Brexit. Why do Brits want Out of the EU?

livinglava wrote:

If you look at the history of unions, especially in Europe, the unions following WWII were always strong enough to maintain wage growth that outpaces inflation. In other words, they were successful at keeping the purchasing power of the middle-class on par with productivity growth more generally.

I was born after WWII.
I live in Europe.
I've studied history.
I'm not aware of any "union" in Europe besides
- the European Economic Cooperation (OEEC), founded 1948,
- Benelux (1948),
-- both becoming/joining the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951,
--- on 25th March 1957, the Treaties of Rome were signed, establishing the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom).
You certainly know what happened afterwards ... 26 (27 with the UK) EU-countries now.

To what other unions (plural, as far as I get it) are you referring, especially, since these "unions following WWII were always strong enough to maintain wage growth that outpaces inflation" to use your own words.

You should switch to other sources for news.
Besides that the EU has indeed antitrust laws. Perhaps, that's called 'socialist', but in the USA, you've got the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890 ...

Does that only work in one way? I mean, 3 million UK-citizens are leaving permanently in other EU-countries.

Besides that, the UK is not a Schengen country.

Even if so: labour (trade) unions aren't political parties in any EU-parliament.

Most of the British public now back having a Final Say referendum on Brexit whatever the outcome eventually is, an exclusive poll for The Independent has found.

Amid the chaos in parliament, backing for a new public vote, which has simmered just below 50 per cent for months, finally broke through into a majority in April, according to the BMG Research survey.

Major players in both main parties have signalled that a referendum could be the way forward, including chancellor Philip Hammond and shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry.

But despite the clear desire for a vote to break the Brexit impasse and reset British politics, the survey once again showed a country deeply divided.

The research revealed Britain has no clear favourite for what the referendum should ask – with different groups wanting no deal, Remain and Ms May’s proposal as options.

And when it came to a Brexit agreement, most people believed it would be unacceptable if it did not allow the UK to undertake free trade deals and be free of the European Court of Justice rulings – in contrast to the options being pursued by MPs in Westminster.

The survey of a weighted sample of more than 1,500 people in early April asked: “Would you support the British public having the final vote on Brexit, whatever the outcome of negotiations – whether a deal is reached or not?”

Some 52 per cent of people supported a new vote, 29 per cent “strongly” and 23 per cent “somewhat”, while just 24 per cent opposed, to some degree, having another referendum. The remaining 24 per cent replied: “Don’t know.”

Prime minister says Brexit could ‘slip through our fingers’ as Tory party fears that taking part in EU election would boost far right

Theresa May is being warned by her mutinous MPs that they will move to oust her within weeks if the UK is forced to take part in European elections next month and extend its EU membership beyond the end of June.

Tory MPs are increasingly angry at the prospect of voters being asked to go to the polls to elect MEPs three years after the Brexit referendum, in an election they fear will be boycotted by many Conservatives and be a gift to the far right and Nigel Farage’s new Brexit party. Senior Tories said one silver lining of a long extension would be that it would allow them to move quickly to force May out, and hold a leadership election starting as soon as this month.

The warnings came as the prime minister made a last desperate appeal on Saturday night to MPs to back a deal, saying there was an increasing danger Brexit would “slip though our fingers”. May said: “Because parliament has made clear it will stop the UK leaving without a deal, we now have a stark choice: leave the European Union with a deal or do not leave at all.

“The longer this takes, the greater the risk of the UK never leaving at all. It would mean letting the Brexit that the British people voted for slip through our fingers. I will not stand for that. It is essential we deliver what people voted for, and to do that we need to get a deal over the line.”

Conservative MP Nigel Evans, a member of the 1922 committee of backbenchers said last night that, if May failed to deliver Brexit and all she could do was secure a long extension at an EU summit on Wednesday, she would face overwhelming pressure to step down. “At the moment there is focus on delivering Brexit, but if a long delay becomes a reality I believe the noises off about removing the prime minister will become a cacophony,” he said. “I and many other Conservatives would prefer leaving the EU on World Trade Organisation terms to any humiliating long extension that forces us to take part in the European elections.”

