EU Referendum - In Or Out? Page 29

Quote: billwill @ 3rd July 2016, 1:52 PM BST

The EU politions claiming that trade negotiations can't start until after the EXIT terms are agreed and after the UK has actually left, haven't thought it through.

Once we have left the EU, World Trade Organization rules would then apply so UK-EU trade would not stop, (but would be subject to tariffs; import/Export duty). However the free-movement-of-labour regulations would immediately stop and the UK would have full control of immigration from the EU. If they spent 9 years dithering about making a new agreement; UK would have full control of immigration for those 9 years and would probably come to like it a lot and wouldn't give up a smideon of that control for the sake of zero tariffs.

Besides which in that 9 years, new deals would be made with non-EU countries and our trade with them would increase and trade with the EU would decrease, perhaps eventually leading to "The UK had decided that it does not need any special agreement with the EU, WTO rules will suffice" and cancelling of any negotiation.

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Shall we suggest you for the vacant PM job. Once you are there you can do the rest towards becoming Dictator yourself.

I think that's how Cromwell did it.

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I'm sorry Billwill but much of what you say here is what you hope rather than being reality. For example, the Director of WTO and the Financial Times disagree with you on the point about a simple reverting to WTO rules:

"Britain would face tortuous negotiations to fix the terms of its membership of the World Trade Organisation if it votes to leave the EU, its director-general has warned".

https://next.ft.com/content/745d0ea2-222d-11e6-9d4d-c11776a5124d

One of the problems with the Leave leaders has been that in their emphasis on "you can't trust politicians, they are all incompetent and actually it is all so quick and simple" is that while they are largely right on the first points, they are totally wrong on the last. Governing a country is extraordinarily complex. It isn't a simple thing at all.

I do not support the EU Freedom of Movement policy. Cameron's deal only partially addressed it. Much of it was likely to change in the next few years because of impacts on national Governments in elections - including France and Germany in late 2017. But this absolute obsession some people have on immigration is extremely worrying when no one sensible has suggested even a five year period of zero immigration would be some magic economic wand. Again, it is wanting an easy solution when there isn't one and there never has been.

Of course, UKIP and other business people could have done huge amounts of work on preparing the way INFORMALLY for international trade deals at the INDIVIDUAL BUSINESS level. There were no constraints on them in that way. But look at the Conservative banker Leadsom who wasn't an MP between 1991 and 2010. She was too bone idle or muddled even to update her website from 2013 when she was praising the EU. These are the sorts of people who claim they can run a country. By citing POLITICAL constraints on FORMAL trade negotiations, they are hiding the fact that they haven't planned at all for this moment in the past 25 years.

Theresa May - the more moderate candidate - has said today that sending them all home has to be on the negotiating table. That is how close we are now to the old people's National Front being in charge of this country. Some will quietly celebrate it but if they think for one moment that they and everyone else are likely to survive something of that magnitude with their owned houses still standing, they are living in a dream world. That will become a nightmare for everyone - and it's precisely why people for years have voted Con/Lab/Lib, warts and all.

Brexit has been a Trojan horse for ukip and other far nastier right wing parties.

Here, briefly, is one reason why we can't have either Euro daydreams like Juncker or independent hard liners like Farage dictating the show. Trump was reported widely in the newspapers earlier this year - including The Independent - of being prepared if the circumstances required it to drop a nuclear bomb on Europe. That might sound typical of his idiosyncrasy but actually he was stating the obvious (as it's always applied) when it comes to a point of last resort for United States security. US - and European - security isn't served by an insecure Europe.

Farage and Juncker are nothing to Trump, however much parallels are drawn between Trump and Farage. They represent a tiny people's movement against tiny elitist power. This whole business to him might as well be a spat about a local authority in Timbuktu. He doesn't want to get involved in Europe. He just wants it to be stable. And he is going to have no time whatsoever with a load of quibbling in negotiations on either side. Pulling the rug on the European economy would be an easy threat to ensure that there is an outcome, if necessary on his terms.

