The only way to get the EU to take the UK seriously is to vote to leave

[SpringingIntoAction]

Cameron tells us repeatedly that he wants to remain in a reformed EU.

Many others across the political divides also acknowledge the need for the EU to reform itself.

Some say that's why we need to remain in the EU - to change it from within.

I think the EU's refusal to engage with Cameron's plea for his EU reforms and the failure of his 'special deal' to achieve anything like the changes he originally said he wanted, show the EU is unwilling/incapable of reform.

I think the only way to get the EU to start taking our demands for reform seriously is to vote to leave.

They need to start imagining what the EU would be like without one of its largest funders - the UK. We do that by voting to leave.

"things that we fought Argentina to restore to the Falklands and fought Iraq to restore to Kuwait"

You think there is democracy in Kuwait?

"things that we fought Argentina to restore to the Falklands and fought Iraq to restore to Kuwait"

You think there is democracy in Kuwait

Self-determination. The right not to be ruled by Iraq.

The only way to get the Tory party to take the UK seriously is to vote stay.

I want the facts, damn it, the facts.

There are probably enough 'facts' to stretch to the moon.

The clincher for me is that I want to live in a country that is governed by a democratically elected Government that we, the people, can remove.

I do not have that while we continue to accept laws handed down to us from an undemocratic EU.

We could argue about tariffs, the benefits or otherwise of immigration, etc etc etc but none of these issue trump (oh dear) the issue of sovereignty.

It is sovereignty that actually makes a country a nation state. Without it you have surrendered power over you to a higher authority.

How do you accept the reduction of sovriegnty that would be part of joining the WTO? The EU avoids it by being a large trading bloc, but the UK wouldn't. Lower regulatory standards which are most of the laws made by the EU anyway, how do you stand there?

Released from the colossal suffocating yoke of the EU, joining the WTO would be a pinprick on the hide of an elephant in comparison.

These are not facts, though, really. These seem more like emotionally charged opinions (very nicely expressed, of course.) I was thinking I would like both sides of the campaign to produce a lot more independently validated economic 'knowns'.

The leaflets we've had round our way have been shockingly bad. All rhetoric and no substance.

I fear I am becoming the floating voter.

"Self-determination. The right not to be ruled by Iraq."

Just by the Emir then not elected, hereditary, whose family memeber is always the Prime minister who has power of appointment of all other ministers.

As usual you know not of what you speak, your ignorance is sgratifying though spring xx

The only way to get the Tory party to take the UK seriously is to vote stay

I'm not so sure about that. Cameron and Osborne would consider that a victory and a job well done, and we'd get more of the same.

David Cameron's EU sham exposed: Leaked letter reveals PM hatched anti-Brexit plot ... while still telling voters he could campaign to leave

"A pact between David Cameron and big business to scare Britain into staying in the EU was exposed last night.

A leaked letter suggests the Prime Minister was plotting with a multinational firm on how to hammer home the Remain case while still claiming he was prepared to campaign to leave.

He had been telling the Commons that he ‘ruled nothing out’ unless he won concessions from the EU.

The secret ‘mobilisation’ plan involved asking FTSE 500 companies to put in their annual reports warnings about the dangers of Brexit."

Of course Cameron always wanted to stay in the EU and only pretended otherwise to make UKIP sympathisers vote Tory in the GE, how is anyone surprised?

He's doing no less scheming and party politics than everyone else, but at least when it comes down to it he's campaigning against what he's consistently believed would be a disaster for the UK (unlike Boris, who could have equally come down on either side but picked the side that suited his ambitions best)

Can't believe I'm defending Cameron, this referendum will be the end of me

I was thinking I would like both sides of the campaign to produce a lot more independently validated economic 'knowns'.

There are actually lots of independent studies around, the vast majority supporting the Remain case. But they're drown in all the rhetoric.

I was reading something about this in the Economist last week in an article about campaign politics - voters say they want the facts, but when given facts they don't believe them.

So much stupid overblown stuff is said on both sides, voters just don't believe anything anymore. It's a big problem for Remain, because the economic studies/facts/expert opinion are their best argument.

was reading something about this in the Economist last week in an article about campaign politics - voters say they want the facts, but when given facts they don't believe them. I, as you know, disagree with this, because when we drill down to the research processes, facts are not as factual as we might like them to be. Politics shape the research processes. I am signed up to several research councils' social media outputs and alerts, and have been amazed at how many immigrant-related funding streams have been announced in recent months (I am making an observation, not a judgement). So, the research questions, hypotheses, and subsequently, methodology and method have all been determined before the research proper as it were, has even got underway. At this point, Chalala might say, "This is wrong because we end up making rubbish decisions - look at the MMR and autism link". However, what's interesting about the MMR/autism link is that take-up of the MMR was always quite high despite the scare stories. Here, you have a lot of well-informed, well-read people making a decision going against the government. They are obviously seeing things other than the research, which, instinctively, people know is tainted with political positioning. I think that voters are being very clever and are acting on their gut instincts, which, surprisingly, are often a really good proxy for more involved decision making when the latter is unavailable.

