The infighting over Europe starts

wotsthat

Thrugelmir wrote: »

More substance than the current generation of clueless politicians driven by ideology than any financial sense. Too young to remember how fragile relationships are between certain groups across Europe. Much in the same way we like to forget that Irish nationalism is still very much alive in pockets decades on.

Having more substance than the current crop of politicians doesn't prove he's a political heavyweight.

Not sure what financial sense he has either. Just heard him on Radio 4 - when asked about the evidence that the UK would be better off out of Europe there was some bluster about red tape in the financial sector but not much else other than a promise he hadn't just dreamt this up overnight but had been thinking about for some time (my guess would be since last Thursday).

pqrdef

michaels wrote: »

So the day I turn 65 I will change from being a social liberal to a racist homophobe?

When you turn 65 you'll find that the world has moved on and left you behind. It'll be run by a weird generation of aliens that you don't get. But the Tories will speak your language. They will share your belief that things were better in the good old days. Whether you like anything else they're saying will become secondary.

RJP33

Can someone explain to me what we get for our money with the EU, which couldn't be achieved outside it?

Conrad

N1AK wrote: »

I am yet to see any evidence that people are voting on it based on a considered appraisal of their policies.

UKIP ideas I can support;

+ The long awaited bonfire of the quangos, to save £50bn

+ Withdrawl from the club saving lets say £50bn (taxpayers alliance say £120bn)

+ Local decision making yet in the powerful club of 10

+ Full control of our own destiny - you know like S Korea, Turkey and Japan have. PS Turkey and Morocco trade perfectly well with Europe, and we would find it even easier than they.

+ Withdrawl from Afghanistan now - yes we can

+ And end to all but essential immigration - the SE is already far too congested and no the answer is not building ever more roads

+ A serious attempt at cutting waste. The Condems still allow vast money waste. My council ofices are lit up like a Christmas tree completely unecessarily.


I dislike thier anti gay marriage stance though.

mcfisco

RJP33 wrote: »

Can someone explain to me what we get for our money with the EU, which couldn't be achieved outside it?

I don't think anyone could and - conversely - no one could tell you with any degree of certainty what we could do outside of the EU
The problem the 'out' brigade have is similar to the problem that the pro independence lobby have in Scotland.
How do you manage to get enough people to put their hands up for something so uncertain that could have very serious repercussions if that uncertainly doesn't go the way they were told it should go.
And just like the Scots, any referendum over EU membership will very likely result in people [on the whole] voting to maintain the current situation rather than risk their future on a such big unknown.

londonTiger

pqrdef wrote: »

Then we must ensure they get paid the minimum wage, so they can't undercut anybody else who'd get the minimum wage.

contractors are self employed and dont have minimum wages. vast majority of labourers are minimum waes.

Also i beleive there was a dispatches investigation of hotel workers of a 5 star hotel that worked the system by only dealing with people through contracts, and they paid them less than minimum wage like that as they were contractors.

newbian

Conrad wrote: »

+ Full control of our own destiny - you know like S Korea, Turkey and Japan have. PS Turkey and Morocco trade perfectly well with Europe, and we would find it even easier than they.

What does a Turkish or Moroccan worker cost to produce a widget compared to a British one? Hint: it's less.

South Korea and Japan are technology juggernauts, and both had significant support from the United States in their early stages of post-war development. And much of their success was similarly the ability to make crap Westerners want cheaper than they can make it themselves. That's why everyone has an LG TV now instead of a Philips.

Graham_Devon

Moby wrote: »

Whose interests are you going to put first? Is the momentum in the tory party now finally moving towards the exit door completely?

Radical, I know. But how about the people's interests?

You've gone for the party politics line, but this is a problem for all parties, and it shouldn't be about what's best for the party.

worried_jim

The full article-
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/politics/article3758028.ece

David Cameron’s attempts at renegotiation will be inconsequential – we must leave

David Cameron has promised that in four years time the British people will be given the opportunity to decide in a referendum whether this country should leave the European Union.

To validate this promise, of course, he first needs to win the 2015 general election, which is by no means assured. But as the British people clearly wish to be given this choice, it is unlikely that, at the end of the day, the Labour Party will wish to go into the next election denying it to them. So one way or another, an in-out referendum is likely to be held. It will be an event of historic importance.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister has already embarked on a series of preliminary talks with our EU partners, hoping in due course to be able to renegotiate improved terms for the UK within the Union, which he can then put to the people in a referendum in 2017. We have been here before. He is following faithfully in the footsteps of Harold Wilson almost 40 years ago. The changes that Wilson was able to negotiate were so trivial that I doubt if anyone today can remember what they were. But he was able to secure a 2-1 majority for the “in” vote in the 1975 referendum.

