So, how long will it be before we join again?

[BlackForestCake]

Will you be supporting the campaign to join the EU?

It will be good for business to do away with a lot of pointless red tape at customs, and our people will benefit from being able to travel, study and work in 28 countries.

I do not believe we will ever rejoin & remainers would be better off campaigning for the UK to seek closer relations with the EU and better bilateral agreements, Travel, Erasmus, Security and Crime cooperation.

Perhaps Scotland will join EFTA? perhaps a better fit than full EU membership?
Any independence vote will cause a major headache for the UK's nuclear deterrent, should NS demand it go.

But why was Ireland allowed to zero rate Tampons? Why are men's razors considered essential and therefore zero rated?

I am utterly sick of this Government who for years, especially since 2010, either didn't bother to make any input into EU rules when they were at the discussion stage, or introduced an EU rule with a few embellishments of their own. Then it's been whine, whine, whine, the EU won't let us do this, or whine, whine, whine, the EU makes us do that.

OK UK Govt - you will get your cheap Brexit points, but now you have to own your own shit.

Now, about that £350 million a week for the NHS......

The EU rules were changed in 2015 on min rates, ROI zero rated sanitary products before this date, an option the UK could have done at any time between 1973 and 2015.

EU rules change in 2022, so the UK has saved a years worth of VAT.

@Ellie56

End of the day its done. Move on yeah right.

Brits have never understood that the EU is about preventing war between nations by making them States within a larger state.The EU has its faults, but its core aim of making everybody safer and richer is working

1. You don't prevent wars by forcing nation states to become part of a superstate.

1. The source of European wars for the past two centuries have been France and Germany. No one else. Not un-coincidentally, the EU nationalism rehab centre is run by and for the benefit the worst and most violent addicts.

1. The USA was not formed from nations. It was formed from colonial states that shared a common ancestral home, language and legal code.

1. To try and force many European nations, with very different linguistic and cultural histories, into one state, is more like trying to redo the Soviet Union - except it's arguably harder, because the linguistic and cultural differences are even greater and many of the components of the USSR had never been independent nation states. And how did the Soviet Union turn out? And how voluntary was its formation in the first place?

You are just repeating the EU version of itself without stopping to to examine it, and while indicating you clearly don't know much about European, Russian or American history.

@Jaypreen

You clearly don't know your history.
USA formed by violent wars and extermination of the native indian.
USSR formed by a bloodbath and invasion.

The source of European wars for the past two centuries have been France and Germany. No one else

What rubbish is this? before 1871, Germany was just a collection of states.
Prussia, turkey, england, russia, france all were involved in wars throughout the 19thC, the europe we see now was formed after WW1 and then reformed again after WW2.

German aggression in the 30's followed on from the Spanish civil war, Germany electing a populist leader after being economically destroyed by the terms of the Versailles treaty after WW1, ably assisted by the depressions in the 1920s.

France and Germany decided to form a trading alliance post WW2,turning into the EEC/EU.

You brexitiers are really rewriting history to suit your populist agenda.

jasjas - agreed. I was going to post something similar but you beat me to it.

Yes Peregrina, i have no issues at all with people having differing opinions based on some reality of the facts.

But to suggest that the EU is some latter day USSR and the EU keeps us under its thumb with military might is crazy and insulting to the the millions who suffered & died under Soviet control.

The EU has a process for any member state to withdraw peacefully, i don't believe referendum is even required?
With no unfair economic consequence, that doesn't equally apply to any 3rd country.

When we say that the EEC/EU helped to keep the peace, invariably an anti-EU person will jump in and say No, it was NATO. In truth, it's very difficult to say why something did not happen - the not in this case being war.

Funnily enough, those that value Sovereignty have no problem not having a say in how NATO is run.

Jaypreen
The USA was not formed from nations. It was formed from colonial states that shared a common ancestral home, language and legal code.

What common ancestral home was that?

jas Also agreed. I was also about to respond too. The hallmarks of the UKIP version of world history are all there. “Ancestral homelands” is a variation on their nonsense about the “indigenous” people of the U.K. though even more nonsense when you are talking about a place that was built almost entirely on mass immigration in the last few hundred years, some of it not voluntary. What ancestral homelands? The lands of the native Indians taken by force. Ireland? Italy? The African continent? China? I think you would find many involved in the violent formation of the American state who would argue very strongly that they shared neither culture or language....

jasjas1973
The EU rules were changed in 2015 on min rates, ROI zero rated sanitary products before this date, an option the UK could have done at any time between 1973 and 2015.

Not 2015 - Commons Library;

This note discusses the way sanitary protection is charged VAT - more specifically, the Labour Government’s decision, announced in the March 2000 Budget, to introduce a 5% rate on sanitary protection, the lowest rate then permissible due to EU VAT rules, and the current Government’s announcement in the 2020 Budget that a zero rate will apply from 1 January 2021. ...

There has been a long-running campaign against any VAT being charged on sanitary protection–the so-called ‘tampon tax’ ...

Although the current EU agreement on VAT rates allows Member States, should they choose, to charge a reduced rate of VAT– between 5% and 15%–on certain specified supplies, including sanitary protection, the introduction of a new zero rate would contravene these rules.

In October 2015 the Government confirmed it would seek a change in EU law to allow sanitary protection to be zero-rated, as part of a forthcoming review of EU VAT by the European Commission...

commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn01128/

EU rules change in 2022, so the UK has saved a years worth of VAT.

I think it's 2022 'at the earliest' - the EU had put off agreeing a timescale. Ideally we would have left the EU in 2018/2019 and not dragged it out so much.

Not 2015 - re: "an option the UK could have done at any time between 1973 and 2015."

Happy to be corrected clav but how did ROI have zero rate and avoid the ECJ ?
Ah! just found it, 1991, 18 years to zero rate... Member States may continue to charge any lower rates, including zero rates, that were in place on 1 January 1991

Regardless, VAT on sanitary products is not responsible for Period Poverty... Poverty is itself.

Lets see if the Govt zero rates energy now? would have a huge effect on fuel poverty...... er no, thought not.

As I said on the Arms thread,
Brexit was caused by real and perceived inequality.
And the anger behind it does not seem to be on the Government's to do list.
There are lots of little policies that could be enacted without world beating grand slogans
but the fact that they have not been since May 2010
does not bode well for the future

so the angry will stay angry
and more people will get angry

Agreed LQ. Prattling about 20 new hospitals and 50,000 new nurses is going to get them built and trained. They need to be planning now.

The war time government was able to pass some important pieces of legislation, one which immediately comes to mind is the 1944 Education Act, and if a country at war can, then this Government should be able to.