Unofficial Hexus Brexit Straw Poll - In, Out, Undecided?

[The Hand]

Things like the Tempora mass surveillance system are nothing to do with the EU and both Labour and Conservative governments supported it.

The EU could earn some brownie points with the British public if they protest against systems like Tempora, but I think it's just a matter of time before the EU has it own Tempora-like surveillance system, since there is talk now of an EU-CIA/NSA after the Brussels and Paris attacks.

I imagine they also don't want to appear adversarial to friends/allies running the Five Eyes surveillance network.. as to not appear to be a rival network or overtly judgmental or possibly hypocritical in time. I think in today's world, it's just a question of which surveillance network or how many networks watch you, not whether you are being watched or not unfortunately.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The EU could earn some brownie points with the British public if they protest against systems like Tempora, but I think it's just a matter of time before the EU has it own Tempora-like surveillance system, since there is talk now of an EU-CIA/NSA after the Brussels and Paris attacks.

I imagine they also don't want to appear adversarial to friends/allies running the Five Eyes surveillance network.. as to not appear to be a rival network or overtly judgmental or possibly hypocritical in time. I think in today's world, it's just a question of which surveillance network or how many networks watch you, not whether you are being watched or not unfortunately.

That is the thing,how did all of this start?? The excuse that our own nation state politicians used?? Terrorism.

It started from politicians in OUR countries,deciding how these things would play out. Look at the rest of Europe?? The majority of the EU they don't have anything nearly the same in place.

How did the current religious war/terrorism start? The US,UK and France mostly prancing around in the Middle East,sometimes dragging along EU member states,who only probably came along to show solidarity with us.

People talk about the "EU" taking our rights and freedoms - our politicians are quite capable of doing that plus all those acts which make our law creation less democratic too. Its like worrying after the horse has bolted.

Plus,you say the EU "might" have a system in place - that is only because the precedent has been set by us,which then makes it more palatable for other EU states to try and get in on the action too. The same with most of the EU states only going into other parts of the world and bombing them when lead by the UK,US or France. Plenty of EU wide actions,laws and decisions which are set in motion by us,and puts paid to the idea the UK is a victim in the EU,who is being held to ransom by a tyrannical Europe, spearheaded by France and Germany.

Even look at how the US,UK and France prancing around in North Africa and the Middle East has lead to this massive crysis engulfing the continent??

All for playing a game of Superpower E-PEEN super showoff. That was NOT the EU.

It was nation state politicians who have plunged us into the worst terror threat since the height of the Cold War,against people who are less likely to be negiotiated with,and left our economies in a terrible state,meaning generations will have to pay the price for their rash decisions.

Nope,they dangle a little carrot on a stick in front of us and all of us are jumping up and down with glee at it. We have a say! We have some power! We can stick it to the man! No we don't.Business as usual for them.

To put in context,its like humanity worrying about the environmental effects of wind farms(EU) whilst there is an extinction level event asteroid on path to hit us(the more immediate and dangerous problems).

[The Hand]

Plus,you say the EU "might" have a system in place - that is only because the precedent has been set by us,which then makes it more palatable for other EU states to try and get in on the action too. The same with most of the EU states only going into other parts of the world and bombing them when lead by the UK,US or France. Plenty of EU wide actions,laws and decisions which are set in motion by us,and puts paid to the idea the UK is a victim in the EU,who is being held to ransom by a tyrannical Europe, spearheaded by France and Germany.

I'm not disagreeing with what you said there, I am personally against the "Big Data" mass surveillance of whole populations since it undermines the right to privacy and therefore the idea of a democratic way of life. The thing is surveillance is going one direction only as in there will be more of it and it's unlikely there is anything we can do about it.

I suppose it's a neutral point as far as the EU In/Out debate goes, as we're going to be spied on regardless whether we are In or Out.

[Saracen]

But it also can be made about such vague terms as "freedoms" which the leave camp also use. Some of our most important laws and decisions are not even determined by the EU,when it has been shown the EU states have been influenced by our hand in key laws which we helped formulate, and when some of the most draconian and stupid laws and decisions affecting our "freedoms" and our economy have been made by our own politicians. Things like the Tempora mass surveillance system are nothing to do with the EU and both Labour and Conservative governments supported it.

Unless we can also have a proper discussion about the last 40 years of our politicians,we will still be stuck with the equivalent of Del Boy and Rodney for the next 40 years ahead,whether we leave or stay. Its either terrorism,Russia or the EU or something else which is deflecting the public's politicial energy's from the obvious
800lb Gorilla we need to be tackling.

Although,I suppose it we leave,nobody can blame the EU anymore.....or can they??!!

