EU referendum: Cameron sets June date for UK vote
bbc.co.ukThis is going to have wide-reaching consequences no matter what way it goes. Off the top of my head, potential issues include:
* Combined with the sovereign debt crisis and the migrant crisis, this could be the end of the EU (perhaps unlikely, but)
* The UK leaving the EU with the Republic of Ireland staying in (there's little support for RoI leaving) could create problems in Northern Ireland
* The UK voting to leave the EU, with Scotland having voted to stay, could lead to another Scottish independence referendum
* The UK voting to stay in the EU, with England having voted to leave, might (though I don't know how likely it is) upset people in England
* Whatever way the result goes, it might bring down the current UK Government and force elections
* If the UK leaves, other countries might consider it as well
* If the UK stays, other countries might want to renegotiate their terms as well
* This will bring up the European Convention on/Court of Human Rights, and Human Rights Act, issue again - what happens if the UK actually does leave the ECHR or repeal the HRA? Especially in Northern Ireland, where the HRA is part of the Good Friday Agreement, and in Scotland, where laws must comply with the ECHR
I'm not an expert on any of this. It'll be interesting to see what happens, certainly.
Membership of the EU requires you to sign up to the ECHR, but countries outside of the EU are also members of the ECHR. We can continue to be part of the ECHR without being inside the EU.
By leaving the EU, all our existing legislation that has been enacted will stay. It just means that our elected government will have the power to remove legislation without getting permission from unelected commissioners.
Under the Lisbon treaty, we will continue to be members of the EU for two years following a vote to leave. I expect if we vote to leave, there will be another referendum in 2017 after the EU has had some serious introspection about the democratic deficit. I would expect them to try to keep the UK as a member.
Gove's statement today -- http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-referendum-... -- sounds to me like he'd also like the UK to leave the ECHR.
Does it say that? I'll admit to have only Ctrl-F'd and not read it, but I see references to the ECJ in Strasbourg, which is an EU institution, not to the ECHR.
Ah, yeah, you're right. My bad.
I expect if we vote to leave, there will be another referendum in 2017 after the EU has had some serious introspection about the democratic deficit. I would expect them to try to keep the UK as a member.
In the news yesterday, before the deal was announced, there was talk of incorporating a specific guarantee that any decision this time would be final, and the EU would not then come back to the UK offering an improved deal later, precisely because of the issue you raised there.
Any mention of that has been notably absent in every news report I've seen so far today. Does anyone know what happened there?
If the EU make significant changes in the next year, I think another referendum would be a healthy thing. Especially if this one is close. This is a very significant decision and whilst I'm for leaving; I'd rather be a member of a pared down EU that concentrated on free trade and less on bureaucracy and the creation of legislation.
It sounds like we'd broadly agree on the politics. I tend to favour the UK being part of what the EU could be, but I'm much less sure about remaining part of what the EU actually is and what some of the other member states apparently want it to be in the future. As always, I'll choose how to vote at each election on its own merits, and I'll certainly watch how the situation develops over the next few months before making a final decision on this one.
> Membership of the EU requires you to sign up to the ECHR, but countries outside of the EU are also members of the ECHR. We can continue to be part of the ECHR without being inside the EU.
Oh I am well aware. I am referring to the Conservatives' manifesto promise to repeal the Human Rights Act, which so far has been kicked into the long grass due to opposition and infeasibility. But since the ECHR is a European thing, EU or no, I think it will inevitably be brought up again with the referendum.
(Side note: The EU is actually trying to join the ECHR as member in itself. Wondering when that process will be finished.)
> By leaving the EU, all our existing legislation that has been enacted will stay.
Sure, most of it, but what of it? We nonetheless lose participation in the Single Market etc.
Certainly an interesting time to be alive. A part of me thinks we (the rest of the U.K.) should just jettison England and be done with it. They're dragging the rest of us down.
[edit for clarity]
They're dragging the rest of us down.
By being a net importer from the EU in trade terms, a net contributor in EU budget terms, and having net immigration from the EU? Or by not fully participating in the ever-closer political union and the Eurozone, neither of which has exactly been a huge success in recent years?
