geojanes wrote:Is there a way to go half-way? It seems like the choice is either full EU member or not. Is there something in the middle, like core EU membership without some details? Or something like that? Or is that contrary to the very concept?

In a sense that is what we are going for. We are not in the Single Currency, and we already have some opt-outs on policy areas we can (and have) exercised. Sass may disagree, but what Cameron is negotiating now is a slightly less strong membership. And it should be applicable to any other member - at least those who are also not in the Euro.

We won't get a choice in the referendum to be "more" involved. It will be membership on the basis of what agreements come out in the upcoming weeks, or being out.

Sass, obviously I hope 4 years or less before this bunch of chancers is kicked out. Maybe the NHS will be their undoing. But even 9 or 10 years would be a long time and by then maybe it won't be Labour whi wins - we could get another coalition.

Greece was not hamstrung because it was an EU member. It was because it was in chronic debt, caused by previous governments. The IMF and creditors were imposing - just as they have in the past for non-EU members in major difficulty.

Sass, obviously I hope 4 years or less before this bunch of chancers is kicked out. Maybe the NHS will be their undoing. But even 9 or 10 years would be a long time and by then maybe it won't be Labour whi wins - we could get another coalition.

Sure, that might happen. There's an awful lot of things that might happen in the next few years. It's still essentially a counsel of despair though. Britain is a broadly centre-left country, for all that we've elected a lot of Tory governments. There's no reason to believe that the left won't be back in power at some point, and if we've repatriated our sovereignty by the time that happens then they'll have complete freedom to enact whatever legislation they might desire.

Now consider the flipside. There's a lot of scaremongering about TTIP floating around in left-wing circles right now. I call it scaremongering for want of a better term because I don't really know enough of the details to make an informed judgement, and I suspect nobody else does either. What if the scare stories are genuine though ? What if this really does turn out to be the death knell of the NHS, as so many are saying ? TTIP is being negotiated in secret and if it's eventually ratified by the EU there won't be a damn thing anybody in Britain can do about it. At least if Cameron were to instigate a full-blown assault on our employment rights (which there's no evidence to suggest he will btw) it could easily be reversed by the election of a Labour government. If the assault upon the workers originates in Brussels there's nothing that can be done.

Tony Benn wrote:In the course of my life I have developed five little democratic questions. If one meets a powerful person--Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates--ask them five questions: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?” If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system.

I'm surprised and disappointed that more people on the left of British politics are not exercised by these questions. When applied to the EU, the answers are rather alarming.

What power does it have ? Well, it has ultimate power over all trade, industrial, labour, agricultural, fisheries, environmental, immigration and (in the case of the Eurozone) monetary policies. There are plans afoot for justice and fiscal policies to harmonised, and defence policy is also being looked at. Where did they get this power from ? The answer to this is unclear, but we can be certain that it did not arise from any democratic mandate.
In whose interests does it exercise this power ? You tell me. I think you'd have a hard time making a plausible case for the answer being 'the people of Europe' given the scale of shady corporate lobbying in Brussels and the opacity of the decision-making process.
To whom is the EU accountable ? Let's be honest with ourselves here, the answer to this is nobody. Or perhaps it might be more accurate to say that EU officials are accountable only to each other. Certainly they aren't accountable to the people.
How can we get rid of them ? We can't.

The EU is clearly non-democratic, and that alarms me. I'm surprised that it doesn't alarm you, because it ought to. One of these days the EU decision makers are going to pass a law which horrifies you and there won't be a single thing you can do to change it. The same doesn't apply to a sovereign British government.

It alarms me no more an no less than the pretty undemocratic and opaque way that the UK often gets run. We have an unelected second chamber. An unelected head of state who has more than a negligible influence on politics. Lobbying that in unreformed despite promises from Cameron. No real confidence that past deeds like hacking or paedophilia are being dealt with if it involves certain types of person.

And it is interesting that you decry "scaremongering" by the "In" support, when we know there is plenty (mainly around how many immigrants we will get, or the spectre of a "superstate") from the "Out" side.

danivon wrote:An unelected head of state who has more than a negligible influence on politics

Yeah, that's crazy. Maybe a small revolution is in order. But at least you're not Canada, where your unelected head of state is a foreigner.

Off-topic. Sorry.

geojanes wrote:

danivon wrote:An unelected head of state who has more than a negligible influence on politics

Yeah, that's crazy. Maybe a small revolution is in order. But at least you're not Canada, where your unelected head of state is a foreigner.

Off-topic. Sorry.

Are you talking about Ted Cruz?

It alarms me no more an no less than the pretty undemocratic and opaque way that the UK often gets run. We have an unelected second chamber. An unelected head of state who has more than a negligible influence on politics. Lobbying that in unreformed despite promises from Cameron. No real confidence that past deeds like hacking or paedophilia are being dealt with if it involves certain types of person.