Senior lawyers have now been privately appointed to try to get Government to put Article 50 to a Parliamentary vote. It appears to be the sort of "keep us in the EU" shenanigans that is the equal to the other side's "let's have a referendum on the trade agreement". But the major concession has been made. It has been on the Remain side and it is that we are exiting as per majority will. The Tory PM would be crackers if she did not put Article 50 to Parliament for endorsement of her own volition. A three line whip on her own party will ensure it is triggered.

It has the bonus for Conservatives of wrong footing a Labour Party that is in a mess and doesn't know for the most part even if it has accepted Brexit. If it doesn't vote for it, it will be curtains for Labour at the next election which is no great news for those who are for Brexit and want a decent NHS etc. Many would drift to UKIP. Those who are more inclined to Europe and the welfare state will just go over to the SNP, Greens and the Lib Dems.

The UK is already a member of the WTO in its own right not just as part of the EU, and has been since it was a member of the preceeding organization GATT since 1947.

https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/gattmem_e.htm

On 1 January 1995, the WTO replaced GATT, which had been in existence since 1947, as the organization overseeing the multilateral trading system. The governments that had signed GATT were officially known as "GATT contracting parties". Upon signing the new WTO agreements (which include the updated GATT, known as GATT 1994), they officially became known as "WTO members".

And here is what the CBI think: http://www.cbi.org.uk/global-future/case_study06_wto.html

Quote: billwill @ 4th July 2016, 1:32 PM BST

The UK is already a member of the WTO in its own right not just as part of the EU, and has been since it was a member of the preceeding organization GATT since 1947.

https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/gattmem_e.htm

And here is what the CBI think: http://www.cbi.org.uk/global-future/case_study06_wto.html

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Thank you for those links Mr billwill.

While I have a "feel" for politics and some history (I did them to a reasonably high level because I couldn't do anything else), I am not especially strong on money matters/economics. Consequently I can only apply a bit of common sense to trade. It seems to me the meaning is clear when the CBI says on the link you have provided:

"Relying on WTO rules alone would not work for the UK. Any limited advantages are easily outweighed by the significant costs to the economy as a whole."

I would have the ability to go through every word of that article and come up with something useful but I'd need to be more mentally alert than I am now. There are, though, already some thoughts in my head....for example, there appear to be some clear distinctions re WTO on post Brexit trade with 1. EU/EU countries and 2. Non-EU.

Secondly, the starting point for arrangements for the financial sector appears to be different from the rest. And, third, remember that the main trade negotiations are with the EU as a whole rather than with individual WTO countries even if many of them are European. However "tortuous" - the WTO's own word - or not, any new trade negotiations/arrangements globally via WTO may be, what is being alluded to here by you (and other people) is perhaps a shift away from EU trade in the shorter term. That is presumably if the EU doesn't deliver a compromise on all points - not only trade - suitable to the UK. But that short term could in reality be many years.

That is if we were to have loads of trade lined up informally and we don't. I have seen nothing from Lord Digby Jones about any specifics like where cars or fish or apples would go if they were required to sail several seas.

It would have implications for the NHS etc. I would say the candidate Dr Fox who appears to be in the direction of ditching EU trade if he thinks it necessary pretty much accepts that fact when he speaks about his priority to cut welfare. Of course, he is an ultra right ideologue too with a background so pro the United States that in his world we would almost be a part of it. Two shadowy words of horror there - "Atlantic Bridge" - which will have been replaced by something else equally oblique no doubt. Voters will not be permitted to know what is going on.

The crucial point at this time is that the Conservatives have a manifesto which they need to honour until 2020. You will recall that even George Osborne was reminded of that point when he came up with that rather ridiculous emergency budget threat. Whatever is done about international agreements, that point still stands - including ongoing support for the NHS - unless someone wants for any good reason to overturn the fixed Parliament rule.

Manifesto? You mean the winning Party honours what they promised?

Surely, the time may come for the Brits to summon their Queen to invoke some olde emergency powers and decapitate Johnson and Farage? And impale their revolting heads on spikes outside some prominent places as a caution to other politicians not to be so childish.

Not that I'm for the death penalty. Over my centuries of many reincarnations, I often martyred myself in the struggle for peace and non-violence. But there comes a time when certain rotten apples have to be nipped in the bud, put against the wall, and feel the sharp punishment of the guillotine. Otherwise, the rot will spread and become normal.

