Is it now in the UK's best interests to get out of the EU and accept that our politicians let us down badly? I think so. There are great negatives including loss of sovereignty / democracy, costs of funding it, costs of complying with often silly and economically stifling legislation, etc, etc.

We are told that it's good because we can have greater global influence by being members, but all our influence is exerted outside the constaints of the EU and we have little within the EU itself now the EZ exists and even less going forward as they seem to be pressing ahead with closer union. We are told its good because we sell alot of stuff to EU member states. That's a red herring as we have a trade deficit with them so they'd continue trading with us.

The really awful thing is that the Commonwealth countries (which are harder for us to trade with being in the EU) combined GDP is about to exceed the EU's for the first time and and their economies are projected to grow by 7.3% pa over the next 5 years - rather more than the EU!

Our politicians have let us down big time over this. We should get our asap before it's too late.

Where is the loss of sovereignty? We still elect our own government, except maybe last time.
Ditto democracy.

As for the "stifling legislation", you couldn't be more wrong, the EU has eliminated thousands upon thousands of conflicting trade barriers, tariffs, terminologies, rules and regulations that each country had before, such that now it is a more open and genuinely competitive market than it has ever been until now.
Maybe you believe all the "straight banana" stories made up by the likes of the [iWail[/i?

The UK is is slipping down the table of "those with influence in the world", as are the likes of Germany and France.
Except as a group we will be subject to the rules and whims of China, Russia, India and Brazil, as well as the US.

As for the Commonwealth, there's nothing to stop us exporting to them if we are good enough, nothing in EU rules stops us from exporting to them.

I put it to you that you are merely trotting out the uninformed UKIP line.

They made us put more meat in our sausages, I tells ye!

And I can't buy bent cucumbers any more.

Bloody human rights.

That's one thing we really don't need... to be treated as equals, free from fear and all the rest of the guff that goes into the ECHR.

I say leave it now so that we can save a few quid.

And get our bent cucumbers back. I'm really bitter about them. Well, Mrs Scooter Nik is more than me, but still, the point remains.

Whilst I am not a Eurosceptic to be devil's advocate here there is an argument in what Dally says about the Commonwealth, if it was possible to strike a free trade agreement between the UK and the Commonwealth. The UK isn't allowed to participate in a FTA outside of the EU whilst it is part of the EU customs union so we would have to withdraw from that and the likely reaction would be the EU would slap tariffs on UK goods exported to the EU.

But the Commonwealth includes double the amount of nations as the EU and it does include as Dally says, fast growing nations. The UK runs a trade deficit with the EU and it may be that we take the gamble on the fact the EU is going to be chugging along as a region of low/no growth for a while so will not be a particularly good market anyway so realignment may be beneficial if the Commonwealth is an area of fast growth.

However there are risks and some of the Eurosceptics that are pushing the Commonwealth idea should be careful what they wish for. If it starts as a free trade area and is reasonably successful then the logical next step will be to expand it to a common market to enjoy the full gains of trade which means free movement of labour across borders not just tariffs and this will mean a different demographic of migrants than the Eastern Europeans, a lot of whom will be from a different colour skin, which will certainly make the Tory Eurosceptics balk.

If they did, that would kill off investment form the likes of Nissan and Toyota because they would not import parts etc into the UK and pay our import duties then export from the UK to Europe and pay their import duties on top. And we don't build cars in the UK to export to the Commonwealth.

That is true for any goods. Once imported into the UK they do not face any duty when exported into Europe. So any companies who's operations are based on the UK or who have a significant presence in the UK due to the access to the EU market will just relocated to other parts of Europe. Plants like the Vauxhall plant recently saved in Ellesmere Port will just close and even one of our largest manufacturers, Airbus, would be under threat.



