Having an Empire and plundering it's commodities created more wealth. We survived losing that.

Interesting comparison, RK. I'll admit, I'm struggling to find many levels on which it can be applied!

Yes - because the 70's were really fun in the UK with "Great" Britain making rubbish cars (when we weren't on strike). If that's what we can look forward to, I'm heading back to NL...

I think it's interesting on the news today that China (Beijing) have ruled against iPhone design. These markets outside Europe we think are aching to buy our products really aren't.

Yup, the one good thing Thatcher did was kill off rubbish British motors, course she pretty much destroyed all UK manufacturing in the process.

From what I experienced of it at some very traditional British companies (Royal Ordnance and Colchester Lathe) she put it out of its misery. At both companies, as a summer student, I was told by union people that I couldn't do simple jobs because they were jobs belonging to someone else. We got what we deserved.

My main problem with this referendum is not whether people vote one way or another, but that they understand the issues and don't vote under some cheaply-peddled misapprehension.

I can't find the Rod Liddle article you reference andy - any chance of a link? Although, in fairness, I regard Rod Liddle as just as unpleasant as A A Gill.

I wouldn't be too cross about the Gill piece - he is generally a very nasty piece of work. What he does quite well here is to observe a certain stereotype among Leave voters. That isn't saying all in the Leave camp are the same, just that there are some people who will be voting to leave for these reasons.

My main problem with this referendum is not whether people vote one way or another, but that they understand the issues and don't vote under some cheaply-peddled misapprehension.

A relative of mine believes that Angela Merkel was created from the frozen semen of Adolf Hitler in a secret Soviet laboratory, nine years after the end of the Second World War. Further, that the European Union itself is the creation of Satan and his infernal imps, an assertion she does not expect to be taken metaphorically.

She has enjoined me, via a series of text messages — always marked “URGENT!!!” — to share these revelations with you, so you vote the right way on June 23. There we are then, love: job done. Incidentally, these messages often refer to a document called the “Mass Trick Treaty” and insist that Jesus Christ, had he been alive on earth in 1992, definitely would not have signed it.

It is a measure of the current level of debate leading up to the referendum that my rellie’s opinions on the matter do not seem markedly more deranged than the stuff being spouted by our most prominent campaigners. We have been hit by a storm of hyperbolic idiocies, a moronic fugue of absurd claim and counterclaim. If we leave, we will be bankrupted overnight and our homes will be worthless. A week’s break in San Gimignano will require the sort of bureaucratic rigmarole that today attends to a trip to Pyongyang. Oh, and there will be world war, nukes flying hither and thither, Putin smirking and rubbing his hands behind the arras. That stuff all came from a man, David Cameron, who only a few months ago asserted that he had an “open mind” on whether we should leave or stay. What, an open mind on financial ruination and global annihilation?

By the same token, the flailing “leave” campaign is guilty of its own manifest stupidities. No, if we leave the EU we will not immediately be transformed into Switzerland, with its gnomes and suspiciously pristine mountains. Trade deals take a long time to work out — why deny it? Our biggest companies probably will take a hit in the short term. There may well be job losses. It is crass and misguided to castigate the Institute for Fiscal Studies as an evil agent of Brussels simply for trying to estimate the likely cost to the UK of a Brexit victory.


I am for out, for a whole bunch of reasons, most of which are at the least open to dispute. Only one is unequivocal and, I would suggest, incontestable, and I will come to that later. Let’s deal with the other stuff first. I am unhappy about levels of immigration to this country. I accept that immigration from EU member states provides a temporary boost to the economy (which is why George Osborne likes it so much), but it has been ruinous for the poorest Brits. Lower earners have seen a reduction in wages as a consequence of cheap labour arriving from what we once called eastern Europe. For the better off it’s terrific, of course: that basement kitchen extension can be excavated at a fraction of the going rate, and think of all the money we’re saving on nannies now we’ve got Svetlana, who does it all for virtually nothing. And with a PhD from Brno University! But immigration widens still further the gap between the haves and have-nots.


That said, I don’t think there are enormous cultural problems occasioned by immigration from the EU, certainly not from the Poles, who are almost more like us than we are, if you get my meaning. They’re like us 50 years ago, or maybe 30: socially conservative, believing in the nation state, a work ethic and, paradoxically, not convinced about immigration. The non-EU migrants? Yes, it’s a worry, but we’re at least insulated from Merkel’s unpopular, unsustainable and patently insane conviction that we should open every European door to a vast influx of people who do not share our aspirations or culture, among which may be a small number of maniacs trying to sneak in to blow us up.

