All EU legislation has to be enacted by the UK Parliament and does not supersede UK law, it has equal status not higher.

The unelected, unaccountable elites are the equivalent of our Civil Service - the source of most UK legislation. All EU laws have to be approved by the European Parliament in a democratic process.

The British problem with the EU is our xenophobic issue with the concept that WE might actually include Frenchmen, Germans and Poles.

That's certainly what it's looking like to me.

I don't think that is even remotely true, we appear to be completely happy with an over-blown self-serving state, and it's something I object to most strongly, and I'd happily start by culling the Town Council apparatchiks, but yes, this is also one of my major objections to the EU.


And who would you let in?


You're going to have to show how Blighty is losing out here as it's not obvious to me that we're disadvantaged by EU membership which I figure gives us a better bargaining position, unless you're saying that we lose out as against the French and Germans or whatever, and I'd like to see where specifically you think we're losing.

Personally I think it's a tyranny that states impose trade restrictions, much like a protection racket, and for me the model to aim for is a world without trade boarders, and the EU is a positive obstacle to this.


Are you talking about VAT, or do you have something else in mind? I'd like to get rid of VAT, it's a pointless expense collecting several different taxes and managing VAT is an administrative overhead that business doesn't need, so yes, I agree with you here.

The EU is arguably a drain on the British economy. A huge amount of money given to the EU is allocated to bureaucracy and wasteful spending such as the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). In 2006, a whopping 45% EU spending went towards the CAP,
To put this in perspective, that's almost half EU spending allocated towards an industry that employs only 5% EU citizens and generates 1.6% GDP

Yes, well it would, wouldn't it. Everything does.

A part from the times how everything looks to you of course.

But that isn't the purpose of the CAP, although it is a divisive policy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11216061

I agree that the CAP is bent, and the very best that can be said about it is that it's considerably less bent than what went before it.

However, do you have much confidence that a Tory government will leave British agriculture to fend for itself in a free market if we leave the EU? - it's a pretty good working definition of Conservatism to think of it as the party of the landed rich.

The EU itself has changed from a confident Common Market to a tired, increasingly fragmented superstate, bickering about debts so huge that they will never be repaid - the Greek debt burden works out to be around £22,000 for every man, woman and child in the country.

Ye Gods - that's almost as much as ours!

I'm with Trump. Let's build a wall.

Per-capita national debt is pretty much the same for Greece and the UK at around £23.5k, and likewise for Germany. It's some £43k for the USA, so whatever point JSC was trying to illustrate with this factoid is lost on me.

But then most things are.

Since the UK joined the European Economic Community in 1973, and had a referendum about our membership in 1975, the global economy has been transformed out of all recognition. First Japan and later China and India have become economic powerhouses. Changes in technology have shrunk the planet. Globalisation means that Europe is no longer the centre of the world. "The World Trade Organization has brought down tariff rates around the world," the Spectator noted in a piece called "Ten Myths About Brexit". "Even if we didn't sign a free-trade deal with the EU, we would have to pay, at most, £7.5 billion a year in tariffs for access to its markets. That's well below our current membership fee." So, win win.

Seems we currently pay about £8.5 billlion to the EU (well we pay £13bn and get £4.5bn back in support for farmers, poorer regions etc).

So the saving could be as little as £1 billion? 0.13% of Government spending.

Is that worth the risk?

I suppose the 'out' argument would say that at least we would say where 4.5m would be spent and for the rest, it's simply duplicating the cost of government we already have. However, if we really look at how good 'we' are at determining where money should be spent on our own), the counter argument does make much sense, as I think you've mentioned before! So, then, another way of looking at these apparently huge fees would be to see what we could trim out from our own administration; arguably that's the duplication. As for control, EU is a democracy and our vote just as valid and frankly just as effective.

You lifted this wholesale from GQ Magazine. Did it escape you that Tony Parsons writes fiction? Do you have any of your own thoughts on the matter?

I'm more than happy to ditch the European administrators, and would happily shed some of our own domestic stat functionaries too (a proper bonfire of the vanities) but it's the isolationism of the Little Englanders that's really putting me off this option - we could for example continue to fund the economic regeneration of Eastern Europe after we leave the EU, but the reality will be that the Johnson government won't enen support the development of the English Regions, and that power and spending will be ever more concentrated in the conservative heartlands of the Thames Valley and Shire Counties, and the discussion will soon turn to discouraging internal economic migration.

The costs issue is a big one to Out supporters - they make much of our sending £50 million a day to Europe as if it all goes to fund the Commission. What they never mention is that the UK Government spends over £2 billion a day and that our spend on the EU is a tiny proportion (0.25%) of what is spent in our name and on our behalf. Nor do they ever admit that an element of the EU budget is about supporting emerging economies in Eastern Europe - a key factor in the long term limitation of westward economic migration within the EU.

Another issue is VAT - often sold as an EU tax, as if it all goes to paying our EU dues. I have recently seen it suggested that an exit from the EU means we would do away with VAT saving businesses loads of aggro. If we decided that the £13 billion paid to the EU were to be left in British peoples' pockets (some chance) this could be done by reducing VAT by 2.5%, not to zero, but to 17.5%. Assuming, of course, that we would not continue the support to UK regions and industries that currently comes from the EU.

It is true that the EU mandates the use of VAT as a tax system and that we would be free to collect the revenue in a different manner - back to sales tax for instance; but the idea that VAT would simply vanish is totally misleading.