Why should we stay/leave the EU?

[OhYouLuckyDuck]

What reasons are there for staying or leaving?
I think I will vote for us to stay as I think it might be a moderating influence on any government wanting to do things to extreme plus we will lose trade with Europe if we leave. I'm undecided though.

It's a pity when posters have to misrepresent the role of the EU organisation in a rather pathetic attempt to explain the obvious democratic deficit

It's a pity when posters are so depisillushioned domestic politics that they feel the only way the fan get the changes the want us via the EU. They forget that the UK and had a welfare state and NHS long before we were members of the EU and it's disingenuous to believe our own Parliaments could not have provided improved social laws without EU initiating them.

The list of 'benefits' is rather childish. Many are not real benefits, many we would have obtained anyway, many are simply facile arguments for staying in the EU

Part if any assessment is to also look at the dis benefits, the risks and the opportunities. I'd like to see a list of those.

This made sense

www.andywilliamson.com/10-points-to-consider-about-brexit-and-the-eu-referendum/

winky - I don't disagree that our own MPs can be cloth-eared sometimes too. But at least if the people are unhappy with what they do we can vote them out. We can't do that at EU level. No-one can, because the EU executive isn't elected at all. The UK system isn't perfect, but we have far better democratic accountability by keeping power at UK level than we do by giving it away to unelected technocrats.

As an aside, if you ask me the EU has made a huge contribution to the disengagement of ordinary UK voters with the political process in recent years. When all the policy that matters is increasingly decided at EU level, what is there left to do at UK level other than tinker and micro-manage, and shout about tiny issues as though they are life and death matters? The addition of the EU diminishes national parliaments to something more like county councils - no wonder people have stopped caring about national politics and believe all politicians are the same. They aren't - it's more that in many cases their hands are tied by EU policy and they simply aren't allowed to act outside a very narrow range of decisions that the EU deems acceptable.

**Also, can you imagine how utterly toxic it'd be politically to try and rescind the laws we now have?

True, but technically possible that if the UK left the EU it could be open to future governments to repeal legislation that would not be possible to ditch were we still a member. First to go under the current administration would probably be the Human Rights Act, but we'd no longer have the protection of the ECHR in the background. More significantly, small, incremental changes to any existing legislation could be made by SI without much fuss as the checks and balances of the EU obligations would no longer exist and, depending on the political persuasion of the government in power at the time, there could be significant legal ramifications of Brexit in this or future parliaments.

Springing - this is pretty much the only article I've seen that looks at what could happen if we remain in the EU.

We can only speculate what happens in Westminster after the election. Events are so fluid that I wouldn't like to venture a guess. The EU is a more predictable beast. We know that it will need extra powers to keep the eurozone in tact. It will get them. We will have our two speed Europe. The EU will have almost total control over economic affairs in the eurozone and those nations not in the Euro will be way down the list of concerns.

Having asserted itself as a new power, it will push for more powers and more of a presence on the global bodies that make trade rules and regulations. It will use the courts to award itself more exclusive competences. On working parties at the ILO and other bodies, the observer status the EU has will be upgraded so it controls all of the votes all of the time, including ours. Any kind of veto will be extinguished.

From then, if we want a change in the rules that affect trade we will have to add it to the list of EU concerns. Only after many meetings to decide if we are allowed to put it on the list of concerns. We will have meetings about when to have a meeting. If there is a crisis between then everything goes on hold. And there usually is a crisis. When is there not?

Eventually a problem will become a crisis and the crisis will become and emergency. Only then will the EU act. It will then claim the only way to solve the problem is for the EU to have more control. As more financial shocks occur in the turbulent years to come, we will find the survival of the Euro is the primary concern and so our problems will not be their problems. We will be way down the list.

Sooner or later a problem will be so bad we find ourselves taking unilateral action to fix a problem only to be slapped with heavy fines by the EU for breach of treaty obligations. We then find ourselves on the fringes of the EU, with diminished influence within, no presence on the global stage -we're told how to vote in the UN general assembly and then we cease to be a nation in any real sense, except for when the EU is keen on bombing something. After all, the EU will want to keep up the illusion we are still a proper country.

Meanwhile, as more and more of the minutia of government comes under EU control we will find Westminster politics becoming increasingly more divorced from foreign affairs and trade, turning ever more inward and parochial, acting only inside the parameters set by the EU. No political innovations or new ideas not allowed by the EU will even be suggested.

As displacement activity, we will find Westminster assuming control of more and more local affairs that should be the province of local authorities - right down to the micromanagement of classrooms. (yes, more so than they do now). We will then see the trivial elevated to high importance in the media as it fails to realise there has been a complete transfer of governance to the EU.

