I thought this was a "Britain leaving the EU thread?"
Where'd that conversation go?
We have one poster insisting that Britain should leave in order to limit immigration, particularly from certain groups. For example a small number of West Africans are a problem, but the many times larger number of Americans and Europeans is not. We have another poster who keeps on insisting that the only reason Britain wants to leave the EU is because we're all either just pretending to want to leave to gain political advantage in negotiations, or because we're stupid.
It's quite hard to have a sensible discussion about the various issues when one person insists on inserting keeping out the undesirables into every conversation, and the other insists that by definition no good reason exists to leave the EU, therefore any suggestion of doing so must be a political tactic.
Maybe I should try and push the discussion in a different direction.
We have a lot of forces pushing towards an exit. A ruling party that is right wing, looking at a comparatively socialist Europe in which they have increasingly little influence. We have an economy that is, and always has been, out of step with that of Europe. We tend to experience longer shallower recessions and longer shallower booms. Our economy is more outward facing that most of Europe. Our economy is stronger than most European member states. Europe is making some of the issues we're experiencing, from being a minor military power looking for a role to the possible break up of the union, somewhat worse. And of course we're strongly aligned with the US, at a time when that's a pretty tough position to justify, particularly in Europe.
We also have lots of forces pushing us towards Europe. Strongest of all is a desire not to be left out decision making about our own continent. There's also the trade advantages, and to a lesser extent the political and economic advantages of being part of a larger bloc.
The issue at the moment is that many of the pro-Europe forces are breaking down. We appear to be losing any power to influence events in Europe. We can't get reforms carried out, we can't get exemptions to policies and events that effect us. There's a constant refrain (of which dystopian here is a good example) that we should not expect to have any influence. Several prominent business leaders have come out arguing against the trade advantages of being the in the EU, and EU political decision making on things like foreign affairs seems less than competent to a nation that pays and values its foreign office very well, and gets good results.
The net result is that the UK is not seeing those advantages. We want to be in a trade bloc and policy bloc over which we have some influence, which is broadly well disposed to us. What we're seeing is a reasonably corrupt agricultural support group that is occasionally hostile, wrestling with an economic crisis. Obviously that's overstating the case, but the EU itself is an issue in the UK, in a way it simply isn't in Germany.
My own experiences has been a long slow continuous cold war between the Bank of England's PRA and Europe's EBA and ECON committee, over who gets to decide what happens to London's financial rules.
