Is Britain about to leave the EU?

[Flying Pig]

It would only be a trade war if things were well escalated which I do not advocate.

The UK pays far more to the rest of the world re IPR than the UK receives from it.

Compare BBC royalties on Doctor Who from USA
with Microsoft licences for 25 M Brits' PCs.

And the two most populous countries: China and India regard most IPR as
little more than a blatant attempt by the western imperialists (backed up by USA
hyper power might) to capitalise on being the first with a particular product, and
tax them. They therefore copy as much as possible and pay as little as possible.
I have no doubt that once the East has parity in devastation power; wider IPR will end.

I don't think you're really thinking this through - however much we pay for Microsoft's products, we're getting the products for it. Trade happens when the buyer values the product more than the money that it costs, and the seller values the money more than the product. Everyone is happy: in the case of something like software, which can be used for business, it's often the case that everyone has fuller pockets as a result as well. When you think of imports and exports, remember that imports are the things we want, and exports represent the work we do in order to be able to get them.

 

[Mega Tsunami]

Being popular does not necessarily translate into electoral success - UKIP demonstrated that quite amply last spring. If people don't want the Tories, they'll generally vote for the SNP or for Labour - who's leading them at that point is unlikely to be that important.

All sorts of people have been tearing their hair out trying to figure out just why the polls at the last GE were neck and neck and then all of a sudden, on the day, the Tories walked it.
One of the more valid reasons given I believe was that we should have been looking at two polls within the polls – the competence given to each party on the economy and the personal ratings of the leaders (would he or she make a good PM). The Tories and Cameron won both those easily.

And Corbyn is even less Prime Ministerial than Miliband (much more a Michael Foot I would say) and the lurch to the left by the Labour party has made the British worry even more about the economy under their hands.

With the SNP continuing to dominate in Scotland, I suspect we will be a Conservative run country for some time to come.

Things might change of course if Cameron comes back from Europe in February with his ‘peace for our time’ piece of paper to wave and then loses the referendum…

Or indeed if he comes back with his tail between his legs saying

‘This morning the British Ambassador in Brussels handed the EU Government a final Note stating that, unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to give us a new Treaty, I will have no option but to support the ‘leave’ campaign.
I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that
consequently this country is about to leave the EU'.

 

[Arakhor]

Personally, I think Labour returning to the left makes sense. The UK doesn't need multiple right-wing parties and the SNP could do with a challenge in Scotland.

 

[innonimatu]

One of the more valid reasons given I believe was that we should have been looking at two polls within the polls – the competence given to each party on the economy and the personal ratings of the leaders (would he or she make a good PM). The Tories and Cameron won both those easily.

And Corbyn is even less Prime Ministerial than Miliband (much more a Michael Foot I would say) and the lurch to the left by the Labour party has made the British worry even more about the economy under their hands.

The world economy is headed into another crisis. And this time the central banks cannot do anything about it. The real problem (income disribution, lack of consumption) must be tacked. That is one Cameron is tremendously incompetent to deal with (people can be blind to what goes against their own private interests), whereas Corbyn is one of the few politicians in the UK who can handle the problem. It's not a matter of if, only when. And it'll come with a big disruption in world trade and in the chains of supply also. Many national economies may need to be rebalanced. Which leads us back to the issue of the political crisis in the EU...

Things might change of course if Cameron comes back from Europe in February with his ‘peace for our time’ piece of paper to wave and then loses the referendum…

Or indeed if he comes back with his tail between his legs saying

The referendum in the EU will probably happen (if it has to happen this year as was promised) before tshtf. But my guess is tha many smart people in the City can already see what is coming, and favour a brexit and preparing the UK for a different world before the whole lot of mess that is going to overtake continental Europe. I don't doubt that they'll have agendas different from what I would favour. But they can smell change coming (the unsustainability of the EU economic and political status quo), and want to be able to influence the UK government without the dead weight fo a desintegrating EU to hamper it.
So I thonk that Cameron's golad will be to come out of Brussens seemingly with the tail between his legs and then carry the no campaign and make it a personal victory. Labour would be well advised to occupy that field before Cameron does. But there are too many blairites still occupying the benches of the party in parliament.