This is a complicated issue with several reasonable arguments both for the UK remaining and for the UK leaving. There is a fundamental underlying tension because the UK simply has different priorities in some areas than its European neighbours, such that while no party is inherently right or wrong, not everyone's goals are aligned.
Still, the idea that England is just dragging everyone else down is silly. That's why most of the other EU leaders have been trying, with varying degrees of subtlety, to encourage the UK to stay.
Worth noting this is only happening because the British electoral system is broken.
A small anti-EU, right-wing party could have stolen just enough votes on this issue to turn the tide on the two party system result due to the brain damage of first-past-the-post[1], so the main right-wing party started this hare-brained scheme in motion to head that off.
This, in a nation where PR and full democracy is derided because... well actually mostly because the status quo benefits the powerful and well connected.
Footnote 1: just struck me what a misleading name this is. I've never seen a horse race where a horse with a similar color Jersey to you going faster, can slow you down.
Indeed it is happening because the political system is broken, but in the exact opposite way from how you have described.
"A small anti-EU, right wing party" - UKIP got nearly 13% of the vote and would probably be part of a coalition government with the Conservative party if we had a proportional representation system. Instead they have 1 MP. The SNP got only 8.6% of the vote and they have 56 MPs.
The referendum is happening because finally the grassroots of the Conservative party prevailed on the parliamentary Conservative party that we had to have one. Polling has historically shown that at least 40% of the country want to leave the EU. All of the traditional parties support the EU membership.
The UK joined an economic community that has somehow transformed into a superstate. You need to have democratic process if you want to make a change that big.
> The UK joined an economic community that has somehow transformed into a superstate
I've seen some variant of this claimed time and time again, but I don't really get it. The EU has always been supranational, always been pro-harmonisation and -integration. The scope of what it covers may have expanded somewhat over time (and that's been actively participated in by the UK anyway), but is it really a fundamentally different institution in 2016 from what there was in 1975? The main thing it did in 1975 and does in 2016 is set common rules for trade. Okay, it has nominal leaders now and some semblance of democratic process, but that's a feature of the UN, too, and nobody describes it as a superstate.
The EU simply did not exist in 1975. That's not just a technical comment: it really didn't exist until 1992 with the Maastricht Treaty. Since 1975 there is a currency (and monetary policy), there is a proper and separate legal system, there a real political process with a parliament and an executive and many other changes. Trade is now only a part of a much bigger story.
In 1975 there wasn't even a flag - the circle of yellow stars was a symbol used by different pan-national organisation (that still exists) with no relation at all to the EEC.
> The EU simply did not exist in 1975. That's not just a technical comment: it really didn't exist until 1992 with the Maastricht Treaty
Under its current name, yes, but the European Union we know today is really the successor to the European Communities of yesteryear.
> Since 1975 there is a currency (and monetary policy),
Which the UK doesn't participate in, mostly.
> there is a proper and separate legal system,
This isn't new. There has been EU law since before the UK joined. The European Communities Act 1972 specifically provides for the conversion of EU law into UK law, and its supremacy over UK law.
> there a real political process with a parliament and an executive and many other changes.
The European Parliament existed long before the UK joined, and has been named that since 1962. But in fairness, it only started having elections in 1979 (it was previously appointed).
The European Commission, the executive, also existed before the UK joined. It has been a single body since 1967 (and there were three executives before that - their merger is sometimes considered the beginning of the modern EU).
> Trade is now only a part of a much bigger story.
It's always been part of a bigger story. The European Economic Community, after all, was only one of the three European Communities we joined.
> In 1975 there wasn't even a flag - the circle of yellow stars was a symbol used by different pan-national organisation (that still exists) with no relation at all to the EEC.
So? Lots of international organisations have flags. The Commonwealth of Nations has its own flag, and it's never considered a superstate.
Most of these ultimately come down to a Ship of Theseus problem - how many changes can something be subject to until it becomes a different thing altogether? Is the European Parliament of today really the same as the unelected body of 1962? Is the judicial system really the same one?
