Friday, November 6, 2009

Glad to see the back of EU?

Lots of ways really, but lets stick to the legal non violent ones for now.

1) Repeal the 1972 European Communities Act. Quite simple really though definitely in the hands of politicians and we already know we can't trust politicians. Still it would re-assert the sovereignty of Westminster over the EU and take us out of the EU in one stroke.

2) Use the (now) existing clauses in Lisbon to take us out, problem being that it would still leave us with a 2 year cooling off period where they'd either milk us dry or bribe our politicos to renege on the details.

3) The UK government could authorise an in or out referendum, if voted for out, go from there. James Higham is currently trying to get an alliance coalition going to do this very thing.

4) Split up the UK. (and as an Englishman this one does appeal to me) We allow the Scots (and the Welsh) their independence referendum and encourage them to take it. This would leave both England Scotland and Wales having to re-apply for EU membership, which an English Parliament does not apply for. No UK no EU for us.

For those who wonder if leaving the EU would leave us isolated and alone facing a trade crisis, I'd point out that most UK trade is internal and the EU needs to trade with us far more than we need to trade with them. The UK is an international trader as opposed to the EU which mostly trades internally and is the reason they have trade tariffs to protect their markets. So, England probably could join EFTA and trade with the EU that way, but also use the money we save from not having to apply EU regulations to our products and services to gaining new markets elsewhere (EU regulations cost the taxpayer £66 billion) In that we'd only need to apply EU regulations to trade with them, and not for anyone else.

So in order to leave the EU there are several options, all having advantages yet all very unlikely unless there's a political will to do so, currently there isn't, but I'm convinced that sooner or later it will and we'll leave.

4 annotations:

Barking Spider said...

Things would have to be left in such a way so that Labour, should we ever be unfortunate enough to see them back in power, can NEVER take us back into it, QM.

Quiet_Man said...

Removing Scotland and Wales from the union would remove Labour from the political map of England. I doubt that the English would ever vote to re-enter the EU again.

Barking Spider said...

That's very true, QM, but I was approaching it from the possibility of achieving what we all want and know is right for us without necessarily needing to break up the union. Labour are pretty stuffed in both Scotland and Wales at present.

Dark Lochnagar said...

It would just be like the thing, if Scotland achieved my dream of independence and I had to move to England to get away from the E.C.!