EU - In or Out?

[Ekona]

I didn't vote to leave Europe, but now we have then out should mean out 100%. No single market, no freedom of movement, no having to obey a single EU law if we don't want to. It'll all be fine, wait and see. It always is in the end, very few political things that happen these days are ever total clusterfucks if you live in the West. I mean, Iraq was quite a shitstorm if you lived there, but did it really affect us over here that much? Nah.

There cannot be a single blank slate that says "Yup, you lot just come and go as you please whilst we sort out the details". That's bonkers. There needs to be a line drawn and everything started from that line. As long as the very basics are done in time for Day One, we've got many years to sort the finer stuff out.


There was clearly a desire for a referendum, just look at the turnout. It was the right thing to do. Now it's done we should proceed and Make Britain Great Again.

[Helios]

This may be the first time in my life that I'm agreeing with Joe.

Thank you for saying all of that so well.

[RB]

It sounds like a paranoid fantasy based on the worst possible imagined scenario to me.
We haven't even triggered article 50 yet, let alone begun negotiating.

[Joe]

Given how little the EU has offered other than threats, I doubt that good faith will get us anything except fucked over.

Just returning to this quote in light of something I read this weekend

The number of EU nationals registering as nurses in England has dropped by 92% since the Brexit referendum in June, and a record number are quitting the NHS, it can be revealed.

The shock figures have prompted warnings that Theresa May’s failure to offer assurances to foreigners living in the UK is exacerbating a staffing crisis in the health service.

Only 96 nurses joined the NHS from other European nations in December 2016 – a drop from 1,304 in July, the month after the referendum.

At the same time, freedom of information responses compiled by the Liberal Democrats from 80 of the 136 NHS acute trusts in England show that 2,700 EU nurses left the health service in 2016, compared to 1,600 EU nurses in 2014 – a 68% increase.

The haemorrhaging of foreign staff is being blamed by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) on the failure of the government to provide EU nationals in the UK with any security about their future. May has claimed that Britain cannot act unilaterally to guarantee residency as it would weaken her hand in the coming article 50 negotiations over Brexit.

Janet Davies, chief executive and general secretary of the RCN, said the government’s tactic was backfiring, and now threatened the sustainability of the health service.

But hey at least May's negotiating hand is intact, right?

[Ekona]

But we'd need to know the amount of UK and non-EU nurses registering to have a clear picture of just how destructive those numbers could be.

If May and the EU have any common sense, they'll do a joint press conference the day aftsr we invoke A50 to clear everything up and bring some stability back to the markets.

[Joe]

It sounds like a paranoid fantasy based on the worst possible imagined scenario to me.
We haven't even triggered article 50 yet, let alone begun negotiating.

Yet we already know we're leaving the single market, we don't know how much Brexit will cost, we're definitely leaving Euratom and you're in the minority if you think the Union will be ok.

Call me paranoid if it makes you feel better. Maybe I just need to stop reading the news and get me some of that faith stuff everyone keeps going on about.

And I guess that was sort of the point I was making - I simply don't have any faith that our government is capable of securing a good deal from this, or that they actually have any interest at all in doing so. In fact everything I've seen so far leads me to believe that they are no better than the European Parliament we're trying to escape from, and in many ways a lot worse because they're operating under a supposed voter-backed mandate to sacrifice whatever is deemed necessary to secure Brexit, and because the goals of a government historically hardwired to protect the 1% and think only as far ahead as the next election are rarely compatible with the long-term interests of the nation.

I think it's a backwards step for the human race. We need to be a united planet not a collection of little bits of arbitrary land.

This made a lot of sense when you said it a couple of years ago. What changed?

[Ekona]

Nothing at all. I still feel it's a huge shame we're dividing up rather than working harder to make things better. I don't regret my Remain vote for a second.

Now it's done, I've my decision to be as absolutely positive about everything as I can be. Some things will be worse for the next ten years or so I reckon, but I refuse to have anything other than an optimistic outlook on it. I was right when I said (okay, not just me but thousands of experts too!) the Poubd would plummet and all our holidays will cost a ton more and all the markets will have a paddy, but if I'm honest it wasn't the horrendous crash I thought. It was bad enough to make this years' trip to LM my last one due to funds, but in the grand scheme of things everything's actually been okay.