Interesting Fourmummy

I think because this isn't a straight political choice (and I like that aspect a lot), after an initial WTF moment of puzzlement when it was realised that Labour, Lib Dem, Tories and Green are all on the same side, people are ignoring the politicians and making their own judgements. Which is also a good thing.

Some will want to find out more, but many won't, the EU isn't a new thing, they've lived under it for years (whole lives in many cases) and already think they're sufficiently well informed.

yes, fourmummy, we disagree on this - I think the root of our disagreement is that you think people dismiss studies for good reasons (personal experience, "gut instinct"), and I don't.

I completely accept that a certain level of healthy scepticism is healthy, but not to the point of completely dismissing what is pretty much a consensus from all experts. Personal experience is always valid in itself, but it can be deceiving because you don't see the underlying mechanisms or the bigger picture. And "gut instinct" doesn't spring fully formed out of nowhere, in this case it largely comes from the anti-immigration, anti-EU propaganda the British public has been fed by the media and the Tories for years and years.

The LSE study is a prime example of this - the research group barely has any EU funding, yet its findings that EU immigration doesn't negatively affect wages or employment is flat-out disbelieved. Not just taken with a grain of salt, not taken contextually - just flat out dismissed, because it doesn't reflect people's "gut instinct".

At this point, Chalala might say, "This is wrong because we end up making rubbish decisions - look at the MMR and autism link". However, what's interesting about the MMR/autism link is that take-up of the MMR was always quite high despite the scare stories.

You know me so well :)

I would reply that the anti-vaccine movement is having some very real, very deadly consequences. Some communities are seeing outbreaks of preventable diseases, because of the local drop in vaccination rates.

87% of scientists believe global warming is man-made, but only 45% of Americans - because their "gut instinct" tells them otherwise (ie ideological prejudices).

Agreed cha, the dismissing of well researched information as being biased or by gut instinct seems rather vacuous. Thy just want information which panders to their prejudices, hence the links to the mail et al.

For example look at the referrals to brexit the movie on here, which is a skilled piece of propaganda, yet continually cited as gospel by the leave campaign whilst independent studies are shouted down as vested interest. It's actually rather galling.

On this thread most people already know which way they're leaning, and will be biased towards that - which is somewhat understandable.

But the other way to look at this, is that the public don't actually want to have to rely on their gut instinct. The posturing on both sides is really putting them off, and they are crying out for facts and independent research.

The independent research is in fact out there, but the public don't seem to realise it. It's just part of the general noise around the campaign, and it's treated as just another politician spouting off made-up numbers. I accept that research has its limits, but it's still more than this, it's still the best source of real information we have. I think the media has a lot to answer for, actually.

Another problem is that the media has to give equal air time to both sides of the story - so if 99% of economic studies say Brexit would be terrible, they still have to give equal attention to the 1% that thinks it'll all be wonderful. So while there is in fact as close to a research consensus as you're ever going to get, it's still making it sound like it's really a toss-up and no one really knows anything.

Fact-finding isn't an end in itself.

Facts need to be interpreted, weighed up, looked at from different angles, and responded to in a human way. What's best for human lives isn't just a case of putting facts into a computer and it spitting out one result. People aren't just efficiency machines. Everyone has different priorities and will feel that different facts to be more important, and trust different people presenting them.

That's why there is so much debate on the radio, TV, online and in the press. Each week Radio 4's programme More Or Less discusses "the numbers and statistics used in political debate, the news and everyday life". In a recent episode the EU Treasury Report is discussed.