Nigel Adams, a former minister who quit last week over May’s decision to hold talks on Brexit with Jeremy Corbyn, said: “Over 170 Conservative MPs including cabinet ministers signed a letter to the PM last week urging her to ensure the UK does not take part in the European elections. Doing so will not end well.”

With discussions on Brexit between the government and Labour appearing to have stalled on Friday, there are fears among senior Conservatives that EU leaders will demand the UK remains in the EU for up to a year and takes part in European elections, unless parliament can agree a Brexit deal before 22 May.

Last month May told Tory MPs that she would stand down once Brexit had been delivered. If there was a lengthy extension to membership, the Tory party rulebook means she could not be forced out before December if she wished to go on. But an increasing number of her MPs and ministers believe her time would be up.

It is also understood that the foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, a potential frontrunner to succeed May, has been informing backbenchers that he would prefer to leave on WTO terms rather than accept a long extension and made this clear in cabinet discussions last week.

Sir Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 committee, told the Observer: “British participation in European elections three years after a majority of the British people voted to leave the EU would be a massive political mistake. The results for the mainstream parties would be likely to be poor and more extreme parties would be looking forward to a massive opportunity.

“Everything should be done to ensure the UK leaves in the near future, obviating the need to participate in the European elections.”

On Saturday night Downing Street said discussions with Labour to find a Brexit compromise that could pass through parliament before Wednesday’s EU summit were “ongoing” at a technical level, but declined to be drawn on whether there were any plans to hold votes tomorrow or Tuesday, before May heads to Brussels.

In an attempt to convince Labour to sign up to a deal, No 10 is offering to enshrine in law a plan that would hand parliament a say in future trade talks with the EU. They believe it would stop a new Tory leader, such as Boris Johnson, shifting to a harder Brexit once May has been replaced.

Meanwhile the new Independent Group of 11 former Labour and Tory MPs said it had been approached by more than 200 people, including one former Tory minister, who wanted to stand for the embryonic party in the European elections, which it sees as a chance to mobilise Remain voters and make its first electoral breakthrough.

The goal of socialism is to harness capitalism to transfer/redistribute more money into more hands, not leave it concentrated in the hands of investors/owners/capitalists.

I still don't get to what other 'unions' than the EU and its predecessor organisations you were referring.

But obviously you've found the reason for the UK's Brexit.
However, that doesn't solve the problems they've got.

Quote:

The goal of socialism is to harness capitalism to transfer/redistribute more money into more hands, not leave it concentrated in the hands of investors/owners/capitalists.

Seems like a good idea to me.

So why can't the Torries just pursue their politics within the framework of the EU? 

[...] The history of the world is punctuated by examples of highly sophisticated, cultured and prosperous nations self-harming and often inflicting great misery on neighbours in the process. Countries, just like people, can make terrible life choices. Countries can take wrong turnings. Brexit has driven Britain down a very rocky road, but more gruesome fates have befallen others. Many of our neighbours have gone through much worse – only to subsequently recover their sanity.

I hope that European leaders bear this in mind when they meet this week to consider granting a second delay to Britain’s withdrawal from the EU. A further extension will require the unanimous consent of all 27 and it is not a given that they will oblige. The exasperation with Britain in European capitals is as palpable as it is entirely understandable. None of them willed Brexit, as European politicians often like to remind their British counterparts. Britain inflicted Brexit on itself.