 

[Agent327]

I'd comment, but this is so confused I'm at a loss where to start... It's not even fit to be called an analysis of current affairs.

The End is Nigh! Repent! seems more appropriate.

 

[Bretwalda]

I am sure US, Russia and China would be happy to see UK leave and even more enthusiastic to see Europe fall apart. That would be the start of Europe being a second and third rate region.

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[Bretwalda]

The EU stands for control by predominantly german and french corporate interests, and corporate interests in general.

The big offense the EU has over the polish government-s move is that they are kicking outt the people the previous pro/EU party put in charge of the state/owned media. And they may invest more in those media, to the detriment of the foreign-owned corporate media there.



You mean the current democratically elected polish and hungarian governments? Though I may dislike right-wing governments, I have no doubt about their democratic legitimacy.

And the definition of open society seems to be one manipulable by foreign interests applied though so/called investment, foreign/owned media, and so-called international institutions.
The election of right-wing (and in the places where the left still puts up a fight, left-wing) radical (hah! not demanding freedom and sovereignty to run ones country is radical) governmens is a rebellion of the population against the open society the EU stands for. The new kafkian empire.

Democracy - the trouble with it is that the damn voters cannot be manipulated for ever. Pesky voters, the EU should arrange a democracy without elections. It certainly does not do well with referenda, that we know.

Hungarian government is not legitimate. Not after rewriting the election law, conquering the constitutional court, media and partly the judicial system. Or if you will as legitimate as Stalin or Hitler.

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[Thorgalaeg]

A thing i dont understand is on one hand the british euroskeptics here are saying UK is having an economical boom but on the other hand they are not happy about being in the EU. Dont they think that the said economical boom may be thanks to being in the EU? Do they think leaving the EU will turn the boom into a nuclear boooommmm and dont care to risk seeing it turned into a big crashhhh instead? Or the main reason to leave the EU is about "national pride" and other silly things like the refugee crisis?

 

[Arakhor]

Or the main reason to leave the EU is about "national pride" and other silly things like the refugee crisis?

I would imagine that that is an awful lot of the issue, yes.

 

[innonimatu]

Hungarian government is not legitimate. Not after rewriting the election law, conquering the constitutional court, media and partly the judicial system. Or if you will as legitimate as Stalin or Hitler.

How the Hungarian government is chosen is an internal problem of Hungary, for hungarians to deal with. If you allow the EU to meddle with how countries choose governments, and rely on foreign inteerventions to estabelish what is and is not legitimate, what's to prevent an updated, EU version of the events of the Hungarian Uprising in the future?

 

[Flying Pig]

I'm not sure that you can say that military intervention in the interests of a good cause is always wrong, purely because military intervention can and has been used in the interests of bad causes. It becomes especially shaky when you're not actually talking about military intervention, but (eg.) economic sanctions, boycotts and the like. After all, we did it to South Africa and to Iran, and are still doing it to North Korea.

 

[dutchfire]

I don't think anyone is talking about military interventions for situations like this. All proposals I've heard are about temporarily removing EU voting rights* and restricting payouts of EU money to member states.

* Queue: "THE EU IS NOT A DEMOCRACY "

 

[Mega Tsunami]

Cameron came back from Brussels with his ‘peace for our time’ deal and was slaughtered by most of the press here. Even the Guardian could only come up with the headline ‘at least Theresa May has become a turncoat and moved over to the dark, sorry ‘other’, side’.
Cameron aimed low and looks like achieving even less. The feeling I get is that the EU doesn’t care if we stay. And who wants to be a member of a club that doesn’t want you? Not me. And a new YouGov poll in the Times (paywall) with a 45-36 lead for the ‘Leave’ side suggests that many of us are noticing these we-don’t-like-you-anyway vibes from the EU. This poll was previously neck and neck.

