In the 40 years since we joined the EU the world has changed in many many ways. Advances in Technology and communications have enabled a far more connected and interconnected world. The world has got a lot smaller.
International companies have used technology to create comlicated and efficient businesses that rely on frictionless trade, international labour, standardised international rules and regulations. this has meant that we now have amazing items like smart phones in our pockets that we can afford. Bits of them are designed in the UK (ARM chips), with software developed in the United states, with raw materials from all over the world, assembled in (mostly) China, and shipped to you at a price that is affordable to many many people. This is the miracle of the modern world.
Slogans like Buy British etc. are as outdated as saying how did we mange before we joined, because there are so few things in any country that are not the result of an international effort.
I 100% agree that this has not benefitted everyone. Manual workers in the UK have been pitted against manual workers in China and have lost out. However this is how things are going to move in the future. Artificial intelligence is soon going to make many people in office jobs redundant. Blaming the EU or some other bogey man for this disruption is very wrong. What we need to do is look at a new settlement for all working people and to make sure that we redistribute the dividend that technlogy has provided more fairly. The vast wealth that technology has created for the few (such as Amazon's Jeff Bezos) has been at the expense of manual workers and will next be white collar workers. We need to understand how to resolve this issue, while not discouraging innovation but recompensing the people that have suffered as the industrial age moves to a post-industrial age.
In short we are not going to be able to wind back the UK to the age before the EU - that time has gone. Saying how did we cope before is like saying things were great before the Romans came. Well yeah kind of - if you want to paint yourself in Woad and live in the bronze age...
There are issues with immigration but leaving the EU in itself is not going to fix them.

Very little you have written here requires the EU in any meaningful way as a method for improvement.

The EU is a political entity and a undemocratic power grab that I disavow as a legitimate voice for the European peoples.

No one is, for example, saying that the US needs to be within some large block and give up its sovereignty because.....development.

What I am saying is that the reasons for lots of people - like DannyBoy - voting to leave the EU (falling wages for low skilled people) are not caused by the EU but the result of globalisation. Globalisation's issues are not going to be resolved by leaving the EU - in fact they are going to get WORSE. The EU is a protectionist trading bloc that has lessened the impact of globalisation. If we are a free trading nation globalisation is going to destroy the economy. Farming and manufacturing will be gone.
It will be the 1980's again on Steroids. But this is what the arch-Thatcherites in the Tory party want. It is their ultimate dream. On the other hand Corbyn thinks that chucking off the EU will leave him free to create some socialiest dream land. Both f***ing crazy.

The US is in a large free trading bloc - it is called NAFTA.

The EU is no less undemocratic than the UK - just different. We still Elect the body that votes on EU laws ( I have not got time to go back over this ridiculous accusation it has been done to death - try Googling the House of lords).

However once we leave the EU we will have to align to somebodies trade standards and regulations in order to export to any significant market. Currently we are aligned to the EU. In the future we may want to align with China or the US. Essentially these are the choices as these are the 3 largest regulatory blocs. At the moment we are aligned to the highest standard that means we are good to go for all three. The Tories want to trash that so we can import US agricutural products which currently don't meet EU regs. But that means we say good bye to exporting to Europe.
And by the way - good luck with an advantageous trade deal with the US. Trump is the greatest deal maker in the world and will use his expertise to f*** us over royally. AMERICA FIRST - if you hadn't already heard.

Don't see how hard brexit people like Johnson still are going on.

What is left of the brexit they wanted to inflict on us?

Hopefully nothing.

All of this is pure scare mongering. There are several European countries outside of the EU that have their own arrangements. We will do the same or we will crash out.

Anyone who still thinks Brexit is a good idea is doing so out of sheer pig headed stubbornness. It’s rapidly becoming the train wreck anyone with a brain and a bit of foresight said it would be.

Why is this scare mongering? Explain that to me? What part of it is scaremongering exactly?

What other european countries arrangements are you referring to? Can you give me an example?

Are you happy to crash out? Do you fully understand the implications of crashing out? this would be project fear becoming project reality - I don't think anyone disputes that - in at least the short term.

The EU's strategy of just rejecting any sort of fudged position has worked very well to date so I see no need for them to deviate from it quite yet. May's position will keep softening until we're at Norway or no Brexit and they will say thank you very much. No deal a non-started given legislation in UK parliament RE Irish border and given parliamentary arithmetic.

What a buggers muddle.

I think the whole thing should be stopped, but I have pointed out on here that we should be doing full Brexit or no Brexit not a weak pastiche of soft Brexit. Waste of bloody time, money and effort. This is all Cameron's fault for doing zero prep and not making it abundantly clear on the voting slip what the actual choices were and saying Brexit will mean x,y and z and laying out a roadmap for how it would happen. Thanks to him all we've had is Tory party squabbling and May finally pushing us towards a pointless BINO following a disastrous election campaign and rejection of her strategy for Brexit and the country.

I have not said Globalisation is inevitable. I was describing the effects of Globalisation. It has been UK government choice to partake in globalisation. It is not scaremongering - this is what happened. We can easily have a more protectionist economy in the future

- and we could have moved the EU in a more protectionist direction. It was the UK government choice not to do that over the last 20 years. This is a statement of fact not scaremongering.

Equally we could have controlled non EU migration over the last 50 years, but we chose not to as successive governments thought that it benefitted the economy. This is just fact not scaremongering.

Eastern european countries can do what they want - they are not the 6th biggest economy in the world. If they want to chuck off the shackles of communism after Capitalism won the cold war and return to tin pot dictatorships good luck to them - but they can f*** off out of the EU if they do.

the US has felt Globalisation as much as the UK has and will continue to do so. Trump is talking the talk on rolling some of it back but lets see how much he achieves.

Why do you think Trump would negotiate anything other than a deal that would benefit the US? I really don't understand your logic. How would this not be the case?
If he didn't he would be letting down the people of the USA? America first? This is not scaremongering - just logic.

You know Norway and Switzerland have customs controls, accept the jurisdiction of the ECJ, pay into the EU budget and have free movement - don't you? All of which are ruled out by the current government as not delivering the will of the people? This is all just basic stuff. We have been at this for two years and people still don't get this.

Crashing out - 5%. And some....

I'm happy to crash out if the EU seriously want that. This would have a nasty effect on the economy for five to ten years of around a five percent contraction.

Long terms it's going to be beneficial in my view compared to staying in. Especially if the EU collapses.....as is probable.

Edited by Stirlingsays (09 Jul 2018 4.24pm)