Yes, it is true… but I am on the side that believes that you cannot have your cake and eat it…
All politicians who say that you can have it all and not be part of the decision-making table in the EU
are selling lies, essentially, because you are indeed either ‘in or out’, as the referendum slogan has it…
Again, there is no need for Britain to pull out of Europe: it is a purely internal Tory dispute, and
Cameron is squeezed between different factions. I do not believe this is genuinely ‘for the British people’.
Change for the better can be painful, but it would be like saying: "The ship is sinking but if we threw
away the lifeboats we would lighten the load and stop taking more water in".
Britain has debt levels resembling 2008 and pointing the finger at the EU is not the way to solve this…
I live in Scotland and there has been massive(!!) EU regeneration investment for anything from
road infrastructure projects in the Highlands to cultural development in the Hebrides, and to the
general agricultural subsidies granted throughout this part of the Kingdom… As we saw in Sep. 2014,
the idea of ‘independence’ (Scottish referendum) was reliant largely on oil/energy, and we all saw
what a catastrophe hit that very resource that would have had to fuel a ‘new era’ for Scotland: equally,
without European funding, where exactly is Britain going to get equivalent funding… Iran? China? US?
I think Cameron will fail, because Britain does not have enough bargaining tools at the European table
to get more privileges: simply put, if you want to be part of a club, would you really expect to be allowed
in for free? All states pay a fee, and it is utterly disingenuous to believe that you can have priviliges
without the same share of the load as appropriate to the size of your membership.
With the holocaust memorial day last Wednesday comes a healthy reminder that the war in Europe
is exactly why we should fight in the courts and in parliaments to keep Schengen, to keep Europe,
to keep collaboration, for the turn we are seeing in sentiment is a litigious, factious, parochial
bickering between single nation-states, breaking up the unity of peace and cooperation within Europe
and raising the ugly head of protectionist nationalism, against migration, against liberalism, against
free movement of academics and legitimate transfer between parts of the continent.
Sterling and ‘Brexit’ have no clear link at present, because a lot of the British currency’s downfall
has been fuelled by lowering FTSE100 stocks (pushed, in turn, by the oil crash) and by the BoE
second failed rate-rise bids (the first failure coming in the 2013-2014 period): I think that, as we
saw in the case of the rather muted response to the Scottish referendum, the markets have already
discounted ‘Brexit’…Therefore, I think this is why it is business as usual at the BoE, and why there
is sufficient skepticism to see this ‘renegotiation’ as nothing more than a marginal issue in global
politics. . . The City will decide, not Westminster.
