Should we leave the EEC?

[Elevenses81]

For DavId Cameron, the latest ฃ2bn demand from Europe [for not stagnating like France] is further cause for further debate on our role in Europe.

I voted for the entry in the 1970s on purely economic terms. The EEC today is a very different animal. The EEC was born out of post-WW2 reconstruction as both a determination that there would never be another European war, an economic independence from US aid and to ensure that coal, steel and agriculture were supported by subsidy. How it has grown in size and function since!!!!. 

The economic, social and strategic implications are hideously complicated, but for many in the UK it just doesn't meet their needs anymore.

[wigginhall]

I am holding fire on the question of leaving, but I thought that Cameron's anger over the latest demand is entirely synthetic.  He has one eye on the UKIP threat, therefore must be seen to be fulminating over Europe.  I am sure that the British govt agreed to future adjustments.   Well, if they didn't realize that they were on the way, then they are really incompetent.

[Elevenses81]

Wiggs,

  what aspects of our continuing membership cause you concern? The expansion that has included countries that are not economically on par with Western Europe, EEC law that overrides UK law, waste, open borders and the inequality of welfare and healthcare provision?

[wigginhall]

Wiggs,

  what aspects of our continuing membership cause you concern? The expansion that has included countries that are not economically on par with Western Europe, EEC law that overrides UK law, waste, open borders and the inequality of welfare and healthcare provision?

I don't actually have many concerns about the EU, but I need to sit down and do some serious reading about it, if we are going to have a vote.   I want to see the details about the benefits and disadvantages.

[Gordon]

According to one expert being interviewed on Radio Scotland this morning the reason for the size of the amount is that it has been re-calculated retrospectively and that the UK has, in effect, been underpaying for more than a decade.

According to him anyway, the monies are due and that any later claims that are made to the effect that a 'deal' has been done will just be political expediency talking since, according to him, by whichever sleight of hand is employed to make it appear that the UK has gained some sort of concession, these monies will get paid to the EU by one way or another.

We'll see - meantime there is ample schadenfreude to be enjoyed!

[Elevenses81]

I'm sure both sides of the debate will offer cogent reasons for staying in or out. Do you think that most people will follow your example and research for themselves? I was at university studying Geography in the early 1970s and one lecturer was in favour and another against. If there s a referendum people will vote with their guts and not their heads and you probably really couldn't blame them. 

[wigginhall]

I'm sure both sides of the debate will offer cogent reasons for staying in or out. Do you think that most people will follow your example and research for themselves? I was at university studying Geography in the early 1970s and one lecturer was in favour and another against. If there s a referendum people will vote with their guts and not their heads and you probably really couldn't blame them.

That's true.  I think the vote will be to stay in, despite all the negative stuff about the EU.  The future will probably seem too uncertain outside, although who can say really.   I think there is probably massive ignorance about it also, and a fair number of myths.

[feelin_blue]

It is a curiosity this EU business, isn't it!  I am certainly divided and wouldn't know how to vote in a referendum.  Like Wigs, I have promised myself to do some reading up on it.... but then without getting bogged down in the actual legal stuff, what do you read? 

So far, apart from the 'do we stay in' vote we were offered way back when, we have had no say.  I am still pissed with Gordon Brown for not letting us have our say on the treaty he signed on our behalf, when the rest of Europe had the opportunity to vote.

But then if UKIP want us out, it kinda makes me want to stay in..........

 

[Elevenses81]

The reasons that the EEC was created for no longer seem to apply - no likelihood of another war, coal and steel have been run down, agriculture is far more efficient and seems to favour the larger industrial farms than the smaller producers who were meant to benefit.

In a global corporate world where national borders seem irrelevant, would the UK really have no market for it's goods if it left? Would London cease to be the financial centre of Europe? 

[Harrowby Hall]

I voted for the entry in the 1970s on purely economic terms.

No Elevenses81, you did not.

There was a referendum, organised by Harold Wilson, in which you were asked whether or not you wanted to remain in the EEC. However, its purpose was not to seek public approval for membership of the Community, but to humiliate Tony Benn, who was behaving rather like Nigel Farage does today, and to shut him up.

It achieved its objectives.

[floo]

Should we leave the EU? DEFINITELY NOT! We need them, they need us, imo.

[Elevenses81]

Harrowby,

  it was a long time ago, but it doesn't alter the fact that I wished to remain in the EEC for the reasons given. Do you think Wilson would have pulled out if the vote had gone the other way? 

[Elevenses81]

Should we leave the EU? DEFINITELY NOT! We need them, they need us, imo.

Could you explain your reasons for thinking this?

[Harrowby Hall]

Harrowby,

  it was a long time ago, but it doesn't alter the fact that I wished to remain in the EEC for the reasons given. Do you think Wilson would have pulled out if the vote had gone the other way?

Wilson ensured that the vote would go his way by getting all-party support. The referendum, in 1975 succeeded by twice as many voting to remain in the Community as voted to leave.

