Watching David Davis on parliament channel. I sincerely hope he doesn't become Tory leader, as he will be hopeless at making himself understood.
Or perhaps he does not want us to understand what he says.
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Our country post Brexit
(1001 Posts)I thought I would start this thread to enable those who are enthusiastic Brexiters, to educate us Europhiles and show that our worries are silly and uniformed.
We hear so little from you, except to criticise our worries.
We have so many threads about the negative effects why not have one which shows the positive effects that leaving the EU will come about?
Why do we still keep hearing in the media that "we're leaving"? Of course it could happen and there are powerful vested interests that want it to happen but it should not be regarded as inevitable. As the "deal" is revealed many more of us might say NO. Let's stand up and do what is best for our country. A large number of good people have already taken a stand.
www.europeanmovement.co.uk/action_day_september?utm_campaign=action_day&utm_medium=email&utm_source=euromove
This thread dried up quite quickly. I think that might be because those who ignored it because of abuse kept away. Yet unless members here are skewed towards remoaners there is much to discuss.
Many of us can remember what happened before Heath took us into the EC (EEC, EU) and how we were lied to. Then Wilson did a U-turn, having previously been against, and the referendum was not a fair one as we were given only the 'benefits' of joining.
Matters have not improved as the politicians on both sides continue to be economical with the truth.
The outstanding deceit was how we were forced to abandon all our existing trade arrangements which primarily involved the commonwealth countries. If we had been allowed to maintain those connections who knows how much better progress the EU might have made.
Instead the EU has become more and more insular. You might think that if the EU was such a good thing then they would welcome members from outside the EU. Instead the drive has been to bring in the eastern bloc bringing more unemployment problems, and the introduction of the euro. That has been one huge mistake.
Not that the idea is wrong, but the timing and method used was against a strong message from those who understood international finance that it was wrong. That has been demonstrated since by the impoverishment of Greece, with the danger to Italy and even France, as well as the huge imbalance between north and south EU together with the drag on economic performances.
Only one winner has emerged - Germany. The blundering attitudes of the undemoncratic EU machine has been played out by the enormous unemployment seen in so many nations - except the UK. From that we can see that the EU politicians have been so committed to the euro and Mario Draghi that their own constituents have been have been ignored. It is surprising this has not produced riots.
So the EU needs reform, far reaching reform. Should the UK be involved and pay towards that? Will it be done successfully? Would we be under more constraints than at present? Do we want to be subsumed into a mish-mash EU where we are unable to progress?
The alternatives are many and varied, mainly because we cannot know in advance. However being able to make our own decisions backed by our own legal system reflects the reason for how the UK succeeded in the past. We used to trade around the world on terms that we agreed with others. Why depend upon the EU when we could be free to trade anywhere as well as with the EU?
The economic reasons for being a part of the EU are insufficient for our future. Thr balance is swinging away from the west to the east where India and China will be the new centre of economic importance.
Does this provide a start for more discussion?
Dried up quite quickly? Nearly 800 posts is not quite quickly.
Anyone think that May's important message on 21st September might be that there will be no Brexit, because it can't be done?
The Uk succeeded in the past because of imperialism and colonisation. We can't reproduce those conditions. Sorry! The Euro has strengthened against the £ . Not the universal decline predicted. All this stuff about Britain turning to the Far East - really? Do we prefer the undemocratic China et al ?
Yes, it did dry up, and is now an echo chamber only, from same few posters.
I agree CardiffJaguar entirely with your post and look forward to coming out of EU and trading with the whole world as well as different countries within EU.?
Tegan
The Enabling Act (German: Ermächtigungsgesetz) was a 1933 Weimar Constitution amendment that gave the German Cabinet – in effect, Chancellor Adolf Hitler – the power to enact laws without the involvement of the Reichstag.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933
The Reichstag was the equivalent of our Parliament.
Under our constitution the 'government' is the Executive and is representative of the monarchy, the original Executive power of the nation. But to enact laws the Executive needs the approval/consent of Parliament (the Legislature) which is the sovereign law making body.
That is why the 'government' needs to be able to command a majority in parliament; without a majority parliamentary vote in favour of proposed legislation new laws cannot lawfully be enacted. If a government can't get it's bills passed into legislation it cannot carry out its function. If parliament passes legislation which enables the Executive to make laws without the consent of parliament it essentially surrenders its sovereignty and the Executive can do what it likes. We fought a Civil war to establish this principle.
When the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act it surrendered its sovereignty and allowed Hitler to enact whatever laws he pleased.
As far as I understand it the proposed Repeal Bill will enable the government to bypass Parliament to amend legislation and enact new legislation. People are very worried about it...
In other words, it bypasses the Parliamentary sovereignty which is a key part of our constitution and which guards against arbitrary Executive power.
The EU has never stopped us trading with the rest of the world. Or am I just imagining that it's difficult to find anything to buy that isn't made in China?