Another point I've made ad nauseum is that neither camp can sensibly maintain that the position they don't support is 100% bad. To my mind, whether it's in or out saying it, to portray either position as entirely black or white is not only fatuous, but condescending and downright insulting, and hints at a subtext of contempt for the average voter.

In my opinion, amyone suggesting either remaining or leaving is 100% good, or bad, is either a fool or a liar.

So yes, both sides distort and exaggerate. I don't think I've said, or even implied, anywhere, that that isn't the case.

As for laws, like everything else, it's complex. From what I can establish, a lot depends on what you mean. There's regular arguments, and "facts" quoted, about just how much of our laws originate from the EU. One measure is primary and secondary legislation, by which count, it's something like 15%. BUT .... a hell of a lot of "laws" that bind, control and limit us, aren't done via primary legislation or even secondary, but via regulations. And by that measure, it's more like 70%.

But what, in terms of impact on our lives, does either figure mean?

One single piece of primary legislation, like the Distance Selling Regs, could have a large impact (for good, in that case, IMHO) whereas 1000 minor regulatory changes might never actually affect either me or thee.

The safe assumption, therefore, is that you cannot easily quantify the impact. The argument is a bit more abstract than that.

The same sort of logic applies to any British "influence" in laws we helped formulate. The issue, in many cases, is not about statute but about jurisdiction, and supremacy of courts. If you take almost any piece of major legislation in our history, the actual impact of that law is determined in part by the wording of the statute, but in very large part by the interpretation of judges over following years.

As an example, dig out a high level court (like Appeal Court, the old Law Lords or current UK Supreme Court) decision on a controversial case, like the Tony Martin trial. Then, follow the legal reasoning of how and why they either overturn or uphold a lower court's ruling. There has bern refinement after refinement on something as fundamental as what force is "reasonable" for 100 years or more.

So, when the statute says you can use "reasonable" force, reasonable in whose eyes, objectively or subjectively, by what standards, and ultimately .... who decides?

That latter bit means even if we, the UK, didn't just "influence" an EU law but wrote every word of it, the crunch us in where the final decision is made as to how to interpret it. The UK Parliament can write whatever statute it likes, but if an EU court has the final say, and in a vast amount of areas it does, and it says "no, interpret it this way", or even "that's subdidiary to this other EU law", then neither our courts nor Parliament can do much about it.

And the legal traditions of much of Europe are very different to ours, with judges often far more prosecutorial or even investigative than supposedly independent arbitrators of the two sides in our adversarial system. So yes, we have "influence" in the drafting of many laws, and that's the positive. But in my opinion, it's hugely outweighed by the loss of 'sovereignty' by having both our courts and Parliament subservient to courts that do not have the same legal history, and a set of parliamentary institutions that do not have the same accountability as ours, and goodness knows, we the people have little enough control over our own.

That's the core issue for me. Do we want to be a nation, or a region of a superstate with an entirely dufferent, and in my view inferior, set of democratic controls?

It's entirely plausible to argue for being part of an EU superstate because of the benefits that brings. It's also plausible to argue that the losses of being part of such are state exceed the benefits, and to want out. As I've said before, I'm open to such arguments but, in the absence of hearing them, am currently inclined to, and will vote, out.

What I'm not open to is the .... parody .... of an actual debate that most talking heads on both sides have been indulging in, trying to bolster their case with statistics so selective and loaded as to be bordering on fraudulent.

The classic example is the notion of Treasury projections of GDP, in 2030 being worth entertaining. The best Treasury models used to produce forecasts of the next 3 months, never mind the next 15 years, have shown themselves to be, at best, highly suspect. And that's exactly what I expect of econometrics. The best we can expect is a vague guide which loses accuracy exponentially faster as time increases, and is ONLY EVER as good as the modelling formulae, which suffer from two critical shortfalls :-

- the economy is so vastly complicated that while they aren't too inaccurate in the short-term, are only really even worthwhile in times when economuc circumstances are 'normal', and stable

- we simply do not have any historical basis for the impact, either in nature or magnitude, of leaving the EU. So we can't model it with anything better than utterly untested assumptions.

Frankly, I'd rather base my expectations of GDP 15 years from now on the odds a high-street bookmaker is prepared to offer than an econometric model, because at least the bookies are honest about it being gambling.

[wazzickle]

The EuroSausage:

If this is not a reason to Vote Leave then I don't know what is.

Fairly sure that's an argument to remain!

[wazzickle]

Still got a bit to catch up on with the rest of the thread but don't want to lose a few thoughts - apologies if this has already been covered.

WRT the idea that the human rights' has gone too far in the favour of the individual rather than the collective, I disagree. The collective is made up of individuals, and so the supposition behind the above sentiment is that there can be cases where the individual should suffer for the benefit of the many. Any suffering of the mental or physical type by any one individual cannot be justified by any amount of collective happiness. One person having their arm chopped off is a worse evil than the rest of humanity experiencing eternal happiness is a good; I appreciate that I've left this horribly unjustified but it is taken by philosophers to be the case and proving it is beyond the scope of this discussion.