Or maybe it is the way Cameron has handled it – stopping his Eurosceptic colleagues talking while Europhiles are allowed to say want they want.
It all stinks of an Establishment stitch up and maybe, as the Times says, it is a backlash against the elite establishment. And there is no better elite establishment than Brussels.
Guardian:
A new poll has suggested more Britons favour leaving the EU over staying in, with 45% supporting “Brexit” compared with 36% against, while a fifth remain undecided.
The YouGov poll for the Times was carried out in the two days after publication of an outline deal that David Cameron negotiated which could change the UK’s relationship with Brussels while keeping it within the European Union.
The poll suggested the number of voters wanting to quit had risen by three points on the previous week, the Times said.


http://www.theguardian.com/politics...it-but-a-fifth-undecided-yougov-poll-suggests



Anyone wanting an idea of some of the many things wrong with the EU could do worse than read this piece in the Guardian by Yanis Varoufakis.
I don’t agree with him saying we should not leave the EU – I reckon if we voted to leave that would give a lot more impetus to his DiEM25 movement.
And once we have voted Leave-first-time, perhaps we would be able to come up with a new democratic Treaty that Britain, and others, could sign up to.

Varoufakis:
The aversion that many in Britain now feel towards the EU springs from the right instinct but leads to the wrong answer. Undoubtedly, Brussels disdains democracy and luxuriates in unaccountability. David Cameron’s hollow compromise will do precisely nothing to address this. Yet at the same time, a vote for “Brexit” in the forthcoming referendum is not the answer either.
<snip>
This European cartel and the bureaucrats who administered it feared the demos and despised the idea of government by the people, just like the administrators of oil producers Opec, or indeed any corporation, does. Patiently and methodically, a process of depoliticising decision-making was put in place, the result a relentless drive towards taking the “demos” out of “democracy”, at least as far as the EU was concerned, and cloaking all policy-making in a pervasive pseudo-technocratic fatalism. National politicians were rewarded handsomely for their acquiescence to turning the commission, the Council, Ecofin (EU finance ministers), the Eurogroup (eurozone finance ministers) and the European Central Bank into politics-free, democracy-free, zones. Anyone opposing the process was labelled “un-European” and treated as a jarring dissonance.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/05/eu-no-longer-serves-people-europe-diem25

 

[Arakhor]

An "Establishment stitch-up"? Really? You think they're competent enough to manage that?

 

[Verbose]

Patiently and methodically, a process of depoliticising decision-making was put in place, the result a relentless drive towards taking the &#8220;demos&#8221; out of &#8220;democracy&#8221;, at least as far as the EU was concerned, and cloaking all policy-making in a pervasive pseudo-technocratic fatalism. National politicians were rewarded handsomely for their acquiescence to turning the commission, the Council, Ecofin (EU finance ministers), the Eurogroup (eurozone finance ministers) and the European Central Bank into politics-free, democracy-free, zones. Anyone opposing the process was labelled &#8220;un-European&#8221; and treated as a jarring dissonance.

The assumption there of course being that it's the EU bureaucrats who wants the EU to be a non-political adminstrative hulk.

The problem rather seems to be that the constituent national governments don't want to cede political decision making processes to the EU level &#8212; and that the EUrocrats aren't insisting they should. And really, if they did, there would be an uproar from the Euroskeptics anyway. And rightly so, because THAT would really be the EU administrators stepping outside the bounds of their remit. (Somehow Varoufakis seems like making himself dumber than he clearly is, by somehow being surprised/incensed at administrators not given a remit to enact EU-wide democracy act like administrators, and don't step out of bounds.)

So like any good conspiracy theory, it gets the fingered EUrocrat supposed culprits coming and going.

But nevertheless &#8212; if this is the actual problem: "depoliticising decision-making" &#8212; then the remedy of making the EU level actually relevant for democratic decision making. But that of course means some form of vastly increased EU federalism. Ho hum, let's just petition the EU Commisson about this, if that's what's actually being asked for here?

That's to say, if the entire exercise isn't just one of the uses and joys of EU scape-goating of course.

 

[Verbose]

The feeling I get is that the EU doesn’t care if we stay. And who wants to be a member of a club that doesn’t want you?

Err... Who in their right mind would want to make you to stay in a club YOU clearly don't want to be part of?

If anyone in the EU has any opinion about any of it, then the British tend to scream bloody murder. Or is it that the UK has been "insufficiently" courted and cajoled here?

The fundamental problem is that the UK CANNOT STAY in the EU unless a majority of the British public, and preferably by a GOOD margin (to give it sufficient stamina for any decision on the matter to stick) actively wants to stay. Or at least the UK cannot stay and hope remain a democracy for long.

