No, it was Thatcher who put through the Single European Act 1986, which changed the EEC we originally joined into the EU of today. (Ted Heath in old age admitted to an interviewer that joining the EEC was always supposed to end in 'fiscal and political union' and the abolition of the British state, but I distinctly don't recall him telling us that at the time. And there is a fairly obvious reason why he didn't.)

Interestingly, the legal drift to an EU superstate is a bit of legerdemain by the curial class for its own reasons, since the 'ever closer union' mentioned in the foundational Treaty of Rome is between 'the peoples of Europe' and not between states.

http://researchbriefings.parliament....mmary/CBP-7230

I think that translates as 'And I just don't see what could possibly go wrong!' And you know how that ends.

The US was established as an oligarchy of white Christian gentlemen, many of them slavers, and not a democracy. It is not the model that Churchill naively took it for when he proposed a United States of Europe (which he didn't think Britain should belong to anyway).

Americans have always had a common legal, political and cultural structure and a common language. Even so, they have not always united under a common leader and the bloodiest of all wars that the US has been involved in was the Civil War of the 1860s. The issues that provoked that war remain unresolved, hence the police shootings that have replaced lynchings and hence 'voter suppression', the paranoid reaction to Obama and the subsequent election of a demagogue who thinks neo-Nazis are 'very fine people.'

Europe is a cockpit of dangerous petty nationalisms and, while the EU could moderate that kind of thing as an economic bloc with obvious benefits, it actively incites that kind of thing when the curial class try and force through an artificial and premature dissolution of nationhood for their own career purposes.

Well I have to say that I have more respect for posters who don't think that having a flag needs a cost benefit analysis. Can you think of any tiny company that doesn't have some kind of logo? I can't recall the last time I've seen a EU flag in the flesh, so to speak, and I wasn't even aware they had an anthem. Why is that such a big deal? I used to work for a large accountancy firm and they had an anthem by all accounts (only ever sung in America).

The debate was about the main drivers for the EU's existence. It really is obvious that the man driver is economic benefit. I can't get my head around anyone doubting this.

And the statement about the main driver being economic benefit doesn't mean that there are not other reasons for some people wanting closer integration. Some in the EU will want a lot more integration, but even then would they want this if they felt their country would suffer financially?

Your location isn't on the continent then.

Not really. It translates as 'I think it's probably on the cards anyway and I'd rather the UK was in than out.'

One look at how the EU's stance towards the UK has changed since the Brexit vote, and Trumps punitive 220% tariff on UK planes gives us an idea how things might be if we were an independent island trying to deal with three huge trading and political blocs.

So it's either gonna be deal, no deal or something else.

Tory bastards care more about their own positions and bitching among themselves than they do about rest of us.

Got to be no deal then as they are a pack of incompetent, lying ****s.

Get your paddles lads cos we're going down ****creek.

Probably the only way to stay in is if the EU steadfastly refuses to play ball and calls the UK's bluff. I doubt that any non-crazy PM would want to go down in history as the person who took us into a hard Brexit and WTO tariffs etc...but then there's Boris.

Yeah, that'll go down great in the North.

It would be impossible to agree the terms on which we would stay in the time available.

BTW. Anyone here care to make some predictions about the percentage of people in 2025 who will be in favour of rejoining the EU?

Only if new trade agreements are needed. A deal to pay £x into the EU every year for access to the single market could be agreed quite quickly.

2025? 70%

Anyone care to make predictions on what %age will still want to leave the EU in 2025

I totally see this as the final outcome. Would suit me fine.

All I care about is we can make trade deals outside of the glacial process of the EU, and we don't have to rubberstamp their laws.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...vice-brexit-eu

Can end this nonsense any time they like.

That was always the view of the legal fraternity, and indeed of Lord Kerr who drafted Article 50.

With both this and committing large sums of money for plans preparing for a no deal, it looks as if the gloves are finally coming off.

Principally we'd need a trade deal with the EU. Which would mean co-operating with their processes and meeting their legal requirements. A bit like now. Similar conditions would apply to any trade deal anywhere, except we wouldn't have the negotiating power of the EU so we'd get took.

Maybe Britain is content with the Commonwealth in the future?

()

Commonwealth:
Population: 2,418,964,000
GDP PPP: $14.623 trillion

EU:
Population: 511,805,088
GDP PPP: $20.745 trillion

Given the massive population difference, how soon before the Commonwealth has a higher GDP than the EU?

Though tbh the Commonwealth isn't a monolith - it's just various countries that are part of the wide, exciting, growing world outside fortress Europe.

Northern hordes.

To have access to the Single Market, it is necessary to comply with a lot of EU law. Being outside of the EU the UK will have much less influence on its regulations. So it will look much more like rubber stamping EU law than it has until now.

Since access to the UK would mean access to the Single Market, the UK would not be able to set different terms than the EU for all products and services that are part of the Single Market. So what would the margin be for negotiation, exactly?

The no deal option has always been on the cards - it's far more of a negotiating tactic than anything else.

Remain is still gathering ground. I may have said this before, but so much of it is up to the people. The more confident MPs are that they can win a 2nd referendum then the more they will push for one. Otherwise we are hoping that it sort of happens by accident because there's no other way forward.

obeying trading standards of a trading partner to trade seems fine to me. Being beholden to them for immigration, fishing grounds, and every other type of law seems ridiculous.

Taiwan has access to the single market though, hence the presence of goods made in Taiwan in the shops.

If people are saying we should be part of the single market then that's a reasonable position (though not one I agree with) but
1) it should be argued for directly, not disguised with talk of "access"
2) why should we pay for it?

Also if you reread the above and similar statements except from the point of view of someone in a 3rd country wanting to trade with the EU+UK then it's clear that whatever barriers there are (conjecture varies has to how important it is) we don't want them to apply to 3rd countries trading with us.

the common fishery policy is great because you need countries to cooperate on quotas to avoid overfishing. it's solving the prisoners dilemma by binding them together. it's finally working really well too because they overcame the political pressure to always make the quotas too big

norway and other efta countries are in the single market but outside the custom union and doing their own trade deals afaict

In the end all is about if Britain dictates it all.

Afraid it's not.