I have no doubt that any changes that Mr Cameron — or, for that matter, Ed Miliband — is able to secure will be equally inconsequential. The theology of the acquis communautaire, the principle that any powers ceded by the member states to the EU are ceded irrevocably, is absolute. It is the rock on which the Union is built, and — through the so-called Passerelle Clause of the Lisbon Treaty — effectively an explicit part of the EU constitution. Moreover, to make exceptions for one member state would inevitably lead to similar demands from others and threaten a general unravelling.

Some pin their faith on making use of the much-vaunted doctrine of “subsidiarity”. But subsidiarity — pushing decision-making down to the lowest appropriate level — is something to which the European establishment pays lip service and then resolutely ignores. The doctrine that “more Europe” must ipso facto be a good thing is sacrosanct My friends among the eurocracy assure me, too, that a precondition for any renegotiation would be that we agree to give up the UK rebate secured with such difficulty by Margaret Thatcher some 30 years ago. But all this is largely beside the point. The heart of the matter is that the very nature of the European Union, and of this country’s relationship with it, has fundamentally changed after the coming into being of the European monetary union and the creation of the eurozone, of which — quite rightly — we are not a part.

That is why, while I voted “in” in 1975, I shall be voting “out” in 2017.

This has nothing to do with being “anti-European”, a particularly bizarre suggestion in my own case, given that my home nowadays is, by choice, in France — indeed, in la France profonde — from where I commute weekly to work in England. The issue is not Europe, with its great history, incomparable culture and diverse peoples, but the European Union. To confuse the two is both historically and geographically obtuse.

On the Continent it has always been well understood that the whole purpose of European integration was political and that economic integration was simply a means to a political end. In this country that has been much less well understood, particularly within the business community, which sometimes finds it hard to grasp that politics can trump economics.

That the objective has always been political does not mean that it is in any way disreputable. Indeed, the original objective was highly commendable. It was, bluntly, to eliminate the threat to Europe and the wider world from a recrudescence of German militarism by placing the German tiger in a European cage. That objective has been achieved: there is no longer a threat from German militarism.

That today German influence is increasing peacefully, largely at the expense of France, as a result of Germany’s superior economic performance is not something to which anyone can legitimately object.

But in the background there has always been another political objective behind European economic integration, one that is now firmly in the foreground. That is the creation of a federal European superstate, a United States of Europe. There is, of course, nothing disreputable about this either. Unlike the first objective, however, it is, I believe, profoundly misguided. It is certainly not for us.

As far back as January 1989, as Chancellor and well before the single currency had come into being, I pointed out (in a major speech at Chatham House) that the only way that European monetary union could be made to work would be if it were accompanied by full fiscal union, which in turn required full political union. I warned that it would therefore be most unwise to go ahead with the project since, whatever many of their leaders and above all the eurocracy may have wished, a full-blooded political union was not wanted by the majority of the peoples of Europe.

Unfortunately, a fundamental contempt for democracy has always been one of the most striking and least attractive characteristics of the European movement, however noble its intentions. But that was the clear purpose of the project, never mind that the lesson of history is that the sequence has to be the reverse, with political union coming first and monetary union a consequence.

Hence in large part the continuing eurozone disaster and with it continuing European economic underperformance. But the coming into being of monetary union — and there can be no doubt of the determination of the leaders of Europe to persist with it at all costs — has fundamentally changed the nature of the European Union and of non- eurozone Britain’s relationship with it.

Not only do our interests increasingly differ from those of the eurozone members but, while never “at the heart of Europe” (as our political leaders have from time to time foolishly claimed), we are now becoming increasingly marginalised as we are doomed to being consistently outvoted by the eurozone bloc.

So the case for exit is clear. But would there be a heavy economic cost, making this unwise? There would indeed be some economic cost, partly transitional and partly as a result of the loss of the modest advantages of being within the single market.

But in my judgment the economic gains would substantially outweigh the costs. The only gain that can be clearly quantified is that we would no longer pay our annual membership fee of some £8 billion. That is the size of our annual net contribution to the EU budget, even after the benefit of the Thatcher rebate (which Tony Blair, disgracefully and unilaterally agreed — against strong Treasury advice — gradually to surrender in almost his last act as Prime Minister).

