UK leaves EU?

[Flashman]

The EU should have stuck to the original 6 members. Get a central Government of the original 6 sorted over a period of say 50-100 years. Then invite wealthy peripheral countries to join as and when.

Instead we get this Imperial madness of the EU running everything from the Atlantic to the Volga....

[SpontaneousOrder]

Personally I don't feel any more "British" than I do European

That's a red-herring. Do you want more sovereignty, or less?

[KentPhilip]

British of course.
Were we to become european we would get taxed more, controlled more, and lose wealth and aspiration.

And we would not understand our leaders, and they would not understand us, literally as well as metaphorically.

[xoggoth]

What is the relevance of that table posted by Mich the Tester? Another of these stupid lefty "arguments" - oh look the British migrate to other countries too, therefore we should not complain about migration to the UK wherever its from and however crap the quality.

Enormous numbers of people from the old EU live here too, just a few figures I found in a couple of minutes:
between 300,000 and 400,000 Frenchman in London alone
Irish 407,000
273,654 Germans
130,000 Italians
73,659 Spanish
88,161 Portuguese (including British born people of Portuguese descent)

So what? They really are not the problem as the downsides/benefits are fairly reciprocal. It has no bearing on the issues with some Eastern EU countries of much lower GDP per capita and problems of crime and porous borders.

[VectraMan]

British of course.
Were we to become european we would get taxed more, controlled more, and lose wealth and aspiration.

Britain is in Europe, both literally and in the EU sense. We are all European and always have been.

And we would not understand our leaders, and they would not understand us, literally as well as metaphorically.

If there really were to be a federal Europe, which I doubt, then English would certainly be the language they'd use.

What's UKIP's position on 2 million or so pensioners and other expats all having to give up their lives and come back to our miserable cold isle? Presumably you'd plan on kicking out an equivalent number of working age immigrants.

[amcdonald]

British of course.
Were we to become european we would get taxed more, controlled more, and lose wealth and aspiration.

And we would not understand our leaders, and they would not understand us, literally as well as metaphorically.

So no different than Labour getting back in then

[Flashman]

Britain is in Europe, both literally and in the EU sense. We are all European and always have been.



If there really were to be a federal Europe, which I doubt, then English would certainly be the language they'd use.

What's UKIP's position on 2 million or so pensioners and other expats all having to give up their lives and come back to our miserable cold isle? Presumably you'd plan on kicking out an equivalent number of working age immigrants.

Errr why on earth would they be kicked out? They are spending their savings and pensions in those countries. If they left Spain then their property market would collapse, thousands of Spanish jobs dependent on the pensioners spending money would go and tourism would take a big hit.

Can't see many upsides for Spain there.


Looking at those figures on page 1 and removing the pensioners I would say there are less 800,000 Brits working in the EU. Being generous lets call it a million. This is out of a UK working age total of 33 million. Or less than 3%.


3% benefit so that 97% suffer?

And those 3% would almost certainly get working visa's anyway which would actually be on asset on their CV.


What exactly is the problem?

[minestrone]

Like the EU are going to pay your pension if Britain fooks off.

[Flashman]

VectraMan;1870996]Britain is in Europe, both literally and in the EU sense. We are all European and always have been.

So like Switzerland and Norway then? Who seem to be doing pretty well outside the EU.

[Flashman]

Like the EU are going to pay your pension if Britain fooks off.

errr they don't now so what's the difference?