Clearly you think that it is the same body. I hope you can also see how others could be cynical about this expanded scope and view it as surprising and undesirable.
Yeah, I can understand that. Undoubtedly the EU has changed over time, and many people might not like those changes. I'm just suspicious of the claim that the EU is very different from the EC voted on in 1975. In some respects it is, but I feel it is misleading to look back and say it was just something like a loose free trade agreement. It was much more than that even when we originally joined, though it could be argued that the general public weren't very aware of it.
On the other hand, I don't know if the general public understands the EU now, either.
In the UK, the EU is a topic like vaccines, evolution or climate change is in other countries. A decades long torrent of anti-EU propaganda has left people adrift from any bedrock of facts to begin a discussion.
The EU has 33,000[1] direct employees, I'd hardly call that a superstate.
[1] http://ec.europa.eu/civil_service/docs/hr_key_figures_2016.p...
My definition is not about number of employees and is common usage:
Since labour would have won (by one seat) if it weren't for libdem voters coming back to Labour and thereby handing 12 threeway-split seats to the conservatives, not to mention the places that Labour to UKIP defections would have came back to them as second votes, a replay with the same votes but different rules wouldn't have been a con-ukip coalition government.
Though obviously, if the rules changed then everything would change, new parties, new alliances, less tactical vote buying, more democracy.
The British political and electoral systems are fundamentally broken, to be sure. That said, it's also worth noting that in this case by far the biggest loser at the last general election because of that broken system was UKIP, the "small anti-EU, right-wing party" you mentioned, which despite commanding 12.7% of the popular vote wound up with only 1 MP out of 650. Even the Lib Dems, who took probably the biggest political battering in a generation at that election, didn't lose out that badly.
Had we had anything resembling proportionate representation in the House of Commons after the election, it is not unlikely that UKIP would have held the balance of power in a hung parliament, and that as effectively a single-issue party they would then have demanded action on their main issue as the price of co-operation. Whether any of us would agree with them or not, the fact is that nearly 4 million people did vote for them, so it's hard to argue that the current situation is somehow unjustified.
My personal view is that one good way to bring more accountability into British politics would be to make more use of direct democracy on specific issues, moving away from the transparent fiction that whichever party wound up in power despite almost always receiving a minority of the popular vote somehow has a popular mandate to implement any policy that was in their manifesto on any issue. From that point of view I'm happy to see a referendum that splits party lines take place on such a controversial issue anyway, regardless of my personal preference for its outcome.
The Tories have been squabbling about this for years, well before UKIP came on the scene.
Yes, and as long as the squabble stayed internal, it didn't affect their first-past-the-post results.
Traditional political logic was that every vote for UKIP was a Tory vote wasted. In reality, they wasted quite a few Labour votes as well.
I'm pretty worried about this. I don't think most of the public are well enough informed to make this decision and I can't really blame them given all the propaganda. I could see many people making their decision based on immigration alone. One place that's going to be particularly hard hit by an exit will be Northern Ireland considering it shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland. In order to keep the current abilities to travel across the border with zero restrictions (the border is essentially invisible currently) I'm sure a lot of new laws will need to be worked out. I could also see a lot of businesses simply shifting offices 50 miles across the border to keep business within the EU.
Uh, no. Neither Ireland nor the UK is in the Schengen. The UK didn't want to be, and Ireland opted out because of the UK. From the BBC[1]:
"The UK and Republic of Ireland have opted out. The UK wants to maintain its own borders, and Dublin prefers to preserve its free movement arrangement with the UK - called the Common Travel Area - rather than join Schengen."
Shocked I wasn't aware of that! I still think it'll be pretty bad from a business perspective with Northern Ireland losing companies to the Republic and more difficult trading between the two.
More concerning will be the future of the Good Friday Agreement and the peace in the area.
True.
The UK and Ireland may both want to preserve the Common Travel Area, but I don't think Ireland has any say in the matter. It will be up to the European Union, or more accurately the commissioners.
