You will find the decreasing number of FN supporters in places like Marseille and the north of the country where there are internal problems. Nothing to do with the EU, but French policy. All the polls show that the parties frequent appearances in courts for financial irregularities and plain racists comments have not gone down well with the French public.
Wait until the referendum is over then all sorts of delayed bad news will surface. This is why the leave campaign will continue. There is huge dissatisfaction with the amount of uncontrolled immigration in the UK, this will not change in two weeks.
There is no sign of the FN losing support, they regularly poll between 26 - 32%. Obviously areas where immigration is causing social problems support is higher, no different from the UK.
Sad really that that the leave campaign has now lost just about every debate on the economy and has to concentrate on immigration. As Nicola Sturgeon said tonight Boris was "only interested in David Cameron's job", and will say whatever. His naked ambition is sickening to watch, unless of course you hang on his every word.
Strange that a national newspaper ran an article discussing why the FN was losing support only last week.
We don't have such a system in place for tourists today - only for some countries that we have issues with. Even the black economy in this country could not pick up a mass illegal workforce from EU countries - in any case if the EU countries are in such good shape, why would a Frenchmen want to work illegally in the UK? What happened before the free movement of people to work anywhere in the EU but we did not have tourist Visa's - did we have mass illegal working? No, of course not. Why don't language students from EU countries that are in the Eurozone already go to Ireland? They have a mass of empty homes and lots on unemployed, they could easily attract them - why do the students not already go there? There is no need to introduce a tourist visa scheme for EU countries if there was a Brexit, just need to extend the working Visa scheme that is already in place for non-EU countries. Just more scare stories...
Europeans going on language learning holidays are already going to Ireland and Malta as alternatives to the UK. Going back in your mind to what conditions were like before the treaty of Rome is pointless because, at that time, East Europeans were not able to travel, and London did not have 17 million visitors per year. Many English people have developed a fixation about people from Eastern Europe (Poland, Rumania etc.) as if xenophobia has suddenly become acceptable (maybe because the new arrivals are not coloured, and it cannot be so easily identified as racism).
That's not actually a similarity though - in spite of the propaganda that comes out of London claiming otherwise, Scotland does not need 'mainland' support, being more than capable of standing on it's own two feet.
Twist the story again. I repeat before there was freedom of movement of people in the EU to live and work, tourist visas were not required. The fact that East Europeans were held behind barbed wire fences with goon towers and could not travel is immaterial. The reasons that London attracts so many tourists are many:- massive growth in wealth in countries like India & China, explosion of the no-frills airlines that all started in the UK, Eurostar, English has become THE international language, it has a massive hotel base after the Olympics and it is a wonderful city full of amazing things to do. Many of these would not go away after a Brexit - and if the doomsters are correct and the £ falls massively, it will be even cheaper to visit London. Maybe British people have developed a fixation about people from Eastern Europe because there are now hundreds of thousands of them living in Britain and they are very visible. 10 years ago you would never have heard an EE accent on the street, or in a shop/bar/restaurant/hotel/beach in a small provincial town in the UK, now you will hear one. Instead of calling us Xenophobes, just pull the racist card - you know you want to.
I am not twisting any stories W_Y. The number of visitors to London has increased dramatically since EU. membership - 68% of all visitors are from the EU. Do you think for one minute that the Euro tunnel would have been possible without Britain being in the EU ? My comment about xenophobia referred to the idea that in the past, when most immigrants to Britain were visibly very different ie. from the Caribbean, India, Pakistan etc. being anti immigration was more easy to label as 'racist'. People avoided criticizing immigration too much for this reason. Now it has become acceptable to do so because to be anti Polish or anti Rumanian is not so easy to label as racist. If I were to say 'there are too many blacks in Britain` then I would be rightly criticized for it so why can a person say the same about East Europeans with immunity ? Britain actually has an inflow of around 333,000 persons per year (having reduced the numbers leaving) - 85,000 are returning Britons, and the European population of the UK. increases by circa 185,000 every year (around 0.3% compared to the population as a whole) - and not all of those are from the East. So, bearing those figures in mind, this does not look like uncontrolled immigration (compare them to the figures of Germany if you like), and does not warrant the panic reaction which is appearing in some quarters. As I said, it looks like Xenophobia, it smells like it and so...........
There are problems with visas as far as the French go. Because they all carry ID cards they do not have passports. Well a tiny proportion do, but they are the few who travel outside the EU. Ask them to pay €100 for a passport and more for a visa and they just will not. Looking in the travel agents windows this afternoon it was very different to one in the UK. Just about every holiday on offer was inside the EU or a French island. The largest number of tourists in the UK from the EU come from France, over 2 million of them last year, and if they stopped coming it would create quite a fall in revenue for those who cater for them and less taxation for the government. The Spanish prime minister has warned that any changes imposed after an exit would be reciprocated. You could therefore assume that if visas were required for Spanish citizens to enter the UK, then the same would apply the other way round. Despite Farage seeming to believe that there is an EU passport, they do not exist, as every country issues their own. It is fair to assume therefore that every country within the EU could ask for visas for UK travelers. At the very least this is adding costs to the companies that need to send their employees on regular business trips around Europe. Loss of revenue for the country and increased business costs is what is on offer.