It goes on. I urge you to read it. It's at least as plausible as the 'rain of toads' scaremongering by the Remain campaign.

True, but technically possible that if the UK left the EU it could be open to future governments to repeal legislation that would not be possible to ditch were we still a member.

So, we should vote in a party which stands up for workers' rights.

sandwich - a couple of points. Firstly, your post assumes that the Human Rights Act is ipso facto a good thing. My understanding of it is that the debate is quite nuanced and there are in fact other ways of achieving the same effect without imposing continental-style rights law on a UK system that hitherto worked quite differently. I'm not a lawyer though and the debate is quite arcane, so others may be better informed than me on this.

Secondly, what the EU does isn't 'checks and balances'. It's a supranational level of governance that restricts the sovereign power of elected governments, and to which there is no pushback as it doesn't take a democratic mandate from our electorate. That's profoundly different. The UK already had a system of 'checks and balances' that has worked, for all its flaws, fairly well for some time and I dispute the implication that without the EU acting as a sort of playground monitor all kinds of legal abominations would flourish.

Ultimately the UK Parliament cannot do things that the UK electorate profoundly rejects. Look at what happened when Gideon tried to take the axe to tax credits. There might be disagreement but a UK Government that acts against the majority will of the British people will be kicked out and its successor can repeal any abominations it's tried to bring in.

Not so the EU. It can and has done things the European electorates profoundly reject. Millions have signed petitions against TTIP, but the Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström tells us "I do not take my mandate from the European people". And once its directives are passed, they cannot be repealed. There is not a single instance of a directive being removed once passed: not one. And the people who create these directives aren't even elected, so don't answer to the electorate, so quite simply don't have to give a stuff what the electorate thinks.

There is an argument that we should cling to the EU so it protects our social regulations. But I just don't trust that the EU is on the side of ordinary people. Given the Troika's indifference to the integrity of welfare states in Greece, Portugal, Spain etc in the recent eurozone crisis I don't doubt for a moment that the EU would shut down any of these vaunted social protections the moment it thought it in the interests of 'trade' to do so. And unlike a UK Parliament, we wouldn't be able to kick them out if they did.

The ultimate 'check and balance' of a government is that an electorate can get rid of them. That, to me, is the reason we need out of the EU: because, quite deliberately, there is no mechanism for getting rid of its technocrats except leaving.

I wasn't very clear in using the phrase checks and balances re the EU and was just using it as shorthand - sorry. What I meant is that the requirements of the eu legislation preclude incomplete or non-compliant implementation of laws in domestic legislation, unless there are specific exceptions/exemptions/exclusions thus achieving the desired result behind the eu legislation (in lawyer terms the "mischief" of the legislation). The checks and balances of our own parliament have been dramatically reduced by the House of Lords reforms and I'm not convinced that domestic politicians give a stuff what the electorate thinks either tbh. When the uk government (of any political persuasion) wants a particular policy to go through, the civil service usually manages to see that it's done. Domestic politics sadly isn't that different from European politics in my experience.

Domestic politics being imperfect seems to me a poor reason to hand away what democratic accountability we currently have.

OTheHugeManatee

I've always been reluctant to predict exactly how the EU would treat us post-brexit for fear of being labelled a scare-mongerer but I would agree with the article you posted.

Here's my predictions if we vote to REMAIN.

If we vote to stay
we will be punished by the EU for challenging them
we will be reminded at every opportunity that we voted for Europe so should shut up and suck it up
we will have ever closer union via the unstoppable reams of EU directives handed to us
we will be sucked into the Euro - after all, we voted to stay IN so why won't we join the Euro -they will argue
we will continue to have mass unstoppable migration from the EU and it will increase when dirt poor countries such as Turkey, Albania and Maceodonia join
our hospitals, schools and housing will be unable to accommodate all the newcomers
we will be required to give up our seat on the UN Security Council - after all, we've voted to be in Europe so why should France AND the UK have a seat each when the power lies in the hands of the EU, they will argue
We will close our embassies abroad and representation will be handed to the EU embassies that have already been established under the Lisbon Treaty
VAT will be imposed on children's clothes and books and on house purchases and the low VAT fuel rate will be abolished (already under discussion)
we will be asked for greater contributions to pay for the migrant crisis in Europe - created by Merkel
we will eventually have an EU Armed Forces - after all, we voted to stay IN, why would we need our own, they will argue
we will be drawn into wars as the EU, like all Empires expands into territories that other powers have an interest in - such as Ukraine, which the EU is grooming and Russia will never accede.
we will lose our veto and our influence in the EU will be further diluted by the increased number of member states - Cameron no longer holds talks with Russia or Turkey, he leaves it to Hollande and Merkel to visit them

And so it goes on until we have as little power as a local authority within the vast European superstate - something Ken Clarke gleefully predicted.

