Let's embrace the world: Why I'm voting Leave

[Asmodian]

Sigh the requirement to have a EU subsidiary only concerns conducting active marketing campaigns within the EU or having offices in the EU, nothing is preventing EU customers from seeking to open accounts with foreign banks. UK banks do not need to advertise in the EU. They will not be able to have offices in Eu countries without a license but frankly today you do not need physical office of the bank near you, possible exception is retail banking catering to business with cash transactions.
To word it exactly Banks not licensed in the EU can not offer services in the EU but nothing is stooping them from offering services in the UK to EU residents, with the technological progress there is little disadvantage to this. With a liberal regulation account can be opened from your home over the internet. Do you people really think that all 300 (rough number) Swiss banks do not have significant European clientele? Or that they all have EU passports? Until recently the fact that they did not have a physical presence in the EU was even a major advantage.

[Flixy]

Swiss banks apparently sell to the EU through their British branches, which they can't anymore either if you'd lose passporting rights.

http://www.investmenteurope.net/regi...ve-uk-exports/


And considering most arguments seem to be about the economy and business I thought it'd be interesting to nie that businesses prefer remain by some margin.

[Asmodian]

[QUOTE=Flixy;173486]Swiss banks apparently sell to the EU through their British branches, which they can't anymore either if you'd lose passporting rights.

http://www.investmenteurope.net/regi...ve-uk-exports/

Its simply not true, i.e.
1) It is true that some Swiss banks have UK subsidiaries
2) It is true that this Grants them EU passport
3) It is certainly not true for all or even the majority of Swiss banks
4) It is not needed to accept EU clients.

Many banks have subsidiaries in UK because it is important to be represented in such an the number one financial center and because regulation in UK is actually better then in Switzerland even now, I imagine they will still have these subsidiaries should Britain leave the EU

[Hazir]

If a Remain vote isn't close, UKIP may disintegrate anyway. There won't be another referendum for a generation, so what are they going to do with themselves? "We should leave the EU!" "We had a vote on this and you lost, badly. fuck off"

We may also rid ourselves of Boris Johnson, who's made such a fool of himself this campaign I now have a hard time seeing him as prime minister.

The polls aren't suggesting a strong Remain win, of course. They're currently showing a slight remain lead, but they're basically neck and neck - but I'm prepared for the polls to be wildly inaccurate.

The Remain campaign is starting to do something that might actually be recognised as serious campaigning, hammering on the economic damage argument, and how most of the things Leave and UKIP would have everyone believe about the EU are simply outright false. But... hello? There's, like, a day to go. Maybe if they'd been doing this from the start we wouldn't be looking at neck and neck polls.

I doubt that very much; as it happens the eurosceptics are not giving up at any time. No matter what amount of actual information you throw at them it will never make it through the filter of their basic hate of everything European (no I don't believe them when they say they love Europe but hate the EU, their contempt it too obvious). If you want an example of that just look at Randblade.

The majority of people are not that interested and only tune in when they absolutely have to. If they happen to hear a debate going on between someone who hates the EU and someone who challenges their nonsense the person on the EU side almost automatically becomes tainted with the mark 'sycophant to the Euro-gravy train', regardless of what that persons actual ideas about the EU are. You can be a Verhofstad type federalist or a Cameron type sceptic, if you engage in a debate with a EU-hater, for the disinterested you become just as bad as the UKIP loony.

In the end the fight isn't really about the economical risk or if you are able to cope with a certain level or immigration or that your passport gets checked at the border. The fight is about whether or not you want to be part of a EU which indeed is encroaching more on the sovereign rights of its memberstates (just look at how even the German Constitutional Court is grudgingly giving in to the EU being able to act against the will of one of it's members today) or if you don't want to be part of it. An entirely separate question is how to make that EU work in a way that the majority will be able to describe as democratic, transparant and accountable.

[RandBlade]

I doubt that very much; as it happens the eurosceptics are not giving up at any time. No matter what amount of actual information you throw at them it will never make it through the filter of their basic hate of everything European (no I don't believe them when they say they love Europe but hate the EU, their contempt it too obvious). If you want an example of that just look at Randblade.

I don't hate Europe or anything European, I'm in the 45-55% of the nation that is voting Leave but not due to hate. To be honest it's the logical thing to do based on your arguments about how the UK outside the Euro is powerless within in the EU. Based on your arguments that the Eurozone can and will make the laws and decisions independently of the UK. I didn't think you were right but based on how shoddily Cameron was treated it seems you were so the logical thing to do is either sign up to full integration (join the Euro and Schengen) or Leave. The current middle ground isn't working. As you've repeatedly argued.