The common law vs civil law argument seems like a big red herring to me, mainly down to the idea that it's reasonably impossible and impractical for anyone to narrow the range of things I can or can't do based on bottom-up rather than top-down law-making. Even Nazi Germany didn't do that (can't believe this is the first Godwin itt). Though I know very little about this distinction within law.

There is a big discussion on the subject of 'undemocratic'. Technically, yes, it is not elected by the individuals of each country, but it is not an autocracy - the heads are elected by our representatives, who we have voted for. It's exactly as democratic as Westminster, where we don't vote for or against any individual motions, we give our proxy to those we've voted for.

In any case, our current system is a million miles away from a true democracy. It's more like a mediacracy (I invented this term but someone else got there first, just that the media is in charge) or a hyper-capitalist system whereby money is seen as more important than welfare, somehow. Votes don't matter much, and those votes are unduly influenced by those with power and money in the first place, not even rhetoric. This referendum isn't even binding.

The current system where a central government controls stuff not that much to do with them is exactly what we have in the UK anyway. Westminster makes decisions for remote parts of the country based on limited knowledge and without the best interests of the constituents affected. What difference between that and europe? IMO every great thing achieved by humanity has been as a result of co-operation; we are a hugely social species and cannot survive without co-operation. On the flipside, all of the worst things that humanity has ever done have been about 'us and them', separation, tribalism, protectionism. When science-fiction writers describe a utopian or even better future, it *always* seems to feature a world government. All the dystopian futures imply gigantic wealth disparity and a world controlled by corporations. They can't all be that left-wing, surely?

The above, though, is all over-arching concepts. The details are more important; the EU is fairly clearly corrupt, we are not getting the best out of it, and there are undoubtedly areas where we would be better off outside. However, there are more and better reasons to stay in. If something's crocked, you don't take your ball home, you stay in and try to make it better. Of course the EU is capable of reform. Just don't send David Cameron to try to reform it. He's a boob. Jeremy Corbyn might be equally boobish, who knows, but let's not throw our toys out of the pram because we got a bad deal out of it.

At the end of the day, we are all europeans. We may be separated by a channel but we are in fact (again, IMO) culturally closer to europe than america. We're much closer to France culturally. French farmers are doing fantastically well out of the CAP, and african farmers are getting stiffed. So let's change that, rather than use it as a pretext to get out.

Immigration: a great example of 'dog-whistle politics' (the idea that you don't directly say things but that you want your electorate to feel them). It seems fairly clear that EU membership doesn't matter one jot in terms of how many Syrians come here, and that the whole thing is a right-wing media-led campaign to capitalise on the fear of others and fear of having less. The UK has a long and proud history of welcoming immigrants and refugees and we are a much better country for it. There is absolutely no reason why that would be different now. 'This country is full' HAHA what a load of crap. London is disgustingly full in parts but there are 1000s of unoccupied apartments and space for millions within squattable warehouses; the countryside is not full and we need labourers country-wide if we're going to turn every unused plot of land into a high-rise luxury apartment block.

Of course Obama should make his opinion heard. Of course he has a vested interest, but that vested interest is tied up in what's best for us. The idea that the US wouldn't allow itself to be dictated to by foreign powers is also invalid, they already do in a lot of ways, they kowtow to media and corporate power, and individual states cede a lot of power to federal government. I.E. exactly what we have here.

I hate the idea that I'm dogmatic about this, so I reserve the right to flip-flop if some hugely important piece of information or news pops up, but I find it difficult to imagine what that could be. Maybe if Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage flip-flopped, and, I suppose, Slavoj Žižek came out in favour of Brexit, I might consider it.

On a related note: Brexeo, Brexis, Brexit, Breximus, Brexitis, Brexeunt? Anyone?

[wazzickle]

Another big factor for me is war. If Britain came out, it seems fairly likely the EU will break up over the next 10-15 years, and war on my soil in my lifetime will seem almost inevitable, whereas together we are quite literally stronger and a more difficult target. Divide and rule becomes a tougher proposition.

[Phage]

All palying into Putin's hands I'm afraid. Dis-unity in the EU is exactly what he wants.

[Andy3536]

There is a big discussion on the subject of 'undemocratic'. Technically, yes, it is not elected by the individuals of each country, but it is not an autocracy - the heads are elected by our representatives, who we have voted for. It's exactly as democratic as Westminster, where we don't vote for or against any individual motions, we give our proxy to those we've voted for.

Elected? That's simply not true.
The EU commission, which is the real power in the EU is appointed, not elected.

