Off Topic The Politics Thread

I'd rather have Gove as a QPR fan than you. Cant wait for the Johnson/Trump special relationship to be cemented, bleeding heart liberals will need to keep their heads down for a change.

 

My my, we've got a live one. Anything else to peddle along with the fear and paranoia? What do the old Etonian Johnson and the serial bankrupt who built his name on inherited wealth have in common with you?

 

Trump is clearly a racist lunatic. Johnson shouldn't be lumped in with him.

 

Just what is going on in leafy Hertfordshire Wats? That's three with similar user names on the rant now. I wonder if they are related.

 

I try and avoid the town centres. Full of genuine nutters. I guess they have phones with 4G nowadays.

 

Gove and Angry Stan - I think we're a broad enough church to accommodate both...

 

If we're doing business in the EU, we will have to abide by EU law, just as when we're doing business in the US, we abide by US law. No problem with that (we're doing a declining amount of business in the EU each year, and expanding amounts with Asia, South American, China etc). When any of these countries want to do business in the UK, they abide by English law (or Scottish law, as the case may be). That sounds like sovereignty to me.

 

Great post, Tooting.

Immigration: This is what the respected organisation Migration Watch says in its latest paper in the even of Brexit:

"The EU would have an interest in maintaining as much free movement as possible. The key change should be the introduction by the UK of work permits to restrict the right for all foreign citizens, including EU citizens, to work in Britain. This could substantially reduce the EU inflow for work to perhaps one fifth of its recent level and would, in turn, substantially reduce net migration by perhaps 100,000 a year from the current level of 180,000. The EU would, of course, be likely to reciprocate."

So the key benefit of Brexit is control. You can find the whole article here:

http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/briefing-paper/371

I agree with what you say about EU migrants integrating well - although there are issues with very poor member states like Romania and Bulgaria being so out of kilter with our own economy - agree entirely with your point about the UK's lost chance to place limitations on these. On the whole, the issue is not the calibre of the migrant, it's the amount of migration and our stretched resources.

Economy - It seems highly unlikely the UK will be refused entry to the single market, post Brexit. Wolfgang Schäuble, the German Finance Minister as good as said this on the Andrew Marr program this morning. Key member states like Germany have to much to lose by excluding us. The issue is, what will be the terms that we are allowed to use the market. The Remain camp will point to Switzerland and Norway that have to pay in, and have to allow free movement of people. But the UK's economy is hugely more important than the economies of these countries (no disrespect to them). We will negotiate entry into the single market after Brexit based on the fact that we're the fifth biggest economy in the world. Great bargaining position. I've said before, on the day after a Brexit vote, Cameron, Merkel and Hollande would meet to work out a grand fudge (Uber's comment about a second UK referendum may not be far off the mark, but I'm against this, in principle anyway)

 

What a cynical old pragmatist you are, Uber! You may be right. I think it may come down to the weather. If it's p*ssing down with rain on the day of the referendum, the IN's will say "Hell, I'm not going out into the wet just to stay in the EU". But the OUT's will say "I'm quite prepared to taking a soaking if it means we can leave this bureaucratic, undemocratic decaying institution..."

...or may be that's just wishful thinking on my part

 

First they took Hertfordshire....

 

Anyone here know the answer to this? If we're the 5th largest economy in the world today, what would we drop to if our multi-national, foreign-owned financial companies and banks decided to move from London to Frankfurt if we left the EU?

Only scaremongering, obviously, but it's one of the things that scares me.

 

..

 

If it's 13% in the the UK then it's because the other 24% is busy getting into debt in the university industry in an attempt to catch up with the rest of Europe

 

Sorry, but it's not as simple as that. Take Norway as an example. To gain access to the EEA, Norway is subject to much of EU law. This includes being part of the Schengen Area, granting free movement of people across all EU countries to Norway. In effect meaning Norway has zero control over immigration to and from EU countries. This is something we have currently opted out of, but may not be able to opt out of if we want to gain access to the EU market from outside of the EU (like Norway).

 

Germany and France would be stupid to put obstacles, taxes, tariffs, whatever, in the way if we decide to leave the EU

 

There won't be any obstacle to buying their goods, but they will put them on our goods. Why would we get a free ride? The US and China are much bigger economies than ours and will be subject to them.

The question is whether IDS/Gove would just suck it up or leave it to the market as to whether we retaliate with tariffs.Who knows what Corbyn would do

 

The best interests of their respective countries at heart.

 

Again, I think that is an oversimplification. There will be significant pressure from EU leaders not to let us escape unscathed, and to give us a 'free ride', as it will firstly weaken their negotiating position with other EU nations that want to leave, and also as Tooting points out, the EU would also lose negotiating power with more important trading powers.

 

I think that is a very generous interpretation of their motives. On February 3 2016 Boris said 'I've never been an outer' to a Eurosceptic MP. Couple of days later he's an outer. Why? So he doesn't have to stand at the back of the stage behind Cameron and Osbourne is my guess. Given the language he has used about the dangers of the EU in the last couple of weeks you would imagine that he would have been spending years telling us all why we have to leave. But no, it's only the last few weeks. Why? None of the principles have changed. But perhaps what he perceives as his best interests have.