No matter how much money has come from the EU to the UK - including farming subsidies - it has always only ever been part of OUR money sent there in the first place.We should stop funding the EU and we could give some of the money to farmers.
Excellently explained - although I bet you do not get a Remain reply thanking you for providing facts that addressed their lack of understandingMaintaining farming subsidies wouldn't need to come from the dividend as it is something we currently pay in for and receive back from the EU as a benefit. The dividend accounts for what we pay in and don't receive back.
Countryfile at the weekend covered this and it sounds like we can cover the cost for much less than the EU pays. It doesn't just go to farmers, but anyone with a business over a large amount of open land, such as golf clubs, which seems silly.
There's also no restriction on what can be claimed and no accounting for the fact that smaller farms rely on the subsidy much more than large farms. Lord Heseltine is worth around £200m and he was receiving £90k each year from the EU for having a ton of land, perhaps explaining why he was so keen to see us staying in.
Excellently explained - although I bet you do not get a Remain reply thanking you for providing facts that addressed their lack of understanding
This from a man who continually bemoans leavers being stereotyped as thick racists! Why does everything you say have to contain an 'all remainers are wankers' comment, or derivative thereof? It's fucking tedious in the extreme and does not encourage debate, although it does make you sound like a Vogan guard....Excellently explained - although I bet you do not get a Remain reply thanking you for providing facts that addressed their lack of understanding
Extremely well put!I think the effects are being massively overblown by people with political agendas and the actual man on the street will see little change outside some additional paperwork when going abroad. Unless you're Irish then it could be bad.
The UK is a major trading partner of many EU countries, especially in the financial sectors where somewhere in the region of £1.3 trillion is based here in investment. The EU is a major trading partner of the UK and accounts for somewhere in the region of 44% of exports going into the EU give or take a very generous 4% for the Rotterdam effect. There's this narrative presented where either the EU has this crushingly great hand in negotiations and we have to beg them which is completely as false as the narrative that the absurdly positive Blighty Can Make It! with some remnant of Blitz spirit. This is a divorce and it will be simultaneously painful and create new opportunity for all involved to some degree.
Both sides are rational actors and will come to a mutually beneficial agreement. Economics runs the world, be in no doubt about that, and economics demands stability above all else. You can't on the one hand believe that politicians are controlled by corporate interests then on the other hand suggest that politicians won't do what is best for corporate interests. That's talking out of both sides of your mouth.
There's some potential benefits to Brexit. It's no secret that over the next 25 years the economic growth in the world is going to mainly be focused in developing economies such as India, China, the Mid East and parts of Africa - that's really where the money is going to be. Being outside of a trading union gives us the ability to strike more specific and quite frankly quicker deals than being inside it which will be better for us in the long term. In addition, nobody sensible is suggesting that we just stop all immigration and that's one of the freak out lots myths. Instead we can control immigration based on need and skillset which is ultimately the best of both worlds and exactly how every single non-EU country in the world handles it and manages to do so without the downfall of Western civilisation.
On the other side, the EU will want us to continue our commitments to them until at least the end of the current EU budget which is somewhere between £20bn and £60bn depending on who you believe (and the EU is keeping silent on it). That seems fair enough to me and something we'll probably acquiesce to in negotiations - the money is essentially already budgeted in both the EU and the UK mid range budgets and we did agree to do so. This however means we'll be paying into a trading union that we're not a part of which will be a difficult sell to the public at a time where the NHS is struggling so much. Both sides will want current citizens to not be affected and I imagine there would be a citizenship amnesty of some sort where Brits abroad or Europeans here will be given a fast track system. Again - both sides here are rational actors and not insane people who are rabidly biased so it seems an easy enough trade point.