It was also supposed to be the apocalypse when Trump won, but it's not been so bad (yet) either. Until we know how deals and ploys will end up in the next couple of years, in going to spread positivity that things will be okay in the end. I still think that we need a stronger Labour leader to push the Tories on Brexit, because they could be running the country in 2020 so should have a stronger say. Maybe they'll see sense, but probably not and that's my only real worry.


We'll be fine come 2020, wait and see

[Ekona]

I don't often do positivity, I'm usually a glass half empty with a crack down the side too. This time, I'm choosing to be different.

[Joe]

Nothing at all. I still feel it's a huge shame we're dividing up rather than working harder to make things better. I don't regret my Remain vote for a second.

Sorry, the "we need to be a united planet" quote was actually RB's, from the Independence thread. Glad you agree though

[Ekona]

Oh lol

I though I said something similar to Hyder at some point about the whole thing.

[RB]

Call me paranoid if it makes you feel better. Maybe I just need to stop reading the news and get me some of that faith stuff everyone keeps going on about.

It doesn't make me feel anything it's just the way your post came across.
You should definitely stop reading and listening to the news. It is biased beyond belief. There are no media sources that are in any way trustworthy.

I get my "faith" if you want to call it that from the fact that in the past 3 years, I've been dealing with huge multinationals in the printing, chemical and engineering businesses across Europe and the US as part of my job and without exception, the feeling among big business is that Brexit is no big thing. Business will continue as is and business not politics is what makes the world turn. There are some businesses talking about losing jobs and moving staff. I've been told by one such company that they said it to get a guarantee of tax breaks if they changed their minds and magically, that happened.

I certainly don't trust the largely corrupt and incompetent politicians to negotiate our exit. However, as we have seen numerous times, most recently with the tax rises for the self employed, if enough people kick off, they'll U-turn before you can get to, "when do we want it?".

I'm not going to put my feet up and just let it ride. I'll be paying attention to what's going on and reacting accordingly but there's no point panicking and getting worked up about things that have yet to happen.

This made a lot of sense when you said it a couple of years ago. What changed?

Nothing, the EU is an old idea for a few countries to stand together in a huge world that's hard to deal with alone. The world has shrunk to the point where a local trade bloc now cuts its members off from the rest of the world that's now simple to trade with individually.
The internet and containerised shipping killed the EU, not Brexit.

[Ekona]

Amazon!

[Joe]

Call me paranoid if it makes you feel better. Maybe I just need to stop reading the news and get me some of that faith stuff everyone keeps going on about.

It doesn't make me feel anything it's just the way your post came across.
You should definitely stop reading and listening to the news. It is biased beyond belief. There are no media sources that are in any way trustworthy.

I get my "faith" if you want to call it that from the fact that in the past 3 years, I've been dealing with huge multinationals in the printing, chemical and engineering businesses across Europe and the US as part of my job and without exception, the feeling among big business is that Brexit is no big thing. Business will continue as is and business not politics is what makes the world turn. There are some businesses talking about losing jobs and moving staff. I've been told by one such company that they said it to get a guarantee of tax breaks if they changed their minds and magically, that happened.

I certainly don't trust the largely corrupt and incompetent politicians to negotiate our exit. However, as we have seen numerous times, most recently with the tax rises for the self employed, if enough people kick off, they'll U-turn before you can get to, "when do we want it?".

I'm not going to put my feet up and just let it ride. I'll be paying attention to what's going on and reacting accordingly but there's no point panicking and getting worked up about things that have yet to happen.

This made a lot of sense when you said it a couple of years ago. What changed?

Nothing, the EU is an old idea for a few countries to stand together in a huge world that's hard to deal with alone. The world has shrunk to the point where a local trade bloc now cuts its members off from the rest of the world that's now simple to trade with individually.
The internet and containerised shipping killed the EU, not Brexit.

Fair enough. I don't think I'll be able to tear myself away from the news but I'll certainly continue to seek balance wherever possible. I want to believe this is going to be a success, regardless of how we got here, and attempting to pick faults in your largely sound logic will neither change your mind nor make me feel any better. Thanks for articulating a cogent, measured response, it's a lot more than I've seen from other Leavers to date.

[Ekona]

It has to be a success. The alternative is too dreadful to contemplate.

[Mr.Clark]

I still think that we need a stronger Labour leader to push the Tories on Brexit, because they could be running the country in 2020

Not with Corbyn at the helm they won't...