What are the real tangible benefits of the UK leaving the EU ?

[frumpety]

I assume there must be at least a couple, things that can be said with certainty, that will improve the lives of UK citizens. I am not talking about the 'feelings' stuff like sovereignty, I mean if the UK leaves the EU , X will happen and this will automatically improve the lives of the majority of the people in the UK. There has to be at least one ?

@NoBaggyPants

Immigrants from the rest of the world are judged differently. They have to be able to prove they earn more than EU citizens.

The EU regulates on oh so many things such as the size of light bulbs we can buy in the shops and how powerful our vaccum cleaners can be the list is actually endless.

@DorisDaysDadsDogsDead
The government do not have control of how many EU citizens choose to live in UK. Currently any EU citizen has the right to come to and live in UK.

I had a huge discussion about this on a Conservative debating forum on FB.

We get zero VAT rated tampons

^ That was pretty much the total of real, tangible things

So we will have to comply with American Red Tape and Chinese Red Tape?
But that we be OK for the likes ofJohnson - Trump's red tape is good.

Re-enfranchisement of significant proportions of the electorate would be a real benefit from my POV

What does that actually mean in reality?

“UK fisherman will get far better fishing quotas.”
But the main part of UK fish is sold to Europe (british don’t like the types of fish UK Fishermen catch) so when we try to do any deal we will have to trade quotas for market access - or our fishermen will go bust (unless you are happy to massively subsidise them - eg by spending less money on public services and putting it into fish subsidy...)
Brexit makes us substantially poorer and weaker (and brexiteers should acknowledge we will spend the next decade discussing trade deals - this is not going to stop.
If long term economic decline is worth it for some vision of being free of the then that is a choice - but be honest. Pretty much everything will be worse apart from your “feeling”.
In the meantime “bollocks to brexit” :-)

Haahaaa!

{The EU regulates on oh so many things such as the size of light bulbs we can buy in the shops and how powerful our vacuum cleaners can be the list is actually endless.}

This is pointless unless you start to understand even simple things in life.
Unless the new products that are used around the world are designed to work more efficiently it will hasten the impact of climate change. LED lamps are a lot more efficient than old incandescent bulbs, although they do have some limitations.

"The government do not have control of how many EU citizens choose to live in UK. Currently any EU citizen has the right to come to and live in UK."

Ignorance. Yes they do. If they cannot get a job or support themselves independently, the we can expel them after 3 months. OUR government has chosen not to enforce this rule.

Spouting xenophobic crap does not make it true...

I discovered yesterday that the Americans were leading the way in phasing out incandescent light bulbs, and not as you might expect under Obama, but under Dubya Bush. Do we hear criticism of the USA for that? Not so far as I am aware in this country - it's ignored as though the EU dreamt up the idea.

The Chinese either have done or also plan to phase them out. But it only matters to the true BeLeavers when there is EU involvement, or so it seems.

We get zero VAT rated tampons

And if we were to stay in the EU and press for this change, wouldn't about half of the EU population raise a cheer?

I did (finally) manage to get some of the Conservative debating group to admit that a big driver was immigration

Quote: "For example, currently, the net immigration into the UK is outpacing the number of houses being built per year by about 50,000. Given that land is becoming more expensive, and due to increased laws regarding building on greenbelt land, the prices of houses are going to increase. Net immigration levels this high are unsustainable, and this isn't even when accounting for natural population growth."

We then had a bit of a discussion about the benefits of EU migrants - some of which he agreed with.

We sort of stalled when I showed the net migration of non-EU migrants having increased since 2016 to replace the decrease in EU migrants. Given that such a big driver is reducing immigration we don't seem to be doing that at all amongst the non-EU migrant population which presumably(?) we have full control over.

The EU regulates on oh so many things such as the size of light bulbs we can buy in the shops and how powerful our vaccum cleaners can be the list is actually endless.

No, without the aide of Google, I bet you can’t name anything else except bendy bananas or tampons on your ‘endless’ list.

Another person wrote this which seems interesting but I asked for sources and didn't get any. Haven't had time to fact check if any of this is true myself

"The U.K. sugar industry was huge, but due to EU quotas and tariffs, we dropped from 18 factories to 4 in a short time. Now that the British sugar industry has been decimated, the skills and experience gone, the factories decommissioned, guess what? Yep, tariffs and quotas have now been removed after the effective destruction of the industry in this country.
The U.K. fishing industry has been utterly decimated by the CFP, as has been well documented.
12% of the Worlds clinical trials were carried out in the U.K. The EU produced a “Clinical Trials Directive”, and again another British industry was destroyed. We now carry out just 1% of all clinical trials.
We were the art auction capital of the World, sadly that too has been decimated due to an EU directive. London now auctions a fraction of what New York does.
And that’s the tip of the iceberg.
The U.K. is the Worlds fifth largest economy, and is there despite efforts by the EU to curtail our ability to trade.
The only thing Remainers seem to be able to point to as a benefit of EU membership is “Free Trade”, which of course is nothing of the sort when you have to pay billions for it. It’s actually very expensive trade.
And that of course brings us to the fact that the UK’s biggest export is Services. Which of course, isn’t subject to “free trade”. Funny old thing that, eh? If I didn’t know better, I’d assume that the EU was trying to curtail British industry......
It all makes me wonder why Remainers actually hate their own Country and prefer to worship at the alter of the EU Commission. From where many of us stand, the EU has been the cause of insurmountable damage to U.K. industry."