Why is the argument rational coming from you and hateful if I agree with you?

In the end the fight isn't really about the economical risk or if you are able to cope with a certain level or immigration or that your passport gets checked at the border. The fight is about whether or not you want to be part of a EU which indeed is encroaching more on the sovereign rights of its memberstates (just look at how even the German Constitutional Court is grudgingly giving in to the EU being able to act against the will of one of it's members today) or if you don't want to be part of it. An entirely separate question is how to make that EU work in a way that the majority will be able to describe as democratic, transparant and accountable.

I don't want that. I want a working EU that does not infringe on our sovereignty. I was hopeful Cameron could negotiate improvements in that direction. It didn't happen.

[Loki]

You can't have an EU that doesn't infringe on your sovereignty. You do realize that even a trade agreement infringes on your sovereignty, right?

I should note that your membership in NATO infringes on your sovereignty. As does your membership in the United Nations. And especially your membership in the World Trade Organization. Time to leave all three I think.

[RandBlade]

That's ridiculous. The random changes that occur would have pushed the pound and/or the stock market in either direction. The reality is that they pushed it in one direction, a direction consistent with the market fearing a Brexit. Virtually all the financial experts are saying the exact same thing. But as Khen's video says, fuck the experts right? Who needs experts when you have Farage and Johnson!

Edit: More "dumb" experts: http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0Z62FR

Today's polls have all shown a move towards Leave. The last 4 polls in a row all show moves to Leave. FTSE is up this week and the pound is up today against both the dollar and the euro.

Presumably then under your not quite original theory that correlation is causation that means the markets favour Brexit.

[Loki]

The news on Sunday was that support for Leave for dissipating. Don't know where you're getting your info from.

And today's markets have gone down. Must be another coincidence.

[Aimless]

The movements of the FTSE is influenced by many things other than the referendum. Again, you should be keeping an eye on options market and on volatility in the pound.

[RandBlade]

That was Sunday, today is Tuesday.

http://www2.politicalbetting.com/ind...-doing-better/
The direction of travel is all one way

Polling analysis where you have plenty of surveys is all about direction of travel and there’s a very clear message from the latest referendum surveys – it’s getting tighter and LEAVE’s position is improving.

Survation REMAIN lead down from 3% on Sunday to 1% today

YouGov LEAVE retakes lead in latest poll after being behind on Sunday

ORB phone Amogst all voters REMAIN gap down to less than 3%

Opinium Level pegging compared with REMAIN lead the week before

At the time I was writing (which was well after all these polls were published) the FTSE and sterling was up. FTSE (and other markets) seems to have taken a hit after Yellen started testifying. As I'm writing sterling is still up against the euro.

[RandBlade]

A fifth poll in a row showing movement to Leave has been published* and now the FTSE is back up in positive territory again. Who'd have thought that correlation may not be the same thing as causation, absolutely shocking isn't it!

* SurveyMonkey, irregular pollster but one of the most accurate May 2015, showing Leave +1 in the lead from what was level pegging.

[Hazir]

You can't have an EU that doesn't infringe on your sovereignty. You do realize that even a trade agreement infringes on your sovereignty, right?

I should note that your membership in NATO infringes on your sovereignty. As does your membership in the United Nations. And especially your membership in the World Trade Organization. Time to leave all three I think.

Thanks for covering that; my reply would have been and I want a unicorn and cake that doesn t make me fat.

[Hazir]

In other bizar news; Boris Johnson has promised a public apology if Brexit causes a recession. Much good that will do.

[RandBlade]

You can't have an EU that doesn't infringe on your sovereignty. You do realize that even a trade agreement infringes on your sovereignty, right?

I should note that your membership in NATO infringes on your sovereignty. As does your membership in the United Nations. And especially your membership in the World Trade Organization. Time to leave all three I think.

Bull. They are not remotely comparable, non-British EU Commissioners and Parliamentarians can initiate and create new laws without our consent and outvote us in their creation.

Are you telling me that other NATO nations can out-vote us and initiate a non-defensive war and compel our troops to join if we don't want to? No that can't happen.
Are you telling me that the UN Security Council can outvote the UK and pass resolutions we vote against? Not only can that not happen, we have a permanent veto!
Are you telling me that the WTO if we were to join it under our own terms (rather than being "represented" by the EU) could pass new laws to override British laws that the British voted against? No that can't happen.

