Leave voters? What's your alternative plan for the country if TM's Withdrawal Agreement doesn't get through?

[bellinisurge]

A small majority of people who voted in the referendum voted Leave. I presume they still want to Leave. How do we do that if the Withdrawal Agreement fails and Parliament has voted through an amendment which allows it to stop No Deal.
Talk me through it ...

Weetabix It's not the EU's fault that the UK has done nothing to 'control' immigration. Provision has always been in the EU treaties and if that was people's major concern, they should have been petitioning parliament to use those powers that are already available to them. Yes there is the freedom to move through Europe; however, there doesn't have to be the freedom to stay and access services for just anybody. Just workers. The U.K. has decided to implement it as 'anybody'. In Belgium, if you intend to remain in the country rather than just travel, you have to go to your local administrative centre within 8 days of arriving in Belgium in order to be processed and receive your ID card. Without your ID card you get nothing. We don't have that provision in the U.K. and it's certainly not the EU's fault!

@Weetabixandshreddies - google Schengen. As a law abiding citizen yes of course you could drive all around the EU. If you were onthe run from justice you would find it much harder. Not impossible but harder.

* ...EU such that it became impossible to leave?*

Errr in the next paragraph there's a bit of a contradiction to your own post? The final para is clearly acknowledging we can 'easily' leave on WTO terms albeit they have to be temporary at first. No one other than geography forces us to trade with EU members.

So - It's not impossible to leave at all- we can leave by April fool's day next year. Indeed we are on that path right now. It's perfectly possible. Just economically self sabotaging to an insane degree.

Imagine if for whatever reason we hadn't met the criteria to join in the 1970's. If we had been limping along on our own for 40 years, we would now be pressing our noses at the glass of the EU window with 100% of us begging to be allowed membership.

If you think WTO Brexit is the way forward, please look into that a bit more closely.
Try some of the 3BlokesInAPub videos (the early ones, particularly the ones in Geneva where they spoke to the WTO) on YouTube and if you disagree with them check your sources for disagreeing.

teaandbiscuitsforme

I'm not talking about people being officially resident or about accessing services.

I am talking about the ease with which someone choosing to evade authorities can travel around Europe.

We've driven from France to Holland, France to Switzerland, Spain and Italy.

Didn't cross one manned border. No passport checks, nothing. No one knew we were there. That's a security risk surely?

Everything about this has been mishandled.

If the UK government has had powers to tighten our borders, to not pay benefits to European citizens and their families etc why haven't they done it, when they knew it was pushing voters towards Brexit?

During the referendum campaign why were both sides focussed on arguing with each other, rather than explaining to the electorate exactly what the options were and the implications?

If the government knew what the implications were, and that there was no solution then why go ahead at all?

The government has shown how inept it is (both Cameron and May's governments). There seems to be no forward planning in any of this, no understanding of what any of this means for the UK.

If May wasn't prepared to go for the best deal for the UK then she should not have stood for PM.

lonelyplanetmum

That is what I meant - that somehow we have been led deeper and deeper into the EU seemingly with no clear way to leave when we choose to. Who agreed to join with an exit plan that the EU deign to give us?

Obviously they are only going to agree a plan that benefits them. Who signed us up to that?

Those who want the backstop renegotiated, what do you think is a realistic and workable proposal?

{I didn't say anyone could enter the. UK, I said they could travel freely around mainland Europe which has to be a massive security risk?}

Why is it as specific security risk?
Everyone with Europe is either a European, therefore has a right to live there and move around, or has had their passport and security check when they crossed the border into Europe.
I 'popped over' to Holland recently from France. This involves crossing Belgium. You can tell when you enter and leave another country as there are signs and cameras noting your vehicle.
The situation is exactly the same as someone traveling to Wales from Scotland, except there are no 'security' cameras. Theoretically a GREATER security risk.
The knifings on the streets in the UK are not being perpetrated by Spanish 'ner-do-wells' using FoM to pop over from Madrid.

{Those who want the backstop renegotiated, what do you think is a realistic and workable proposal?}
Why should it be renegotiated' the whole point of a backstop is that it is only to be used in a dire emergency. You don't regularly use the life vest under your aeroplane seat, but it is a small comfort to know that it exists.
The backstop is to be used if/when the UK stops negotiating and coming to a sensible agreement.

I don’t think it should be renegotiated @1tisILeClerc - I think the EU have been very clear that they are not willing to. I was asking those who believe it should be.

An unscrupulous airline might save some money by not installing the life vests. Not too far removed from some of the suggestions by the Tory party.

"If the UK government has had powers to tighten our borders, to not pay benefits to European citizens and their families etc why haven't they done it, when they knew it was pushing voters towards Brexit?"
Because they were too chicken. Because we don't have ID cards in line with our national views on what makes a free society.
I have found EU acquaintances happy to have ID cards but horrified by us having so much CCTV.

1tisILeClerc

If it's the case that everyone who enters the EU has their passports checked then a)how are so many illegal immigrants able to enter at various points and then travel around Europe? b) when we drove from France to Switzerland there were no passport checks and no cameras (from what I remember). We crossed the border into Switzerland and back many times on our stay and man times didn't even know that we had. Sometimes we were in a hire car, other times in our friend's Swiss car and at others in our own car. Had I been a criminal trotting around how would the authorities really have known what my movements were?