Not that I'm for Britain remaining in the EU under the current system. If someone told me that Australia should allow some of its policies to be determined by a lazy, bloated, overpaid non-elected Southeast Asian Union based in Jakarta, I'd say: "You must be bonkers."

God no, if the Queen were to invoke some old emergency powers it'd be the treacherous likes of Osborne and May she'd go for.

Quote: Aaron @ 5th July 2016, 1:14 PM BST

God no, if the Queen were to invoke some old emergency powers it'd be the treacherous likes of Osborne and May she'd go for.

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Well without needing the death penalty they could perhaps dig up Edward Heath and Harold Wilson and put their skulls on spikes.

Quote: billwill @ 5th July 2016, 2:49 PM BST

Well without needing the death penalty they could perhaps dig up Edward Heath and Harold Wilson and put their skulls on spikes.

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THE 1970s POSITION

Well, of course, in 1973 when we went in to the EEC, the main political figures who opposed it were Tony Benn and the Far Left of the Labour Party, Trotskyist trade unions, Peter Shore and a few other Labour types who were a bit more moderate - the Gisela Stuarts of their day, Enoch Powell who had spoken about immigration leading to "rivers of blood" in Britain's streets, the Ulster Unionist the Rev Ian Paisley on the grounds that the EEC was "a Catholic superstate" and the National Front, the forerunner of the BNP. Almost all of those people were British people close to the centre of violence disrupting other British people's lives - strikes, bombs, racial attacks.

Margaret Thatcher, on the other hand, was wholly in favour of us staying in EEC when Wilson called the 1975 referendum. So too were the vast majority of her economic advisers and similar Conservtaive MPs who were moving their party towards Thatcherism economically. Heath was a post WW2 European ideologue but Wilson was only marginally in favour of the EEC, seeing the referendum as a way of addressing splits in the Labour Party (much like Cameron with the Conservatives in 2016). Externally, we had the destabilising oil crisis which quadrupled oil prices overnight affecting people's personal budgets very severely. The British economy - and its politics - were so wonderful that the lights went off in homes and schools for a period on a daily basis and there was the imposition for a while of a three day week. Plus we had nuclear bombs directed at Europe by the Russian Soviet Bloc and had almost no contact with communist Eastern Europe behind the iron curtain including Poland.

President Nixon of the USA was corrupt and about to be kicked out. And being less than 30 years from the end of WW2 - the equivalent of the distance between where we are now and the mid 1980s - the emphasis was on ensuring that there wasn't a further devastaing war including between western European countries. One in which there would be huge loss of life - - and what was happening to young American lives in Vietnam was a reminder that devastation of that kind was not simply part of history - before Britain almost certainly lost and ended.

THE LUCKY ONES

My uncle, born in 1941, is typical of many thousands in this country. Raised on a council estate, he was able to retire at 53 and is now a property millionare. Left school at 15. A manual tool maker at first, he accrued money as a basic insurance salesman and then a basic insurance inspector in a way that was unprecedented to earlier generations. Inclined culturally to Coronation Street and of an outlook towards racial groups that belongs to 1962, he is not especially political but is nevertheless a staunch Conservative. Alongside the status symbol of private health care until older age led him to believe that he was better off relying on the NHS, he had - and has - a state pension to go with a private one that is well in excess of anything his parents received and his children will obtain. In his worldview, he was mainly responsible for what he achieved, Thatcher was second and the EEC, later EU, was nothing. Older people like him are being made poor on account of "the Muslims". It's blindness to greed.

Such people fool themselves and regrettably distort historical truth. They would not be anywhere near where they are now if it hadn't have been for the 1980s. Similar transitions were made by people across Europe under regimes ranging from Reagan economics (here) to the Christian Democrats, positioned more to the centre of Conservatism (much of mainland Europe) and across to Social Democracy (Germany post war, Scandinavia outside the EEC considerably longer) and moderate Socialism (France). The EEC was not a hindrance to that profit and was almost certainly beneficial. The emerging global markets also helped although they posed challenges, especially Japan which was more competitive than Britain and preferred by Commonwealth countries in closer geographical proximity. Mostly the EEC helped ensure - along with the UN and NATO - that today's middle aged could travel, study and work in Europe rather than half of its male population dying in a trench there at age 19.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

