Have you seen Brexit: The Full Movie? It came out in 2016 just before the referendum: I found some of the facts and figures quoted in the film a little on the disturbing side. Is any of this true? This is what it says in the text accompanying the movie:
Could be talking about the Westminster government and Scotland, couldn't it? At least it could if it wasn't for the fact that the UK didn't have to beg the EU to allow them to have a referendum....the Tories just decided to have one without needing to ask permission.. That alone proves that the UK within the EU has sovereignty, while Scotland within the UK is a colony.
The film is just as relevant in 2019 as it was in 2016. I'm currently reading "Why Vote Leave" by Daniel Hannan and some of the stuff in the book is a real revelation for the average person and we just don't hear the full story in the mainstream media. There's such an anti-Brexit bias in the media and especially the BBC. I haven't really got that far but the author is keen to tell us that since joining the EEC, Europe has steadily dwindled economically right up to this day, so being trapped in a European trade zone is actually hampering our economy rather than helping us. However the EU has set out on a relentless drive to federalize the whole of Europe no matter what and one method it uses is cronyism and fat cheques for the bureaucrats. The British economy is also hamper by heaps of unnecessary and protectionist regulation from the EU that doesn't help us at all. What's going on in Westminster at the moment is the Remain camp playing for time in the hope that the British public will eventually get bored with Brexit and vote against it in a second referendum. It's almost too obvious.
How has being in the EU hampered our economy? What HAS hampered our economy is living in a country which produces little, bar financial services, that anyone in any other country wants at the prices we try to charge, with the result that there is a trade deficit. As Brexit, for some time to come, will have us under WTO rules, I don't see that as something to be welcomed, bearing in mind that we already have, via the EU, a number of trade agreements with other countries which we will have to re-negotiate before we all starve as we don't produce enough food to feed ourselves. .If I was a Commonwealth country, I'd make the UK pay through the nose for unceremoniously dumping them in favour of the EEC/EU in the 1970s. As long as there is a veto on certain issues in the EU, there is no chance of federalisation...and if that situation were to change...then THAT would be the time to Brexit. . It isn't the Remain camp which is playing for time, because playing for time gets us a no-deal Brexit, which is why we have the prorogation of Parliament by the Leave camp, leaving little time to do anything of use before October 31st. The Remain camp thinks that the only options to cancelling Brexit are to get a deal which does not breach the Good Friday Agreement in NI or have another referendum, now the voters know that the "easiest negotiation in history" is anything but and are more aware of the consequences of Brexiting. The Remain side wants a Brexit, if that is still the choice of the UK population, based on informed choice, not one based on lies on the side of a bus, and promises made by politicians, given we all know politicians' promises mean nothing....and THEN we might get behind it.
You’re hardly picking out fair and balanced sources yourself. The EU is a long way from a perfect institution but many of its failings are reflected in national governments too. After all, it’s largely the same people involved in both. It’s very easy to spin the complexities of such a wide and diverse social, political and economic area in either direction, and the campaigns both for and against Brexit did exact the in spades. You could find very similar material making the exact opposite arguments to yours which would be just as convincing, especially to someone already determined to lean that way. While the Brexit camp play for time in the hope that we fall out with no deal. It should be noted that most normal people aren’t really in either camp. The people who really care either way are the extremists. The basic fact is that the UK has similar potential to thrive (or indeed fail) regardless of whether we’re in the EU or not (or somewhere in between as was once an option). The major problem we’re facing at the moment is on of transition. Being out of the EU isn’t really a problem (or certainly not one we’ve even started addressing yet). Exactly how we proceed from one status to the other is the sticking point. All the politicians, especially the Brexiteers but also the Remainers, are spinning it as if it’s all simply about in or out when the reality is much more complicated. Even when (if!) we get past the current question one way or another, we’ll be faced with years of further transition, readjustment and reorganisation that I don’t think very many people have been in any way prepared for.
I detect a slight circular argument in the above quote. Okay, our country wasn't doing that well back in the 70's when we joined the EEC, but the question is how much better could we have done as an economic nation if we had left Europe quite some time ago?
It's an almost certain fact that we never will find a deal with the EU. When Thersa May came back with her deal we were told by the EU that this was not only the BEST deal but the ONLY deal. Parliament quite clearly rejected this deal and not without fair grounds. The EU are extremely reluctant to change anything at all of this original failed deal. We are wasting our time chasing a deal which will never happen and Boris Johnson is quite right, we should leave on October the 31st no matter what.
What circular argument? And the answer to how much better we could have done is equivalent to the answer to the question "how long is a piece of string?" I voted to come out of the EU in the 1975 referendum, because I never did see what was wrong with EFTA, which did allow us to make our own trade agreements. Should your question not have been " how much better could we have done if we had not left EFTA at all, in an effort to swan about and feel important on a bigger stage that we thought we could control because our wee island and its population is so indispensable to the world"?
The facts have been distorted. I find it very alarming that very few people seem to understand how the EU works, when it's very easy to find out. There certainly needs to be reforms, but, even so, being a member works very well for the UK. We're much better off in than out. Any deal we can get is not going to be anything like the deal we have as a member. I haven't posted on here for ages and am interested to see how many of the ardent brexiters seem to have disappeared. What happened to Brexit being easy and seamless? What happened to all the amazing deals we were going to get? These days, anything that's not going to result in total disaster is grabbed as a plus point by the leavers.
