EU referendum are you in or out

[PFVA]

Portugal and Spain won't throw out the British expatriates that are here. They were already here before the 2 countries entered the EU.

Now with companies investment is a different thing. After agreements were made on TAP airline privatization we were told b the EU that the American ownership wasn't acceptable because airlines have to be owned by those inside the EU. As a result it's still publicly owned. Same thing applies to bank where non-EU cannot own the majority of the shares which has been resulting in being bought only by Spanish banks. Basically they don't want investment fm the Americas, China, etc in several sectors of the economy even though they want everything privatized. If the UK exits i guess they wouldn't be able to invest in those sectors even though they haven't been doing it in anyway.

[pogo]

Portugal and Spain won't throw out the British expatriates that are here. They were already here before the 2 countries entered the EU.

I would not be too sure. Britain might try and discriminate between different EU countries, letting in e.g. the French and Germans but keeping out Poles and Czechs (say). But the EU will oppose that, in the name of unanimity. Even if Spain and Portugal are not that bothered Poland and the Czech Republic will not accept being their people treated as second class citizens. And every country gets a veto in the negotiations.

And I’m sure the same attitude will be taken to Brits in the EU. Treat them all the same, don’t let individual countries be more accommodating. Spain and Portugal will be expected to fall in line. The EU will be playing hardball in these negotiations. They don’t want leaving to look at all attractive, so want to ensure Britain gets a worse deal than staying in, to punish them even for rejecting the EU.

In practice this means any deal on market access will require free movement of people. The EU can point to Switzerland and Norway, both of whom had to accept free movement of people. The Swiss even voted in a binding referendum in 2014 to reduce immigration. But they now cannot implement the referendum decision as it would break their agreement with the EU. They have until February 2017 to square this particular circle.

[Ollie]

Their promise to reduce immigration is also complete nonsense. Any trade deal with the EU will require free movement of people, just as it did for Norway and Switzerland. The EU has made it clear that is non-negotiable. Furthermore any move to stop EU citizens coming here would trigger reciprocal action from the EU. Over a million Brits currently living in the EU could be affected, unable to work, perhaps unable to own property or unable to stay long term. The net effect could be more immigration, as the large diaspora of mostly retired Brits in e.g. Spain replace the workers we have foolishly excluded.

The Brexiters' response to this seems to amount to "Well we're British, we're so important that we will get better deals than everyone else in the world and they'll give us anything we want because we're so brilliant." Not especially convincing, but it's the sort of thing that a lot of nationalistic people seem predisposed to believe.

[phattslagg]

In FFS.

[PumaG]

The Brexiters' response to this seems to amount to "Well we're British, we're so important that we will get better deals than everyone else in the world and they'll give us anything we want because we're so brilliant." Not especially convincing,

eh? that happens now!

[pogo]

Yes, they are deluded. It is much harder for a small country like the UK to do deals, as the benefits are asymmetric. A deal with the US will be worth much more to us than the US. E.g. if the US economy is 5x as big as the UK one (a guess) then getting access to only 2% of the US market is worth the same as 10% of the UK market. And that might be the deal on offer, us giving up much more to access a small share of the US market. We can get much better deals as part of the EU.

The same will be true of the EU, but with additional spoilers to any deal. Any deal will require unanimity, so any country can veto it. So e.g. France, jealous of our financial sector, might seek to exclude financial services. And the EU will be out to make an example of the UK, to discourage any other countries from leaving. The UK will have little choice but to take whatever is on offer, even if it a much worse deal than what we now have.

[Little stoned kiwi]

The EU sounds like an awful trade bloc to be in.

[pogo]

It‘s pretty good, for us. The euro is a disaster but we are not in that. The EU border/immigration/migration policy is a mess but we also are outside of that, being not in Schengen and with our own border. Apart from that although we complain about the cost and bureaucracy they are small compared to the benefits we get. Or EU regulations, which though often badly thought out have only limited impact. Government policies are far more important.

The other thing the Leave campaign complain about is migration, but the immigrants, being mostly young and coming to work, contribute massively to the economy. In particular as net contributors they boost revenues and so help balance the books. We would be worse off, requiring even more cuts and austerity, without the immigration we experienced over the last decade.

[Dio]

This article hits the spot pretty exactly:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... -contagion

Sums up perfectly the fundamental misconception which breaks the entire exit argument, about the trade treaty. Any trade treaty with the EU has to be agreed by 26 nations of which only two have a trade surplus with the UK - there's no way that possibly looks better than the current deal. (True of the already existing deals with Norway and Switzerland too of course).

[OX mkII]

GTFO

[KlaxonCow]

Sums up perfectly the fundamental misconception which breaks the entire exit argument, about the trade treaty. Any trade treaty with the EU has to be agreed by 26 nations of which only two have a trade surplus with the UK - there's no way that possibly looks better than the current deal.

Plus, as previously mentioned, the rest of the EU are essentially obliged to make it hurt for us.

Nothing personal, you understand. But they can't afford for an ex-EU member to prosper, as this would just send the signal to other EU members that maybe it's a great idea to exit the EU and they'd all follow suit, leading to the EU collapsing nation-by-nation and, with that, the Euro slowly going down the pan too.