Obviously without the EU we won't get access to the single market but many have argued this is a good thing as it allows us to cut bureaucracy in different sectors that aren't really applicable to the UK economy. The single market are the internal trade rules of the EU and don't apply to external products or deals. So the UK won't have to do adhere to rules that are designed to keep French dairy farmers competitive, for example. However the flip side to this is that manufacturers might be not fancy making "EU version" and "UK version" of their products if we have different rules so costs will go up. Realistically, we'll probably continue to mirror the rules of the single market for products that will benefit from it and change them for products that won't. Also realistically, there's no way we could stay in the single market because it's implied to be part of EU membership. I imagine we'll ask but give up on it fairly easily because even we're not stupid enough to believe that a members only club will continue to give us membership benefits without us paying membership fees. We'll probably keep access until the end of the EU budget then that will be it.
Access to the customs union is a complicated one. The customs union is the external part of the single market - essentially the rules that the EU put on imports into it from countries not in the EU. This is the one that we want to be a part of because otherwise all British goods would have a tariff on them and there's already precedent for non-EU countries being a member of the customs union, Turkey for example had an agreement which extended it to them all the way back in 1995. The Tories have said that they intend to exit the Customs Union and Labour have said that they intend to fight them every step of the way on this. Mainly because Labour seems to think that Northern Ireland will become a large smuggling area due to its EU border and the Tories seem to think that us being forced to charge tariffs on other countries to trade with us outside our negotiation is stupid in a non-EU Britain, at least as far as I can tell, the political parties are all over the place here. There's no real way to predict how this will fall, I imagine we'll push for a free trade area where we have tariffless access to the customs union and aren't bound by the common tariff on external goods. The EU will want to push us into the single market for access to this, which includes free movement of people so won't be accepted. I imagine we'll probably have some patchwork agreement where nobody really gets what they want and it doesn't really work for anybody because lines are drawn in the sand on this one. The threat of cutting London off from the EU and setting up a tax haven off the coast of the EU was not an idle threat and I genuinely believe the Tories can and will do this to keep London strong if necessary. On the other hand we'll be asking for a spectacularly biased deal that no country in the history of the EU or EC has ever gotten which would make France and some other nations eye up the prospect of leaving. Creating a whole new Free Trade Area between the UK and EU seems to be the minority consensus on where this is going rather than joining the currently existing European free Trade Area which Norway and Switzerland are in. It makes sense for both - we are not Norway or Switzerland, we're one of the largest economies on the planet and in fact have a larger economy than every non-EU member of the EFTA put together.
A big issue is Ireland. Both the British and the Irish would want Republic of Ireland to remain in the Common Travel Area which allows free movement of people between Republic and Northern Ireland. The problem, and this is one of things that points to some of the validity of the Leave arguments over sovereignty, is that it's not the Republic's choice to make. They can't negotiate that deal with the UK about whether their citizens are allowed in NI and vice versa, only the EU can and it would have to apply to the entire EU which the UK would never agree to in a billion years. How a hard border will affect both countries and really minute detail such as recruitment in jobs or skills is presently unknown but it's not going to be a good thing. We'll ask for special exemptions on this and we'll probably lose because the EU will ask for free movement of labour in return. I just can't see a way which the EU would grant "a bit of free movement".
The main thing to remember is that most of this is academic. A vast majority of the economic models that predicted a failing economic and slowed growth after a Leave vote were inaccurate and it's not surprising. Models of anything are only as good as the data going into them and nothing like this has ever happened before for them to really have any accurate data to build upon.
I think, somewhat controversially it appears, that everything will be fine for most people and they'll barely notice the difference. I would have preferred us to Remain as it leans towards my political utopia of a federalist world government, but the gaslighting that goes on towards the Leave campaign and voters is literally ridiculous.
This from a man who continually bemoans leavers being stereotyped as thick racists! Why does everything you say have to contain an 'all remainers are wankers' comment, or derivative thereof? It's fucking tedious in the extreme and does not encourage debate, although it does make you sound like a Vogan guard....
