by Guest Author: Richard Barber
Episode 1 came across Richard’s Article through our Personal Network of friends. We believe it is an excellent document which clearly articulates the arguments for Remain-ing in the EU. Well worth reading in our opinion.
Summary
The Brexiteers wildly underestimate the costs of the UK leaving the EU. If we vote to do so, I believe we would put the health of our economy at risk; commit the whole basis of our trade with the EU to a prolonged and damaging period of uncertainty; lose the UK’s ability to shape — or veto — EU rules, regs and policies affecting our vital trade and foreign policy interests; enrage our most important international partners; imperil our national security; undermine the confidence of our creditors at a time of major deficit; provoke further falls in both sterling and business investment from within and outside the UK; seriously weaken the stability of the EU at a critical juncture; launch the UK into the unknown without friends at a time of desperate international challenges; and delight President Putin.
Being a member of the global community today will always involve a pooling of common interests. And in the EU the UK gets a favourable associate deal because we have negotiated opt-outs from the euro, Schengen, ‘ever closer union’, the working time directive, a refugee quota and much else.
Of course Europe is cumbersome and inefficient in so many ways. But the answer to that is reform, not divorce. Once we have declared our commitment to our membership of the EU by voting to remain, the UK will surely be in a far stronger position to demand reform (which we know would have the backing of many other member states).
Here are 8 of the arguments most commonly put forward by the Brexiteers.
1. Sovereignty
Brexiteers: We need to recover our Sovereignty that has been ceded to unelected bureaucrats in Brussels over whom we have no control.
No country can simply go from non-sovereign to sovereign by pulling up an imaginary drawbridge to resuscitate a form of idealised parliamentary sovereignty on its own. This is simply a false choice: in an increasingly interdependent world, countries must opt, not between pure sovereignty and the pooled sort, but between the pooled sort and isolation. In today’s world, we are all part of one another and real sovereignty will always be relative.
The Brexit mantra of “Regaining control over our own destiny” is an illusion. There is no strength in isolation and no power without allies.
Norway and Switzerland are certainly more “sovereign” than Britain. But in practice their economies and societies are so intertwined with those of their neighbours that they must subject themselves to rules over which they have no say.If sovereignty is “the absence of mutual interference”, which paraphrases the aim of many leading Brexiteers, then the most truly sovereign country in the world is North Korea.
2. Rules & Regulations.
Brexiteers: The EU’s rules & regulations imposed by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels, are stifling the UK and we must free ourselves from them.
Eurosceptics paint an idealised picture of Britain outside the EU, set free from social, environmental and employment regulation from Brussels.
But Rules & Regs are part of life in the 21st century. They cannot be wished away. A country that refuses to pool authority is one that has no control over setting the rules that regulate such everyday things as: Food Standards, Product Safety, the cleanliness of our seas, the pollution drifting over our borders, standards of financial regulation the consumer and trade norms to which its exporters and importers are bound, completion of the Single Market — and so much more.
Outside the EU we would have no say in formulating, changing or controlling any of these. We live in a globalised world and must acknowledge that many laws have international reach whether we like it or not.
According to the Economist, if we left the EU and wished to continue trading with the Single Market, 93 of the top 100 EU rules & regs we have to observe today as an EU member would still remain in force for a UK outside the EU.
In fact by far the greater number of the regulations we observe in daily life are “home made” (e.g. the National Living Wage, the Apprenticeship Levy and so much more). Interference in the free market by official rules & regs generated by the UK Govt is greater than all EU’s rules and regs put together
An OECD study in 2015 showed the UK to be among the least regulated modern economies, far less than US, Canada and Australia.
This “Rules & Regs” issue is tightly linked to Sovereignty. Britain is subject to some 700 international treaties involving multi-lateral submissions to multilateral compromises, such as:
- the UN
- the WTO,
- NATO,
- the COP climate talks,
- the IMF,
- the World Bank,
- nuclear test ban treaties
- and accords on energy, water, maritime law and air traffic.
All of these similarly ‘infringe’ the UK’s self-determination, for we can be outvoted in all of them just as we can be in Brussels. They all require Britain to tolerate the sort of trade-offs that give us influence in exchange for standardisation, laws and rules set mostly by foreigners not elected by Britons. Yet we submit to all of these knowing that, as with the EU, we are free to leave whenever we want — but at a price we do not consider worth paying.
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