The UN kind of proves my point. We have a permanent veto on every single UNSC Resolution, the EU rules are determined by QMV which we are outvoted on. The UN can apparently work with a British veto, but the EU apparently can't.

[Khendraja'aro]

Um, you do realize that you do have veto rights in the EU, my dear? Just not on everything. So, any more lies and FUD you want to spread? But, hey, educate yourself a bit before doing so, would you? http://www.press.umich.edu/script/press/2012704

Or why do you think actions against Poland won't move beyond a stern talking to, ever? It's certainly not because Hungary would veto anything beyond that, no, not at all...

[RandBlade]

That we don't have a veto over everything that affects us is not a lie.

Please tell me how many UN Security Council Resolutions have passed in the past decade that the UK voted against but passed despite the UK voting against?
Please tell me how many EU Directives, Regulations etc have passed in the past decade that the UK voted against but passed despite the UK voting against?

[RandBlade]

Since 2009 the UK has been on the losing side of 12.3% of votes in the Council of Ministers.
Since 1945 the UK zero votes have been passed that the UK voted against in the UNSC.

[Khendraja'aro]

That we don't have a veto over everything that affects us is not a lie.

You're clearly incapable of clear thought on this matter. I never said said, in fact, I stated explicitly and I quote myself here:

Um, you do realize that you do have veto rights in the EU, my dear? Just not on everything

Next time, engage your brain before going into RARGLEBLARGELWAAAAAARGH! mode. I used your examples. For example, the NATO one is patently false as the EU equally CANNOT pressure you into a war. In fact, that's one of those things you do have a veto right on, you moron!

The resolution thingie? You have a veto on that as well.

Overriding laws? Well, if we didn't have that you'd probably be residing in an uninhabitable wasteland by now. You might want to look into your country's environmental issues in the 70's and who exactly made you finally resolve those.

[RandBlade]

What you said was bollocks because you called my claim "more lies and FUD" despite the fact I'd made clear that the UN, NATO and WTO (if we were our own members) could never initiate new laws etc that we oppose. Only if we have a permanent veto like we do in the UN would my claim be "more lies and FUD", the fact that we retain a veto on a tiny proportion of issues is neither here nor there.

More facts. Since 2009 in the European Parliament the UK delegation has lost roughly a third of all votes. Despite the fact most votes are consensual so losing votes is rare for most nations.
Since 2009 in the UN Security Council the UK has seen zero resolutions passed that we voted against.

[RandBlade]

I used your examples. For example, the NATO one is patently false as the EU equally CANNOT pressure you into a war. In fact, that's one of those things you do have a veto right on, you moron!

The resolution thingie? You have a veto on that as well.

Overriding laws? Well, if we didn't have that you'd probably be residing in an uninhabitable wasteland by now. You might want to look into your country's environmental issues in the 70's and who exactly made you finally resolve those.

This has all been edited in since I replied above. They're not my examples they're Loki's. NATO is a military alliance, the EU is not. Look at the EU's functionality and we can and are outvoted in the EU in a way that does not ever happen in NATO.

As for living in "an uninhabitable wasteland", if you believe that you'll believe anything. If we can't get a workable system that means we don't lose a third of all EU Parliament votes and an eigth of all Council of Minister votes and have laws passed that we don't want, then I'm sure we can survive without turning ourselves into an uninhabitable wasteland.

[Khendraja'aro]

And how workable do you think your country would be if a party with 1% of the seats had a veto right on everything? Are you really that deluded?

As for the wasteland, my dear, you really should hit some history books.

[Hazir]

And how workable do you think your country would be if a party with 1% of the seats had a veto right on everything? Are you really that deluded?

As for the wasteland, my dear, you really should hit some history books.

Now he will explain to you that it doesn't matter if have a mere plurality in a national vote to impose your will on all others in the land. Because the rule for the EU is that it is only democratic if everyone is voting yes, where as in the UK its totally democratic if the biggest minority gets its way.

Actually, that may be the problem with these Brexiteers, they are used to be able to totally fuck the country without even having to bother to get a majority and now that bloody EU messes with their sacred rights. There indeed is a democratic deficit, it's just not where they claim it is.

[Loki]

Bull. They are not remotely comparable, non-British EU Commissioners and Parliamentarians can initiate and create new laws without our consent and outvote us in their creation.

