"I want my money back!"

Margret Thatcher at the European Union summit in Dublin in 1980

"That such an unnecessary and irrational project as building a European superstate was ever embarked upon will seem in future years to be perhaps the greatest folly of the modern era. And that Britain, with her traditional strengths and global destiny, should ever have been part of it will appear a political error of historic magnitude."

Margret Thatcher from her book Statecraft published in 2003

... just pointing out that Margaret Thatchers views on Europe were nuanced at best. Probably best explained by this segment from Yes Minister https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37iHSwA1SwE

There's a difference between a free trade area and a political union.

Thatcher was thoroughly against the centralisation of power and monetary policy in Europe, but all for free trade.

Yes. There's also a difference between a free trade area and a customs union. A lot of Americans in particular seem to think the EU works something like NAFTA when it comes to trade.

Right, which is why the UK, very successfully, blocked every attempt at EU integration and secured opt outs out of Euro and Schengen for itself.

As a European, I believe I'm not alone in thinking it's great that the biggest obstacle to EU integration is leaving the EU, we're just all very puzzled as to why considering the UK had the best deal possible in the EU.

Thing is, and it took me all too long to learn this, Schengen is not what enables foreign workers to enter another EU member nation. It just makes it easier.

The Brexit yes came overwhelmingly form the old industrial areas of UK. From the towns and such that has seen their quality of life stagnate or deteriorate while the jobs gets done by foreigners that come by the busload.

Damn it, i don't live in UK but i have seen the phenomena myself. A local wharf some years back had a boom year, and the the peak there were perhaps twice as many foreigners working there as locals.

All EU's fault obviously.

Minimum wage, union nagotiated wages, restricting benefits for non working immigrants, IDs to combat illegal immigration, unused emergency brakes for immigration, none of that matters it's the damn EU's fault and most definitely not the UK government.

I promised myself I will only post one comment and not get dragged into any discussions so I this is my last one.

Wherever a scapegoat is needed it always seems to be the foreigners and immigrants first to be fingered.

Can't just blame post-industrial areas, SE England voted to leave too.

And I'm not the only resident of Germany who wishes that we would follow Britain's example.

I likely have a biased sample, but amongst my colleagues and friends, I don't know anyone who wants further European integration, and most want out completely.

Anecdata cuts both ways.

If I may ask what are your reasons of wanting to get out of EU? I'm interested if possible in an overview of short term and long terms objectives and gains/advantages.

I don't want to write a thesis here, but hopefully a bullet-pointed list will suffice:

* The EU is not only undemocratic in the sense that the powerful European Commission is unelected, but is in fact antidemocratic in the sense that one generally has to have lost a democratic election in one's own country to be appointed to it.

* The EU places an enormous regulatory drain on its member states, issuing a stifling number of pro-corporate, anti-free-market regulations every year

* Policies such as the Common Agricultural Policy, the Clinical Trials Directive, and the Port Services directive are extremely illiberal policies, introduced to satisfy special interests.

* The EU is in the process of exporting draconian, crushing German-style data protection law to the rest of the continent.

* The European Court of Justice is not only activist, but also highly incompetent, lacking the institutional jurisprudential experience of proper supreme courts, such as those found in the UK.

* The Common Market is not a free trade agreement, it is a customs union. Combined with the EU's inability to negotiate free trade agreements (held up by Italian tomato growers, French vintners, and just about every other special interest wanting protection), this means that export-focussed economies such as Germany's are hampered from engaging with faster-growing economies - and just about every other continent's economy is growing faster than Europe's.

As I said, I don't want to write a thesis here, but these are just a few of the many reasons why I believe that Germany - and almost every other country in Europe - would be better off making its own laws by a democratic process, trading and cooperating freely with its friends and allies, rather than being part of an antidemocratic, supranational bureaucracy.

Weird that you as a German actually want data protection laws relaxed. I would have though given your history you would want more of it. I certainly do.

German data protection laws do not offer as much privacy as you think, not when it comes to the state in fact many of them mandate data collection and retention requirements even when it's not needed or wanted.

They also offer very little visibility to what is collected.

Sure data cannot be easily shared or exported but this doesn't increase privacy as much as you think of at all, in fact it can hinder it.

I live in Germany, but I'm not German.

That yes minister clip really does seem to reflect what has happened here.

Context https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37iHSwA1SwE

> global destiny

Does this mean what it sounds like it means?

People in the UK haven't quite gotten over that whole global empire thing. Every now and then they make documentaries about how they brought civilization to India or something.

Empires were certainly established for the benefit of the empire builder but India also gained in many ways via British social reform - abolition of Sati (burning to death of widows) and child marriage for instance, construction of the railway system, roads, canals, mines, sewers, plantations and the establishment of English law and <language> and the idea of democracy.

