In this wonderful article, Seth Lipsky quotes the American Spectator for the phrase Brexit of Champions (link). On June 23, 2016 Britain votes on Brexit. Hopefully Britain votes to leave.
Britain and the EU are truly a poor fit. The UK’s natural allies are its successful offspring, such countries as the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Israel and India. These countries have been successful, forward looking countries. The continental EU countries are in many respects frozen in time. They’re beautiful museum pieces but like their many churches largely bereft of worshipers, are places of the past, not the future. Britain joined the EU in 1973, at a time when the U.S. was crippled by the Vietnam War and its opposition, Watergate, price controls, inflation and the energy crisis.
Now the U.S. and other freedom-loving countries should be looking to the future, not to the mercantalist, bureaucratic past.
He supports rigorous gun control (not even for home defence), the National Health Service (free Health Care for all, funded by taxation), gay marriage, closing Guantanamo Bay, abortion etc.
We would be bat crazy to leave. It is thankfully odds-on that we won’t.
But the idea that if we do we should then hitch ourselves even more firmly to the American political wagon would be even more bat crazy. Look where that has got us recently? Any successes to note? I thought not.
I think the main issue is that any Anglophone agreement would be dominated population-wise by one country – either the USA or India depending on if India is included. I don’t think the smaller countries would want to join if decisions were based on population, and the larger countries wouldn’t want to join if it were one country, one vote.
Yes England should exit the EU. When the country voted for a Common Market it was not a vote to lose our sovereignty to an unelected Federated States of Europe. The threats of tariffs on the U.K’s exports is a double edged sword as the U.K would replicate with tariffs on imported goods, the majority of cars purchased in the U.K. are manufactured within mainland Europe, a £20,000 car with a 20% tariff would be a substantial price hike making cars manufactured within the U.K. an attractive purchase and increased sales would mean increased employment. This could encourage Ford and Vauxhall to return car manufacture to Dagenham and Luton. If as the article suggests America would bring in tariffs against the U.K. a 20% tariff on the aircraft we import from America would be a hefty hit. Britain is a land of innovation watch us fly when we are released from the shackles of EU red tape, it will be the EU who will crash and burn not Britain.
What if we created some sort of comprise, maybe even a great compromise as it were. We’ll have a legislature made up of two bodies or “houses” the lower house will be based on population and the upper house will protect the interests of the countries with two votes per country.
It’s a crazy idea I came up with on the fly but it could work.
Personally I think the economic arguments are a wash, nobody can really make a clear case that we’d be better off in or out. And anyway, I think basing all political decisions on what is best for ‘business’ is one of the biggest problems with modern politics.
I will vote to leave because I don’t trust the direction that the EU is heading. The bureaucracy continues to get less democratic and more entrenched, you only have to look at the trouble Cameron had getting what are pretty meaningless reforms through to see that there is no real hope of ever actually improving things like the common agricultural policy. Europe is also yet another route for large corporate interests to embed themselves in the establishment with no democratic route to reform. And I am convinced that any hope of meaningful move leftwards in the UK cannot happen while we are in the EU (for a number of other reasons too).
And then look at the current internal disputes about the migrant crisis. Germany invites the world in only to then change their mind and try to spread the migrants out to countries that don’t want to accept them (often for fairly bigoted reasons).
Then there is the general shitting on Greece first over the banking crisis and now the refugee crisis. Turkey has been given 3 billion euros while bankrupt Greece has been left on it’s own and now looks to be stuck with the problem while Northern Europe shuts it’s doors.
The EU is not some happy union where everyone always benefits, it’s run predominately by Germany and France and if you are on the wrong side of an issue from them you’ll be hung out to dry.
I sincerely doubt India would want anything to do with an Anglosphere bloc. The legacy of colonialism is too strong, and personally I don’t want them in anyway.
Among the areas of criticism leveled at the EU by the pro-brexit camp the alleged lack of democracy keeps puzzling me. As far as I can tell anyone, who has anything to say within the EU’s institutions has either been directly elected by the people or has been appointed by the democratically elected governments of the member states. You might argue that the latter is a fairly indirect approach and that the EU would be more democratic, if it had a government directly elected by the people - but as far as I understand the brexit camp that is exactly what they do *not *want. So what would have to be changed within the EU for it to be more democratic?