A discussion at work on Brexit

[Suff]

Partly true and partly not. 'There are precedents for trading, but one side just wants to scare the hell out of people and the other just wants to try and kill the scare.

Let's put it this way. When we're talking £12.5bn of which we pay net around £6bn, whether it is £350m or £650m it is irrelevant so long as the £6bn net contribution stands and the £12.5bn total contribution stands. Those figures are not really contested.

Let's put it another way. The general trading tariff for most goods for most countries, with the EU, is 3%. So if we did £100bn of export trade with the EU, then it would cost us £3bn. So we could afford to keep subsidising to the tune of 6.5bn, pay our own businesses the £3bn and still have £3bn in hand.

That is hardcore reality and the IN camp doesn't want to go there. So they keep on rubbishing the Brexit figures and trying to create dobut.

Of course that is not even reality. We don't even do £100bn of trade with the EU and we would impose exactly the same tarrifs on the EU as they did with us. The EU does an additional £30bn trade inwards to the UK than we do to the EU. So it wouldn't cost us even that postulated £3bn, it would cost us nothing, it would, instead, actually increase the £6bn that we would be getting back.

Never mind the fact that we would regain control over the additional £6.5bn we get as "largesse" from the EU and redirect it where it would do the best good for the UK, not the EU. Angel of the North and the other follies anyone??? Millions of investment in generating art and art based business put into a few hands for a few people to make their mark...

I was half listening to the radio tonight heading back from work when I heard "part funded by the EU" over the radio. Immediately followed by the semi ranting of yours truly shouting "No it's effing not it's funded by the UK money the EU takes from us"....

The propaganda is everywhere and most people who just don't care are going to believe it.

That, I believe, is a tragedy.

[Workingman]

Of course the propaganda is everywhere, both sides are at it.

Suff, you have just given us two sets of figures. The first, I suspect, is to make the numbers understandable. The second set tells us what would happen to them under some sort of Brexit. They both take the present position and work on tweaking the numbers to argue against staying in.

What I am asking is which flavour of Brexit will we get? Brexiters have a problem in that their versions, and there are many, come from the Dream Wall. They do not have one version to promote, nor the figures to back it up, they can't have. Since the fall of Empire after WWII we have never traded alone we have always been part of a group.

If we Brexit what would happen if we only joined the EEA? Give me the numbers. How would the numbers change if we only join EFTA. What would they be if we joined the Commonwealth of Nations, not all of whom are our friends? What if we joined the EEA and EFTA. Some Brexiter must have the figures, or maybe not.

Don't keep harping back to what we currently have and then knocking it down. Tell us the positives of the different versions of Brexit arer, then tell us which one we will be getting. Not knowing what people are voting for in order for Brexit to happen really is a tragedy.

[Suff]

Ah and there is the rub.

Of course I can't tell you what we would get. After the vote there has to be at least 2 years of negotiations before the exit.

If you ask me, I'd rather we joined the new pan asia/Americas deal that was recently signed and stuff the EU and the EEA and the EFTA. Take our money and play with it where it gives us more return.

Of course it depends on what kind of copulating ononists we have negotiating for us and how hard nosed they are going to be. Although that is a darwinnian process. The worse they are the more rapidly they will be removed and replaced with someone who can actually do the job. Being out has that effect, it means we have to up our game and be, what we once were, the best in the world.

The whole money thing is not my position. My position is this. Both options come with a risk. The risk to remaining in the EU is crystal clear and very high. Namely that the UK ceases to be the UK after the requisite period of time and that the most rapacious of the other countries will rule that nightmare of a rabble in Brussels.

Then again Brexit is a risk. However, correctly managed, it is also an opportunity and we have already proven that we can navigate that opportunity as, decade by decade, more of our business is done out side of the EU.

To me the risks are clear and the risk of remaining is far, far, higher than the risk of leaving.

Potential £100bn if we leave? If you believe our CBI, which I do not.
Total destruction of the British people and culture if we stay?

Now lets put that in perspective. The UK banks went down for £100bn.

How much did that hurt the person on the street?
How much do you like/love/hate your country?

For me it's simple. I just don't listen to the UEphile's BS about how "great it is". It isn't and it will only get worse for us.

I'd take the risk in a heartbeat and, remember, this has more personal risk and cost for me than 99% of people in the UK. So when I hear Cameron prattling on about how people might lose their cheap holidays to Spain and Portugal, I, quite literally, see red.

Until this recent trouble with the fanatics, holidays in the Egyptian resorts, Tunisian resorts and Turkish resorts have been cheaper and, to many, better than Spain or Portugal.

Also if you think for one second that Spain and Portugal are going to give up on billions of £ worth of British holiday makers to keep the northern Europeans happy, think again. They have absolutely nothing to "thank" them for. They're the PIIGS remember! And that is another harsh reality of the EU!

[Workingman]

For me it's simple. I just don't listen to the UEphile's BS about how "great it is". It isn't and it will only get worse for us.