They question is do they want to buy anything we sell? Nissan Qashqai's to Australia, Cananda and India from Sunderland? Don't think so. Our former Commonwealth partners are more interested in their own regional markets anyway with Australia/NZ focused on Asia and Canada North America. With India we would probably soon swap one trade deficit for another. The assumption that because the Commonwealth countries are growing fast we can tap into that and replace what we lose from free access to the EU market is a huge one.



The bottom line is to trade freely with the Commonwealth means we can't trade freely with the EU.

I agree, if the cost benefit analysis says the UK would be better off in the EU than signing a FTA with the Commonwealth then I'm all for staying within the EU.

Admittedly, I'm no expert on this whole EU thing, but it surely makes little sense to just walk away from, what could be, a very large and powerful organisation?

What is obvious though, is that if we remain in the EU, then we have to be more influential in what should be, hopefully, a massive re-structuring of the whole set-up.....Rather than stand on the sidelines constantly throwing a negative spin on the future of the EU, we should be looking to get things back to the original plan that most of us signed up for, and only by being involved can we do that.

Major change is needed, but cutting our 'losses' and getting out, isn't the right choice.

My view too. The way that some people look at it as being something we need to get out of ASAP doesn't work, that's the same kind of short term thinking that the RFL specialise in, not politicians.

We need to be in there, leading the way, not standing outside going "tut" when we don't like things, followed by "Well, we want a veto" when the restructuring is finished.

I think had Tony Blair had his way that's what Britain would have done, he was a leader that other European leaders seemed to look up to and respect unlike Cameron who gets treated with disdain (especially by Sarkozy when he was there), Blair's vision would have been that he would have been the big fish alongside his adoring fan Gerhard Schroeder and Britain would have been one of the dominating powers in Europe. However the country as a whole was not in step with Blair's Euro-enthusiasm and Blair would have also had us in the Euro which would have made our recent financial problems a lot worse if we hadn't had the independent Bank of England to lessen the pain.

I wish the single currency had never gone ahead as its the single biggest balls up in the history of the EU and it seems the countries inside are not going to cut their losses and end it but trying to go all in and have a giant fiscal union which means they will have to become much closer on tax rates, budget balances and all sorts. The Germans seem to be driving this but if it is to work then they have to accept the inevitable consequences - the United Kingdom is a fiscal union where the rich regions of the UK end up subsidising poorer regions through transfers of revenues and Germany as the richest part of the EU will inevitably have to subsidise the poorer parts. They have to accept this from the start.

What I fear will happen is Germany will lead calls for a fiscal union, so that it can keep on being inside the Euro which means it has a currency much undervalued compared to what the Deutschmark would be on its own, making German goods much cheaper in Euros than they would be in Deutchmarks hence Germany has a huge export advantage. But they will constantly complain about having to subsidise the others, and castigate them for having higher unemployment, lower productivity, and lecture them on how they need to have lower wages and conditions etc. Unless Germany is willing to accept the rough with the smooth of fiscal union it is not going to work.

One of the biggest issues at present is that Maastricht effectively enshrined neo-liberalism. I think it's Caroline Lucas, outgoing Green leader, who has raised this.

And what Merkel et al want to do is go further and, in effect, outlaw anything else, including, say, Keynesianism.

Corporatocracy here we come. Actually, we're pretty much there.

[url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/sep/16/euro.euIt was, in 2003 actually[/url

I caught part of a Hugh Fearnley poshgit programme about fishing and the ridiculous fishing laws. That was to do with the EU regulations wasn't it?

Our poor fisherman once again.

And idiot shoppers too, who only ever want cod or haddock or a bit of skate, when we have extraordinarily rich seas all around these islands.

Conversely, the various Cod Wars had nothing to do with the EU and everything to do with rapacious trawler owners. Left unchallenged, they'd have been happy to decimate Icelandic and arctic waters

What's that go to do with Dally's point? And EU regulations?

I suspect he means that EU regulations stopped that, In other words, there are two sides to the regulation argument.

