Vocal Voices

David Davis' view.

http://www.daviddavismp.com/david-davis ... -politics/

I think I am for brexit, but I worry about the consequences of going it alone.

I like David Davis because he's no-nonsense and I've often wished he'd got the Tory leadership rather than Cameron. He always speaks well.

I'm completely the wrong person to ask about Brexit because I'm a totally entrenched "outer", and to the devil with the consequences!

TheOstrich wrote:
I'm completely the wrong person to ask about Brexit because I'm a totally entrenched "outer",
and to the devil with the consequences!

Me too.

That was always the way with the UK. Now it is 0 risk in everything.

Whatever happened to no pain no gain?

David Davis is a clever man.

In the same programme Margaret Beckett, who wishes us to remain in, talked negatively about leaving. Davis totally ignored the option of doing the same about staying in and spoke positively of the benefits of leaving.

He made a good case and it is a tactic both sides should be looking closely at.

Aggers wrote:

TheOstrich wrote:
I'm completely the wrong person to ask about Brexit because I'm a totally entrenched "outer",
and to the devil with the consequences!

Me too.

And me !

Workingman wrote:He made a good case and it is a tactic both sides should be looking closely at.

It's hard to make a positive case for the EU when the downsides of being in are stacking up really badly. We pay a lot to be in, the people who pay nothing but get a lot of what we pay want to tell us what to do and, in general, the entire deal stinks pretty badly.

Add to that the fact that the EU don't want our goods but want to sell us their shoddy overpriced stuff, forcing us to sell to the rest of the world and even the whole trade thing is not really benefitting us. Now we do more than 50% of our exporting to the rest of the world, especially the US and Asia, we could benefit more by leaving and having our own deals with those we trade more with. We could have been a part of the TPP just organised with the US, of whom many of the players are where we do our 50%+ trade with.

As these things go on, the "positive" case will get harder and harder to make. What do they have left? Rubbishing the leave case and making people scared. Pretty much what they did with the Scots.

Note that the Oil revenues that Scotland would have gained, by leaving, still tip the balance to positive compared to what they get "given" by Westminster today. Something the press never, ever, talk about. They just spend their time crowing about how much money Scotland would have "lost" if they had left. Completely forgetting that 90% of a 25% is still better than 10% of 100%.

Expect the IN campaign to do exactly the same with the EU. Hopefully the UK will be much more wary of that approach after the Scottish independence referendum.

Who knows.

It is not at all difficult to accentuate the positives of the EU except to those who are implacably opposed to it. Not everybody thinks that way.

For me the EU project has not gone far enough, and some of the things it has done have not been done at all well, but overall I am still for it.

When I voted to join the Common Market, and later to stay with it, it was with the hope of it "going forward" as Harold Wilson said it would. I wanted expansion, but I would have stopped at the old Iron Curtain for a very long time. I wanted open borders for travel purposes, but I would have had a very firmly patrolled external border. I wanted a single currency and from that a set of single tax structures and possibly welfare services. And, yes, I did want a set of Federal Laws over and above national ones, for some crimes. It follows from that, that I am not against a beefing up of Europol. I also wanted the UK to be a full and influential member of the EU, something it has never been.

However, I do recognise that I am in a very small minority, and I have to say that I am not blind to the failings of the project in its present form. It needs a major overhaul or the dominoes will start to fall, sadly it does not look as though it is going to get one and that is why Brexit is an almost certainty.

Two more in this house, joining you in that minority Frank!

Kaz, I know that there are a few of us out there, but in general we are a minority and hardly heard.

The press, long owned by members of the Little Englander mentality, only ever wanted the UK on the periphery or the EU for the benefits it gave us. Not much has changed.

Thatcherites, on the other hand, wanted the UK out of the EU. Thatcher, with her hard-line stance on anything European and British sovereignty, single-handedly scuppered any chance of the UK ever playing its full part in Europe. As prime minister she fought tooth and nail against anything that looked like the growing powers of the EU. The defence of British national interests above all others was her guide, to the anger of many EU leaders. We are, where we have always been in the EU, a bit part player, because of Thatcher. She did not want us to be influential, and the EU obliged her.