Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Immigration. They want to be able to control the flow of immigrants from E. Europe.

How exactly is withdrawing from the EU going to accomplish that?

By denying them work permits, turning them back from the borders etc. The way they already do with, say, Nigerians.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Immigration. They want to be able to control the flow of immigrants from E. Europe.

How exactly is withdrawing from the EU going to accomplish that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area

read up!

Anonymous wrote:Immigration. They want to be able to control the flow of immigrants from E. Europe.

How exactly is withdrawing from the EU going to accomplish that?

Why not?

The Queen takes her responsibilities seriously. Regardless of who the prime minister was, she treated all of them exactly the same. She is privately known to have disliked Tony Blair tremendously but she never failed to meet with him and always behaved impeccably towards him.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm seeing a lot of correlations between this and our own countries politics: the populist desire to not get involved with other countries and to take severe stands on immigration. I can also see a stark similarity between Boris Johnson and Donald Trump - hell, they even look alike. Could you picture these two at a G8 summit?

Exactly. Same basic reactions/fears/hair

Sadly, if the vote to exit goes through, Cameron is finished. Boris is his likely successor. Could you see him sitting down for tea with the Queen every week?

Not sure she'd take the meeting.

It basically boils down to two issues.

Immigration, as you mentioned, is one of the issues. As one of the strongest economies in Britain (and being English-speaking and a reputation for being more acceptive of immigrants) Britain saw a huge influx of EU migrants in the last decade. Many parts of Britain are feeling the impact of overcrowded social services and a severe housing shortage. The ramp up in EU immigration followed a decade of very large non-EU migration under the previous Labour government. There are also cultural aspects to the immigration issue. The government and economists generally claim that immigrants are a net economic benefit to British society but most of these studies have not factored in the burden placed on housing and social programs, which have not kept up with the population growth particularly in the south of England. While the British government can take steps to reduce non EU immigration, under current EU laws they cannot prevent any EU citizen from moving to the UK, so there's a perception of uncontrollable immigration for the foreseeable future.

Sovereignty is the other issue. Britain entered the EU when it was still the Common Market and strictly a trade entity. Over the years the Common Market has transformed, largely through stealth, into the present day EU, which is now an entity that no one in Britain voted for in the Common Market referendum in the 1970s (although if Remain side wins the referendum it will be seen as an indirect approval of the EU). As the EU has grown, more power has been transferred from national governments to a centralized EU government in Brussels, which is not directly elected by the British population and is a very opaque, byzantine machine with minimal accountability yet with tremendous powers. The trend of the EU is towards greater and greater centralization and eventual federalization. Many people in Britain are not happy about this trend. They are also unhappy that each stage of the EU's growth happened more or less on the sly. Tony Blair promised a vote before he signed a key treaty, but he went ahead and signed it without calling for one. Gordon Brown signed another major treaty handing over powers without the direct consent of the British population. In many other EU countries, referendums were held, but the results were ignored if the voters rejected the proposed treaties (or submitted to another referendum, as my Irish friend, who is generally pro EU, even admitted that in the Irish case, the government literally promised to keep having referendums until they got the result they wanted).

If you can imagine the countries of North America in a similar set up like the EU, with free population movement across all the countries from Canada to Mexico to the various islands, with a supranational court headquartered in, say, Havana or Mexico City that takes precedence over the US Supreme Court, a supranational government and political body of whose representatives the vast majority are not from your country and more often than not outvote your own representatives, a common currency for all these nations, a substantial portion of your own laws have to be rewritten to incorporate mandates from the political body despite that you didn't vote for it, well, that gives you a decent idea of what the EU is like. That's why it is always hypocritical for Americans, if you consider a nation's sovereignty to be paramount as many Americans do, to say Britain should stay in the EU if it prefers to leave, as the Americans (or Canadians) would never enter such a similar entity.

The real concerns for Brexit outside the UK or the EU is primarily fears that it would lead to severe economic repercussions not just for the UK or globally, but I've always disinclined to believe it. The economists predicting doom and gloom are generally the same economics who completely missed the 2008 economic collapse. Or the IMF, which accepted austerity for Greece with predictions that the Greek economy would return to regular growth by 2013 (laughable, as you can see).

If the Remain side wins, it will largely be because of these economic fears, and it is understandable why so many people are unwilling to risk the status quo where things aren't overly bad for the unknown. The long term future of the EU, however, I find interesting. It's currently a veneer of respectability that barely hides bubbling dissatisfaction across many parts of Europe.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm seeing a lot of correlations between this and our own countries politics: the populist desire to not get involved with other countries and to take severe stands on immigration. I can also see a stark similarity between Boris Johnson and Donald Trump - hell, they even look alike. Could you picture these two at a G8 summit?

Exactly. Same basic reactions/fears/hair

Sadly, if the vote to exit goes through, Cameron is finished. Boris is his likely successor. Could you see him sitting down for tea with the Queen every week?

Not sure she'd take the meeting.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm seeing a lot of correlations between this and our own countries politics: the populist desire to not get involved with other countries and to take severe stands on immigration. I can also see a stark similarity between Boris Johnson and Donald Trump - hell, they even look alike. Could you picture these two at a G8 summit?

Exactly. Same basic reactions/fears/hair

Sadly, if the vote to exit goes through, Cameron is finished. Boris is his likely successor. Could you see him sitting down for tea with the Queen every week?

Anonymous wrote:John Oliver does a pretty good job with the cons: http://youtu.be/iAgKHSNqxa8 I don't really se the pros for Britain or the EU.

Thanks for this - although it is comedy, its very informative. It's also heartening to see that a British native thinks its a bad idea. That song at the end is awesome!

Anonymous wrote:I'm seeing a lot of correlations between this and our own countries politics: the populist desire to not get involved with other countries and to take severe stands on immigration. I can also see a stark similarity between Boris Johnson and Donald Trump - hell, they even look alike. Could you picture these two at a G8 summit?

Exactly. Same basic reactions/fears/hair

I'm seeing a lot of correlations between this and our own countries politics: the populist desire to not get involved with other countries and to take severe stands on immigration. I can also see a stark similarity between Boris Johnson and Donald Trump - hell, they even look alike. Could you picture these two at a G8 summit?

They also want to control their own destinies. The EU promulgates a lot of regulations that affect British laws. Brexit advocate resent that these regulations come from Brussels where they have less control over the results. It's equivalent to states-rights advocates in the US.

Immigration. They want to be able to control the flow of immigrants from E. Europe.

The reason the European Union formed was to combine the economies of the different European nations. This would encourage trade across the continent and bolster the economies of the smaller nations. Alternately, the economies of the stronger nations, such as UK and Germany, become much more affected when the smaller nations are struggling. Even worse, several nations lied (a lot) about the current state of their economies so things seemed strong for the first few years but after a while several countries couldn't pay off their debts to the larger nations and a recession started. While Germany is stuck being the grim big brother to all these nations in debt, UK essentially wants out. They do not want their economy dragged down by a bunch of deadbeat liers.

John Oliver does a pretty good job with the cons: http://youtu.be/iAgKHSNqxa8 I don't really se the pros for Britain or the EU.

Admittedly, I have not been on top of this issue. However, what little I have read leads me to question what the benefit(s) would be for Britian to leave the EU. Is it fear over immigration? Well shit, there are other ways of dealing with that.

Initially I didn't really care, because it's Britian and I am an American. But now, I'm starting to read that the implications of them leaving could impact the global economy in a devastating fashion.

Does anyone else have any insight as to how this even got started, and why people would want this?

If there is another thread on this, I apologize.