Thank you Diving, i also watched QT and found it quite interesting. Like Kermit, i also find Paul Mason a good read. He is an articulate political economist who challenges and puts forward alternative and often popularly appealing arguments. He did seem vague as to whether he would vote leave or brexit. His background however is far left. I dont know if he is still a trotskyist but he still states that capitalism is dead and talks of working co-operatives, full employment and welfare. These far left policies sound appealing until we remember that they were the basis of uk economic policies in the 50s and 60s when we didnt join the eu.

It wasn't that we didn't join the eu -De Galle vetoed our membership on several occasions.

By the early seventies the eu member economies were all growing much faster and indeed the German economy had surpassed us which to those who remembered the devastated german economy after ww2 was almost unbelievable. It was attributed to the Bundesbank laser like focus on inflation (having learned their lesson from the Weimer republic) and a liberal and open trade policy.

Let us not forget the fact that Germany made no financial reparations for WWII, and had defaulted on it's payment from WWI, whilst Britain was repaying loans from the USA and Canada, and interest (5%) on Gilts issued to raise funds for WWI (including also some incorporated from the Boer and Crimean wars). So, not just the Budesbank and it's laser.....

The uk decided that they too wanted to join but at the same time the oil crisis started and trade unions in the uk started to demand 30+% wage increases. The uk was suddenly left holding a busted flush and barely a year after the last referendum (1975) duly applied to the IMF for a bailout, the biggest loan it had ever given -about 4billion i think. Yes we were the Greece of the 1970s!!! Would you believe that!! Before anyone thinks i am a tory (i'm actually politically non-alligned) uk economic policy then shifted to targeting inflation and expenditure whilst pursuing a liberal trade policy within the EEC, i.e. based on the successful German model. But then Thatcher got elected and pursued monetarism using Milton Friedman as a guiding light. She was supported by another very prominent uk economist called Patrick Minford (who also now wants to vote leave) who was similarly articulate and populist but from a right/far right perspective. He had done some very good work on rational expectations theory and sure enough the economy started to boom in the early 80s. However, despite being helped in no small measure by north sea oil revenues, the economy eventually nosedived. Inflation boomed, we saw unemployment (3.5m) like we had never known, interest rates at 12-14% and record numbers of house reposessions, property market declines etc. Monetarism or Thatcherism was seen to have created monetary illusion or a false economy based on interest rate and money supply manipulation and eventually the bubble burst.
Thankfully now it is rejected by mainstream conservatism and i think all of the tory cabinet (except maybe John Whittingdale) do not ascribe to it. Luckily, since Thatherism we have been fortunate with our economic policies (both labour and tory and a bit of lib dem) but at the core of it lies a liberal and open trading policy with the eu, and isolationism would IMO make the uk economy suffer.

And be part of an unaccountable, unelected and undemocratic institution that is unfit for purpose with a delusion that 28 nation states can be united under a single flag.

Just a couple of notes for historical accuracy:

They signed up to a trade agreement.

I've literally no idea how it became what it is now.

The Maastricht Treaty (formally, the Treaty on European Union or TEU) undertaken to integrate Europe was signed on 7 February 1992 under a Tory Government.

History doesn't count in Brown's desecration of the treasury so you can drop this one out.

You haven't mentioned Paul Mason wants out of the EU, it has serious issues and catastrophe is around the corner. What he said was he DID WANT A UK EU EXIT but didn't want a UK exit led by the likes of further right of centre Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. They turn his skin, but not in those words, and he MIGHT vote IN just because of this. I can't rememeber what he said about BJ and MG but employees' rights was probably one. I'll watch it again later but he deinitely wanted out but MIGHT vote in because of the tories. Dimbleby was amazed by this.

I think he may have said he'd wait for another referendum under different govt (long wait there then) or the break up of the EU, which he did say was inevitable.

So a respected economist does want out. He did say however that it had nothing to do with immigration and he was happy with it continuing as it is.

Edited by Rudi Hedman (25 May 2016 11.15am)

Atlee wasn't PM in 1959, it was MacMillan.