EU Referendum Megathread (Brexit)

[scottish]

Had a phone call yesterday from someone at Britain Stronger in Europe, will be volunteering handing out leaflets/making phone calls etc soon, just waiting to hear back from them

Good to see someone on the forum taking initiative.

[abc]

Good to see someone on the forum taking initiative.

Dan is doing this too however using different tactics.. by trying to get people to vote LEAVE with his made up facts and scare stories

[-:Undertaker:-]

What amuses me about the Remain campaign is that even if they do win this referendum, they're completely wasting their time as we're out anyway within the next five to ten years. That's the political reality of it. That's because as the EU moves to political union and in public declares this even more openly than present, Britain will find itself having to leave and thus there will be another referendum/series of referenda on any political union or treaty changes in the future. Of course the Remain side will scream about any more referendums being held claiming they've settled the issue, but they'll only have themselves to blame for not being honest in what the EU intends to become.

Think about it. Remain have spent the entire campaign telling us how no more powers will go to the European Union, how immigration will be controlled whilst inside, how reform will be fought for... so when the EU inevitably attempts to seize more powers with the treaty changes ahead, when Turkey a country of 80 million joins open borders and when Britain is sidelined completely as the Eurozone federates - they can hardly turn around and say we've settled the matter when they've lied all the way through.

If we do vote to Remain this June, I hope the EU moves as quickly as possible towards political union. The sooner they do that the sooner we're forced out.

[-:Undertaker:-]

I've changed my mind on the EU now. I'm voting Remain.

If we voted Leave I just thought we'd all lose our jobs and house prices would collapse but not our lives in a mass genocide. I don't wanna die.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...speration.html

Now Cameron warns Brexit would lead to war and genocide: PM's extraordinary intervention leads Out campaigners to accuse Downing Street of desperation

- Europe risks war and genocide if Britain votes to leave EU, PM will warn
- His speech will invoke Winston Churchill and the graves of war heroes
- Remain camp has also claimed house prices could collapse with Brexit
- But Vote Leave campaigners have accused Downing Street of desperation

Europe risks sliding back into conflict and genocide if Britain votes to leave the EU, David Cameron will say today.

In an extraordinary escalation of the referendum battle, he will invoke Winston Churchill, the Second World War and the graves of the fallen. The Remain camp will also wheel out military veterans in an emotive video warning against jeopardising the sacrifices of the dead.

Out campaigners have accused Downing Street, which yesterday claimed house prices would collapse following a vote to leave, of desperation. They say No 10 is panicking with the polls neck and neck despite the intervention of Barack Obama and a series of dire warnings about the risks of Brexit. Historians have dismissed the suggestion that the EU had kept the peace in Europe, citing instead the crucial role of Nato.

But in a speech to mark the start of the final 45 days of the referendum contest the Prime Minister will insist a leave vote would be catastrophic.
'Isolationism has never served this country well,' he will say. 'Whenever we turn our back on Europe, sooner or later we come to regret it. We have always had to go back in, and always at much higher cost.'

In other developments in the increasingly bitter referendum fight:

- Downing Street was accused of trying to scupper TV debates;
- The former head of MI5 was dragged into a row over whether British citizens are safer inside the EU;
- Environment Secretary Liz Truss claimed 40,000 jobs in the Scottish whisky industry would be put at risk.

What I don't understand though is this.... if leaving was so awful, why would the PM be offering us a referendum on it?

This latest scare story tops them all so far though. Next week we'll read how a Leave vote will result in plagues of locusts and fire & brimstone.

[scottish]

http://infacts.org/uk-doesnt-send-eu...-or-55m-a-day/

[-:Undertaker:-]

Spend them billions here on hospitals, schools and infrastructure.

For all the years we've been in the EU it has bled us dry: we've constantly been a net contributor. Even worse, that figure is going to rise a lot over the next few years if Turkey, Albania and other poor countries continue to join. Would @scottish; prefer to pay for Albanian roads or for British hospitals?

I wonder if he'll answer for once when a point is put to him rather than disappear.

http://getbritainout.org/eu-myths-facts/



https://fullfact.org/europe/our-eu-m...ee-55-million/

The claim that the UK’s membership fee is £55 million a day comes from the £20 billion annual UK payment to EU institutions listed in the Office for National Statistics' (ONS) Pink Book.

The ONS told us this isn’t the correct figure to use. It has another set of figures which actually represent official government payments, although this isn’t clear from the release.

The £20 billion figure includes payments to EU institutions by UK households, and so doesn’t represent what the government pays as a ‘membership fee’.

The Treasury has more up to date estimates than the ONS, and uses slightly different accounting methods. They show we paid in £13 billion in 2015.

We previously said that “it's reasonable to describe £55 million as our ‘membership fee’, but it ignores the fact that we get money back as well.”

This was based on the understanding that the rebate is paid up front and then sent back, which we now know is wrong.

