Britain has been negotiating to leave the EU, just so we can negotiate another arrangement to get back as much as possible of what we’ve already got as an EU member, but on considerably inferior terms.
Does it make any sense? No, it doesn’t.
The EU is the world’s largest free trade area. As a member, we receive huge benefits worth enormously more than the small net annual membership fee of just £7.1 billion a year.
As a member, we enjoy free, frictionless trade with our biggest trading partner by far, right on our doorstep, where almost half of our exports go to and over half of our imports come from.
Nowhere else in the world comes close to that.
Both the Tories and Labour are pretending to the electorate that it’s possible to negotiate a Brexit deal after we’ve left that will give us key benefits of EU membership, but:
▪ WITHOUT being part of the EU Single Market.
▪ WITHOUT agreeing to the rules of the EU and its market.
▪ WITHOUT being subject to the European Court of Justice to oversee those rules.
▪ WITHOUT paying anything to the EU for access.
It’s not going to happen.
What’s the point of a club if you’re going to allow non-members to enjoy the same or better benefits as members? What club allows that?
So, here’s the bottom line:
▪ We need free AND frictionless trade with the EU.
▪ We need free movement of goods, services, capital AND PEOPLE for our country not just to survive, but to thrive.
▪ We need to continue with the status quo: the arrangement we have now, as a FULL MEMBER of the EU.
Has this sunk in yet?
We’re leaving all the benefits of the EU, only to desperately try and get back as many of those benefits as we can after we’ve left.
This is complete and utter madness. It will be much better just to keep the current arrangement we’ve enjoyed for over four decades as an EU member.
As an EU member:
① We have a say and votes in the running, rules and future direction of our continent.
② We have full and free access to the world’s largest free marketplace.
③ We enjoy the right to live, work, study or retire across a huge expanse of our continent.
④ We enjoy state healthcare and education when living and working in any other EU country.
⑤ We enjoy free or low-cost health care when visiting any EU nation.
⑥ We are protected by continent-wide rights that protect us at work, when shopping and travelling.
⑦ We benefit from laws that protect our environment (and have, for example, directly resulted in Britain’s beaches being cleaned up).
⑧ We enjoy excellent EU free trade agreements covering over 70 countries, with more on the way, on advantageous terms that Britain is unlikely ever to replicate.
So, we’re going to throw that all away, just so we can get an inferior arrangement with the EU, in which we’d still have to agree to the rules of EU trade (over which we’d have no say) and we’d have less access to our most vital customers and suppliers outside of our home market.
And what are we gaining? Surely something?
NO.
ALL the reasons given to leave the EU are based on lies and false promises. Yes, ALL OF THEM.
There are no good reasons for Brexit.
▪ MORE SOVEREIGNTY? Nonsense. We’ll get less. In the EU, we gain a share of sovereignty of our continent. Outside the EU, we’ll still live on a planet and have to obey thousands of international laws and treaties. We share sovereignty with NATO, for example. Is that a reason to leave it?
▪ FEWER MIGRANTS? Really? Just think about it. Most EU migrants in Britain are in gainful employment, doing jobs that we simply don’t have enough Britons to do. So if they all left, we’d have to replace them with about the same numbers of migrants as we have now to get all those jobs done. What’s the bloody point of that?
▪ MORE HOUSES, SCHOOLS AND HOSPITALS? Think again. Without EU migrants, we’ll have fewer builders, teachers, doctors and nurses. Migrants are not the cause of our problems. Blaming them just excuses successive UK governments from investing sufficiently in our country.
▪ GET OUR COUNTRY BACK? We never lost it. If being in the EU means losing your country, why aren’t the 27 other EU member states planning to leave? (Really, none of them are: support for the EU is the highest it’s been in 35 years).
▪ OUR OWN LAWS? The vast majority of laws in the UK are our laws and passed by our Parliament in Westminster. But in the EU, we benefit from laws for our continent that no single country alone could ever achieve. Could our UK government have got mobile phone companies to scrap mobile roaming charges across the entire EU? Of course not. It took the might of 28 EU countries working together to achieve that, and so much more.
▪ THE EU IS RUN BY FACELESS BUREAUCRATS? Another lie. The EU is run and ruled by its members, the 28 countries of the EU, along with its democratically elected European Parliament. The European Commission is the servant of the EU, not its master, and the European Parliament has the power to choose, and dismiss, the entire Commission.
We are leaving for no good reason, not one. We will pay up to £40 billion (money the UK has agreed we owe) to settle our debts with the EU, to enable us to have an inferior deal.
We will be poorer, and with less sovereignty, fewer rights and protections, restricted trade, and diminished power after we’ve left.
What’s the point? There’s no point. The country really has lost its bottle.
We should have the courage to admit that Brexit is bonkers and abandon it now.
The general election on 12 December gives the electorate a key opportunity – maybe the ONLY opportunity – to create a new Parliament that will offer us, the people, a democratic route out of Brexit.
Please, vote wisely on Thursday. Don’t bottle out.
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Other articles by Jon Danzig:
- Britain would prefer to remain in the EU
- Brexit has sunk our democracy
- Cameron, May, Johnson: Where they went wrong
Follow my journalism page on Facebook: Jon Danzig writes
Follow my Stop Brexit campaign on Facebook: Reasons2Remain
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As @Jon_Danzig writes in his blog today, "ALL the reasons given to leave the #EU are based on lies and false promises. Yes, ALL OF THEM. There are no good reasons for #Brexit." Please RT. And vote tactically on Thursday to #StopBrexit and end #Tory rule. https://t.co/sYi69BB9uH— Reasons2Remain #FBPE (@Reasons2Remain) December 9, 2019