The strength of the EU has been that it has been able to negotiate advantageous trade deals with 'third countries' because of the enormous market it offers to prospective trading partners. Our paltry 60 million with which people long to go it alone doesn't compare very well with the EU's 500 million.
We can't trade with different countries within the EU. The EU comes as a whole. We either trade with the EU or not at all.
MasieD: the EU regulations mean we have to increase the price of our exports to them to cover the extra costs. We could try selling to the rest of the world on the same prices and be at a disadvantage. We could have two sets of pricing which means more admin costs. The EU is not an enormous market - about 450 to 500 million without the UK - against China and India with i.2 billion each and rising rapidly without taking in the rest of the world. It is not a matter of population size so much as what that population can achieve. When the UK was a lot smaller than 60million = actually 65million and increasing - we achieved much more than other advanced nations. Your 'paltry' comment is ridiculous in terms of achievement.
durhamjen: we trade with companies within the EU just as other countries outside the EU do. We do not trade with the EU which is an administration.
Of course we do, as we are part of it. When we are not part of it, the rules change.
Isn't that what Brexiteers want?
The EU is our biggest trading partner at the moment.
This is an extremely interesting article, and very relevant to Brexit.
ukandeu.ac.uk/the-two-irreconcilable-faces-of-conservatism-the-economically-liberal-and-the-socially-illiberal/
"With an economic heritage that is both pro-market and pro-individual-freedom, associated with the likes of Margaret Thatcher and Milton Friedman, the one party that should not have stood in the way of European integration is the Conservative Party. They were, after all, the pro-European Party in the 1975 referendum, when 88 per cent of Conservative voters voted to stay in the common market, compared with only 58 per cent of Labour voters, many of whom saw Europe as a “capitalist club”. But, as Margaret Thatcher herself found out, disagreements over Europe have long threatened to rupture what is the oldest political party in Europe.
Whilst Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party is reawakening the ideological battle of the last century, it is divisions within the Conservative Party that, ironically, represent the greatest threat to its future fortunes. Brexit has laid bare a schism within the party, between two very different notions of Conservatism: the economic and the socio-political. It is a division that ultimately boils down to liberalism on the economic front but illiberalism on the socio-political front. Whilst in the past these two forces proved reconcilable, they are fast becoming incompatible."
Brexit will split the Tories. Perhaps that's Maybot's big announcement on 21st.
durhamjen: We are a member of the EU; we trade with many companies within the EU as we will when we leave. Thr rules may change but how we do not yet know. We can continue to trade with com panies within the EU whatever the changes just as companies of other nations do. The EU collectively is our largest market just as we are their largest export market. They sell more to us than we do to them.
What Brexiteers voted for was to leave the EU as a member; that removes all the rules and regulations we are presently subjected to unless we wish to keep them. The present repeal bill is the start of that. We are not going to stop trading with the countries and companies within the EU just as they wish to continue to sell to us.
They will still be members of the EU and have to abide by the rules as far as taxes, etc., are concerned.
If the 27 EU countries say that they have to charge us import duties, they will have to.
You sound like someone who thinks we can have our cake and eat theirs, as the saying goes.
Most of our exports are services, particularly financial.
Our banks are moving to the EU, because they want to stay members of mainland EU. Do you not read anything?
Cardiffjaguar
Everything I've always known about the eu: particularly, why is Germany the richest country on the continent?
Some of us on here know why 
Some of you might want to read an article from the Guardian printed on 27th July 2012. The heading is:
EU trade reforms will hurt developing countries.
If you really care about the poor and starving in the world, you can't defend this.
fullfact.org/europe/uk-trade-deficit-eu/
"But that doesn’t necessarily mean that “they need us more than we need them”, as it was often put during the referendum campaign. There are other ways to look at this.
For example, UK exports to those other EU countries are worth around 13% of the value of our economy, whereas for the EU it’s only 3-4%. "
durhamjen sounds as if CardiffJaguar understands the EU much better than you do.
Why is it that if your a country outside the eu but trading with them, you don't have to adhere to the 4 pillars of freedom? but they keep demanding this from us.
They have just negotiated a 99% tariff free trade deal with Canada but have not demanded the 4 pillars.
durhamjen
If your a 'companies' biggest customer, they do need you more than you need them.
CardiffJaguar
When the UK was a lot smaller than 60million = actually 65million and increasing - we achieved much more than other advanced nations.
And when was that, precisely?
We were one of the first industrialised nations and our success was based on our empire; we got our raw materials cheaply from the colonies and sold finished goods worldwide a) to our captive market of the empire and b) because we were ahead of most other nations. We no longer have an empire to exploit and we are no longer ahead of other industrialised nations in what we produce. After WW2 were were in serious economic decline. We were desperate to join the, then, EEC.
Since then our industrial base has withered and we have focused on financial services, tailored mostly to the EU and which are not readily tradeable with the rest of the world.
As you appear to be strongly influenced by Economists for Brexit I offer you this critique:
blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/08/23/economists-for-brexit-predictions-are-inconsistent-with-basic-facts-of-international-trade/
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