petitefrancaise

A few of my friends and I are laughing at the hypocrisy...

Lawson lives in SW France, rather close to Toulouse in the Gers and commutes back to London. Conflict???

"Lord Lawson to lead UK EU exit group"
Lord Lawson to lead UK EU exit group - BBC News

plus ca change...

scot47

Aristos have no principles. That is why the French got rid of theirs some time ago.

amideislas

Semantics, really. "Champagne Socialist" comes to mind...

Garbatellamike

then they found out the revolutionary leaders had no principles either........

Pulaski

I see no hypocrisy. You, and many others here on BE live in the US but are happy to bad-mouth the US at any opportunity, and I am reasonably sure that y'all would campaign against the UK becoming the 51st state. If he is a hypocrit, so are you!

petitefrancaise

Bored are we? A bit of trolling to liven up your pathetic friday afternoon,.. usually you at least wait until Saturday evening when presumably you've had a beer or two and wifey has gone to bed.


A man who has the right to live and work in France and has exercised that right to his advantage over many years seeks to deny that right to others. Many Brits living and working in France will be at best inconvenienced by this if it ever gets anywhere. .

Pulaski

You're aware, I assume, that the right to live and work in other countries is a function of the European Free Trade Area, and not membership of the European Onion. Of course this fact is going to complicate the arguments of the more rabid of the anti-EU crowd when the formal in/out campaigning gets going.

There are currently NO countries in Europe outside of the EU that are not part of EFTA, and I think Britain not being part of EFTA is wildly unrealistic. I can't say I have been following the gutter press debate on this, but I did see this important destinction discussed in the Telegraph a few months ago, and I think BiP mentioned it on BE earlier this year.

sir_eccles

Not to be "that guy" but maybe you need to update yourself on who is actually a member of EFTA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe...de_Association

petitefrancaise

I don't know about the gutter press.
From the Guardian dated June 6th 2015
Ten ways in which life could change if the UK left the EU | Politics | The Guardian

"2. Moving to another EU country to live, work or retire

British citizens can at present move easily to another EU country. If we left the EU, they would have to satisfy more restrictive rules on getting a work permit, setting up a business, studying and bringing family members to join them. More than two million Brits already live in another EU member state. Pensioners could find that their pensions are no longer increased every year at the same rate as those of people living in the UK - as happens now.

3. The second home on the Med?

EU countries could ban UK citizens from buying second homes in their countries after Brexit, and existing homes could be taxed more heavily because EU rules on free movement of capital would no longer apply to Britons."

This would seem to fit the bill regarding Monsieur Lawson n'est-ce pas?

Pulaski

Yeah, I knew that, which is exactly why I wrote what I did.

Pulaski

I am not interested in arguing with speculative articles from the Grauniad. Countries "could" restrict the right of British citizens to buy property, but whether they would is a separate matter. Whether pensions are increased annually is a matter for the British government, and leaving the EU would not necessarily cause the British government to stop paying increases, after all pensioners in the US get increases, and the last time I checked, the US was not part of the EU.

BTW, you might want to check BE Rule #17.

BritInParis

I was referring to the EEA but, yes, the principle is sound. Withdrawing from the EU but remaining within the EEA would, in theory, remove us the political machinery of Brussels but allow us to within the Single Market and retain the 'four freedoms' of the EU, namely free movement of goods, capital, services, and people. This would put us in a similar position to Norway.

The downside is that you get a 'fax democracy' - having to comply with EU legislation but without the ability to shape it.

Non-EU Norway 'almost as integrated in union as UK' - BBC News

On a related note when UKIP and similarly minded Euro-sceptics repeatedly makes the claim that only if we vote to leave the EU would we 'get back control of our borders' - we wouldn't as we would still be members of the EEA. Likewise leaving the EU would remove the influence of the European Court of Human Rights on the British legal system - it wouldn't as the UK would still be a member of a Council of Europe.

rpjs

Except that UKIP policy, or at least Farage's pronouncements, which actually carry more weight than official UKIP policy[1], are that the UK should leave the EEA too.

[1] Remember when he simply denounced the 2010 manifesto as being rubbish[2]?

[2] Which of course it was.

sir_eccles

But this is the first time you've commented on this thread.

BritInParis

That may be true but the referendum we've been promised before 2017 by Cameron is on our membership of the EU, not the EEA. Anyone campaigning on the basis that a 'No/Leave' vote would see us stop unrestricted migration from the rest of Europe into the UK is peddling falsehoods.

Read Pulaski's post which I quoted in my reply.