So your essential bottom line is the Perfidious Albion one: we will cheat on our obligations (e.g. to paying the pensions of EU civil servants including Britons) and this is the "negotiating stance" / threat (the knife on the table) coupled with the threat that we'll jump off the cliff even as we stab you.Yep - and?????
That would be:
Michel Barnier? and his role is what???? oh - Lead EU negotiator - did you expect him to say that he has concerns for the EU??
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IMO, that post sums up the problem with a number of the Remain posters on here - they just suck up everything that the EU puts out there and ridicule anything that suggests positive things for our country. You wonder why a lot of us on the leave side hold the view that you seem to want the country to fail??
To help you - here is some more of Barnier's negotiating stance - this part of his briefing to the utterly pro-EU FT:
"Britain could be forced to pay up to €60 billion (£52 billion) in unpaid budget commitments, pension liabilities, loan guarantees and spending on UK-based projects as part of Brexit negotiations, the Financial Times reports.
The FT was briefed by senior EU negotiators on plans for talks with Britain once Article 50 is triggered, beginning the official process of Britain leaving the 28-nation bloc.
It looks pretty bad for Britain. Michel Barnier, one of the European Commission's chief Brexit negotiators, wants to go after Britain on finances, forcing it to plug the financial gap created by Britain leaving the EU. The total bill is estimated to be between €40 billion (£34 billion) and €60 billion (£52 billion)."
http://uk.businessinsider.com/eu-wa...fee-in-brexit-negotiations-article-50-2016-11
Notice how it is all reported as negative fact - just like you do. No mention of the alternative opinion that we need not pay a penny - no suggestion of how the EU could be up shit creek pretty quickly if we equally play hardball.
In fact - if you understood the negotiating dynamics, Barnier's stance and briefings here actually support my stated views about the UK - from a negotiating POV - absolutely needing to have the option of walking away and the EU believing that it has the will to do so.
Why do you think that the EU: "............... wants to go after Britain on finances, forcing it to plug the financial gap created by Britain leaving the EU."?
As I have said before it is because MONEY - especially over the next 7 years when they have huge investment programmes predicated on our contributions - is their Achilles heel. Good negotiating tactic by Barnier to seek to fix that to the EU's advantage up front. Equally important that we do not remove from them the threat that they may have our contributions removed with immediate effect - that is our most important bargaining chip and one which likely is an 'Ace of trumps' if played right.
Problem is the Remoaners will continue to try and tie the government's hands and undermine the UK's negotiating strengths - they have tried throughout and will not stop now.
The tactic remains, as largely does the opinion on here, one of continuing to fight the pre-23/06 campaign - meanwhile the government's negotiating team have to try and secure the best deal based on the decision to leave - because they have to live with where we are - not where you wanted us to be.
So your essential bottom line is the Perfidious Albion one: we will cheat on our obligations (e.g. to paying the pensions of EU civil servants including Britons) and this is the "negotiating stance" / threat (the knife on the table) coupled with the threat that we'll jump off the cliff even as we stab you.
At least Damocles has a bit of morality about the exit payments: "that seems fair enough to me and something we'll probably acquiesce to in negotiations - the money is essentially already budgeted in both the EU and the UK mid range budgets and we did agree to do so".
The House of Lords report that argued that we could jump off the cliff without any debt to the EU being legally enforceable was (a) possibly wrong in law - that article 50 trumped 70.1(b) of the Vienna Convention and (b) a hideous trampling of any claim to the UK's moral high ground in international law. But you seem happy with (b).
What do you understand about international trade, importance of trade to other countries and trade agreements? What makes you qualified to tell me I know nothing about economics?
I ask because you talk like someone who has swallowed a load of bollocks ('member states will go to the wall without our trade').
You clearly did not read my post, as I did not state that countries would be impacted equally. In fact, I explicitly stated it. It was the central tenet of my post.
One of the main issues relating to the EU referendum is that it has created hundreds of thousands of pseudo economists.