And we're facing all this because everyone is terrified that the 5th largest economy in the world cannot exist without the EU, conveniently forgetting that even Cameron himself has said repeatedly that he has "no doubt the the UK could exist outside the EU".

So we're doing this for 'free trade' which is self-evidently not 'free' at all an, after all, most of the profit generated by these free traders gets laundered through tax havens so we gain very little tax for all that effort anyway.

It's a huge confidence trick, sustained by fear.

I don't disagree that the Lords situation needs sorting out (though that's a whole different debate )

But domestic politics being less than perfect seems a poor reason to hand away what democratic accountability we have.

Great post SpringingIntoAction

oops - double posted! Stoopid internet.

Springing - I think your list is pretty plausible. It can't be stated often enough and loud enough that the status quo isn't an option. The direction of travel for the EU is clear, and its destination is a federal state. The eurozone has to do this now. Sure, we're not in the euro, but do we really want to cling on to the side of this gigantic federal superstate as a sort of parasitic, semi-crippled semi-state, sort-of in the club in that we don't have our own representation internationally, but not in the club because our currency is different and we've made so much fuss about being different and special? How much attention is the United States of Europe going to pay to us? Precious little, I imagine.

We are more likely to get something that looks more or less like what we currently have if we leave. We'll still have the Human Rights Act, we'll still have employment protection legislation, we'll still (most likely) have free movement as part of staying in the EEA and even if the EU could break WTO rules and punish us with harsh trade restrictions there is no way Germany will lose all those lovely BMW and Audi sales in the UK by initiating a trade war with us.

If we leave, nothing much will change. If we stay, we'll be slowly absorbed into a superstate.

Domestic politics being imperfect seems to me a poor reason to hand away what democratic accountability we currently have

Spot on.

Neither is the fact that your particular political party can't get itself elected, so we'll try to get what we want via the EU a good argument either.

Remember, you can vote your domestic Government out of power. You can't vote an EU dominated by Marine Le Penn, Alternative for Deutschland, Golden Dawn and Lega Nord and various other Far-right parties out of power. You're stuck with them. Then what? Then you'll wish you were living in a truly sovereign country.

Are we going to watch the impending blood bath at 3.30 today when Dave has to explain his Dodgy Deal to a Parliament in which half his Tory MPs have declared LEAVE?

There will be blood?

Dave has put himself in a very awkward position.

Having donned the anti-Europe coat to woo his anti-Europe Conservative voters in a bid to win the last election, and having spent his time running down Europe, he now has to admit that Britain would be better off in the EU and try to put out the fires he has lit.

Also, can you imagine how utterly toxic it'd be politically to try and rescind the laws we now have?

do you mean like the Coalition and Tories did and have done since 2010? For example, increasing the period that you have to be employed before you can claim unfair dismissal?

If we stay, nothing much will change. If we go, we could have decades of being in the doldrums. I am alive now, with one chance at life, thank you very much and want my standard of living and lifestyle to stay the same, not be changed because Cameron couldn't show leadership and tell his Eurosceptics to put up or shut up. We've just had all the uncertainty of the Scottish referendum and now we've got another one. Joy.

As for the democratic deficit, well I give you the House of Lords. I actually think the Lords do a decent job of analysing legislation and hold the government to account better than the Commons do at times, but democratic they are not. The EU does have a parliament, we can elect its members and they also scrutinise legislation. It's not ideal either but we can vote them out.

Some of you may be happy with a toxic Tory isolationist Trump-arse-licking England (not UK, the other home nations will be off). But the majority, hopefully, will not be.

Boredofusername

This is about much, much more than domestic politics.
It's about freedom and sovereignty, not a beef about the Tories/SNP/Labour/

Cameron's on his feet now

SpringingIntoAction
well said

I know y'all hate DC, & mostly want to vote out, but DC's speech was great :).

Who repairs a marriage by starting divorce proceedings?, indeed.

Love the way Cameron is trying to rebrand 'sovereignty' as 'getting things done' as long as Juncker and Merkel say you're allowed to do it. He doesn't mention any of the 'things' you can't 'get done' because EU policy prevents it

Poor 'principled' Jeremy Corbyn. He's a sceptic but he's having to toe the Labour party line on this.

DC gave a copy of his statement at 8 minutes past three. It's becoming a bit of a habit...

For teacher and parents - this - from the TES (not normally considered in favour of the Conservative Gvt) “There is developing awareness of bursary tourists from EU in some subject areas, eg, secondary MFL,” the university told the committee last year. “This adds weight to the belief that we are developing a teacher training and development culture that rewards training at the expense of teaching with no requirement to actually enter the profession.”