And another interesting post was this one. Again, I haven't had chance to do any independent fact checking of it.

"Try to concentrate on the big picture and long term trends, rather than on short term challenges.

UK exports to the Single Market have fallen to 43%, while our exports to the rest of the world have risen to 57%. Some suggest that is due mainly to accelerating growth in emerging economies.

But since the advent of the Eurozone in 1999 the German economy has grown by around 32% while that of the UK has grown by 43%. Over the same period US, Canadian and Swiss growth rates have risen by 49%, 53% and 46% respectively.

The EU’s track record has been disastrous. It has been the least successful trade area in the world for many years, apart from Antarctica.

Global Finance magazine calculated EU GDP growth over the last 10 years at 1.0% per annum (and the Eurozone even worse at 0.7%) compared to other advanced economies (excluding the G7) at 3.0% and the world at 3.8%. “

EU output has fallen from 30% of world GDP in 1980 to 17% in 2015. The IMF predicts that 90% in global growth will come from outside of the EU over the next two decades.

The fact is that developed non-emerging economies such as those above, have done much better than the EU, which is restricted by its Eurozone and Regulation straitjackets.

The Eurozone Titanic has average % unemployment around twice ours and we do not need ever closer union with that.

165 countries do not pay £billions to trade with the single market and the U.K. doesn’t need to either, when average world tariffs have fallen below 3%.

Yes there will be short term challenges but they will be far outweighed by the long term benefits of escaping the one size fits all E.U.

93% of the world’s population is outside of the E.U. and it is creating wealth at a faster rate. That is where the future lies. It does not lie with the crumbling edifice that is the E.U.

Many who wave the economic issues to one side simply say that they want all regulations made in their Parliament, by MPs who are directly accountable to them.

WHY do LD’s want to see the end of their nation state? They are like turkeys voting for Christmas and they do nothing to sustain DEMOCRACY and government for the people.

www.politico.eu/article/juncker-lashes-out-at-stupid-nationalists/?fbclid=IwAR3lLY6O2sZwmer6aVN4_ZIY2kIjPaK57sga6zyvd6RFYwt61dowqoOBxIE

Sorry for spamming a few quotes from Leavers from the Conservative Debating Group.

They're the first time I've seen a couple of posts that look like they have a bit of thought in them.

Yet to do my own fact checking of any of them so please don't take at face value, just thought I would share a few Leaver opinions (solid Remainer myself).

@Peregrina

And if we were to stay in the EU and press for this change, wouldn't about half of the EU population raise a cheer?

Now I'm a solid Remainer but I did my background research into this and actually we raised it a number of years ago and it has been very, very slowly progressing since then.

I will try to dig out the source but it did make me at the EU to be honest

Here is the link on tampon tax. Now the EU have I believed called for MS to zero rate tampons in Jan 2019 but it appears to have taken a very long time.

Though I realise this isn't the priority issue of the century.

researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN01128

And that of course brings us to the fact that the UK’s biggest export is Services. Which of course, isn’t subject to “free trade”. Funny old thing that, eh? If I didn’t know better, I’d assume that the EU was trying to curtail British industry......

Free trade and trade deals are massively about services too...
If you saw the news tonight China is pushing back on our view on rights of Hong Kong citizens. Post brexit we will be free to do whatever trade deal we want with China (which you will like) but no longer have the rest of Europe behind them. Highly likely the price of any UK only trade deal will be keeping quiet about Hong Kong. To me that seems a serious loss of power. Or maybe that is a trade off you are happy to make..

Yes, that's one thing that jumps out of that post. We have 'passporting' in place for services under the EU.

@Milkywayfan

These aren't my opinions. I'm a Remainer. They're copied and pasted from a massive discussion on this very topic I started in a Conservative Debating Forum on Facebook.

I've just shared a couple of the more thought through posts from Leavers. Amidst quite a few not so thought through ones!

Sorry wheresmymojo - read too fast as should be packing and not mumsnetting

To WheresmyMojo

In essence the growth and opportunities are outside the EU.

Won't be an overnight windfall, but Rome was not built in a day either.

They said the benefits of destroying coal mining in this country would outweigh the negatives. And the benefits of doing so are apparent. But the negative effects trashing coal mining communities and leaving them without any support is still being felt today. Multiply this effect several times with No deal. Not with Leave but specifically with No DealZ
Where's the magic money tree to help wrecked industries and communities @LifeContinues . Or like Hunt, are you prepared to tell hard working business owners that their sacrifice is worth it?