In or out is partly a class argument — the Establishment versus hoi polloi. And I know which side I am on
We are not part of Schengen — the system of open borders in continental Europe — so are not bound by this potentially calamitous policy that is now being rejected by the population of one European country after the other. By far the greatest immigration to this country is from the Indian subcontinent. Nothing to do with the EU.

I have misgivings about an alliance of countries that differ wildly in their attitudes to fairly important things such as work and financial prudence. I do not believe, as Marx averred, that the base determines the superstructure — that economics underpins everything. I think culture has a large part to play. I would be happy in a free-trade alliance comprising an area stretching from Novgorod in the east to King’s Lynn, full of upstanding Stakhanovite Slavs and rather dour, earnest Scandinavians and Saxons: decent people who understand the necessity of paying taxes, who do not sleep through the entire afternoon and do not for a moment swallow the notion of transubstantiation. We could call this trading bloc the Hanseatic League and give it a suite of offices in Lübeck.

I always thought it would be difficult for the EU to align the working practices that pertain in Thessaloniki or Seville with those that pertain in Hamburg or Copenhagen. So it has been proved with the financial collapse of the “Pigs” (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain). Nor do I feel much affinity with the residents of, say, Palermo or Cordoba, aside from the fact that I — just about — accept that we are all members of the human race. I feel far greater affinity with the people in Chicago, Melbourne, Wellington and Vancouver, but accept this is not a clinching argument and many will not subscribe to it.

I also like the idea of a nation state — for us, at least. The EU does not like the idea of a nation state. It wishes, in its heart, to abolish the concept. This is understandable if you are a German or an Italian and your country was cobbled together by some charismatic dictator only 150 years ago, with not always the most clement of consequences either for them or for the rest of us. Or if you are from Luxembourg and rely upon a supranational body to give your pitiful dozen or so acres, inhabited by a pitiful dozen or so quasi-Flems, a bizarrely disproportionate influence in world affairs. Or you are Spanish and the most affluent parts of your nation state, such as Catalonia, wish very dearly to get the hell out. Or, indeed, you are from any one of a number of continental countries where your borders are about as permanent and stalwart as the surface tension of water, and have shifted many times from empire to empire, from country to country.


Liddle’s Got Issues: In or Out
In the recent Austrian presidential race, the two most popular candidates, from left and right, both wished to see — somewhere down the line — the abolition of, er, Austria. For one candidate (the winner), this was a consequence of a dislike per se for the nation state and a willingness to surrender all to Brussels. For the other, it was a paradoxically very fervent belief in the nation state, providing that the nation state in question is Germany, or perhaps, as old Adolf used to call it, Greater Germany. Can you imagine that happening here? Continental Europe contains a vast melange of displaced, gently oppressed minority people — the Sorbs and Scythians, the Transylvanian Hungarians, the Basques, the Swabians and Samogitians, the Frisians, the Sami, the Flemish. The nation state, then, has far less purchase as a notion over there than it does in our islands.

Hence the sniffiness in Brussels when we Brits talk about national sovereignty. In the main, the countries of continental Europe merge seamlessly; the language often remains the same as you cross the unguarded and even unmarked border. So does the cuisine and the culture. Often, the only thing that changes is your mobile phone provider. None of that pertains over here. But I accept this is not a clinching argument, either.

I do not like the bureaucracy of the EU. But who does? Have you ever heard anyone say: “The one thing I really like about the European Union is the thousands upon thousands of smug, overpaid mandarins issuing fatuous directives.” Bureaucracy is simply our prayer, a fervent and very costly prayer, that we are doing the right thing by one another. The larger the organisation, the bigger the bureaucracy and the more ludicrous it will seem from time to time. But I do not think that it is much more parlous than our own profusion of quangos, of which there has, as yet, been no discernible bonfire, as was promised. And on a related matter, nor am I overly worried that our small businesses — the people for whom Ukip was set up — are overwhelmed by red tape and regulations. Pay your workers a decent wage and abide by a few sensible criteria when you’re flogging your wares — fine, I’m with the EU on that.

On the other hand, the insistence from the “remain” camp that everyone of consequence in the entire world wishes us to stay part of the EU makes me yearn for us to leave. The Americans, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation, the rest of Europe all insist we should stay. There’s a straightforward and easy answer to that: vested interests. The money markets, the multinational corporations, the rich — yes, they are all in favour of both the status quo and the untrammelled movement of labour and capital, regardless of what effect this has upon the poorest. By and large, the British people who support leaving the EU are powerless and short of cash, and those who wish to remain in it are comparatively wealthy, well educated and will benefit financially. In or out, then, is partly a class argument — the Establishment versus hoi polloi. And I know which side I am on.

