Some EU Referendum questions...

[philmophlegm]

[Poll #2047763]

Comments

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I'm voting Remain.

I would be quite happy to see the EU become a single state and the current member states being abolished. Seems to work for the USA, Australia and a few other countries.

I'm also not entirely concvinced that being a state is a binary thing - that a geographical area with an associated polity is either a state or not a state.

I'm okay with the EU having some influence over member states' fiscal policy (see above) but that's predicated on the EU being more democratic than it currently is. I don' think the UK is democratic enough to have the level of control over fiscal matters that it reserves for itself over local government and the devolved parliaments.

Difficult to answer the question on 1 million immigrants - do they keep arriving at the million plus level for decades (in which case can I buy a holiday home in whereever it is they've come from for no money) or are we getting a decades worth in one go for some external but temporary reason? Are they paying tax?

I am pretty sceptical about TTIP and a large part of my support for the EU is about European integration rather than purely free trade.

I don't just find the Leave side obnoxious - I find them willing to whip up racist hysteria to the point where MP's are being shot dead in the street.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that some of the Remain people haven't been almost as obnoxious though. I keep wondering what the reaction would have been if it had been a Leave politician who had been shot (and I don't think that's an impossibility: I am not confident that everyone who I've seen sharing their desire to shoot Farage or Gove is genuinely just 'blowing off steam' and I don't believe that blowing off steam by threatening actual living people is OK).

[andrewducker]

Totally agreed. I think the Remain people have been less dangerous in an overall sense, but some of the reactions I've seen about Farage and Gove have been distinctly not ok.

I am very glad that nobody has shot a Leave politician, and I don't consider it impossible that someone as mentally unwell/deeply unpleasant as the person who shot Jo Cox could decide to do exactly that.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I endorse this comment.

[andrewducker]

I was going to leave my own comments, but I find that Dan has mostly made them for me.

[naath.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much how I feel.

I actively look forward to being part of a USE, although I don't expect it to happen in my lifetime.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

"within your lifetime the EU would transform into a single state, and individual nations were abolished?"

And

" in future, the EU would control member states' fiscal policies"

I don't have an abstract view on whether those would be terrible things or not. I'd need to know how the people living in the merged EU and former UK felt about it, whether they were offered another referendum, whether the future EU is peaceful and generally prosperous... etc.

There are worse things than becoming part of a superstate. Another war in Europe would be up there in my list. If it's superstate or land war, I'm probably thinking bring on the superstate.

"would you change your mind if you knew that net immigration would increase significantly past current levels, say to 1million a year?"

Maybe, but I'd need to know why, and for how long, and whether the 'leave' option would actually make a difference to it. I don't particularly like the idea of the UK becoming one vast city, but if it's happening because the alternative is feeding 1 million people a year to Monstrous BugBeasts, then I can't really advocate anything other than squeezing them in. I do reserve the right to try to sell everyone condoms though.

'would you change your mind if the EU successfully negotiated a free trade deal like the proposed TTIP with the US?'

Probably not, but I don't know enough about it to be sure.

I try not to use the word 'obnoxious' about the other side in any yes/no question, unless the yes/no question is a lot more stark and murderous and uncomplicated than this one.

[andrewducker]

Aaaand there's the other half of the comments I was going to make!

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

Re fiscal policy, I would need a better sense than I currently have of what policy decisions would be likely. I imagine that harmonisation across the EU would be beneficial all else being equal, but not if it was harmonised to terrible policy.

I'm in favour of parts of the TTIP proposals, so successfully negotiating them would make me more strongly in favour of Remain. Of the bits that I have concerns about, I think that the UK is probably more likely to agree to them than Brussels.

Free trade is generally good, and the ways in which it is enhanced by being a member of the EU is part of why I'm voting remain. Whilst remaining also imposes some restrictions, I don't they're either or both outweighed or likely to be continued internally even if we leave.

I'm sure there are non-obnoxious elements to the Leave side, but they're being overshadowed.

[eledonecirrhosa.livejournal.com]

What does SEWIWEAIC mean? Google doesn't know...

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

something else which I will explain in a comment

[eledonecirrhosa.livejournal.com]

Ta muchly!

[purplecat]

I feel I want to SEWIWEAIC, but I'm not sure I have the energy or the optismism. Would it make a difference what I said, especially since my answers would be "it would depend upon the details" for everything up to the Free Trade question. I think Free Trade is good under certain economic conditions which I'm not convinced the UK enjoys right now, but to which it ought to aspire - I'm not sure either Leave or Remain guarantee that.