A strange attitude. All you need to do to rectify all of the flaws you perceive in the British constitution is convince enough of your fellow citizens to back you in either an election of referendum proposed by the party you support. Look at all of the constitutional changes brought about by Tony Blair. A mixed bag to be sure, but he changed a lot during his time in office for better or worse. Change is possible within the context of a sovereign democratic nation, it's virtually impossible in the context of a supra-national body. Have a little faith in yourself and your own party !

And it is interesting that you decry "scaremongering" by the "In" support, when we know there is plenty (mainly around how many immigrants we will get, or the spectre of a "superstate") from the "Out" side.

I'm not sure I'd agree that either of these things really constitute scaremongering. The immigration one maybe, but even though some of the things you see argued by certain Outers veers into the xenophobic end of the spectrum at times (I tend not to associate myself with that side of the debate), what they're saying is based in fact. It's a simple fact that the migrants flooding into Germany will never go home (or the vast majority of them won't), that they'll ultimately end up gaining citizenship and that this will give them the right to come to the UK. We can only speculate as to how many will decide to come here, but we can say with absolute certainty that if we remain in the EU then it isn't possible to control our own borders in the event that Europe continues to admit millions from the third world. It's not really scaremongering to point this out.

As for the superstate thing, that's a statement of fact. The direction of travel for the EU is and has always been ever greater centralisation of power within the Brussels institutions. This is exactly how 'ever closer union' has always been understood in the rest of Europe, it isn't even controversial. At some point in the next few years either the Euro will collapse or the Eurozone will have to enact a treaty change which brings about full fiscal and economic union for its members. One or the other is inevitable. Once that happens then existing outside of that structure will become increasingly non-viable. Either we'll ultimately have to join in or we'll be left in a situation where we're outvoted on absolutely everything, at which point we'll be obliged to leave. It's not scaremongering to point out the inevitable direction of travel in the EU, especially since the Five Presidents Report has already set out the intentions going forward.

geojanes wrote:

danivon wrote:An unelected head of state who has more than a negligible influence on politics

Yeah, that's crazy. Maybe a small revolution is in order. But at least you're not Canada, where your unelected head of state is a foreigner.

Off-topic. Sorry.

Well she is largely German.

Sass - Blair managed all his reforms from within the EU. So it is not an issue there. If anything it helps to put pressure on us to reform that we are in a group with largely more democratically set up structures in our partner countries.

The immigration thing is largely guesswork, but if they wanted to come here, they would head here first. Germany was the stated destination in August, before any Merkel announcements or photos of dead children on a Turkish beach. Which actually suggests that Germany is the aim, not the UK.

On the "superstate" we are seeing challenges to that already. If Cameron was smarter and not only thinking of his party and leadership, he would be doing more than he has so far to bring counties like Poland on board for reform. The UK alone looks petulant (we do have a history), but a group of countries with a set of reforms they all agree on is harder to ignore. The Euro crisis and the refugee issue are a big part of it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... urope.html

So apparently we need to stay in the EU to prevent the spread of Ebola...

There is scaremongering on both sides. I don't feel the need to link to every stupid comment from the likes of Forage, Grayling or Johnson.

Because then we would just be proxies for the unfounded extremes of the debate, which is boring.

Merely asserting that both sides are as bad as each other doesn't make it so. It's quite clear that Remain is falling back on a relentless torrent of unsubstantiated scare stories that isn't going to let up between now and June 23rd, Leave isn't doing that. In actual fact I've only been linking to the more amusing examples.

This particular claim was part of a document drawn up by government officials and presented in Parliament by the Prime Minister btw. Are we now saying that Cameron is part of the extremist fringe ? There was me thinking he was the figurehead for the Remain campaign...

Sassenach wrote:Merely asserting that both sides are as bad as each other doesn't make it so. It's quite clear that Remain is falling back on a relentless torrent of unsubstantiated scare stories that isn't going to let up between now and June 23rd, Leave isn't doing that. In actual fact I've only been linking to the more amusing examples.

This particular claim was part of a document drawn up by government officials and presented in Parliament by the Prime Minister btw. Are we now saying that Cameron is part of the extremist fringe ? There was me thinking he was the figurehead for the Remain campaign...

Well, from my perspective he is.

Look, we had Grayling claiming that staying in will lead to a "Paris" attack. UKIP telling us that hundreds of millions of people are coming. I guess now Boris will claim the City will be laid waste to.

The reality is that staying in or coming out both provide ample opportunity for extrapolation of unknowns. I am not saying we should stay in because the BAD will come and get us. Sure, some are. But the Leave campaign is also a "Project Fear".