[Anchorman]

If England wants to leave the EU, let them.
We're staying put.

[ProfessorDavey]

If England wants to leave the EU, let them.
We're staying put.

That isn't an option - Scotland is part of the UK and either the UK in its entirety stays in the EU or the UK in its entirety stays leaves the EU.

Perhaps you've forgotten that the Scottish people just had their say in independence and voted by a sizeable margin to stay in the UK.

[floo]

Should we leave the EU? DEFINITELY NOT! We need them, they need us, imo.

Could you explain your reasons for thinking this?

Britain is a very small country in reality, and we need to be part of Europe, united we stand, divided we fall. We have always looked across the pond in the past to the US for support, but I suspect it won't be so forthcoming in the future unless it is in their interest to support us.

[Harrowby Hall]

I am rather concerned by the obsession with the EU. It seems to me that there is a section of society which can be broadly categorised as the not highly educated lower middle classes in middle life who believe, for some reason, that the "rewards" of life, which they think are due to them, are passing them by. (I say categorisation - I realise that some may consider this close to a caricature.)

They look for a reason and are entranced by slick individual with a passing resemblence to Arthur Daley who tells them that the reasons for this are:
(a) immigrants who, simultaneously, are taking all available jobs and growing rich on welfare benefits as well as monopolising health and education services and
(b) the EU which is submerging our British identity with expensive uncontrolled beaurocracy.

Is this not reminiscent of 1930s Germany when the perceived ills of society were blamed on The Jews?

Should Britain leave the EU expect an early announcement that the Nissan car plant in the North East will close. Nissan is controlled by Renault who would not waste any time in relocating the most efficient car producer in Europe onto French soil.

As far as trade to Europe is concerned, leaving the EU would be an empty gesture. The UK will be faced with all of the existing regulation and "bureaucracy" that it faces now. It costs Switzerland and Norway just as much to trade with the EU (in terms of regulations and bureaucracy) as it does EU members. But being inside the union does mean that a country can influence decision making; being outside the union means having to put up with whatever is thrown at you.

One of Arthur Dal Nigel Farage's claims is that we will be able to trade freely with the rest of the world. Well, don't forget that the competition will then come from the BRICs. Be ready for wages and living standards to fall in order to become competitive. In ten years the UK will be the Argentina of Europe.

I am not totally against Nigel Farage. Like him I believe that the UK needs to reform its preVictorian constitution. I worry that second rate political leaders like Cameron and Milliband are incapable of seeing beyond party advantage and will not seize the opportunities currently presented.

[Elevenses81]

We have always looked across the pond in the past to the US for support

You seem to have forgotten that we have just finished paying off our WW2 loans to the US. They even made us pay for clapped-out WW1 destroyers. With the election of a Labour government after the war, all reconstruction loans were withdrawn and Maynard Keynes spent months in Washington trying to reverse the decision.

Why do you think we are a small country? Our GDP at ฃ2tr behind only Germany and France and while France stagnates with public spending it cannot sustain, at least the UK economy grows. I would concede though that our employment growth is down to 'self employed' and zero-hour contracts and cause for concern.

[Elevenses81]

Is this not reminiscent of 1930s Germany when the perceived ills of society were blamed on The Jews?


Your well reasoned reply is somewhat tainted by this unsavoury piece of hyperbole. 

[Gordon]

If England wants to leave the EU, let them.
We're staying put.

That isn't an option - Scotland is part of the UK and either the UK in its entirety stays in the EU or the UK in its entirety stays leaves the EU.

Perhaps you've forgotten that the Scottish people just had their say in independence and voted by a sizeable margin to stay in the UK.

Some of us are of the view that the fat lady has yet to sing.

[Harrowby Hall]

Your well reasoned reply is somewhat tainted by this unsavoury piece of hyperbole.

Hyperbole? Surely, you're exaggerating!

[Elevenses81]

Gordon,

  Devo-Max may well give you far more than any fat lady singing ever could. Compared to how Wales has fared under self-government - 75% less proportional income from Westminster than Scotland under the Bartlett formula, an NHS that people on the border flee to England to get treatment and an education system rated amongst the worst in Europe. Plaid Cymru is so out of favour it polls even behind the Tories.

[Elevenses81]

Your well reasoned reply is somewhat tainted by this unsavoury piece of hyperbole.

Hyperbole? Surely, you're exaggerating!

Oh I  see, so the 'foreigner' in our midst is perceived to be the perpetual outsider, a hate figure in hock to international banking and intrinsically disloyal and hence ripe for whatever hatred and abuse we throw on them. Get a grip man!!! Concerns about the addition of 1m added to our population since the mid 90's without additional infrastructure is not an insignificant concern.

[floo]

It would be hard to leave the EEC as it ceased to exist in 1993.
We're in the EU now and long may we remain so.

Quite right on both counts.