You're already a member of the club. Does the EU "not want you"?

Well, you're the ones talking about leaving all the time. You're like the tricky girl-friend constantly darkly hinting things might be over between us soon, so as to keep you on your toes, forever unsure about the status of the relationship, always trying to make up for... something (usually an imagined slight)... endlessly courting and cajoling to mollify her.

And that said, Sweden (it's pretty well generalisable like that) REALLY, REALLY doesn't want the UK to leave. That would leave us alone to confront the Germans (who don't understand modern financial systems, like how modern banking is not having a vault full of gold) and the French (who do, but have a domestic politics scene that doesn't bode well for free trade and internationalism). So if the UK goes, that would instantly trigger a Swedish crisis of identity as a EU member state. It would mean Sweden eventually also has to make a choice, to leave like the UK, or stay and become more like some of the other EU member states. It's a toss-up.

Mind, the PROBLEM from this kind of Swedish perspective is not some kind of imaginary EU Giant coming to eat us, but the quite real problems of the political dynamics between EU member states — and how that would change for us without the UK in the EU — because that actually matters a damn sight MORE than Brussels does.

Though it's possible a member state has to be smaller than the UK to actually be able to discern how the dynamics work? The UK might be too insulated by its size, and so can get away with replacing fantasy for reality over what the EU is and how it works to rather a high degree.

That said, since the UK has size enough to insulate itself from the EU-level of things to a very high degree, it also HAS undeniable clout inside the EU (Sweden, which tends to agree with the UK on most things, if not all, profits here), yet somehow doesn't notice itself. Partly that seems to be beause British politicians have already largely managed to sideline themselves with regards to the processes going on inside the EU — Cameron not least.

 

[Mega Tsunami]

@Verbose
Just today the EU parliament president Martin Shulz has said – ‘Many of my colleagues say - Don’t stop a rolling stone - If the Brits want to leave then let them leave’. Imagine if Cameron, for example, had said that about the Scots in the lead up to their referendum. My guess is that many in Government thought exactly that at times but wouldn’t actually say it.

I know we are nothing but trouble to the EU at times but it is because we feel so uncomfortable about the way it is going. To continue your analogy about the tricky girlfriend, we want to be good neighbours, not bedfellows.
In the same way we knew how wrong the Euro was (being introduced decades too early), we feel ‘ever closer union’ is also wrong for us.



We get all sorts of scare stories about what would happen if we left (such as Goldman Sucks saying today the pound would fall 20% if we left) but they don’t tend to bother me at all, except for one scare story - the possible breakup of the EU as a result of our leaving.
But I still don’t think that would happen – I honestly think that if we vote Leave, we would all go back to the drawing board and make a new (London) Treaty which would describe how Britain (and other countries like Sweden and Denmark if they wished) would sit in the EU. Call it some sort of Associate Membership of the EU and I am sure we would vote a big fat Yes to that.

 

[AdrienIer]

To continue your analogy about the tricky girlfriend, we want to be good neighbours, not bedfellows.

Yes, the kind of "good neighbour" that flirts with you then asks you to fix a lightbulb and is always at your door when she needs you, but nothing ever happens. We know that's how you'd want it to be but it's not going to work.

I honestly think that if we vote Leave, we would all go back to the drawing board and make a new (London) Treaty which would describe how Britain (and other countries like Sweden and Denmark if they wished) would sit in the EU. Call it some sort of Associate Membership of the EU and I am sure we would vote a big fat Yes to that.

Europe will, for once, speak in one voice and say no.

 

[Mega Tsunami]

Yes, the kind of "good neighbour" that flirts with you then asks you to fix a lightbulb and is always at your door when she needs you, but nothing ever happens. We know that's how you'd want it to be but it's not going to work.

No, the kind of good neighbour who would exchange the most detailed of security information and who would stand side by side if threatened. The kind of neighbour who would feel Je Suis French if France is attacked. You know, like we have done for a hundred years or more.

Europe will, for once, speak in one voice and say no.

We have to be willing to take that risk, of course. But the proposed two tier Europe would be infinitely better than the current one.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

I would fix the lightbulbs of my neighbour any time she ask me. But she is so cute... much more than UK.