I haven't checked but if the BBC still make documentaries on colonization by the British they almost certainly focus on its undoubted sins along with corruption within the East India Company.

Source, or is that just some generalised opinion based on simplistic historical foreign parody?

Not about documentaries, but May talked today about the Commonwealth and the importance for UK trade. They hope to get better deals just because they've occupied the country a century ago.

Anecdotal, but many do hold that view.

Similarly anecdotal, whilst in India met many Indians who held the same view.

I mean, the East India Company is still a going concern. It's worrying on numerous levels.

It's hard to convey just how incredibly huge and powerful was the East India Company. For example, they used to donate their used time-served warships to the Royal Navy as an act of charity!

The closest parallel today would probably be something like a merger between Halliburton and Academi, the varied enterprises of which profit hugely from foreign adventurism of their host state and which have autonomous military potential in excess of that of many countries. But even that would fall well short in terms of revenue. Perhaps throw Apple into that mix as well and you'd get close.

Oh dear.

Go check what the 'modern East India Company' actually sells, who owns it and why he bought it.

Oh, I know who owns it. Doesn't make the brand's continued existence any less repugnant.

Think of it this way: do you think anyone could get away with selling Triangle Trade Rum?

Yup, and as a Brit I have to facepalm every time I recognise this in the people around me.

Yes, and it's something the Brexit crowd are relying upon in their visions of our prosperity after leaving the EU.

I happen to think it's a load of hogwash, but I really don't want to see them proven wrong because I'll still have to live through it.

Well, it's a marketing prop that tries to refocus the attention on a conceivably positive aspect.

Exceptionalism.

We all know how well that turns out.

Nice words and I agree with the message. The implementation however is often still deeply flawed. Quite often it's nothing but some aloof bureaucrat's plan (or shall I say pipe dream?).

A prime example of this is VAT regulations in the EU, which supposedly have been harmonised and simplified some time ago yet with every iteration, with every 'simplification' they just got worse, less harmonious and more unwieldy to handle for companies buying or selling goods or services in other EU countries.

"Ideas are cheap, execution is what matters" is a standard startup advice. I think it is even more relevant to politics and in terms of execution the EU did not do too well. My 2c.

I don't think it relates purely to the EU, but to politics in general. I'm all too often hearing quick-fix solutions mouthed by politicians when what's plain to the eye is a profoundly unsexy root-and-branch analysis is necessary.

The problem is, you can't harmonise VAT without harmonising the tax bases. And if you don't harmonise the tax bases, companies will try to set up mechanisms to avoid tax.

The problem is not about the different VAT rates in different countries. The problem is the process for claiming VAT paid in another EU country. That process is so ridiculously complex that up to a certain amount even accountants have largely given up on it because it's not worth the bother.

indeed, I simply stopped selling services to the rest of the EU as it was not worth the effort in dealing with the new EU VAT regime, even though my small operation is below the threshold for VAT registration in my home country

So is the solution: (a) Fix the VAT registration rules to make them simpler. (b) Leave the European Union.

all I'm going to say is that bureaucracies rarely decrease in size

I'd hope it's easier to sell to other EU companies within the EU than trying to export into the EU from outside, despite the VAT regime, in which case the bureaucracy is a net positive in that regard.

Sometimes I honestly wonder: If I would set up a US subsidiary to sell digital services through, and not comply with EU VAT laws, would I get into trouble?

A stupid example: buying a .com domain (as an individual) through an EU registrar will set you back $10 + VAT. If I buy it from a US company, I pay $10. Why would I buy from an EU registrar?

Was it for real or isn't that just a politician trying to sell something (which it sounds remarkably like)? One of the reasons Brexit is happening (at least it's argued) is due to bureaucracy.

Should we agree with the quote or find it wrong in hindsight?

Oh, I think it was very real - one of the great things about the EU is the fact that it doesn't matter whether I buy from or sell to france, austria, germany, portugal or hungary. No customs fees, delays or complicated export documents and a common return policy. As someone who knows both sides, this ease of access is great for sellers and buyers alike.

Frankly, I'd love to do the same with goods to and from the US, but since it comes with a lot of barriers, I simply don't buy from there. And at work we don't sell our physical goods to non-EU countries. So, yes, it's makes a difference.

no, its immigration, and the lack of jobs for "locals"

much has been made of "bureaucracy" but in fact, most of that is hidden from the UK.

The basic fact is that large parts of the UK have been left to rot, suffering terribly from the lack of decent jobs to replace the decline of manufacturing. This has been blamed on immigration, correctly or not. That is why large swathes of the country voted to leave.

