Amazulu

The EU - as it stands - is not a very good idea but it is too late for the UK to leave. To do so would be economic suicide

Their best hope is to renegotiate terms

brits1

The vote should be for people only living in the UK and Northern Ireland, I certainly cannot understand why anybody from the Public of Ireland should have a vote.

OzTennis

Unlike the Scottish referendum, the Electoral Commission has suggested the wording should be 'should the UK remain a member of the EU'? so:

YES is to stay and NO is to leave.

"Citizens from most EU countries living in the UK will not get a vote in the referendum on Europe, No 10 has said.

The eligibility rules will be broadly the same as for a general election, rather than local or European votes.

Irish citizens in the UK are eligible. Residents from two other EU nations, Malta and Cyprus, also qualify, along with others from the Commonwealth."

verystormy

I disagree. Europe and the UK can simply enter free trade deals. Europe would be as keen as the UK.

Don't mean to sound patronising, but there are lots of successful economies outside of Europe!

Until recently, the UK's biggest trading partner was not Europe but the U.S. arguably given the state of the European economy a better option.

Amazulu

UK would lose companies like EADS (Airbus), Honda, Toyota etc who have all said that they will leave if UK withdraws

Gibbo

It wasn't only Scots living in Scotland that could vote. Anyone resident in Scotland at that time could vote in the referendum - even foreign students, who were told by the No voters that they would have to leave the country if "Yes" won, could vote. If only the Scots had voted I'm sure the result would have been different.

Amazulu

Maybe but I read that non-UK but EU citizens who live in Scotland - and there's lot of them - were overwhelmingly in favour of independence

astera

I cannot find a single, logical reason why the UK should bail out of the EU. Seems like hitting the self-destruct button would be all pain and no gain...

The economy will be in the doldrums, investments will be doing a detour and steering clear of the UK, political isolation will mean a less significant say in global affairs with the US putting a greater emphasis on its partnership with Germany and France with the UK then left on the sidelines.

Need I mention Scotland leaving the UK is pretty much a done & dusted deal should negativity prevail? So maybe we should just rephrase the question: should England leave the UK?

And what exactly are we running away from? Immigration? Heck, for each and every year since 2005 there has been GREATER immigration from outside the EU... than from the EU (yup, it's all there in the numbers, folks). So all the tools necessary to curb the MAJORITY of immigration if need be are already in our hands.

But of course this is a very inconvenient (and rarely mentioned) statistic as blame cannot be shovelled onto any outside entity such as the EU...

OzTennis

The SNP is urging that the UK remain in the EU (but they don't want to be part of the UK). Nicola Sturgeon is saying that if the UK votes NO to membership on the EU referendum then they will call for a 2nd referendum on being part of the UK (despite it being a once in a lifetime/generation) They can see the benefits to Scotland of EU membership but not benefits to UK membership (?)

Nicola Sturgeon warns of Scottish backlash if UK exits Europe | Politics | The Guardian

Thunderclap

Nicola Sturgeon will use any excuse to call another referendum; their ultimate goal is independence, as she herself declared in the debates leading up to this year's general election.


I think that a lot of people voted for the SNP because they wanted change and not necessarily because they fully resonated with the SNP's policies. The political classes and parties of all colours have been operating in the Westminster bubble for years - safely insulated from the trials of the working classes. This sentiment is felt throughout the UK, not just in Scotland, and I don't blame people for becoming disillusioned and seeking a radical change.


When people feel ignored by the mainstream political parties is it any wonder that they move to the far left or right? They want something to change, but many will not be fully aware of the real consequences of such a change. The fact is, if Scotland had gained independence last year the economy would be in tatters, as it was largely based upon revenue generated from oil, the price of which has nearly halved in the last twelve months, resulting in redundancies within the industry.


Are the SNP dangerous? At present, probably not (apart from the usual anti-English sentiment thrown around), but nothing good ever came from a party whose core values are nationalism and socialism.


Scotland will succeed in gaining independence by hook or by crook; the SNP will not rest until they achieve this, yet all they'll accomplish is making the nation subservient to their unaccountable EU masters.

