Sorry about the delay, but I've been busy:

A lot of words I know, but bear with it...

mhv mhv is online now
Junior Member

Join Date: Jun 2014
Posts: 29
A lot of words I know, but bear with it...

The EU referendum: the case to remain

The EU referendum on Thursday is arguably the most important plebiscite anywhere in Europe since the Second World War. Unlike general elections, which are now held every five years in the UK, the outcome of this EU referendum will not only shape Britain?s future, but it will profoundly affect the rest of Europe and have an important impact on the rest of the world.

So if you are eligible to vote in the referendum please exercise your democratic right - I would argue obligation - to vote on Thursday.

Unfortunately a lot of people will go into the polling booths ill-informed, with a poor grasp of the key issues, having been wilfully misinformed as a result of embellishments, distortions and outright lies.

The Remain campaign is guilty of embellishments and fear-mongering and the Leave campaign is guilty of propagating myths, and worse, of systematic mendacity, which I will address below.

The case to remain in the EU ? five good reasons

The UK has tariff-free access to the largest market of advanced economy consumers in the world (508 million). The benefits of this free trade single market access may be even harder to quantify than to articulate, but when you think about the range of goods and services we would pay more for outside the EU and the extent to which our access to parts of the single market would be subject to quantitative restrictions - for example in financial services, where the UK has a notable comparative advantage ? the benefits of single market access are multiples of our annual net membership fee of approximately ?8bn (0.4% of UK GDP and 1.0% of UK public spending). Organisations like the CBI and OBR claim we get ?10 back for every pound we contribute. That may be a high end estimate, but even if it is only 2-5 x it is worth having.
A Brexit would make Britain poorer. If the UK leaves the pound would fall precipitously, possibly by as much as 15%. I will explain why in much more detail in part two. The UK has benefitted from large EU capital inflows and has been the biggest beneficiary of foreign direct investment in the EU (20% of the total stock). Much of that investment is predicated on the UK being in the EU and having access to the single market. If the UK leaves the EU much of that investment will dry up, or even reverse, which would imply a much lower equilibrium rate for the pound and therefore higher prices for imported goods and foreign holidays, and hence lower UK living standards. A Brexit could even trigger a sterling crisis of the sort we saw when the pound was ejected from the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992.
The EU is based on noble principles embodied in the 35 chapters of the ?acquis communautaire? which countries aspiring to join the EU have to meet in full. These include respect for human dignity, tolerance, liberty, democracy, equality, the rule of law, and respect for human rights, especially those of minorities. The objectives of the EU are for an area of freedom, security and justice without internal frontiers, an internal market where competition is free and undistorted, sustainable development, protection of the environment, the promotion of scientific and technological advance, combatting social exclusion and discrimination and the promotion of social justice. Unlike the US, which is blighted by gun crime, the EU has strict gun laws, which are set to be tightened further following last year?s Paris attacks. Being part of the EU means the UK can pool resources to fight terrorism and international crime syndicates, and as a bloc the EU is more effective for lobbying the United States and China to fight climate change. Moreover the EU is much stronger ballast than national governments against abuses by large multi-national corporations, white collar crime and international tax evasion. The EU is much less amenable to be ?captured? and lobbied by corporate interests. In the United States it is estimated that major lobby groups have six lobbyists for every politician in Washington DC, and the political system is broken, reflected in the lamentable calibre and tainted credentials of the two presidential candidates. Key EU Governance institutions are much less amenable to being lobbied by large multi-nationals and the European Commission is going after corporate giants like Google, Amazon and Microsoft over an array of corporate abuses. We could not rely on David Cameron?s Conservative government to do this because it is hopelessly in hock to corporate lobbyists.
A retreat in the isolationism would most likely end very badly. History is littered with examples of countries that have retreated into isolationism and have ended up a lot worse off. The United States retreated into isolationism in the 1920s. The US refused to join the League of Nations, closed its doors to immigration and erected trade barriers. This contributed to the Great Depression from 1929, a crumbling of the world peace structure and the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. The Brexit campaign revolves around fanning fears about migration and xenophobia, marching to the drumbeat of demagogues like Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen. A Brexit would be a huge fillip for nationalist and extremist movements across Europe. No country has ever left the EU, and if Britain leaves it will be the biggest ever setback to the post-war European project, constructed on the ashes of two world wars in which nearly 100 million people perished, and the culmination of centuries of European conflicts. In the worst case a Brexit could be the catalyst for the unravelling of post-war Europe. Indeed this is what some Brexiteers are hoping for.
The UK can have the best of both worlds. The UK has no obligation to join the euro, has a written guarantee that it will not have to fund any future euro-zone bailouts and is not bound by the ?ever closer union? leitmotif, which is arguably necessary to make the euro-zone stronger. The UK should welcome ever closer union at the euro level if it makes the single currency more resilient. If we have another euro crisis the UK will be affected by the economic consequences if it is in or out of the EU. By remaining in the EU the UK can maintain the benefits of single market access with no obligation for ever closer union ? the best of both worlds.
Laying bare five myths and lies of Vote Leave