Now we won't have that excuse any more.

But brexit isn't going to make life any better for those areas. Most likely it will be worse as the country as a whole will be probably poorer and less able to support deprived areas. But I expect they will still put the blame for this on someone else rather than the total failure of successive UK governments to spread wealth around the country.

Just to be clear, are you doubting the existence of a single market for EU members? Because if you are, reality is very persuasive.

there is certainly a single market for goods, services is far from complete

it makes the statement "four freedoms are indivisible" somewhat hollow, because there has never been full freedom of services

I ~~have been~~ was a consultant in the EU for about 3 years w/ clients in 7 different countries. All I (additionally) had to do was mark a checkbox on my income tax statements.

If that checkbox was all that held me from "full freedom", then I concede your point.

Can confirm on that the single market for services is far from reality.

Today, if I'm a consultant and have a consultancy company registered in EU country X, if I come to EU country Y to provide my services there, it's pretty likely that I will have to set up a separate company in Y or Y's tax people will be after me (that's currently the situation in UK for example).

I cannot confirm that. I found the tax agreements within the EU to be relatively easy in the EU & UK. Of course you deal with two authorities, so there is an additional benefit, but recognizing taxes paid in the UK with another country was not that hard.

Yes, there is no double taxation - but you essentially need to involve yourself with the tax authority of every country you are doing business in.

In a real single integrated market, I'd have company registered in country X, serve customers across entire Europe, but file taxes on the entire income in X only. I'm thinking they don't allow that because it would open doors to all kinds of tax optimization for the little people - ex. say UK workers would register themselves as companies in countries with very low taxes, and continue to work ("provide services") in UK. This kinds of schemes are allowed for the megacorps, but not for us regular folk.

"involve yourself" in this case is present the tax income declaration to the tax authority in the 2nd (3rd, etc.) country.

Hardly a cumbersome experience.

In practice, you need to learn the tax code to find most suitable form of conducting business. For example, in the UK if you know what you're doing, you'll pay ~20% tax on your income as a contractor. If you don't, you can easily end up paying something like 30+%.

Also, there are perpetual costs of having a company registered (such as monthly payments to an accounting company which handles paperwork, health care contributions etc.), so if you move around regularly between a couple different countries, you'll probably need to maintain a legal presence in each one, and thus have these costs multiplied.

> In practice, you need to learn the tax code to find most suitable form of conducting business.

That has not been my experience.

Not yet, anyway. There's still a lot of talk about it. I'm particularly interested in the ongoing talk about a single market for digital goods.

You can agree with the existence of a single market but find most of that quote flowery political rhetoric.

> Should we agree with the quote or find it wrong in hindsight?

What Thatcher was talking about was literally a single market i.e. where one could buy and sell goods without tariff and other protectionist restrictions.

What we have now with the EU is most definitely not that. We have free movement of people, a much expanded EU with qualified majority voting, significant social (as against economic) legislation, and the Euro.

None of these were really evident in '88 and Thatcher was dead against all of them. Fundamentally, she was a supporter of a wide ranging trade agreement and not very much else.

If you read May's bullets, she has non-tariff market access as one of priorities. She is effectively using the term Single Market to a much wider scope than Thatcher but still attempting to keep the basis of what was originally envisioned, at least in the UK, on the table.

Can't imagine the EU agreeing to this as it's moved well passed that stage but you never know.

>We have free movement of people,

A single market includes the free movement of labour, as well as goods and services. Hence, restricting immigration is equivalent to leaving the single market. If we're to have tarriff-free trade with the EU but barriers on migration, that's surely a "protectionist restriction" on British jobs.

EU has free movement of labour and goods but does it have free movement of services I didn't think it did (that's a genuine rather than rhetorical question)

Pretty sure it does, it's one of the "four freedoms": http://ec.europa.eu/growth/single-market/

I got the link from the Wikipedia article, more info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Single_Market

No way. Brexit was primarily caused by xenophobia in combination with lack of education about how the EU works. Most people don't even know how many unanimous votes of all member states were necessary to get to the contemporary EU in the first place.

Had there been a simple test of 10 questions about how the EU works, drawn from 100 previously published questions, that needed to be answered in order to qualify as a voter, then the Brexit would never have happened. Likewise, if there hadn't coincidentally been a bloody civil war in Syria with many refugees looking for a new future at the time of the Brexit, then the Brexit would also never had happened.

Coincidence and lack of knowledge have determined the fate of the UK and Europe as a whole for the next fifty to hundred years or so. But you could say the same about many other historic decisions and events.