For the rest of the EU, those consequences are much too dire. An existential threat to the entire institution.

If we leave, then they have to make it hurt for us. They have to punish us. They really would have no other choice.

Indeed, the calculation would inevitably be that, as Brexit would damage the EU and thus indirectly threaten the health of the Euro (which ain't exactly great already anyway), then whatever advantages are gained by trading with the UK, these are dwarfed by that potential threat. The calculation is that fucking off trade with an exited UK to punish us for our betrayal makes much more economic sense for them.

They're politically are obliged to hurt us. They're economically are obliged to hurt us. They have to do it, however much they otherwise do or don't like the UK.

Any post-Brexit trade deal with the EU will necessarily be punishingly shit for us.

And, indeed, they'll undoubtedly do, as they've done with Sweden and others, the thing of insisting that any trade with the EU has to follow the EU rules - this wouldn't just be part of punishing us, but is just how trade with the EU has to be, so that all their internal rules are upheld (otherwise, it creates a loop hole where anyone who wanted to dodge EU rules could just set up shop in Sweden or the UK and trade into the EU, dodging these EU trade obligations) - so that we absolutely will not actually get around any EU rules we don't like. Just won't happen.

(This doesn't just apply to the rest of the EU either. When Obama said that the UK would go to "the back of the queue" on any trade deals, it's the same thing. It's not that America wants to punish Brexit, but it kind of has to do so for its own interests. The UK is a trade route into the EU, it is a political route into the EU's decisions. The UK helps facilitate US-EU relations, so our decision to cut that off for them is something that, in their own interests, they can't allow to go unpunished. Australia and Canada, by the way, would also have to take that view too, albeit to a lesser extent, perhaps.)

You get the gist. None of them can politically or economically allow us to have a better trade deal post-Brexit. They are obliged to punish us and to make it hurt, to preserve their own self-interests, no matter how much they otherwise are friendly with the UK.

The alternative hurts them. So, between "hurt or be hurt", be under no illusions that they will all choose to hurt us extremely hard with any post-Brexit trade deal (and force us, in any such deal, to abide by all the EU trade rules anyway - so, on that level, we'd be exiting nothing whatsoever, in fact).

They have to. There's no choice in the matter.

That's what Obama's "back of the queue" and France's "there will be consequences" was all about (and when Merkel intervenes to speak with us, she'll probably escalate that to explicitly spelling it out to ensure the hints are not being missed by the British public - as her decision to directly talk to us on this issue specifically, not just mention it in passing on a regular visit like the US or France, strongly suggests).

They're trying to tell us that, though friends of the UK, they have to serve their own interests first and that obliges them to make sure that our "wrong" decision is punished with, indeed, those "consequences" France hinted at.

[pogo]

They're politically are obliged to hurt us. They're economically are obliged to hurt us. They have to do it, however much they otherwise do or don't like the UK.

Economically they don’t have to. Economically it makes sense to offer us a deal much like Switzerland and Norway. Of course we won’t take such a deal as it involves accepting all EU regulations, free movement of people and a contribution to the EU budget. Or at least we won‘t take it immediately, but after a couple of years with no deal we will have no choice. We will need the deal much more than the EU, and they can wait us out indefinitely.

(Why leave the EU when we know we will eventually sign up to a deal much like we have now, except outside the EU so we have no say over the rules, regulations we’ve signed up to? Something for the Brexit campaign to answer I think)

Politically though, yes, they will want to make it as unpleasant as possible. They will want to dissuade other countries from seeing it as an easy option. Not that they need telling: most other EU countries have the added problem of the euro. Exiting to exit the euro would be a much much worse experience.

Also because any decision needs to be unanimous every country will be able to hold out for their own priority. Germany wants the Eurobond market in Frankfurt not London? That will be in the agreement in some form. France wants us to process refugees coming to the UK in France for resettlement in the UK? That will be in the agreement. Romania wants to ensure their citizens have as much right as French and German people to live and work in the UK? That will be included. And so on.

[Dio]

It only "makes sense" for Germany and Holland. Everyone else might well think it's a great thing to divest themselves of a country to which they have a trade deficit - and only one has to think that way to give it the shaft.

The exit campaign "answer" this with an attitude somewhere between the ostrich and the Iraqi Information Minister. Butno bugger is calling them on it because the majority of the press is pro-exit and the BBC is suffering from it's pro "balance" bias.

[venusian]

Why the apparent surge is Leave support in the polls? Yes Cameron et al have been guilty of hyperbole and downright scare tactics but no more so than Boris and Gove. The argument doesn't seem to have moved forward at all in the last month, so what's changed? Is all the argy-bargy and rudeness made it more acceptable to be a xenophobic bigot in public?

[VNVObit]

Why the apparent surge is Leave support in the polls? Yes Cameron et al have been guilty of hyperbole and downright scare tactics but no more so than Boris and Gove. The argument doesn't seem to have moved forward at all in the last month, so what's changed? Is all the argy-bargy and rudeness made it more acceptable to be a xenophobic bigot in public?

hardly an argument. Gove & Boris seem to have entered the realm of "If I led the government..."
Though thought lawson's contribtion was even worse

http://www.newstalk.com/Lord-Nigel-Laws ... ing-Brexit