Tursiops
Saturday 24th May 2014 11:20am
Welwyn Garden City
9,788 posts
Quote: sootyj @ 24th May 2014, 11:39 AM BST
Precisely that's how democracy works.
There seems to be a deranged view these days, that democracy is all about micro choices and opinions. When it's really about electing an accountable government for 4 years and hoping they do the right thing.
EU membership is not really a micro choice, it is pretty much fundamental issue of sovereignty - any area of autonomy that has been negotiated away cannot be claimed back without leaving the EU. You can, to take the most obvious example, only vote against a policy of unrestricted EU immigration by voting to leave the EU, an option that none of the three parties of government are offering in their manifestos.
To be honest I doubt we would be that much worse off if we leave the EU; most British manufacturing survives on offering unique quality, so in those areas exports are unlikely to be affected. Where we might suffer is where overseas multinationals have invested in the UK as an an entrepôt into Europe. On the plus side we might be able to start rebuilding our industrial base by awarding UK contracts to UK companies; though I am not sure that it is necessary to leave the EU to do that. We just need UK officials to adopt the same pragmatic approach to twisting EU rules that occurs elsewhere in Europe - something unthinkable to the free trade pursuits of Whitehall. My own suspicion is that if the electorate forced us out of the EU we would fail to reap any practical benefits, because our politicians would still be creeping up to the EU from the outside.