The Eu, Leave Or Remain ?

if only that was/is the case. do you expect farage to go back in the box? will he get to open his mouth about anything with out hearing you lost get over it (back in your box)?
will you stop talking about the possibility's?
swap anger with passionate @El Toro :Angelic::smileys:

 

Firstly Cameron doesn't want to "negotiate" a new relationship with the EU. He wants Britain to stay in no matter what. All he's seeking is a presentational deal that will see the IN vote over the line.
Secondly, even if he were genuinely seeking new terms of membership for Britain, neither he nor any other Prime Minister of any political party would ever be able to achieve it. The purpose of the EU is to draw Europe into a single state. To quote Jean Monnet, the founding father of the European project, "[the future] lies in building union between peoples, not co-operation between states. There is no future for the people of Europe other than in union."
Every process and institution of the EU has been deliberately constituted to serve this end. If you are going to be a member of "The Project" - the EU is only an evolutionary stage - you must accept that your national identity and autonomy must eventually be surrendered. If you wish to retain national identity and national sovereignty you CANNOT BE A MEMBER OF THE EU.
The only way to achieve the sort of relationship with the EU which Cameron in his Bloomberg speech claimed he wanted for Britain, is to leave. He isn't failing in his renegotiations because he's a useless English toffee-nosed Tory scumbag where a nice "progressive" leftist man of the people would have done better, but because his renegotiation is a chimera. His stated objective is impossible and he is a fraud and a liar. It doesn't matter a fig what party he belongs to.

 

please stop with the "English toffee nosed" it diminishes your argument. :smileys:

 

The funny thing is that Boris is equally English toffee-nosed and will come out to leave the EU.
What will happen next is this:
The ref will actually vote to leave.
Cameroon will be defeated and will have no further credibility.
Boris will be elected leader of the Tories.
There may nor may not be another GE.
Boris will become PM.

I honestly think that this is the most likely scenario.
I suspect that the poll on this thread isn't so far from what the country is thinking.
The EU migrant crisis will convince the UK to leave and Cameroon's pathetic EU concessions, if he gets any, will prove to be completely insufficient for the British people.

Pity. If the EU had more realistic objectives, it could have been great.

 

firstly,and honestly most of my posts on the subject of the EU on here have been a bit tongue in cheek, bit provocative even. been waiting 18months for this, sad i know. :smileys:. been using all the arguments back at yahs, been suggesting the motives for separation are similar to the dam snp english hating Nazi's. yip, i have along with others been called that on here, been relishing all those suggestions of rigged systems, pro EU media bias,no representation, elites, smoke and mirrors, fudge. seems some dont like it up em :smileys:.
borris is a funny guy, i like him.i also like john bercow and i have a lot of respect for portillo. but borris as a leader and representative of the UK? no thanks. i watched him try and defend the shift of tax jobs from up here to down there (jobs that where safe if we voted no) and fumble through explaining why a pound spent in london was better and more efficient than spending it in scotland. aye, i can see him bringing the country back together.
but my main argument for staying in the EU remains the same. i realy cant see a tory government out of the EU will invest or fund to the peripherals the way the EU does. scary stuff for someone that dont live within the m25.

 

Infamy !..Infamy !...............they've all got it in f' me :Nailbiting:

 

yip. i know what it sounds like. :smileys:. but that's politics init? dont ask dont get.

 

Boris' job is Mayor of London. He is supposed to look after London's interests to the detriment of anyone else's. I don't think that as a PM he'd necessarily discriminate against other parts of the country.
I quite admire him for knowing his remit and trying to get the best deal for those that voted for him.

 

i guess i am just a dreamer. i think a leader should be as much a diplomat as a champion for those that voted for them.

 

That is true. But he is a metropolitan politician through and through and he is wedded to the idea that London is the engine room of the economy. Which in a sense it is but turning the entire country into a satellite of London is no way to conduct national governance. That could be simply a case of talking up London's interests which as Mayor is his duty, but as a national leader that wouldn't do for me. We've gone too far that way already.
Whether Boris can broaden into a national leader I don't know. But I've got my doubts.