To my knowledge there have been at least two formal cost benefit exercises on membershop initiated by The Treasury, one was cancelled by Ken Clarke and the other cancelled by Gordon Brown, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out why politicians might decide to do that. You have to bear in mind that the UK has been always been a net contributor since it joined, the only other country in that camp being Germany, so any talk of Nissan style investment has to be offset against billions annd billions in UK net subsidies to the EU year after year.

There is no real reason for the UK not to leave the EU and negotiate a free trade agreement 1) tit for tat customs spats do neither side any good (particularly as the UK runs a trade deficit with rest of EU), and 2) this is the era of of WTA and even the EU has to work with that. These are very heavy realpolitik counterbalance to worries about Nissan style investment leaving if we turn off the taps. If the UK is still part of a free trade zone, and is more competitive as a result, and they've already sunk billions in costs then it's unlikely. What business (like Nissan etc) doesn't like is uncertainty, but that is tough luck anywhere at the moment.

Talk of human rights, meat in sausages or cucumbers are p.iss weak red herrings, they are not dependent on the wider EU project with its bureaucracies, talking shops and corruption so deep and widespread nobody even bothers to bat an eyelid at it any longer. You can have institutions managing international trade regimes, providing aid to poor European countires, or promoting universal human rights standards, you don't need the trappings and cost of the EU for all that, in fact many such organisations already exist outside the EU. Trade does exist without the EU, and human rights actually existed in Britain before the Human Rights Act even if it wasn't around to justify a range of undesirable actions subsequently garishly splashed across the viewspapers, an expensive political integration project is not a pre-requisite for any of these things.

Now I appreciate all this realpolitik s.hit may not be as cuddly as 27 nations all proudly hugging each other under a flag of peace blah blah, but it's a moot point now anyway, the EU has already overstretched itself, it's pulling itself apart trying to maintain a common currency that doesn't work for half of it's members. If the Euro fails then what is the point of ever greater integration? The Germans are only really propping the whole thing up because their banks are so heavily exposed to the banks in weak economies (particularly Spain) that they'll have a banking meltdown if they exit. Afterall who will pay the German banks back what they lent to banks in Spain etc if the German people don't stump up the cash to keep the circle intact? Everyone is worried about a flight of capital out of the weaker economies into Germany if one of them exits, but what happens when Germany's banks start to take hits as a result of their losses from an exit? Gotta keep kicking that can along...

From memory the programme was about throwing dead fish back into the sea and not being able to sell it, thanks to EU regulations. I simply added an EU regulation that was bolloçks to the dear working folk (fishermen) back in blighty to the people's ridicules of ones that apparently are good.

Over 40 years ago. Weren't the cod wars over before we joined the EEC? Actually don't answer, this is how threads get derailed.

Aside from whether the others will accept formally ceding control of their economies to Germany (even if they've already done so in practice), there is this suggestion that the German economy is going to soften later this year, and if this happens then the German people may get even more tectchy than they already are, and there are plenty who are not keen on Merkel repeatedly handing over their money to countries out of step with the German work ethic.

The problem is the Germans aren't propping it up, they're trying to get everyone else to prop it up. They want the benefits (better for German exports) but don't want the costs (helping out the poorer areas). The Euro would work either if it was restricted to nations of similar size economies or if (like in nations outside the Euro) the rich areas subsidise the weak. Since the Germans don't appear to want either, it won't work.

As for the EU, I'm sure there is plenty of unnecessary and wasteful expenditure, but I'm of the school that you attempt to make something better before chucking it away entirely. I don't see why those parts can't be controlled with effective leadership (that does not include btching from the sidelines with no proposals only complaints).
A big problem for the EU is that no one understands how it works. It needs simplifying and far greater transparency introduced. People are suspicious of things they don't understand. If there was greater transparency there would be greater understanding and therefore greater pressure brought to bear upon our European representatives. People barely know who their MP is but I think people at least know if theyre in a Tory or Labour constituency. Without looking, I have no idea who, or what party my regions' MEP's are from or even how many there are. And I'm at least somewhat interested in politics.