Eh, what? Hasn't the ROI had a say up to now? What's about to change? Is the EC about to invade the ROI?
The EU requires protection of it's external border by member states. The ROI would be required to protect it's border with the UK. If it failed to do so, the EU could withhold funding from it, in effect fining them.
Ah
How does that work with Norway and Switzerland? Or is that different because they're members of the Schengen?
I really hope for an exit. I just want to see what will happen with UK outside of EU. Especially since they have done nothing to fulfill their pre referendum Scottish promises. The imperial preference days are over. That is a lesson the British need to learn. And a self inflicted wound will be the best way to do it.
So either UK will be in EU as with all other or not at all. The current state of affairs as we are in EU only for the good stuff mightily annoys me.
That sounds like you're treating this as a game. Fact of the matter is, if we leave the EU, a whole bunch of minorities lose a whole bunch of human rights protections. When this happens, the ability to lead a life of any sort decreases and suicide rates increase.
The UK being "kinda-sorta part of the EU" is not a wonderful thing, but being out of it entirely would be far worse for real people. Fight for more integration with the EU if that's your thing.
I'll note that Scotland would likely become independent and join the EU a few years after a British EU exit, but there's plenty of English, Welsh and Northern Irish people who'd get stuck.
The Council of Europe[2] isn't same as the EU. The countries below [1] have ratified the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. I accept that enforcing some of the provisions of the Convention in some of the countries listed could be problematic. We sort of managed before 1973 (with shady areas that continued after 1973 just the same).
[1] http://www.echr.coe.int/Pages/home.aspx?p=press/factsheets&c...
What human rights protections will be lost by leaving? In fact, what legislation would be removed by leaving? Surely all existing EU legislation is enacted into British law via an act of parliament.
One possible consideration is that while the main European human rights provisions are separate from EU legislation and organisations in principle, membership of the EU does require being a signatory to the ECHR under the Maastricht Treaty. Unless there is a very significant element of Cameron's deal that is getting remarkably little coverage so far, there doesn't seem to be any proposal to change this as a result of the recent negotiations.
This creates an interesting political minefield for the UK's current Conservative government, since their stated policy is to abolish the Human Rights Act (the current UK legal foundation for respecting the ECHR) in favour of a British Bill of Rights, yet as of today their stated policy as a government is also to campaign to remain in the EU. These policies seem to be incompatible under Maastricht, not to mention almost polar opposites in the underlying philosophy they represent.
Cameron started treating it as a game. I just want to play in such a way to make it best for europe. I am sick of British blackmail. Pax Britanica is over. It is a small regional player. And I want it seen treated as. such. And if minority protections are so important said minorities should have done more for preventing him to come to power.
Categorising the UK as a small regional player shows a ridiculously limited world view.
Britain is the second largest economy in Europe, the fifth largest economy in the world, the fourth military power, a leading member of the G7 and one of five permanent seat-holders on the UN Security Council.
Hardly a "small regional player".
I'm a Brit living in Germany. A vote to leave the EU is likely to mean that I will need to apply for a work visa to stay here. It is more than likely going to cause me a major pain in the arse.
On the other hand I'm tempted to have the anti-EU Brits win and let them see what a disaster that will be for the UK, shutting them up once and for all. Then have them come back with their tails between their legs asking to be let back in.
Reality is that the result will depend on the major newspapers bias, namely Mr Rupert Murdoch. He is traditionally anti-EU, but that has previously been based on back room deals with different political parties promising him one thing or another. Since his fall from grace his power has been somewhat diminished, do it will be interesting to see how the press play this out.
Also, don't forget that:
> It’s a peculiarity of this referendum that Commonwealth citizens may vote in it, whereas French, Italians and Germans who have lived here for many years, and are much more directly affected, may not.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/20/how-to-...
I'm one of those Commonwealth nationals resident in the UK with the right to vote in this referendum. I had thought the case for the UK staying in the EU was obvious until I started thinking about it and, in the process, stumbled upon a frustratingly alluring argument for me -- and other non-EU, British-resident Commonwealth nationals (that is, other Commonwealth nationals legally living in the UK who are not also nationals of an EU country) -- to vote for the UK to leave.