[wazzickle]

Appointed by whom?

[Andy3536]

Appointed by whom?

No one, accross the whole of the EU. Comes clear on who they will appoint to the EU commission before they are elected domestically from what i understand. Therefor there can't be any democratic accountability for the entire process of selecting the members of the EU commission.
How many people, when they voted in the last general election knew, who from each party were going to be the possible entrants to represent us in the EU commission?
And that's before we even get to the farce of the last election of the president of the EU commission where the EU parliament were given a choice of 1... but still had to vote.
We've been told nothing about Lord Hill or his goals as part of the commission.
Every time something goes wrong in Europe too there seems to be an effort on the part of this unelected body for a power grab.
The financial crises has led to tighter centralised controls on fiscal policy, seen a complete overturn of a Greek referendum on fiscal policy forcing the people of Greece to go with tougher restrictions than they voted against. The migrant crisis has now led to discussions of both an EU border force that will over rule the local border agencies of the countries they're in. And an EU Navy to patrol the area. Russia requires an EU army to defeat it(I don't believe for a minute this discussion is over, this discussion will go round and around for years untill they've finally worn people down) even though all these countries are in Nato which was formed to protect us from Russia...
But how can we possibly show the EU commission that their ideas arn't welcome? The only way, that we have any influence is by voting for an EU skeptic MEP to go to Brussels. Yet they have no real power, despite a very large number being elected to the EU parliament from right across Europe, they can do, and have done very little.

And if it's not undemocratic, as you seem to think. Why is it that a large number of national referendums on the EU have been ignored? By the looks of it, they're ready to ignore the recent Dutch vote too (at least, that's what Herman van Rompuy said they should do). So nothings changed, i've half a mind to believe that if we vote to leave they'll just ignore it and we'll end up staying.

[peterb]

Appointed by whom?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commissioner

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission

(It is Wikipaedia, so cannot be considered authoratitive)

[wazzickle]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commissioner

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission

(It is Wikipaedia, so cannot be considered authoratitive)

'The legitimacy of the Commission is mainly drawn from the vote of approval that is required from the European Parliament, along with Parliament's power to dismiss the body'

Sounds about as democratic to me as voting for your local mp and the power goes to the pm

[Andy3536]

'The legitimacy of the Commission is mainly drawn from the vote of approval that is required from the European Parliament, along with Parliament's power to dismiss the body'

Sounds about as democratic to me as voting for your local mp and the power goes to the pm

Hmm, i'm not seeing it. You forget, that David Cameron is someones local MP for parliament. And was voted in. He's also been voted in by conservative party members to lead the party.
The process for vetting the commission is more or less just being presented with someone you don't know and being given a period of time to question them. The European parliament for the most part will only know and have previous information about the appointee from their own country (although given ours i doubt it) and in the questioning they're required to find a reason not appoint them?? I'm guessing this hasn't happened all that much. Just as farcical and undemocratic as the appointment of the president of the commission...
What they're also supposed to do is vet the candidates for the role the commission president wants to give them. So take a look at Lord Hills job, he's the Commissioner for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union.. Yet his previous experience is in PR???
Also, in answering the question of democracy, you can't turn a blind eye the fact that time after time national referendums have simply been ignored by the commission. When nations exercise their democratic right to ask the people about a subject, the EU commission simply can't allow that and pretends it didn't happen.
Not only are they not democratic, when they see democracy happening they stamp on it.
What happens in the future if that happens to us? Lets say we vote to stay in, but there's a drive from the EU for further integration. Given the previous history would anyone be so naive as to think they wouldn't ignore a referendum from the UK? Even though they may well be on the verge of ignoring the Dutch??? Again!

[Corky34]

So take a look at Lord Hills job, he's the Commissioner for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union.. Yet his previous experience is in PR???

Sounds like your typical politician to me, we have a guy running the economy who, as far as i can tell, knows more about modern history than economics, and an education secretary who specialised in mergers and acquisitions, it's seems previous experience isn't to important when it comes to what job politicians get given.

[peterb]

Sounds like your typical politician to me, we have a guy running the economy who, as far as i can tell, knows more about modern history than economics, and an education secretary who specialised in mergers and acquisitions, it's seems previous experience isn't to important when it comes to what job politicians get given.

Hmm, I'd argue that successful politicians are those that are good at assimilating facts and picking a good team. I doubt that George Osborne sits down planning the last detail of a budget, but he does set policy and the direction he wants his staff to take. The same goes for any cabinet post.

As an example (not UK based) Ronald Reagan was a pan actor, but had the knack of building a very good and loyal team to support him.

The point is that these guys need to show leadership and strategic direction for the people that do the the detail. The same is true for successful business leaders.