The EU has spent many painful months negotiating a withdrawal agreement that involves quite a lot of significant concessions from its point of view. An aspect of the Brexit imbroglio that is always under-reported in Britain is that quite a lot of the EU’s leaders don’t much like the exit deal that was struck with Mrs May because they feel that it gives too many privileges to the departing member. The European commission and European leaders have spent a lot of time on this, time they didn’t have to waste when they need to focus on their own considerable challenges. Yet the British government and parliament have proved utterly incapable of signing off on the agreement or coalescing around an alternative to get us out of this toxic swamp.
[...]
It is hardly surprising that there are voices in the EU, those of the French being the loudest, asking what is to be gained from dragging out the pain. Emmanuel Macron is taking the hardest line on resisting an extension without a clear plan from Britain to resolve this nightmare. European leaders would only be human if they threw up their hands in despair and told Britain to go ahead and plunge on alone with a disaster of its own making.

They also have legitimate anxieties about allowing Britain to carry on as a half-in, half-out member. Some worry that Britain will use an extended period of membership to sabotage European decision-making, especially over appointments and budgets. The Tory ultras are trying to stoke those fears, none more recklessly than Jacob Rees-Mogg with his deliberately inflammatory suggestion that Britain should be “as difficult as possible” during any extension. He wants a crash-out Brexit and is trying to provoke European leaders into granting him his wish.
[...]
There’s also an immediate fear about our participation in next month’s elections to the European parliament. Prolonging the Brexit agony could be fuel for rightwing populists in other European states, though in truth they are likely to do well in those elections whether or not Britain is still a member of the EU.

While understanding Europe’s utter frustration with Britain, we should be hoping that they do not succumb to their exasperation. It would not be a good look for the EU to effectively eject the UK without a deal, even if that was almost entirely the UK’s fault. The EU thinks of itself as bigger than that, as Donald Tusk recently reminded his colleagues in an impassioned speech to the parliament that urged Europe not to abandon its many friends in Britain. In a threatening world, Europe should ask itself which foreign leaders would be first to celebrate a calamity Brexit? That would be Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, neither of whom is a friend of the EU.
[...]
However the Brexit saga ends, it will not change geography unless someone has discovered a magical new technology to tow the UK into the middle of the Atlantic or out to the South China Sea so that it can be moored off Singapore. (I expect there is a member of the Mogg’s European Research Group working up a pamphlet on how this fantasy could be fulfilled.) Whatever ultimately comes of this, Britain will have to find a way of living with its closest neighbours and they with Britain. It is in the long-term interests of all for Britain and its continent to have a good relationship, not one incurably poisoned by a calamity Brexit.

Allowing a further extension will require great forbearance from EU leaders. Yet it will be in their enlightened self-interest to try to contain their exasperation and grant more time in the hope that this country might regain its senses. When a friend is driving towards a cliff edge, it is best to try to slow them down, not press on the accelerator.

[...]
It is amazing to me that the political class, and especially those who favour leave, are not more ashamed. Geoffrey Cox, the attorney general, is often lionised as a great intellectual, in the way that Englishmen with booming voices, decent suits and no-nonsense characters often are.

But he rather let the cat out of the bag last week when he admitted: “I just feel we have underestimated [Brexit’s] complexity. We are unpicking 45 years of in-depth integration. This needed to be done with very great care, in a phased and graduated way.”

No, Mr Cox, you underestimated its complexity. A modestly bright 10-year-old, given a quick briefing on the history of Britain’s entanglement with the EU, would spot that getting out might be a bit tricky. But people like the attorney general believe that “tricky” is for ordinary folk. Brio, gumption, expertise, connections, probably (whisper it) the right school and university: these are meant to be the tools that reliably conquer complexity.

Or not, as it turns out. Cox’s bafflement is the sudden, pained recognition of an entire establishment class that it takes more than willpower to get your way. To this extent, Brexit has been ruthlessly democratising.

And it is in this traumatised state that the body politic begins the week, as the prime minister heads for Brussels as supplicant-in-chief for a nation completely unsure of where it is heading. Which prompts me to ask all you Brexiteers: that business about “taking back control”. How’s that working out for you so far?