An opinion, and because we already know what it is like to be in the EU, an easy one to make. I want to know what it will be like outside the EU, and which 'outside' we will be voting for.

I'd take the risk in a heartbeat and, remember, this has more personal risk and cost for me than 99% of people in the UK.

Sorry, Suff, but your personal risk is neither here nor there; what about the country? It is if the UK, or rUK if Scotland wants independence, we are talking about.

I couldn't give a stuff about cheap holidays, bent bananas or the greenness of cucumbers. I want to know what the different versions of Brexit will mean to my country and its economy.

Over.

[Suff]

I couldn't give a stuff about cheap holidays, bent bananas or the greenness of cucumbers. I want to know what the different versions of Brexit will mean to my country and its economy.

Over.

Ah but plenty of people will be voting IN based on cheap holidays. Stuff the country, me, me, me.

Remember we've been out there before. We chose the EEC over taking the pain and reorganising our economy. Yet we had to take the pain anyway.

Let's put it simply. With the 5th largest economy in the world and a permanent seat at the UN security council, nobody is going to treat us like Iceland!

For me the risk of staying is so high that even a moderate cost of Brexit is worth it.

And NO. Nobody is going to be able to fully quantify what it will look like until we get out there. However we do have examples. Australia, Canada, New Zealand, India, Braizil.... All of whom have a smaller economy, less military power and less influence in the world. Then there is Russia. Who has a smaller economy, a bigger military and similar influence in the world.

A risk? Only in the short term. It's time we returned to the world where we belong and got out of the suffocating smothering incestuous pit that is the EU.

Going around demanding to know the "impossible to know" is synonymous with campaigning for IN. There is risk. Is it manageable? Of course it is. Even Cameron had to admit that.

[Workingman]

I am voting for IN because I know what it entails. Voting for OUT takes me into no man's land. Playing about with us being the Xth largest economy and having a seat on the UN Security Council is neither here nor there, it is only theory anyway..

I know what we can do as things stand, what I do not know is where we will be out of the EU. I am awaiting answers that are not forthcoming.

Don't just knock the Status Quo, tell me the future, but for God's sake back it up with some concrete evidence. The latter is lacking by a long way so far.

[Suff]

I hope you don't live to rue that decision.

History is littered with those who chose to take the safe, secure, comfortable route. Even slaves who feared the risk of freedom rather than the known comfort of food, shelter and labour....

Germany and France will have elections in 2017, the treaties will be open for revision in 2020, just in time for the UK to get a Labour government who may sign away even more rights.

On the back of mid term leaders in France and Germany I expect the EU to try again for a constitution and ever more encroachment on the rights of the "nation states". Just enough time for a UK government to giver up everything except our borders and, maybe, even that.

Let's face it. If we stay in the EU we must, eventually, lose our borders. Because we will be faced with an ultimatum. Join Schengen or leave. They know we won't vote to leave (or they believe we won't), so what do they have to lose?

An IN vote gives the EU the power over the UK they have never had before. If we vote to stay it would have been much, much, better never to have had the vote.

Did we learn nothing from the Greeks? They came to the table proud, but having campaigned on staying in the EU and staying in the Euro. They left the table bent and broken to the wheel.

If people believe they can vote remain and there will be no consequences they are totally fooling themselves. If we vote remain we might as well sign up for Schengen and the Euro and do it sooner rather than later. Because the damage a messy ejected Brexit, on the back of an EU who thinks that we will stay beyond reason, will cause more than the £100 billion in damage to the UK. It will damage us for a generation.

So it's Remain and Integrate or Leave and take what comes.

That is not FUD, that is simple practicalities of the remain vote.

Notably nobody is talking about the consequences of a positive vote to stay.

[Workingman]

Oh, go on, I'll answer the Straw Man argument about remaining: We all live the EU day after day, we already know the positives and negatives.

What I am asking of the Brexiters is what type of Brexit are we getting? Unfortunately nobody is home or the phone is off the hook. I take it from that that they do not have clue either, all they want is out of the hated EU at any cost and then to play things by ear.

The only Brexiter I have heard put up a decent argument was David Davis when interviewed by Andrew Neil. He stoically refused Neil's prompts to bash the Remainers and instead made positive remarks about Brexit. I have to say that for the undecided he made some good points, some bloody good points. The Brexit camp(s) could do with more like him.

[medsec222]

It was a pity that the Conservative MPs did not vote for David Davies to lead them instead of David Cameron. Regarding the pros and cons of leaving the EU or not leaving the EU. Sovereignty may possibly come at a price, and if it does, it is well worth paying. If a leap in the dark is what it takes, I'll be jumping.

[cromwell]

Me too Meds.
You have only to look at the "deal" the EU has done with Turkey on the migrant crisis. Not only is it unworkable, it's probably illegal.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cf5c1c3a-e21d ... z43di7jXIC

I know some of the consequences of staying in the EU. Further erosion of sovereignty, more of our businesses being bought up by the Germans, the regionalisation of England, and eventually being forced into accepting boatloads of illegal economic migrants. No thank you!