I’m not convinced that deal was as bad as its detractors made out, especially if you consider what the whole point of the exit deal is meant to be. It’s been presented to the public as the be-all and end-all, establishing the future for all time when in truth it is merely the initial basis on which our future relationships would be discussed and the temporary arrangements while that happens. It had flaws but not intractable ones. They’re not as much a function of the deal but a function of the Brexit process regardless of how it is done. What would be changed? Northern Ireland is the only real sticking point (for which there is literally no good answer, regardless of whether there is a wider deal or not) and the resultant “backstop”. Outside that aspect, were there any rational arguments against the deal or concrete proposals to improve it? Parliament failed (a pointed choice of words) not because the deal was bad but because there were too many groups fighting for exactly what they wanted without compromise. It has become clear that none of them can get that and that a balanced compromise is the only way forwards (not that it shouldn’t have been clear a long time ago). That’s what Mays deal was. It wouldn’t make anyone entirely happy but it could actually work. I honestly think a similar deal could get through Parliament now, they only need the opportunity to actually vote on one. I don’t think Johnson ever intendeds to let them do that though.
There's more than one sticking point. Not least the bit in the deal that promises to implement the anti tax avoidance directive.
Economists are very good at measuring how long pieces of string are, or at least the fair and independent ones are.
There is a brilliant quote from the book I'm currently reading ("Why Vote Leave" by Daniel Hannan) about the joke circulating Brussels that if the EU applied to join itself it would be rejected on the grounds of not being democratic enough.
As an example of how 'democratic' the EU can be, it's a fact it's completely ignored a total of eight previous national referendums on EU policies and constitutions. It seems democracy is only a secondary interest to the relentless drive to build a federal Europe. Here's an article from the Independent: Brexit: Governments have ignored referendums about the EU before
Yes, the EU puts a federal Europe before democracy as a philosophy and democratic institutions as protocol.
Are there any fair and independent economists? I am inclined to think that fair and independent people in any walk of life or profession are as rare as hen's teeth or rocking horse's manure. Everybody has an opinion and an agenda, and that opinion/agenda is a production of a lifetime of learning...shaped by parents, school, peers, university, experience...plus the influences of the media/politics/religion and science. As there are four, I think, basic economic models, so taking the plethora of religions which have evolved from one single religion's writings as a measure of how much any theory can be interpreted for good or ill, then there are probably more economic theories than there have been Nobel Laureates in economics since 1969. Can't say I've ever noticed our economists being good a measuring the length of a piece of string...but given the ONS statistics are mostly guesstimates at best, economic modelling seems to be a clear case of GIGO, given the aim of austerity, as introduced in 2010 was to have eliminated the UK's budget deficit by 2015, based on the forecasts of the time. When that patently wasn't going to happenby the next Budget...they changed the goalposts.....in 2011, the first surplus was forecast for 2016/17. By December 2013, it had been pushed back to 2017/18 and in November 2015 it moved to 2019/2020, despite a Tory Manifesto commitment to achieve a surplus in 2018/19. How many people have to die on sanctions for a surplus to be achieved by next April, I wonder? I suspect that if a suplus ever happens in the UK...it will be useful for the next tax cut for the higher earners.
My first response would be that you should watch the film itself, my second is that it's actually a documentary and not a work of fiction loosely based on the truth. Boris Johnson himself has said, quite openly, that the Remainers are in cahoots with the EU and are ultimately seeking to ditch Brexit. This, at the end of the day, is exactly how the EU works. It hands out generous grants to organisations it expects support from and the latter end up supporting the EU anyway because they don't want to lose their generous grants if the EU ends. It's called Cronyism and the public then falls for the illusion that the whole thing is grassroots and genuine and that the EU must be good with all this apparent support. However all this money the EU is spending ultimately comes straight out of the UK tax payer's pocket anyway.
The UK's spend on the EU amounts to less than 1% of our total spend. The NHS alone takes over £100 billion a year compared to around £11 billion to the EU. What we pay in is peanuts, especially when you take into account the value of belonging to the single market.
Many have said, and this is covered in "Brexit: The Movie", that the single market isn't really that valuable at all and it's now actually a hindrance to the UK economy. Rather than being hampered by the single market, which forces us to trade with our European partners first, we can trade freely and negotiate our own trade deals independently on a global scale outside of Europe. The best Deal with the EU is No Deal. Indeed any deal with the EU will inevitably entail a half in half out scenario which makes a mockery of the whole thing. Let's just leave the EU and revert to WTO terms and get on with it.
Many have said, man didn't land on the moon and 9/11 was an inside job. Meanwhile, just about every financial institution you can name has explained how catastrophic a no deal Brexit would be. Even the Government's own suppressed report ''Yellowhammer'' outlines the disastrous effects and the plans to mitigate them. Besides which, Parliament has quite clearly rejected a no deal Brexit. It's time to give up on it, it's dead in the water and you need to move on. A deal with the EU is the only way to leave.
A No Deal Brexit is NOT a conspiracy theory. It would work in practice. The only conspiracy theory out there is Project Fear. If the head of the WTO says that a No Deal Brexit would be okay, he must know what he is talking about: WTO boss: Brexit no deal is no problem
Wow, you're still peddling ''project fear''? You are living in the past. Yellowhammer proved without a doubt that a no deal Brexit is the worst possible way to leave the EU. That ride is deceased. Azvedo himself said '' a free trade agreement between the European Union and the United Kingdom would be ideal''. You are arguing against the ideal outcome.