I don't disagree with you Chalala and Lurked, and I'm also not suggesting that we should use 'gut feeling' to make decisions. What I am suggesting is this: take, for example, the LSE study. The results are correct as they stand within certain parameters, the parameters being hypothesis testing, observations and recording of data, referring to the dependent and independent variables. Once these things have been decided, the study is correct, objective and rigorous as it stands. However, it's the parameters themselves, the stage before the study actually commences, which are infused with political processes (how your dependent and independent variables are defined, how you define and word your hypotheses and research aims, how you define which cases to include and which to exclude from your observations, what you count as present or absent). So, deciding how you define a migrant, the concept of social cohesion, income, spending, service usage, infrastructure, etc. are all political decisions. The science may be accurate but how we got to that point isn't. This is why many organisations get things wrong an awful lot of the time. For example, this is from an article (obviously presenting a particular perspective):

"It does not take a particularly long memory to recall how, little more than a decade ago, the CBI insisted we had ‘no alternative’ but to abandon the pound and join the euro [...] Yet the CBI, under the director-generalship of Adair Turner, disapproved even of the then Labour government’s policy of subjecting the issue to economic tests.In 2002, on behalf of his members, Turner declared: ‘There is no case in favour of wait and see . . . to stay out now would be a terrible mistake.’ Britain would be ‘missing out on the great restructuring of the European economy [...] Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan has pointed out: 'The CBI, in its various incarnations, has managed to get practically every big call wrong'. ‘In the Twenties, it wanted to go back to gold at the pre-war rate. In the Thirties, it was for appeasement. In the Forties, it was often for nationalisation. ‘In the Fifties, it was for state planning. In the Sixties, it was for tripartite industrial relations. In the Seventies, it was for price controls. In the Eighties, it was for [British membership of] the Exchange Rate Mechanism. In the Nineties, it was for the euro. Now its leaders trot out precisely the same line in favour of EU membership"

I think that one reason why big organisations are often wrong (and there are plenty of examples of this) is because they fail to account for the political processes underpinning their research. I am not suggesting that we make decisions on the basis of gut feeling. I am suggesting that organisations make their self-interest fully available when producing knowledge. In the absence of this, however, the public must seek out these processes for themselves, which is what everyone is doing here. And sometimes, gut feeling (not ideal) is all we have left when the self-interest are not declared or not forthcoming. Given what I've said above, which 'side' do you suggest people believe? From a personal perspective, given that neither side is able to produce factual and objective information, things like the ability to vote representatives in or out becomes important as do several other points, which are incontrovertible.

Your points fourmummjy are kind of accurate, but your idea that say the LSE set parameters that would favour a finding for political bias is rather iniquitous. The problem with that as well is that the LSE study found pretty much the same as previous studies by the OUMO, UCL and the Nuffield College Oxford studies on the NHS. It also corresponds with the data given from HMRC on the contributions of immigrants who have been here for 5 years or less.

The point about the CBI would be pertinent, if the CBI were the only one highighting the risks. For example the BOE and the Treasury advised against joining the euro, but their economic forecasts are being disregarded here too. The views of the BCC, the IOD, the pharmaceutical industry, the majority of FTSE 250 companies, the car industry and all. Along with leading think tanks, banks and university predictions.

THIS is the problem, its fine to question the information, I totally agree, but it is to question the vast majority l of the information because it doesn't point you in the direction you felt you should be going in.

"like the ability to vote representatives in or out becomes important as do several other points, which are incontrovertible."

Not so, you directly elect your EU parliamentary candidates, the council members are from the elected government, these are the groups with the power to bring something into law. The Commission proposes laws, mostly at the request of national governments, the EU council and the parliament. They are negotiated in the interests of the countries. I fully believe the "democracy" point to be yet another post truth argument.

Also on the other foot, both coming out of the EU would either relieve us of sovereignty if we adopted full WTO deals, or in the case of an EEA deal still being subject to EU rules and laws, yet having no control.

I've got to run but just quickly - a consensus of opinion does not make something right or wrong - it's just that, a consensus of opinion (it can be right or wrong, but we may never know), and you can make people, including large organisations agree that black is white and vice versa quite easily (much research on social influence and political pressure).

Got to say though, that the stability of the economy seems to be the only angle the remain side are using and it's a bit boring tbh! I think BJ said something like 'Euro love can't be bought' and he's nailed it for me. I just don't, never have, never will, like being in the eu, and honestly, no amount of money will change that for me. I would be happier out, even if 'poorer forever' as remain claim.

A consensus of opinion of course doesn't make something right or wrong, but it indicates a general level of agreement from a wide range of organisations who are assessing the situation, which makes it more likely to be correct.

You can waffle about social and political pressure all you like but it is highly unlikely that the level of pressure is being brought to bear on all of these very different organisations.

a consensus of opinion does not make something right or wrong - it's just that, a consensus of opinion (it can be right or wrong, but we may never know

In theory yes, but then we don't know anything, do we. The theories of gravitation and evolution are just that, theories. They're just the opinions held by the majority of scientists.

When all the research points in the same direction, there's always the theoretical possibility that everyone is wrong, because research is imperfect and conducted by flawed humans, as you point out. But on balance, we generally tend to assume that the consensus is more likely to be right than wrong, and act accordingly.