If we stay in the EU negotiations for Turkish accession will start on Friday (24thJune) and Turkey is likely to join by 2020. This is an outright lie. Turkey first applied to join the EU 29 years ago in 1987, but has only satisfied one of the 35 chapters of the Acquis (see above). Moreover under President Erdogan Turkey is moving away from secular democratic principles to an authoritarian Islamic state, so Turkey is moving backwards rather than forwards in meeting the acquis criteria. Unless or until Turkey recognises Cyprus Turkish EU entry is a non-starter.
The UK sends ?350m a week to Brussels and gets nothing back. That money could be spent on building schools and hospitals. This is tantamount to a lie. At the very least it is grossly misleading. The ?350m figure is the UK?s gross contribution to the EU. It does not include Britain?s rebate that Margaret Thatcher negotiated in 1984 (worth ?70m a week), and our overall net contribution is less than half that figure at about ?150m a week. For that contribution we have access to the single market (see above). As mentioned above organisations like the OBR and the CBI argue that the UK gets ?10 back for every ?1 it contributes. That is likely a high end estimate, but even if it is 2-5x it is worth having.
Leaving the EU will save the NHS from being overrun by migrants. Again this is a wilful distortion. While there is no denying that some local constituencies have huge pressures on housing, health and education services as a result of migration, the NHS is crucially dependent on EU and non-EU migrants to operate. Migration, in other words also boosts the supply capacity of the NHS - i.e., its ability to deliver services. Moreover funding of the NHS is crucially dependent on the health of the overall economy. If the UK suffers an adverse economic shock ? or even a recession ? as a result of Brexit there will be less tax revenue and unpleasant choices will have to be made on spending priorities. The notion that leaving the EU would free up ?350m a week to spend on the NHS is utterly bogus and tantamount to a lie.
The EU needs us more than we need the EU. This is based on the notion that the UK runs a large trade deficit with the EU and imports roughly ?60bn a year more from the EU than it exports to it. But this is a fallacy because EU exports to the UK account for just 3% of other EU GDP while UK exports to the EU account for 12% of UK GDP. By this metric the UK is four times more dependent on the EU than the EU is on the UK.
If we lose access to the Single Market we could make up for this by trading more with Commonwealth countries and emerging markets. This may not be a lie but it is a deluded fantasy. The UK?s exports to the EU are 50 times bigger than the sum of all its exports to Commonwealth countries put together and six times bigger than exports to the ?BRICS? put together (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa).
I would welcome any attempts to repudiate my arguments, but in my opinion the leave campaigns arguments do not stand up well to rigorous scrutiny.

----------------------------------------------------

Th above is based on assumptions. One of the main ones is that we couldn't do a deal with the EU if we Brexited.
At least one German thinks this would be a bad idea:

Markus Kerber, head of the BDI (Germany?s answer to the CBI), is calling on his country to not risk damaging trade with punitive post-Brexit tariffs.

?Imposing trade barriers, imposing protectionist measures between our two countries ? or between the two political centres, the European Union on the one hand and the UK on the other ? would be a very, very foolish thing in the 21st century. The BDI would urge politicians on both sides to come up with a trade regime that enables us to uphold and maintain the levels of trade we have?

The contribution of low paid EU migrants to the UK economy is not cut & dried. Patrick Minford has calculated the cost of low paid workers to be between ?800 for young single workers rising to near ?30,000 p.a. for a family of four with one working, due to tax credits & other benefits.
It strikes me that it is the owners of low pay businesses who are reaping most benefit here, as they are being subsidised to run non-viable companies.

Of the ?350m p.w. gross contribution we get an abatement of around ?100m & are returned another ?70m or so in grants (i.e. they tell us how to spend it).

If I give you ?100 & you give me ?50, who's paying who?

We are prevented from striking our own deals with countries outside the EU, so it's not surprising we do so much business with it. A business will always take the easiest route, it doesn't care that's it's effectively being subsidised from elsewhere.

The EU's trade as a proportion of the world's has shrunk dramatically in the last 10 years. We need to look elsewhere.
The ?10 in for every ?1 contribution is based on a whole raft of assumptions about how good the EU is for our economy. The ?1 bit is indisputable however.

I honestly do not know if we'd be better off in or out - my gut feeling is things would stay about the same. The comments of Markus Kerber above suggest to me that the reality of economic advantage will prevail.

Afraid it's out for me.

Posted By: dennis moore, Jun 22, 16:26:07