The argument runs like this.
The UK's current level of migration is seen as a problem by the current UK government, by a significant proportion of British citizens, and probably even by a good few in the left-leaning parties. While the UK's in the EU, there's almost nothing that can be done to curb skilled or unskilled migration from the EU. Any government of a UK in the EU that wants to curb migration has to do so by clamping down on non-EU migrants. There's already no legal unskilled migrant route to the UK, so that means cutting back on skilled migration.
That clamping down is for me a personal pain, so much of a pain that it feels like every time I see Theresa May in the news it's because she wants to make it harder for me and other non-EU nationals to work in the UK. (I try really, really hard not to hate her.) If the UK left the EU, that'd allow the British government to apply the same rules across the board (to EU citizens as well as non-EU citizens) which'd probably lead to any UK government (from migration-hating UKIP to migration-loving Greens) having a more sensible approach to skilled migration. And not only is that in my own interest as a non-EU Commonwealth national, it's also in the UK's interest as far as having a sensible skilled migration policy goes.
This argument is, of course, too narrow on something as broad as the UK's members in the EU to be enough: it doesn't deal with the host of other things around British EU membership (wealth, security, environment, international influence etc). But my working visa issues are so frustrating that I find it a very, very tempting argument.
IIRC a fair few of those work in finance in the City, things are going to be… interesting.
Indeed. Border control policies end up being a tit for tat affair.
The only reason EU countries have border controls on flights landing in their respective countries from the UK, is because the UK applies border controls on their citizens entering the United Kingdom. I can fly from Germany to Spain without ever showing my passport at my destination, but if I fly to and from the UK I need to show my passport on both sides.
I expect this to become 100 fold worse in the UK tries to leave the EU.
Maybe we will have to get visas to visit the EU. If the EU want to make it harder for us to visit, then that is their choice and they have every right to do so. I don't see why we should expect others to just let us into their country if they'd rather we weren't there.
> Maybe we will have to get visas to visit the EU.
That's really unlikely, though that would be a hilarious hit to the "power" of the UK passport (in terms of countries you can enter visa-free).
If you are from the EU any EU ID is sufficient to enter the uk you do not need a passport.
My point is that you have to present your ID at a British border control. Germany to Spain - nichts, nada, zilch. I just walk straight through.
The UK most likely will still remain within the EEA even if they'll leave the EU, as resident holders within Iceland, Norway and Switzerland can move around and work within any country within the EEA/EU even without being EU members.
Not to mention that even a vote to exit will take years and there will be provisions to maintain current status it's highly unlikely that the UK will kick out millions of residents not to mention have to take in millions of UK nationals that are living in other EEA countries (which on it's own could cost the UK economy much more in the short term, as when people are forcibly kicked out of their country are quite often not in the best financial position to make that move).
While it's true that the UK takes in a large amount of EU nationals they export almost as many there is a slight difference that the ones that leave the UK often posses high paying jobs in the first place while many individuals that come in come in often as a qualified job seeker meaning that they might receive more benefits at least initially than paying out as far as taxes go.
This situation is also quite common among immigrants from lower income EU countries like Poland and Romania which also historically exported allot of their income back home, it wasn't that uncommon for them to immigrate to the UK for 3-5 years just to make enough money to buy a house in their home country and then return there which is some what of an issue on it's own also.
There probably should be a better process to ensure that there isn't considerable wealth drain on the stronger economies due to economic immigration but more importantly that there isn't a brain and skill drain on the poorer EU members, pretty much any one I've spoken too from Bulgaria and Romania curses the EU more than your average UKIP voter mostly because it seems that joining the EU caused a massive exodus of anyone who could leave for greener fields which often are the most educated and better off people in the first place, those who can actually drive the country forward.
Agreed. I think you should be able to live and work in another EU country for a maximum of five years. After which time you should apply for citizenship. That way, member states can control migration levels and in exchange, those who have moved and settled in another country get full citizenship status including the right to fully partake in the voting process.