I would rather we did not have a referendum. Not because I "fear" leaving so much as that the surrounding debate will cause uncertainty (which will hit the Pound and trade and investment in the short term, when the recovery is fragile enough), and because I can see that just as for Scotland, the losers are not going to simply go away and accept the will of the people, they will carry on the rancour of the debate and it will continue to overshadow politics for years.

Mind you it could chronically split the Tories, which would have all kinds of consequences. I wish I could step away and enjoy from afar with popcorn. Alas, I can only do that with the Trumpageddon.

I actually think the Tories ought to be able to come through this without going into meltdown. If they don't then Cameron himself will be to blame, because so far he's the only member of the party who's going out of his way to needle his colleagues. The performance yesterday was extraordinary.

ConHome have run some numbers on the Tory MPs who have declared for either camp. What's striking is that Remain has something like 80% of the payroll vote whereas Leave has a clear majority of backbenchers (87 declared for Leave against 60 for Remain, with a lot of them yet to declare who you'd have to assume are probably not inclined to the Remainian position). What this suggests is that the 'split' in the Tory party is a largely artificial construct. Those who are on the payroll and looking to build a career for themselves have been leant on to support their boss. I'll bet that at least half of the MPs who have come out for Remain have done it through gritted teeth for the sake of their careers. The reality is that most Tory MPs are instinctively Eurosceptic, and it's certainly true that the membership in the country are overwhelmingly so. They won't make the mistake of electing another flimflam artist like Cameron as their next leader. The next leader of the party, no matter the outcome of the referendum, will be a Leaver, and that will effectively settle the issue.

The way I see it, the only way that this catastrophically splits the Tory party is if Cameron keeps crassly blundering around making an ass of himself and royally pissing off both colleagues and party members. The Out crowd have no need to make it personal because they know the members are with them on this. Granted, Cameron is a fool who may very well do just that, but I doubt it. He doesn't want to go down in history as the man who led us out of the EU but neither does he want to be remembered as the man who split the Conservative party.

Its hard to follow the EU debate from afar and really understand the nuances.
But this Boris Johnson is really hard to comprehend. Is it right to say he is for voting to get out of the EU but not actually carrying through when the vote is delivered?

Gentlemen could one of you explain how Boris gets to be both mayor of London and an elected MP? Why doesn't he have to resign the mayoralty?
Has he given up his American citizenship?
There's strange pattern of duality with this guy.
Does he have a picture in his attic that is much older but with well groomed hair?

There's nothing to stop anybody from simultaneously being an MP and an elected mayor. In fact his predecessor did the same thing for a while. In Boris' case he started out as an MP and then resigned his seat after he first won the mayoralty. This turned out to be a major springboard for his political career though, and by the time he came towards the end of his 2nd term he'd outgrown the job and wanted to return to the national stage. This was slightly controversial because he'd always vowed never to dilute the attention he gave to the job of mayor, but he calculated that with only a year to go before standing down he could get away with reneging on that promise so he stood for Parliament last May and got elected as an MP again. There's a lot of speculation to the effect that he expected the Tories to lose the election and was positioning himself to make a play for the leadership afterwards, but they unexpectedly ended up with a majority, which scuppered him but doesn't seem to have diminished his ambition...

Boris Johnson is an unusual character. He's far and away the most popular politician in the UK. The last politician I can think of who had universal first name recognition was Thatcher (Maggie), and she was hated by as many people as loved her. Boris is liked by almost everyone, even if he isn't necessarily respected. Political journalists are obsessed with him. It's widely assumed that he's consumed with ambition to lead the Tories and become PM, and everything he does is analysed through that prism. In this case, he's taken a gamble but one that he almost certainly had to take iof he has serious ambitions to be PM. The way that the Tory leadership election works is that the MPs vote until they whittle down the candidates to two, at which point those two go forward to a vote among the wider membership. His main rival atm is George Osborne, who's tied to Cameron and as such tied into the Remain campaign. The thing is though, at least 3/5 of the Tory party members are strongly Eurosceptic and there's every chance that there will be a major backlash against anybody who supported Remain in the (likely) event that Cameron wins the referendum. For someone like Boris, who has always liked to show a bit of leg to the anti-EU crowd among the wider membership while deep down not actually being all that Eurosceptic, this is both a challenge and an opportunity. If he wants to be leader then he really had no choice other than to come out for Leave. if he hadn't then he'd be kissing goodbye to his future career prospects.

His best chance, and what I suspect he's hoping for, is if we narrowly vote to remain. That way there would be a massive backlash against Cameron and Osborne among the wider membership, which would pave the way for Boris to win the leadership while absolving him from any need to actually leave the EU, which i suspect he doesn't really want to do. Whether he succeeds in his cynical game remains to be seen, but there's no doubting that he's a major asset to the Leave campaign.