But there are other, and more important, gains than this. It is widely recognised throughout Europe that, safely removed from effective democratic accountability, the EU has become a bureaucratic monstrosity. This imposes substantial economic costs on all member states. These are perhaps greatest in the case of the UK, not principally because our own dear bureaucracy is inclined to goldplate the regulations that emanate from Brussels (although all too often this occurs), but more because we have a tradition of precision in law-making and respect for the law that is less pronounced in much, if not most, of the rest of Europe. That is not going to change, nor should it.

Moreover, there is one area of regulation of particular importance to the UK, where the EU regulatory cost threatens to be even greater than it is already, and that is the area of banking and financial services more generally.

Despite the banking disasters of 2007-08, London remains a far more important financial centre than the rest of Europe put together. It is one of the few major industries, with substantial growth prospects, where this country is indisputably a world-class player.

As a member of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards I am well aware of the need to clean up British banking, and proper supervision and regulation has to be part of it. But the ultimate purpose is not to cut British banking down to size but to enable it, shorn of the cultural decadence and scandals that emerged towards the end of the last century, to flourish globally.

However, after the recent banking meltdown, the EU is currently engaged in a frenzy of regulatory activism, of which the foolish and damaging financial transactions tax, imposed against strong UK opposition, is only one example. In part this is motivated by a jealous desire to cut London down to size, in part by well-intentioned ignorance.

The Bank of England, now through the Prudential Regulation Authority restored as the body responsible for the necessary and sensible supervision and regulation of British banking, is becoming increasingly frustrated by the mandatory nonsense emanating from Brussels. Escaping from this and reinforcing the escape by co-operation with the only other genuine world financial centre, the United States, would be a major economic plus.

Those who claim that to leave the EU would damage the City are the very same as those who in the past confidently predicted, with a classic failure of understanding, that the City would be gravely damaged if the UK failed to adopt the Euro as its currency.

But what of the loss of the advantages of being within the single market? In the overall scheme of things these are marginal. You do not need to be within the single market to be able to export to the European Union, as we see from the wide range of goods on our shelves every day. The statistics are eloquent. Over the past decade, UK exports to the EU have risen in cash terms by some 40 per cent. Over the same period, exports to the EU from those outside it have risen by 75 per cent. The heart of the matter is that the relevant economic context nowadays is not Europe but globalisation, including global free trade, with the World Trade Organisation as its monitor.



Indeed, I strongly suspect that there would be a positive economic advantage to the UK in leaving the single market, quite apart from the more important economic gains I have already listed. Before we joined the European Common Market, as the EU was then known, far too much of British business and industry felt secure in the warm embrace of what was still known as Imperial Preference and was reluctant to look farther afield. It took entry into the Common Market to bring about a recognition of the opportunities on our doorstep.

Today too much of British business and industry feels similarly secure in the warm embrace of the European single market and is failing to recognise that today’s great export opportunities lie in the developing world, particularly in Asia. Just as entry into the Common Market half a century ago provided a much needed change of focus, so might leaving the EU, an institution that has achieved its historic purpose and is now past its sell-by date, provide a much-needed change of focus today.

There is a saying frequently attributed to the eminent economist John Maynard Keynes. Charged with having changed his mind about economic policy, he is said to have replied: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” It is probably apocryphal, but it accurately encapsulates his approach to events. It also accurately sums up where I now stand on the issue of UK membership of the European Union and why I shall vote “out” in 2017 if given the opportunity to do so.

Lord Lawson of Blaby was Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1983-89

londonTiger

newbian wrote: »

What does a Turkish or Moroccan worker cost to produce a widget compared to a British one? Hint: it's less.

South Korea and Japan are technology juggernauts, and both had significant support from the United States in their early stages of post-war development. And much of their success was similarly the ability to make crap Westerners want cheaper than they can make it themselves. That's why everyone has an LG TV now instead of a Philips.

Turkey doesn't want to join the EU because then Turkey will become the holding cell of all EU immigration. Greek has serious issues with immigration paticualry from Iraq and Afghanistan caused by you know what.

There's also a far rigth movement that is being ignored. immigrants beaten up, and seriously wounded. Saw one footage of an immigrant who had his eyesgouged out. His eye socket was like an open cavaty. Supposedly down by greek far right. It was shocking to see.