In the end it was all about immigration. Without immigration, people wouldn't have voted against the EU. Other reasons (judges in Luxembourg, EU regulation) are used as placeholders so that others won't think you're xenophobic. But most discussions with Brexit voters sooner or later end up being about immigration (esp. from Eastern Europe).

Actually you don't know at all how Brexit was 'primarily caused' if indeed there was a primary cause. Plenty of cosmopolitan EU-savvy intellectuals supported 'Leave' with excellent arguments. An opinion is one thing; the pretense of having a penetrating analysis to the extent of proving it with a virtual quiz plus results (wow - it agrees with your prediction!) is another.

Okay, your opinion. I still know that it was primarily caused by these two factors, and even know that I know it.

I also have not heard a single excellent argument for Brexit so far - not a single one, and as a well-informed and educated person I've heard many if not all of them. "Plenty of" is too vague to be of any value as a statement, but I also wouldn't agree that there were "plenty of" EU-savvy intellectuals who supported 'Leave', unless you're willing to count people like Boris Johnson to this group. You and the rest of the 'Leave' is being dishonest or simply deluded / misinformed.

Please don't bother discussing this topic with me (or Trump supporters or climate change denial, for what it's worth). I'm sick of it and the UK. What I would like to ask you and your kind is to urge your politicians to exit the EU swiftly and then shut up and never blame the EU for anything that happens to the UK again. Bye!

Wow, this is coming from the woman herself, the icon of modern conservatism in the 20th century.

Capitalism proves to be not self-sustainable and now it's self-cannibalizing which is a good thing as we move gradually to the next stage in history according to Karl Marx to socialism and away from capitalism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx's_theory_of_history#Stage...

Read him by all means; he had one or two interesting ideas. Sadly though, you will find that Marx did not even understand how wealth was created which is a bit of problem when you're creating grand economic plans for the rest of us.

I'd remind you that the last 20 years has seen the greatest reduction in world poverty ever in the history of mankind. That was achieved by people trading with each other not by socialism.

>It's not some bureaucrat's plan. It's for real.

Actually it was a bureaucratic plan all along, and badly managed.

And you still can have great access to the same 320 million market even outside of it (like e.g. China or Japan have) -- with the extra benefit that you don't have a German-controlled ECB to impose you rules and monetary policy.

> you don't have a German-controlled ECB to impose you rules and monetary policy.

The UK had its own currency and central bank from the get go. What are you're referring to exactly here?

It's funny how Brexiter arguments usually come from the same collection of "misunderstandings" and lies

What double standards! So, trade tariffs and custom agreements: bureaucracy; restrictions on free movement [1] - that's just the will of the people!

Populism is going to cost the UK dearly. And not just in terms of money. The UK is heading headlong into a kind of society taken straight out of the pages of "V for Vendetta".

________________

[1] "Controls on immigration"

> The UK is heading headlong into a kind of society taken straight out of the pages of "V for Vendetta".

I call "Godwin by Proxy".

There's many reasons to fear current trends but it's a touch premature to predict we're about to become a fascist dictatorship.

"funnily enough" [1], it seems the only obstacle to government mass surveillance and privacy invasion in UK is the ECJ...

[1] as in, not funny at all

What gpderetta said, and also Teresa May pushed aggressively for RIPA, and has spoken about getting out of the jurisdiction of the ECHR.

> And you still can have great access to the same 320 million market even outside of it (like e.g. China or Japan have) -- with the extra benefit that you don't have a German-controlled ECB to impose you rules and monetary policy.

Yes, but if you are officially retailing in the EU you are obliged to adhere to EU warranty regulations, to EU safety regulations (flame retardation etc.), you must charge VAT (and pay it to the EU), etc. etc.

That's very optimistic thinking. First, Japan and China are both more heavyweight economically than the UK, and second, the EU will want to set a precedent: If you leave, it's gonna be painful. They really don't have another choice.

Any examples of monetary policies imposed by the ECB on the BoE? Given the different currency, I'm curious about it.

I understand there are a few arcane rules concerning the BoE not being allowed to purchase govt bonds directly from the govt. But that's not what most people would understand by control of monetary policy.

Similarly with fiscal policy, whilst the UK is supposed to "endeavour" to follow the Stability and Growth Pact rules on keeping deficits down, it can and does cheerfully ignore those rules without risk of penalty.

"you still can have great access" Well, that is quite a statement considering what has been the tenor of EU officials thus far. And keep in mind that the only chance for Europe to keep the freedom of movement will probably be to make it extraordinarily difficult for Great Britain to get access to the free market. It does not really stand up for debate that Britain's economy will suffer quite a bit, and less rules by the EACH will not make up for that.