snapdragon wrote:
Half our exports go to the EU and as the EU countries are on our doorstep, that is likely to continue. Our trade with other countries hasn't been in any way restricted by being a member of the EU. There have been various papers published showing this to be the case. You can find them quite easily.
Trade will no doubt continue, but the proportion of trade that the UK does with the EU may well decrease further which is quite likely a good thing in the long term. You can view this as diversification, i.e. not being overly dependent on one trading partner, especially if it is unlikely to be a future growth market.
Being a member of a customs union restricts your trade policy by definition regardless of whatever opinion pieces of academics you have read. The UK's priorities with respect to FTAs would certainly have been different to the EU as a whole and bilateral trade agreements and negotiations also tend to be less complicated and are therefore agreed quicker.
snapdragon wrote:
Foreign investment is certainly of enormous value, but so is the trade of financial services.
I already know that you think this is true, so simply repeating what you have already said is not enough. For the second time, please show some evidence for this. How much of British trade with non-EU countries depends on the UK being a gateway?
snapdragon wrote:
Which is probably why the EU won't become vengeful. Not allowing Britain to cherry pick a deal and protecting the interests of the rest of the EU countries would not be "vengeful".
Free trade is win-win, is it not? The UK wants the win-win part. It doesn't want the ever closer political union part which means less and less sovereignty and, as the EU itself admits, ever increasing obligations. The EU calls this cherry picking because it wants the UK to stay an EU-member and assume the obligations.
snapdragon wrote:
Mainly due to the British consumer acting as if nothing had happened. Which was a very good thing, of course, but perhaps it would be better for you not to get into a "which side told the most lies" argument. Also what do you mean by "your own" treasury? is it not yours, too?
Yes, the Brits have rejected Project Fear and good for them.
If we started listing lies of both sides, I would win hands down in showing that it was yours who was the most dishonest, not only in quantity, but also in quality. I'd start with one of my own posts here and would then go on to list every wrong claim in the treasury report which was politically motivated and hence deliberate in its excessively gloomy outlook. We would then go on to hyperbolic and false political consequences about what Brexit means.
snapdragon wrote:
Of course it's a pro EU paper. They all are. Try to find a scholarly paper that isn't and also maintains the UK is no longer sovereign. That paper states Britain chose to pool some sovereignty with other EU countries.
The EU is not a sovereign state, and no country of the EU has any sovereignty over Britain. No foreign states overrides Parliament. No, no no. It's the British parliament that enacts those laws. The fact the Tories hate some of them is a bonus.
There is always a trade off that has to be made when it comes to negotiating deals with other countries. That is not an erosion of sovereignty, that is the way the world works these days. I certainly don't take your idea of sovereignty seriously. Pimping the Queen to Trump as a kind of sweetener is something I can easily give up.
The EU must reduce the sovereignty of the member state, otherwise it wouldn't be able to function. That's also why qualified majority voting now covers a wide range of issues, which by definition means that the UK has to submit to decisions that others are making for it if it is outvoted on them. Arguing that this doesn't negatively affect British sovereignty is inane on the face of it. The EU is far and away the most intrusive and dangerous institution when it comes to sovereignty. It is orders of magnitudes more advanced in that respect than any other organisation or treaty. This is by design because it is a political union which, as mentioned, cannot properly function otherwise and its objective is to integrate ever more.
"The whole population", you claimed . It's far from it.
You are right. What I wanted to write was the majority of Brits and I thought I had written that. Apologies!