Are you telling me that other NATO nations can out-vote us and initiate a non-defensive war and compel our troops to join if we don't want to? No that can't happen.
Are you telling me that the UN Security Council can outvote the UK and pass resolutions we vote against? Not only can that not happen, we have a permanent veto!
Are you telling me that the WTO if we were to join it under our own terms (rather than being "represented" by the EU) could pass new laws to override British laws that the British voted against? No that can't happen.

The UN kind of proves my point. We have a permanent veto on every single UNSC Resolution, the EU rules are determined by QMV which we are outvoted on. The UN can apparently work with a British veto, but the EU apparently can't.

I don't think you have any understanding of what sovereignty is, nor do you seem to know much about the organizations mentioned above. The UN is more than the Security Council, which is the only UN organ where you have a veto. Your sovereignty argument only makes sense if you support the status quo. Because you certainly can't get the UN to do anything with your veto. Your argument makes even less sense for the WTO, which has an independent adjudication mechanism over which you certainly enjoy no veto (and no influence for that matter). Or the World Bank and IMF, to whom you have to contribute money, while enjoying less influence than you do in the EU. NATO might not obligate you to attack someone, but you could certainly be attacked by someone who hates another NATO member and assumes you will come to their defense (see Germany's attack against France in 1914).

More broadly, you give up some of your sovereignty each time you sign an international treaty, because that treaty places legal obligations on you, thereby limiting the scope of your actions. If you're going to resort back to your "international law is pointless" argument because no one will bomb you into the oblivion for violating a treaty, well, the same is true if you violate any EU regulation.

Lastly, you haven't provided an argument as to why sovereignty should be a country's main objective. If countries all guarded their sovereignty as jealously as you'd like the UK to guard its own, we'd never have international law and we'd never have any international organizations. We wouldn't have trade agreements either for that matter, as they remove your ability to regulate all aspects of your own economy.

[Hazir]

A little tidbit about how small countries fare when they have a freetrade deal with countries many times bigger; China and Switzerland.

The Swiss had to abolish their tariffs from the get go, the Chinese get up to 15 years to abolish tariffs. Take back control indeed.

[Aimless]

Now he will explain to you that it doesn't matter if have a mere plurality in a national vote to impose your will on all others in the land. Because the rule for the EU is that it is only democratic if everyone is voting yes, where as in the UK its totally democratic if the biggest minority gets its way.

Actually, that may be the problem with these Brexiteers, they are used to be able to totally fuck the country without even having to bother to get a majority and now that bloody EU messes with their sacred rights. There indeed is a democratic deficit, it's just not where they claim it is.

This particular peeve doesn't have to do with RB's views on democracy so much as it has to do with his view of sovereignty being defined as a binary-either or property made for British Empire. Someone who views sovereignty in that way can't see the EU as anything but an unacceptable existential threat to British sovereignty even though the Brits voluntarily gave the EU some of their sovereignty as well as supremacy over their laws in exchange for something they believed was more worthwhile.

The statistics about the voting successes of British MEPs strikes me as being a red herring in light of that. If the number had been 1% it would still not be okay in RB's book. No-one's surprised that the Brits are slightly more likely to be on the losing side of a vote, of course. When you're represented in the EU by a bunch of ass-clowns who were elected by a minority of your voters and are part of stupid alliances to which they aren't even particularly loyal then you should expect to lose every now and then. What surprises me is that the Brits don't "lose" more often.

Another thing that surprises me is that British royals have apparently used their power to veto laws

[Loki]

It's because most EU "laws" are uncontroversial.

[Aimless]

A little tidbit about how small countries fare when they have a freetrade deal with countries many times bigger; China and Switzerland.

The Swiss had to abolish their tariffs from the get go, the Chinese get up to 15 years to abolish tariffs. Take back control indeed.

This has been brought up several times but remains to be acknowledged, probably because RB's trying to figure out how he can explain that, while Switzerland is insignificant compared to China, the UK is at least China's equal in trade matters.

[Aimless]

It's because most EU "laws" are uncontroversial.

Yeah but I mean given the British propensity for seeing controversy where there shouldn't be any.

[Loki]

Considering that the UK is on the losing side three times more than anyone else, I think they do plenty of that. This means about 1/10 of all EU legislation is controversial to no one but the UK.

[Aimless]

Holy crap is that the rise of the Euroskeptic-groups we're seeing in the 2009-2015 graph?