It is wrong to blame Heath and Wilson and Thatcher in the 1970s and the 1980s. The problems occurred from the late 1980s onwards, especially because of the collapse of the Soviet bloc and how Governments responded to it - Major and especially Blair. Half the later "imposed" rules in what became the EU and half of its organisational structure including expansion eastwards were designed by British politicians and insisted upon when many European Governments were doubtful. They were backed up fully by American neocons who also promoted increasing amounts of privatisation and sell offs. That is the truth of it but we are where we are. This appears to be what the world's Top Brass - the United States, the likes of Murdoch, the Royal Family etc - have decided is the way forward. It sheds light on some questions previously raised and some people might find it helpful to know:

http://www.cityam.com/244673/lord-owen-and-lawson-stop-dithering-we-must-leave-eu

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/26/the-truth-about-britains-trade-outside-the-european-union/

Well, tonight's news seems to indicate the dire predictions for a Leave vote are starting to come true. Unfortunately we'll all be dragged into the mire along with the idiots who voted for it.

And scientific research is already being hit, so if you're expecting a quick cure for motor neurone disease, you can whistle for it.

Quote: keewik @ 5th July 2016, 10:55 PM BST

And scientific research is already being hit, so if you're expecting a quick cure for motor neurone disease, you can whistle for it.

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Won't prolong this unduly. I've had enough of it but here is a view from the Caribbean. Not once did I hear in the campaigning any comment from either side of how there might be concerns of this kind internationally. It was all Britain this and Britain that and Great Britain the imaginary Empire.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/Brexit-creates-EU-Britain-nightmare-for-the-Caribbean_65093

As for future trade with EU countries individually, I am still unclear. Peter Lilley and similar have indicated that if, say, Italy remains a member, and Britain is no longer a member and Britain has no access to the free trade Single Market, (ie not pursuing the Norway model so as to reduce the number of immigrants), then it's ok. We wouldn't have to have a trade agreement as such with Italy. We'd say we would offer Italy free trade with us but if they imposed tariffs we would impose the same sort of tariffs on them.

If right, that makes a lie out of us not being able to have had separate arrangements with a range of non EU countries - eg Australia, South Korea - while being an EU member because they would have been the equivalent to Britain (ie Non EU) at that time and we would have been the equivalent to Italy (ie an EU member). There wasn't a trade plan. I can bet that Boris and Nige and Gisela and all the rest still don't have a trade plan. And already - just ten days on - a wide range of people are suffering.

Here's the easy history behind the EU freedom of movement obsessions :

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/why-does-the-european-union-insist-on-free-movement/article/2595257

I see that multi millionaire Arron Banks fancies his chances of being UKIP leader to "win the northern heartlands".

Power to the People!

Quote: keewik @ 5th July 2016, 10:25 PM BST

Well, tonight's news seems to indicate the dire predictions for a Leave vote are starting to come true.

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Such as?

Sigh.

By EUs own rules no member country can have special trading arrangements with non-EU countries; that's one of the reasons for voting Leave.

So the UK could not have a special arrangement with Italy.

Whate you are describing are essentially the World Trade Organization Rules, whereby if there is no special Trade Agreement beteeen two countries then each country has a list (possibly two lists) of tariffs which must be applied equally to all other countries. It is possible that there are two lists: Most Favoured Nations (MFN) and all the rest.

The whole EU is one country as far as the WTO is concerned and of course has such list(s) so the whole EU applies these MFN tariffs equally to places such as USA, India ans Australia. When the UK leaves the EU, in the absence of an FTA, the EU will have to apply that list to UK trade. Someone has calculated that the average EU tariff across the trade that the UK does with the 27 countries would amount to only about 1% which is MUCH cheaper than the subscription to be a member of the EU.

Naturally the UK's own WTO Tariff lists are way out of date so new ones will be needed. Since at present as a member of the EU) trade with places like USA, India, & Aus are subject to the tariffs on the EU list, it will avoid tariff changes for those countries if the initial UK tariff list is an identical copy of the EU list; the values can then be changed later as needed or new FTA may be agreed with other countries.