GarryP

All they really need to do is a france - give lip service to the EU statements, but basically ignore them. The onus would then be on the EU to throw them out - something it's not going to want to do once Greece upsets the apple cart by defaulting and finally implementing plan B.

They can see an opportunity ....

Thunderclap

My concerns with EU immigration are purely economic in nature. If you flood a country with labour willing to work for minimum or below minimum wage, employers will take advantage of this to cut down on labour costs. Why pay a native Brit care worker/cleaner/farm hand/hotel worker £8.50 per hour when you can pay a European £6.50 per hour? Result: Increase in unemployment amongst working-class Brits, thus increase in unemployment benefits and an increase in low-paid EU workers, thus increase in-work benefits (like tax credits). It's a lose-lose situation, except for the employers of course! Working class Brits feel cheated and start to resent EU immigrants who they see as "taking their jobs" (because they are!). I can give you countless examples of industries where this has taken place. The truth is that this country affords no protection to its native workforce and has no incentive to do so because the political elite are often closely affiliated with big businesses. This is completely wrong. Why should the (historically disadvantaged) blue collar working class have to compete with the whole of Europe for jobs in their own country?


As for non-EU immigration, the problems are both economic and social. LSE studies have shown that there is a net loss to the treasury as a significant number do not contribute for whatever reason and there is also massively increased pressure on services, further straining the public purse. Socially, unlike EU migrants, many non-EU migrants do not share our culture, religion, language, tolerance for others, etc. and do not intend to do so. Living in silos amongst only your own minority community leads to division, ghettoisation and all the associated social problems that ensue. The aim must be integration, rather than multi-culturalism.

astera

For the first part I would say that without a common market there would be a shortage of people to fill many jobs, from nurses to lorry drivers, builders to doctors even. If it's a question of say a 2 quid difference per hour then let's just raise the min. wage by that amount. Also, it's worth keeping in mind that Europeans are in fact funding "the system" by putting in more than they are taking out in terms of taxes/benefits/etc. Unfortunately locals are net benefactors of the system. So luckily there is someone to pay for it and keep the system afloat...

In a way it's a similar situation with the Chinese - they are generally accepted and allowed in because they work hard and contribute to the economy - unlike those whose aim is to come to a country (even on a raft) because they feel that if they make it then they are set for life and everything will be handed to them on a silver platter.

With Europe we're lucky because integration isn't so much of an issue as with the Chinese or others. Across the continent we have similar people, a similar culture (though some do say that the Germans are strangely devoid of humour), and once their kids go through local schools they come out as... English adults. As you mentioned, non-EU immigration is totally the opposite as integration is such an obstacle - even for the kids - as we are recently seeing with all these efforts to join some stoneage savages trying to create a barbaric state.

The real problem though is a much more long-standing one and involves much larger amounts of jobs simply being "shipped out" to the likes of China. The same thing has happened in the US, where corporate America has in a way betrayed the country by shifting such a large part of traditionally-American jobs overseas. No wonder the red dragon is so strong nowadays and Western corporations are the ones guilty of feeding it over the last decades.

Wol

You, like many people, fail to understand why sceptics want out. It's nothing to do with the minutae that "renegotiation" might or might not reform: it's the total loss of sovereignty and political accountability that being in the EU entails.

They even had to coin a new weasel word for it - comitology.

Voters elect their MEPs but don't realise that they effectively have no place in law and rule making. They cannot propose legislation, only vote on the mass of legislation proposed by the commission's UNELECTED backroom committees. By all accounts the vast majority of this is never even looked at before a vote. And on the odd occasion that the commission's bills are turned down, they just get trivial changes before being presented again until the "right" vote is made. Ireland? France?

The fundamentally undemocratic way the UK no longer has control - no, it's more than that, no member states have voter control - of their own laws via the ballot box is one of the reasons I left.

The way that centuries of freedoms have been signed away by lying politicians of all parties is a national catastrophe.

astera

Umm, what do you mean by all this? There is no total loss of sovereignty nor has the UK lost all its powers to enact law.

There are some common standards, benchmarks and laws that have been implemented across Europe but those are vastly helpful and not the opposite, mainly to facilitate trade and streamline important areas.

Where exactly is something terrible happening to us with our hands tied behind out backs?