I worry a little about our defence. Of course the EU will continue to expand its remit and insist that it must have a defence force. The EU wishes for more and more power, as all organisations do. An EU force would be incompetent, indecisive, undemocratic and undermining of western interests. But whatever, leave or remain, we are still part of Nato — an organisation that has done far more to ensure peace in Europe than the EU, despite the latter’s claims to the contrary. So defence is not quite a clinching argument, either, although it is a persuasive one.

There is really only one clinching argument — and it is astonishing that so little hyperbole has been expended on it. It’s this: democracy. Not sovereignty, but democracy. Perhaps we might all sign up to a winnowing away of British sovereignty if we could be confident that the EU would behave in a democratic manner. But it does not do so.

If we stay in the EU, we will be consigning ourselves to a future that, in political terms, resembles the old USSR: no dissent, no alternative point of view permitted. A supranational body run by authoritarian liberals. Now, there’s hyperbole for you — what seems, on the face of it, to be an exaggerated claim. Yet this is what the EU is doing right now, explicitly and brazenly. The unelected president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, has recently made it clear that any country that elects a right-of-centre populist government will be stripped of its rights to make decisions within the EU, and possibly subjected to a loss of income. He did not hint at this, he actually said it. If Austria had voted its Freedom party into power, it would have had its decision-making capacity within the EU removed.

The EU is currently applying the same sanctions to Poland, whose electorate had the impudence to elect a mildly socially conservative government. The Poles could face a total removal of their voting rights and economic sanctions — all for voting in the “wrong” party. The European Commission gave itself these powers — to bully and ostracise countries that vote for policies that contravene Juncker’s own personal credo — back in 2014. This is not merely outrageous and scandalous, but genuinely worrying. No dissent allowed whatsoever from the socially liberal, fiscally conservative line. Because it is not only the right-wing populists who have incurred the wrath of Juncker and the rest of the commission. If you are Greek and vote for an anti-austerity left-wing socialist party, you will be bullied too. No dissent allowed. None. If you are opposed to any more immigration to the EU and are a bit worried about Islam — that’s your voting rights gone. Against gay marriage? Ditto. Europe will be a sort of gigantic safe space where only approved opinions are allowed.

It seems a truly hyperbolic assertion, and yet this is what is happening now — ask the Poles, the Austrians, the Hungarians, the Greeks. It is by far and away the most persuasive argument for insisting that we leave an institution that seeks ever to expand its remit; to exert, in the end, total control. It has become a tyranny, intolerant of any dissenting voices, contemptuous towards the wishes of its people. Why, given this, would you vote “remain”?

From what I experienced of it at some very traditional British companies (Royal Ordnance and Colchester Lathe) she put it out of its misery. At both companies, as a summer student, I was told by union people that I couldn't do simple jobs because they were jobs belonging to someone else. We got what we deserved.

one of the key points that's been mentioned before is that we can vote to leave at any point in the future if any of the things we don't like come to pass: a European Army, restrictions on our democracy, etc. When, after leaving, our economy falls over, I think we'd find it rather hard to get back in.

An interesting point that someone made on More Or Less was that our most complicated regulation is nothing to do with EU: Tax (except bits of VAT), planning, and a third one I've forgotten.

I can't remember where I saw it or who said it but there was a quote from a European leader which said that we would be able to rejoin at any time and would be welcomed back. Sort of highlights the issue doesn't it - lots of contradictory information as no doubt someone has said they wouldn't have us back.

Probably the main thing if we did re-apply is that it would be difficult to get any special terms, but the act of us leaving is very likely to change the EU and bring demands from other countries that may well make things more favourable in the future anyway I suspect.

It's not April the first again is it FreakinFreak?

Wow.

What do you actually know about the European Union and how it all works? Watch this, no one knows anything...

CLICK to YouTube

What do you actually know about the European Union and how it all works? Watch this, no one knows anything...

Well they don't seem to know that General Elections occur every five years, not four. Once I'd heard that I didn't see any point being told anymore 'facts'.

Btw, Over half the financing for that film came from one hedge-fund manager - I'm sure he's all for a sovereignty that allows him to take his tax responsibilities offshore.

The remain campaign haven't come up with an alternative that finds anything wrong with the facts in the film, if it wasn't true it would have been easy to refute the claims.

In, with border controls