£5bn, £13bn or £20bn .... and for what exactly?

[AgnesIO]

Spend them billions here on hospitals, schools and infrastructure.

For all the years we've been in the EU it has bled us dry: we've constantly been a net contributor. Even worse, that figure is going to rise a lot over the next few years if Turkey, Albania and other poor countries continue to join. Would @scottish; prefer to pay for Albanian roads or for British hospitals?

I wonder if he'll answer for once when a point is put to him rather than disappear.

http://getbritainout.org/eu-myths-facts/



https://fullfact.org/europe/our-eu-m...ee-55-million/



£5bn, £13bn or £20bn .... and for what exactly?

So leaving the EU would not result in us making any payments to the EU whatsoever? If you multiply the amount Norway pays towards EEA and EU activities by 12 (to account for the difference in both of our populations), their contribution would be around £8bn. If you think we have any chance of paying the low (but still 900m euros), then you must be on another planet. Of course these payments are not all directly to the EU budget, but ultimately they are paying them to reap the benefits (with no say whatsoever) of the EU.

Also, how on earth can you accuse people of 'disappearing'; the top non-sticky thread in the section of the forum is me proving you wrong, and you just cower away rather than accept you were wrong...

[-:Undertaker:-]

So leaving the EU would not result in us making any payments to the EU whatsoever? If you multiply the amount Norway pays towards EEA and EU activities by 12 (to account for the difference in both of our populations), their contribution would be around £8bn. If you think we have any chance of paying the low (but still 900m euros), then you must be on another planet. Of course these payments are not all directly to the EU budget, but ultimately they are paying them to reap the benefits (with no say whatsoever) of the EU.

Also, how on earth can you accuse people of 'disappearing'; the top non-sticky thread in the section of the forum is me proving you wrong, and you just cower away rather than accept you were wrong...

Who said I would want us to join the EEA?

In any case EEA membership is still preferable and cheaper than EU membership is. I have said before in terms of the best options after we leave, a simple FTA with the EU as an WTO equal along the lines of Canada, Australia is the best followed by EFTA membership (Switzerland) followed by the EEA (Norway) followed by the EU. Access to the EU Single Market does not require billions of pounds in Sterling just as access to the US Single Market does not.

http://www.conservativehome.com/thec...than-that.html

Sheesh, europhiles, how many times? No British Eurosceptic is suggesting that we precisely mimic Norway’s relationship with the EU. Norway’s deal is better than full membership; Switzerland’s is better than Norway’s; but the United Kingdom, being a larger market, as well as an existing member, can expect better terms than either.

The Britain Stronger in Europe (BSE) campaign has latched onto a new tactic: to pretend that the only alternative to EU membership is Norway, and then line up some Norwegian Eurozealots to pooh-pooh that option.

Hence these wearisome interventions by a former Norwegian minister called Espen Barth Eide, who keeps popping up in British media to tell us that we mustn’t copy the world’s second-richest nation. Hence, too, David Cameron’s first major intervention on the BSE side, to warn against a “Norway-style future”.

It’s worth stressing that Norwegian public opinion is solidly against EU membership. And I mean solidly. Here is a summary of the polls going back to 2003. As you can see, the pro-EU side has never once been in front and, over the past five years, opponents of membership have led by three-to-one or more.

In other words, Eide is an untypical Eurofanatic. It would be rather as if a Norwegian newspaper presented Peter Mandelson as representative of Britain.

More to the point, Eide’s claims are demonstrably false. He keeps asserting, for example, that Norway has “no presence when crucial decisions that affect its citizens are made.” In fact, Norway is independently represented in the international forums where the rules are set, such as the WTO, the ILO and UNECE. Britain, by contrast, is represented on these bodies by the European Commission.

Nor is Norway excluded from the EU’s own decision-making process. As Anne Tvinnereim of Norway’s Centre Party – who, unlike Eide, is a current minister – explains: “We are not there when they vote, but we do get to influence the position. Most of the politics is done long before it gets to the voting stage”.

In any case, Norway isn’t obliged to adopt EU laws. Although its Europhile ministers tend eagerly to transcribe anything that comes their way, their treaty provides for a “right of reservation”. When, for example, they didn’t like the EU’s Postal Services Directive, they declined to implement it.

But the really monstrous lie – the lie constantly repeated by BSE – is that Norway must apply “three quarters of EU laws”.

Three quarters? Let’s look at the figures. Using the EFTA Secretariat’s official statistics, a study found that, between 2000 and 2013, Norway applied 4,724 EU legal instruments. Over the same period, the EU itself adopted 52,183 legal instruments. That’s not 75 per cent; it’s nine per cent.

Iceland, like Norway, is a member of the European Economic Area. Last week, in reply to a parliamentary question, it found that, between 1994 and 2014, it had adopted 6,326 of 62,809 EU legal acts – ten per cent.