 

Our location does change the way we see things. Down here in Oxford I see the Scots as getting a pretty good deal with growing powers and a really strong SNP voice. I understand that the EU has been good in Scottish funding also. But down here we have roads that get no proper maintenance, overcrowding everywhere; public transport and roads GP's, A&E, etc. New housing pressure on what was greenfield protected areas due to our expanding population. They even closed down an infant school in my local town, built on the site and now there are another 300 houses just passed planning (Developer overturning local planning decisions again) so there will be longer trips for children who can't get into the local schools they used to walk/cycle to, leading to even busier roads.....

If we lose a bit of growth from being outside the EU and the net migration drops from 330,000 to less than 100,000 then that alone will be a key reason to leave. I enjoy our great multi cultural society but it has been too many migrants over the last 15 years. Back to Boris; he's done a good job as London Mayor and I can only see him as an upgrade on Cameron. Hopefully in a few years the Labour party will sort itself out and get serious about being in government again or perhaps the Lib Dems will take a stronger position in the middleground. Looking back, I think the Tory/Lib Dem alliance will be viewed as a good period of governance.

 

thats a good post kirky. very much appreciated. and v.true.

 

I would be interested to understand why you think net migration might fall, Norway has to allow free movement of people and allow EU citizens to live and work in their country without restriction as part of their deal to have free trade with the EU. (A deal that costs them almost as much per head as UK membership.) The migrants in Calais won't suddenly go away if we leave the EU and they aren't trying to get here because we are members. our international obligations won't suddenly evaporate if we leave the EU nor will the factors behind those obligations.

 

We don't have an international obligation to accept economic migrants. International convention is quite specific: to qualify for refugee status, migrants must apply for refuge or asylum in the first safe country they reach. None of the people at Calais are refugees under international law. They have no right to claim asylum in France, never mind Britain. Rather than rewriting established rules we should be rigorously enforcing them. This would allow the international community to help genuine refugees without encouraging a black market in people trafficking which enriches criminals and terrorists, exploits and robs people who are already poor and encourages them to pointlessly risk their lives while leaving our borders open to every imaginable malign influence and doing nothing whatever to help the genuinely dispossessed.

 

Not arguing,just fleshing out some of the bones.

Goods and services imports from the EU were worth £289 billion (52.8% of the total) in 2014.
Goods and services imports from the EU to Norway were worth £123,180 billion in 2015.

"Earlier this year the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published an article on the 'Rotterdam effect' (also known as the 'Rotterdam-Antwerp effect').
Goods exported to the EU don't necessarily stay in the EU. The Rotterdam-Antwerp effect is a suggested phenomenon where trade with the Netherlands and Belgium is exaggerated by British goods being shipped into the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp and then dispatched elsewhere in the world.
As the ONS notes, this problem isn't unique to Rotterdam (or indeed Antwerp), but the sheer size of the ports in question focuses attention on them. It said that it's "reasonable to assume that trade with the Netherlands suffers from an element of distortion".

"The ONS did publish estimates for trade in goods that attempted to adjust for this effect, while saying that these are highly uncertain. It thinks that EU countries accounted for between 46.1% and the recorded 50.4% of UK goods exports last year.
Both the ONS and the government's review of our EU membership concluded that it's hard to quantify the extent of the effect or establish whether it's a serious problem for the statistics".

"Under World Trade Organisation rules the EU wouldn't be allowed to punish the UK for leaving
We don't yet know what a post-membership relationship with the EU would look like. But we do know some things already.
If the UK and the EU can't agree on a specific trade agreement, then trade would take place under World Trade Organisation rules.
The EU would not be allowed to discriminate against the UK specifically, and we would face the same tariffs that any country without a free trade agreement with the EU would".

 

It won't be easy but at least the government would have the power and freedom to put controls in place. Asylum seekers (e.g. Syrian families inline with our policy) and unrecorded immigrants (Calais, etc) won't change but with the ability to take away EU economic migrants access to our benefit system, this will make us less attractive. Good numbers will choose to leave, or not come to the UK, instead choosing other EU countries. The UK will want to have skilled immigrants to help prop up the NHS staffing problems, etc. Seasonal workers coming in on restrictive work permits. Students really confuse the figures and I think should really be excluded or calculated separately. We want the UK to be a magnet for top students. To make it work and manage it properly without the mess of large numbers of people in the UK who are here illegally; we'll need to make the Immigration service "fit for use" and a good start would be to staff it properly. The UK will also have the power to deport, withdraw UK passports, from small numbers of people who are either serious criminals or poisonous to our UK way of life and undeserving of the rights and benefits of being here (and not cost £Millions and years, to deport). Let's hope!