Well this is some what how the process currently works after 5 years in the UK EU nationals can apply for permanent residency and after 7 years they can apply for citizenship IIRC.
The problem with term limiting is that you almost ensuring that people will not make long term plans which leads to drain of capital. This is also why for example the current Tier 2 Inter-company Transfer UK visa's are moronic, they force very high minimum pay (50K GBP or more per year) but limit the term to upto 5 years without any option to extend that duration or even switch to another UK visa (with the exception of marriage/partnership).
The idea behind the term limit was to make the local workforce especially in IT more competitive the result was that companies still bring allot of employees from outside of the EU paying them very high salaries, have those employees gain experience and then after 5 years take all their knowledge and capital out of the UK because they can't settle.
The immigration policy in the UK is one of the least efficient and most self defeating immigration policies I've ever seen, it's pretty much structured to shoot it self in the foot every time with idiotic regulations that do no effect those who actually cause the highest financial drain but disenfranchise those who could actually benefit the country.
The EU immigration policy could be more adapted slightly to be better, the general immigration policy in the UK really needs a rework, move to a point based human capital value approach as it's currently one of the few countries that actually would kick out some one who spent 5 years studying in the UK getting a master degree then offered employment with a salary of over 100K$ because they are not from the EU and do not want to provide hospice and nurse the elderly.
> The UK most likely will still remain within the EEA even if they'll leave the EU
What's your reasoning for this? I think it might be attractive versus simply leaving altogether, but who says that's what'll happen?
Consider that the EEA might be unpalatable to people against EU membership due to migration.
That's why I said most likely, the immigration from the EU isn't an actual problem, not as far as the "problematic" immigration into the UK goes.
EU individuals do not make the bulk of the economic immigration into the UK while making the majority of the high paid migrant workers.
If the UK want to deal with immigration "family" visa's and bogus work permits for people who end up earning below the minimum wage is a far better target than EU nationals.
> That's why I said most likely, the immigration from the EU isn't an actual problem, not as far as the "problematic" immigration into the UK goes.
Perhaps, but I'm not worrying about actual problems here, but rather public perception.
The hold up is in negotiations from what I've read. Also the house of lords isn't too comfortable with the bill either.
Which pre referendum Scottish promises haven't been fulfilled?
The greater autonomy of Scotland. Devolution max. There is barely something new done from what I read in the news
The Scotland Bill is currently working its way through the House of Lords (currently at committee stage) - http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2015-16/scotland.html
The Bill recognises the Scottish Parliament and a Scottish government as permanent among UK's constitutional arrangements, with a referendum required before either can be abolished. In addition new powers/control given to the Scottish government include:
* The ability to set Income Tax rates and bands * Control over several benefits and removable taxes including Air Passenger Duty and Disability Living Allowance * The right to receive half of the VAT raised in Scotland * Extended powers over Employment Support and Universal Credit
The rest of the EU countries should also hold a referendum about granting the UK these special conditions. It is very likely that, event after getting these privileges, they will act as if they were making us a favor to stay. Just leave. Maybe a free Scotland joins back in a few years.
Agreed. I would love to be consulted on this deal. Because I don't think the UK should get (any more) special rights. Stay as it is or leave, but why the special treatment ?
I hope Sweden leaves too, and/or Brexit causes the union to collapse. We have paid billions in aid to the poorer EU countries for years and all we get back are refugees, Romanian beggars and criminal gangs from the Balkans.
I really want to believe you're being sarcastic...
In any case, neither the aid nor the 'consequence' you list above would be fixed by magic-ing the EU away.
Well, I assume you are Swedish. A lot of Swedish people are respected internationally: Zlatan Ibrahimovitch, of Balkan origin, is one. What have you done that compares to what he has done for your country? Nothing, right? Your country has benefitted more from Eastern Europeans than they have from you.
I can't believe I read this here. Hope you're joking. I don't wear rosy glasses, I won't say there's no trouble, but targeting some people the way you do... awful.