Incidentally, why does the Prime Minister keep using Norway as his example when he is actually in, you know, Iceland? Presumably because the Icelandic government, unlike the Norwegian, reflects its voters’ opposition to EU membership. Its prime minister, the centrist Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, cheerfully declares that Iceland is doing very well as a result of being outside the EU, owes its extraordinary recovery from the banking crash to that freedom, and has no intention of joining.

Iceland and Norway have ostensibly similar deals, but Norway chooses to opt into many more EU initiatives than Iceland does. Its per capita contributions are therefore higher: not because it is obliged to pay more, but because it wants to participate in, for example, common international aid projects.

Switzerland gets a better deal than either Iceland or Norway, though, and it’s worth taking a moment to explain why. Switzerland, like Iceland and Norway, is a member of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). All three states have full access to the single market, while being outside the EU’s jurisdiction on agriculture, fisheries, foreign affairs, defence, immigration and criminal justice policies. But there is a critical distinction: Norway and Iceland are members of the European Economic Area (EEA) while Switzerland is not.

The EEA was negotiated in 1992, when Austria, Finland, Norway and Sweden applied for full membership of the EU. It was only ever envisaged as a transitional arrangement: a way to expedite harmonisation on the way to full accession. No one imagined that Norway would vote No to the EU, but still be in the EEA 23 years later.

Swiss politicians, unlike their Norwegian counterparts, listened to their voters. When Switzerland rejected EEA membership in a referendum in 1992, that was that. Although almost all the political parties had wanted to join both the EEA and the EU, they accepted the people’s verdict. With EU membership off the agenda, they sat down to discuss an alternative. Over the next three years, 120 sectoral treaties were negotiated, covering everything from lorry noise to fish farming.

In consequence, Switzerland has most of the benefits of full membership, but few of the costs. It is wholly covered by the four freedoms of the single market – free movement, that is, of goods, services, people and capital – but it is spared the regulatory burden of Brussels directives. When it harmonises its standards with those of the EU, it does so through bilateral agreement and following a deliberate act of the Federal Assembly in Bern.

Yes, Swiss exporters must meet EU standards when selling to the EU, just as they must meet Japanese standards when selling to Japan. But they are not obliged to apply these standards, except in some very special circumstances, either to their domestic economy, or to their non-EU exports. Being outside the Common External Tariff, they have pursued a much less protectionist policy than the EU and are now, among other things, negotiating a free trade agreement with China – something Britain cannot do while it is in the EU. Oh, and Switzerland makes only a token contribution to the EU budget.

Not that this prejudices its trade with the EU. The EU accounted for 64 per cent of Swiss exports in 2014, as against 44 per cent of British exports. In per capita terms, the discrepancy was far greater: $25,770 to $3,340. In other words, in population terms, the Swiss sell seven times as much to the EU from outside as we do from inside.

Why, then, don’t the Norwegians copy the Swiss? Why, 20 years on, do they keep the lopsided EEA agreement in place? Because their politicians – and here, at least, Mr Eide is typical – still hanker after eventual membership. Replacing the EEA with something more permanent would mean formally accepting that their dream was over.

So, to summarise, Norway has a much better deal than the UK, but Switzerland’s is better yet. There is no reason why, after Brexit, we shouldn’t get an even more attractive arrangement. We are 65 million people to Norway’s five million and Switzerland’s eight million. We run a massive trade deficit with the EU (but a surplus with the rest of the world). On the day we left, we’d become the EU’s single biggest market, accounting for 21 per cent of its exports – more than its second and third largest markets (the US and Japan) combined.

To be clear, both Norway and Switzerland are inspiring, beautiful, freedom-loving countries. They’re both in my top ten favourite nations. They are the two wealthiest states in Europe and, according to the United Nations (which measures literacy, longevity, infant mortality and the like) the two happiest places on Earth. Their deal with the EU would be a big improvement on where we are now; but we can realistically expect to do far, far better.

[AgnesIO]

Who said I would want us to join the EEA?

In any case EEA membership is still preferable and cheaper than EU membership is. I have said before in terms of the best options after we leave, a simple FTA with the EU as an WTO equal along the lines of Canada, Australia is the best followed by EFTA membership (Switzerland) followed by the EEA (Norway) followed by the EU. Access to the EU Single Market does not require billions of pounds in Sterling just as access to the US Single Market does not.

http://www.conservativehome.com/thec...than-that.html

TLDR

You always refer to the wonders of the European countries not in the EU, so I did too. Cheers for ignoring my points on Norway though.

[-:Undertaker:-]

TLDR

You always refer to the wonders of the European countries not in the EU, so I did too. Cheers for ignoring my points on Norway though.

Do not try and draw me into a false argument about Norway and the EEA when I have not said I want EEA membership. FTA > EFTA > EEA > EU.

In any case I have replied to you via the Daniel Hannan MEP argument which addresses both the EEA and EFTA issues. Read it and tell me what you think.