If we already are able to exercise sovereignty then why haven't we?

Again @Weetabixandshreddies , you are confusing your law abiding activities with non-law abiding activities. And you seem to think that anyone who gets into the EU from outside automatically heads for the UK.
Incidentally, if we open our borders to let food flood in unchecked you can bet your arse that there will be illegals on the lorry because they know it won't be checked.

I voted to leave because I want the UK to have sovereignty, to make our own laws,

Name one law that has been pushed on us that has not been passed by our parliament. We even opted out of Schengen, arguably damaging the tourist industry.

to control our own finances, to not have to financially prop up other countries over whom we have no control (Greece et al)

As we have a central bank we already control our finances. had we been in the Eurozone then you'd be correct. As for Greece, the UK played no part in their right royal shafting. As they are part of the Eurozone they have no control of their own finances, the ECB does.

That is what being in the EU feels like to me. Countries exerting low wages, rising retirement age, cutting benefits etc are having to bail out other countries who are less than careful with their spending.

You do know our well paid manufacturing jobs were allowed to leave in the 80s under Thatcher's disaster capitalism? Rising inequality Has been UK policy for decades, it's not from the EU.

The UK does not 'bail out' other EU countries; what happens is the ECB transfers a fuckton of money to their central bank and then demands the banks, usually Deutschhe Bank and BNP Paribas are paid back their fraudulent loans, benefits are slashed and it's the ordinary people who suffer. It's a shit system, but we're not part of it, our poor suffer because of our govt policy, not the EU.

IDS on R5L right now, saying we can't have another Referendum b/c...

The people will hate us.
Lots of people will be very angry.
We'll be more divided than ever if we do that.

So the angry people should win. That's that, then.

If the several sovereign countries of the Schengen region wish to have check-free borders between themselves, which has nothing to do with the UK because the UK is not in Schengen (and "we" are all really big on disliking other countries having opinions on our affairs, yes?) - why are "we" complaining about the agreed arrangements between members of the Schengen region?

{Had I been a criminal trotting around how would the authorities really have known what my movements were? }
The same way that you are monitored when traveling from Birmingham to Wolverhampton.
There is probably significant difference in the mentality of society in these areas. On a trip to Switzerland years ago my friend who is a resident is quite happy to leave a nice open top sportscar with keys in the ignition and his wallet on the seat for an hour or so with no real concern. On the other hand when living in the UK I have had tools stolen from when I was working on my car and nipped inside for literally 2 minutes to grab another screwdriver. I know where I would prefer to live. The status of those 'wandering' around France etc is not necessarily that they are illegal immigrants. I have no idea.

DoctorTwo

If the UK isn't propping up other EU countries where does the money that we pay to the EU go?

If the UK is not under EU control what does the EU parliament do?

We are controlled by the EU. We obviously don't have complete autonomy, free from control by them and if we do, then why haven't governments instigated this autonomy before it got this far?

@Weetabixandshreddies , much of it comes back to us in the form of grants.
What doesn't helps our neighbours thrive which is good for our exports if we have a market on our doorstep. Peace in NI is because we are in the EU. Stability and thriving economy in EEurope is because they are in Europe.
Why do you think Putin hates it so much?

bellinisurge

Not really seeing that tbh.

Don't really see many stable or thriving countries in the EU.

Whatever the rights and wrongs - we were given a referendum, this is the result, it's therefore now up to the government to represent our interests and to facilitate our exit.

Before we joined, was an exit deal not negotiated? How did anyone sign us up to this, allowing the EU to decide the terms under which we can leave?

If we have as much power and freedom as you say, why are we allowing the EU to control our exit? How can they have that power, if as you say, they currently don't have powers over us?

Weetabix - you do know in terms of contribution to the EU per capita, the UK is only about 8th, on a par, iirc, with Italy - and well behind Belgium and the Netherlands?

If the UK isn't propping up other EU countries where does the money that we pay to the EU go?

Into a central pot, where it's distributed in the form of grants. Ironically, those areas that voted heaviest for Leave receive the most in EU grants, money they won't get from Westminster. They are doubleplus fucked.

If the UK is not under EU control what does the EU parliament do?

It provides cchecks and balances to the EU Commission.

Weetabix Clearly you don't agree with Schengen, rather than the EU. Which is fine, we're not part of Schengen. You can't cross from any Schengen country into the U.K. without a passport.

As for why didn't the government tell people, etc, for 2 very obvious reasons:

1. As has been clearly shown, they don't understand it. They don't have the intellectual capacity to comprehend the complexities of the EU and of international trade.

1. 'Will of the people'. The U.K. has been fed decades of anti-EU and anti-immigration rhetoric. A large section of the population either doesn't care or doesn't want to hear the benefits of either the EU or immigration. People are also looking for somebody to blame for their situation and the right wing hate press has jumped on that and turned them against anything other than White British rather than educating people to think more critically and question the government. The collective attitude in the U.K. disgusts me.

@Weetabixandshreddies thank you for explaining your thoughts and reasons, it makes a change to hear some rational debate. The money we pay to the EU also covers areas of joint trade like access to all EU markets, being part of trade deals we jointly negotiate, and yes of course admin to help run it all. If we leave then of course many of these functions (think Customs officers etc) will have to be paid for out of the UK's shrinking economy, leaving less national 'disposable income' to fund all of the other projects the EU have backed in the UK.