Britain is not the EU's equal in strength, and boy, does it show

Nemesis wrote:

This, and the tony martin thread, have really got my attention. There are some really good points being made amongst all the dick waving.

Brexit isnt about alienating people or exluding them, its about fighting for, and protecting whats ours.

This is a huge gamble, leaving the EU but personally i think it has too many flaws in it to remain. Sure, it will be tough and we will probably be made an example of but i voted for change, if it turns out to be worse then so be it.

I’m sure that will be the attitude of a lot of people if a second referendum is called, Nem.

I’m genuinely worried about such a referendum. It strikes me as too early, it would be fought on the wrong issue of democracy, and it would be bitterly divisive – remember the last one?

But it looks increasingly likely if may fails the Commons vote (though only a fool would tell you what’s going to happen). Friends have told me that it will be bitter and divisive whatever time it comes, and this just has to be faced.

If you were asked to vote again, you said that you might consider voting to stay, but the post I’ve quoted would indicate a die-hard Brexiteer.

Could I ask you, what did you mean when you said, “With hindsight, im not sure if id still vote to leave..”?

Given your strong brexit instincts, why would you reconsider voting to leavve??

Yes, Nem, I understand that your instinctively pro-Brexit, and you explain that.

My question was why you may reconsider – the reason for you saying that you’re not sure you’d still vote to leave.

You said you were sold a lie. In what way?

This is a genuine question, not a trick one.

I appreciate those posts, Nem, both for their honesty and for your thinking outside the box, two characteristics I’ve always associated with you.

I’ll bear your points in mind and I hope you enjoy and participate in the discussions whihc hopefully lie ahead.

The nature of the debate, and my taking part in it, is going to depend on the events of the coming weeks, which are really up in the air.

If May loses her vote on the 12th(?), she may well keep going with a slightly-rehashed deal and push it to a second vote in March. My guess is that it’s her strategy at the moment.

Parliament may not let her do that, and everything is up in the air at that point. I don’t see a general election because the recent law on fixed-term parliaments makes an election difficult (though who knows he circumstances then?).

I can’t see a no-deal exit because again parliament won’t allow it – they realise how awful for us all it would be.

If they can’t agree on how to proceed, they could well decide on taking it to the people in a new referendum.

In those circumstances, the debate here in jc (and in the country) could get very nasty, if the last referendum was anything to go by.

If May wins her vote, in two weeks time or early next year, then the debate becomes a lot less urgent imho.

I think people voted to leave for all sorts of reasons – nationalism, a belief that the EU was the cause of poverty, a belief that somehow if we left the EU we could stop the immigrants taking our jobs and living standards.

I think, if you want to take your image, they think the dog had to move toe scape the nail.

The problem is that if the nail hurting the dog isn’t the EU – if – then the wound remains, and could get a lot worse.

So  we’ve got to try to understand whether the wound is caused by the EU or something much deeper, something which has led to austerity, the cuts in health and welfare,  a dangerous mood growing.

I’m going to try to ignore taunts and accusations from some people to try to figure out whether it’s the EU which is to blame, as you seem to think, or something else.

I’ll take a couple of arguments, and in my next post I’ll try to answer a couple of good questions I promised I’d answer.

It’s been claimed that the EU budget is a real drag on our resources. We pay more into it than we get back, and the Health Service could be enormously helped by diverting the money there. Rude Boy has said that £5bn per year could be paid into the health budget.

The reality, if you look at it in some sort of perspective, is very different. Joining a club means that you have to pay your dues to get the benefits of the club. The EU budget is just this, and it’s small fry as a proportion of our budget (and that’s true of all other countries in the EU), and it’s well worth it for the benefits we receive in terms of trade and investment, which brings us the money with which we can finance our health, welfare and education.

The EU budget is relatively small, and our contribution to it is also relatively small, according to academic research coming out of the Londoon School of Economics (the LSE I can quote form it if necessary).*. The Health Service budget is huge in comparison – The £5bn claimed by Rude Boy to be diverted from the EU budget to the NHS, and our contribution to hat budget (let’s take his figure of £8.3bn is a drop in the ocean given that the NHS is now costing about £123bn per year and rising.

The money lost by leaving the EU is already far greater than the amount of money which could have been saved (see https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-22/u-k-brexit-hit-already-exceeds-eu-budget-payments-study-shows).

We won’t feel any brexit dividend to help the NHS for many years – under the deal, we’ be paying much larger amounts per year for a while to come, and the loss of investment and trade means that the NHS will have a lot less money to spend because the govt (which pays it) will be getting less money from lost revenue.

And welfare? And mental health?? And social care for the elderly and disabled???

It’s Universal Credit, not the EU; austerity, not the EU budget which is causing the real hurt to people. It arises directly from the financial crash of 2008, and the hurt is deep.  The bitch that gave birth to that crash is still in labour.

There’s change coming, Nem, that’s for sure. Within the EU, the stresses seem to be leading to a two-speed Europe, one heading towards greater integration, the other (a conglomerate of different countries which would have been led by the UK, but is composed of the prosperous ‘Hanseatic League’ of northern Europe as well as the poorer countries of the South) which won’t be integrated in the same way.

If there is a decisive break with Europe (and it can’t be ruled out) then the wind could blow very hard through Britain and it could blow for a long time. Let’s hope that there’s still something left to feel proud about at the end of it.