I'll admit to finding a lot of prominent Leavers obnoxious and I strongly don't want Johnson as Prime Minister, though I would be cautiously optimistic if Gove got the job, but I think Gove is a bit of a long shot particularly since he gives every sign of not wanting the job (or at least not wanting to put himself forward for it). However, judging the person and not the argument is a large part of what is wrong with a lot of modern political discourse so I hope I'm not too strongly swayed by my dislike for a lot of them.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

On the 'optimism' front, I still remember hearing during politics A level a thousand years ago, the great handwringing about how it was so hard now to engage the public with politics in any way, how reluctant they were to vote, to stand for office, to engage with their representatives.

I think we can safely say this is a problem we no longer have...

[purplecat]

*sigh no*.

I think what really makes me depressed is that no matter who wins, the win will be attributable to playing fast and loose with the truth, appealing to people's worst emotions, and cheap Internet memes at the level of "Gove looks like a swivel eyed loon in this picture therefore you should vote Remain" and that means we will see more of the same in future and I can't believe that is good.

Greater engagement may be a good thing, but I feel at the moment its just greater engagement with some kind of celebrity mud-slinging match that would be farcical were it not so tragic.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

My feeling is that the tone of the thing changed on Jo Cox's murder. Before that, yes, all very superficial, let us laugh at ugly unpopular Gove, make jibes about foolishnesses that David Cameron may or may not have committed as a student, let us wage surreal battle upon the Thames and talk about immigrants and refugees as if they could not actually hear us.

After though... It is a strange and amazing day when Mark's gin-mad aunty Jenny turns up on facebook to make a long post about sovereignty and economics. People keep posting things that I would not quite expect from them...

Perhaps I *am* chaotic neutral, but I am finding it all very fascinating, this process of watching a nation make up its mind deprived of all the usual filters of party politics.

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

Hello! Your entry got to top-25 of the most popular entries in LiveJournal!
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[lightofdaye]

Here from LJ homepage and What on earth does SEWIWEAIC week?

[bunn.livejournal.com]

"Something Else Which I Will Explain In A Comment"

Ie, none of the options, comment instead.

[lightofdaye]

Thanks very much.

[drplokta]

For the questions about the EU becoming a superstate of some kind, I would need to know the circumstances. Specifically, would the UK have its current veto on such an action, and if not then how would it lose its veto?

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

I'm a US type, but I wanted to see the results which is what I'm explaining in comments.

I lived in London as a kid before they joined the EU and later as a college student afterward. While I was politically minded from a young age, I can't be certain of the accuracy of my recollections on this subject. Having said that, my memory shows economic lives being better after the EU, at least before Maggie got the bit in her teeth.

Interesting Links for 23-06-2016

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

User andrewducker referenced to your post from Interesting Links for 23-06-2016 (http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/3470172.html) saying: [...] ) An actually interesting poll on the EU referendum. I had to think about my answers. [...]

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of people responding to that poll are staunch remain voters. Many of the people I know are in favour of the EU because historically it has represented a far more left-leaning government than we have in the UK. I wonder if people's voting preference would change if European governments, and the EU parliament/commission became more right wing than the government we have in the UK?

[skington.livejournal.com]

Remain voter, and for many of the questions it depends.

EU turning into a single state and nations abolished: as long as the EU principle of subsidiarity still applies, and there's proper regional government (something that France and Germany have, but which the UK is still rubbish at, with the exception of Scotland), that would be fine. It's not going to happen without popular consent, so if it happens it's because the EU has turned into a proper polity and future voters think very differently from how we do now.

EU controlling member state budgets and stopping budget deficits: some form of banking and fiscal union is inevitable in a currency union like the Eurozone (which the UK isn't in and won't be for the foreseeable future). I'm unhappy about not allowing budget deficits, but in a deeper political union you'd hope that occasionally the left would get in and stomp over such silliness. And again, this will have happened because people in EU member states voted for it.

1 million immigration: the question is ill-posed, as it assumes that this happens purely as a matter of the UK being in the EU or not, so it's not about the scary brown people from Syria that the Brexiteers have been talking about. If an extra three quarter million European people want to come to the UK and pay taxes, hooray.

TTIP: much of it is good, and some of the stuff like corporations being able to sue nation states in an independent tribunal is arguably necessary in a supranational agreement. The devil is in the details - e.g. watering down some of the EU acquis because of corporate lobbying.

[matgb]

the EU would control member states' fiscal policies, for example setting tax rates and stopping countries from running budget deficits?

Stopping countries from completely running budget deficits would be an insanely suicidal thing that most sane politicians would block. Ensuring that they run a surplus at times of growth to pare back debts in order to make future debts during downtimes workable would be something I'd be very happy with.

Greece got into trouble because successive govts were reckless when their economy was growing, it's stayed in trouble because the leading EU members were being stupid and Varoufakis was a prat about it.

So my "something else" is that regulations on fiscal policy I'd be fine with, but I'd be fairly confident that a stupid regulation like that wouldn't be passed in the first place.