Reply to: NEXIT. Netherlands a Trillion £ better off outside the EU.

[Zero Liability]

Aye, the EU has been abundantly clear on that.

[Flashman]

Well the other problem with a referendum is that it offers a binary choice; in the EU or out of the EU, in the UK or out of the UK, etc, when I'm pretty confident that a lot of people would like to answer 'well, sort of in, but with some/a lot/a little more room to decide things for ourselves'. It excludes the middle, and in doing so, it's likely to disenfranchise a lot of moderates.

There is no middle ground. It's a binary choice. In the long run you cannot have two equally powerful governments running the same country.

'sort of in, sort of out' 'negotiate and reform' Just waffle invented by the British Conservative Party to confuse the above issue.


You cannot 'sort of' obey EU laws.

[petergriffin]

Add this to the lot: van Rompuy is Belgian. Possibly either the next EU commission or EU council apparently must be Belgian. The Dutch historically hate the Belgians.

[Zero Liability]

Well the other problem with a referendum is that it offers a binary choice; in the EU or out of the EU, in the UK or out of the UK, etc, when I'm pretty confident that a lot of people would like to answer 'well, sort of in, but with some/a lot/a little more room to decide things for ourselves'. It excludes the middle, and in doing so, it's likely to disenfranchise a lot of moderates.

I would agree, you could come up with more gradations than that. It's whether the EU and its politicos want to be reformed. They don't. You get the likes of Barroso and van Rompuy informing Cameron and other British politicians that the UK can't negotiate terms to suit itself at odds with the rest of Europe. They really do desire one-size-fits-all policies.

However, I would be in favour of the Referendum being more than just a yes/no thing, same with the Scottish one, provided it is clear that voting for reform may still achieve absolutely feck-all given the EU's stance.

[darmstadt]

You could hold a referendum in any of the EU countries and people would always vote against the EU.

Some countries who have held positive referenda (admittedly some were for the EC): Latvia, Ireland, Sweden, Austria, UK, Czech Republic, Estonia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia and then there are numerous other referenda regarding the EU, i.e. Treaty of Lisbon, Maastricht Treaty, etc, where countries and people have voted in favour of the EU...

[Mich the Tester]

You could hold a referendum in any of the EU countries and people would always vote against the EU.

But remember that the Fascists in Italy and the Nazis in Germany used referenda to legitimise their authoritarian regimes.

Referenda are easy to manipulate.

Well the other problem with a referendum is that it offers a binary choice; in the EU or out of the EU, in the UK or out of the UK, etc, when I'm pretty confident that a lot of people would like to answer 'well, sort of in, but with some/a lot/a little more room to decide things for ourselves'. It excludes the middle, and in doing so, it's likely to disenfranchise a lot of moderates.

[MicrosoftBob]

You could hold a referendum in any of the EU countries and people would always vote against the EU.

But remember that the Fascists in Italy and the Nazis in Germany used referenda to legitimise their authoritarian regimes.

Referenda are easy to manipulate.

Surely Stalin is more appropriate

It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything...

[petergriffin]

There's nothing the EU can do to stop the Dutch holding referenda.

You could hold a referendum in any of the EU countries and people would always vote against the EU.

But remember that the Fascists in Italy and the Nazis in Germany used referenda to legitimise their authoritarian regimes.

Referenda are easy to manipulate.

[Mich the Tester]

Would the EU ever allow the Dutch to have another referendum?

There's nothing the EU can do to stop the Dutch holding referenda.

[petergriffin]

The report was commissioned by the Freedom Party, led by one Geert Wilders who is a cross between Adolf, Farage, the BNP, Alf Garnett and Outraged of Tunbridge Wells.

At least he speaks better English than Farage.

[Flashman]

Janet Daley in the Torygraph

Newsflash: Dutch would be better off if they had freedom to set their own economic policy – Telegraph Blogs

....
there are also good reasons to believe that a nation, untied from the bureaucracy of Brussels and able to make decisions for itself rather than have imposed one-size-fits-all policies will benefit economically…" You don't say. In fact, isn't that what you and I (and lots and lots of other people) have been saying ever since the inception of the single currency? Indeed, how could anyone in his right mind have thought that tying all the wildly differing states of the European Union, with their vastly disparate economic histories and cultural attitudes to taxation, debt, public spending, etc, etc, was a good – or even a remotely feasible – idea
.

Would the EU ever allow the Dutch to have another referendum? The cloggies scared the heck out of the Eurocrats last time.

[AtW]

cba to read whole thread, so the question is - would Mitch?

[Mich the Tester]

(I'm sure Mich could explain Wilders better than me but just for fun, Google him)

Wilders has no ideology except marketing. His policies are based on what the polls and his PR people tell him the low end of the electorate want to hear. He used to talk of breaking down the social security system when he was a VVD member, but that changed when he realised his new voters are mostly collecting state benefits of some kind. He used to talk of keeping Turkey out of the EU to protect the European identity of the EU; now he talks about leaving because that's what his PR people say his voters want him to say. An ex PVV MP recently told the Dutch press that he'd challenged Wilders about all this and Wilders' response was 'I know what we're saying is stupid, but it's what voters want to hear'. There is no substance, no backbone and no philosophy behind Wilders beyond pure old marketing. His party is an intellectual void and he knows it; that's why there's no party democracy and everything is decided by Wilders and his PR man Martin Bosma.

As long as Wilders can keep conning people, he can treat the Dutch state as a big welfare cheque that will keep in in a cushy job for the rest of his life where he doesn't have to turn up if he doesn't want to and doesn't have to be responsible to anyone. He is also living off the taxes that I pay.

I don't have much time for the likes of him. As for his voters, well all the studies show that they're not very well educated (do I get a prize for understatement?) and basically discontented about everything outside their own villages where they've never even met someone from a different country.

I attribute the growth of his party to inbreeding, especially in Limburg and a few religious villages where people like to shag their sisters.

[Zero Liability]

These figures assume that the Dutch obtain the same status as Switzerland. UKIP makes the same assumption. No country except Greenland has left the EU so how can anyone predict what the outcome will be by leaving according to clause 50 of the Lisbon treaty. Being in the EU Is like being in the army , the EU will determine your exit terms not the UK or the Netherlands

I actually sympathise with many of the goals behind the EEC as a free trade zone, the Euro (particularly as a hard currency, restraining member states from just devaluing wily-nilly) and aspects of the ECHR. The EU has gone far beyond all that, however.

Conversely, how can anyone predict how much leverage the EU will possess in stopping member states from leaving, particularly economic powerhouses like the UK? Although the German government is behind the EU project, the electorate is fed up of subsidising southern Europe (and subsidise it they did, particularly the recent boom in the south) and then being scorned for it. All around, support for the EU is tepid, at best. I mean why shoot themselves in the foot by ceasing to trade with countries like the UK? They retain the benefit of remaining entangled in a union of shared values and such, and the UK leaving will not end this, so what is this obsession with keeping the UK in, when it isn't a very eager team player to begin with? I don't get it. That it sets a precedent?

My only worry is that British politicians will not change their tune even if the UK were to leave the EU. It'd still be the same mentality of max out the govt credit cards and spend, spend, spend, and fork the future generations with the bill, but I scarcely see the EU as offering much salvation from that formula, which is prevalent in nearly all governments. If the ECB were like the Bundesbank of old, I'd say ditch the £ and go for the Euro, but it isn't.

[NickFitz]

WW1 and WW2 proved that wars get nobody in Europe anywhere.

"The War to End All Wars: so good, they fought it twice."