This is part of a general trend Frenchie. The Brexiters are asking us to believe that after an exit we will be in a position to negotiate from a position of strength with our European partners re. trade, tourism etc. it simply will not work in that way.
Can you imagine the sun bed carnage in Europe when all those German carmakers find themselves unemployed due to tariffs put on their cars to the UK. Us Brits will have to be up before 5 a.m. to stand any chance of finding a sun bed without a german towel on it!!
The fourth poll this week, all showing leave campaign ahead, has the biggest margin, a 10 point lead. Leave on 55%, remain on 45%, it is certainly hotting up. Several commentators remarked that the remain side fired their big guns too early, also big mistake to let the dodgy Blair campaign on their behalf.
I'm not good at political debate so have kept out of this one but i am definitely on the side of leaving the EU, having never wanted in in the first place. I read a post yesterday on FB and put it here for you to pick to pieces but it sums up my feelings exactly. "No one has suggested (except the politicians) that this is black or white argument. I fully accept there will be a major earthquake if we leave. There will be a short term run on the pound, interest rates will rise. House prices (I hope for all of us) will fall. Immigration will continue at a rate that will suit our economy as we have to have tax payers to pay our pensions, and we don't have the birth rate on our own. HOWEVER...life is not a snapshot. If you ask me whether we are better off where we are today, right now, as if there is no change ever over time, I would agree. BUT why does a single currency work in the US and is struggling in Europe? It is accepted that the only way to stop the mass migrations from the old East to the more affluent West is by having a single currency, single interest rate, single tax and benefit system, therefore single Exchequer, and in the end: single government. These are things no British government will be able to accept on behalf of its people, we would need opt-outs - and I ask you, is it better being inside a club, out in a corridor on your own, or outside the club, being able to conduct mutually respectful and friendly relations with that club? The idea that being in the EU gives us protection from future Tory governments is nonsense. The European parliament is only allowed at the moment to discuss and vote on policies put before it by the Commissariat. For Britain with its proud tradition of parliamentary representative democracy this goes right against the grain, and would, if we stay, be one of those things we should want to change from this quasi-authoritarian framework more towards ours. However, look at Europe. Golden Dawn in Greece, Kotleba's Our Slovakia - a Neo-Fascist party has 14 seats in its parliament, right wing and Nationalist elements rule Hungary, Poland; in the eastern part of Germany there is a rise of the neo-nazi right and the Pegida party, the Front National is banging on the door of the presidency in France; the Dutch Freedom Party (Geert Wilders etc) is in opposition in the Netherlands at the moment, previously in Governament...that's from the top of my head and there is more. These are our friends and what sort of protection of Gay rights, disabled rights, any rights do you think these people would offer you. Frankly, Britain, whatever you may think, does not 'do' extreme. You can point to Farage, he may have a loose mouth after lunch, but he's not extreme in the mould of a Trump even, let alone the European far-right. Even in the thirties at the height of Moseley and the British Union of Fascists, extreme politics gained no real ground. Do we want to be in a club like that? I have spoken to many well-connected people recently whose view is that In or Out, the EU will crumble eventually anyway and a Brexit may only serve to hasten that. The sharp differences between Eastern Europe and Western in outlook with Western German intervention and control do not augur well for the future of this continent. Europe, in the long term may need us to help, and we will need to be out, rather than in. Doubtless a rocky 10 years stare us in the face, but long term there is no economic, social or political reason why things may not be better after."
A sensible post. All economists agree that the EU project can only succeed if political union joins full fiscal union. At present it is obviously too transparent when some countries, mainly Germany, are subsidising other countries. This idea is not only unacceptable to the British public but also to the majorities in most donor countries. So there is a stark choice, not only for the UK but for the Euro area, become a single state or condemn many countries, mainly in Southern Europe, to a life of unnecessary hardship. Us oldies keep saying we voted on simply joining a common market area but it is now clear that full political integration was on the agenda from the start, they just made sure we were unaware of it at the time.
A good article H, I just wish you had written it yourself. Yes, a common currency works better if you have a common tax system but the common currency is not Europe, and it is interesting that other eurosceptic parties such as the AfD in Germany simply propose going back to the Deutschmark rather than leaving the EU. altogether. Even if the Euro collapsed the EU. would still exist (going back to the same conditions as in the 90s). Even in the case of a joint tax system etc. nobody is asking Britain to join because it is not in the Euro - and not in Schengen. The assumption that Britain can have more influence over Europe from outside is ludicrous - like saying that Scotland can influence the UK. more from outside. The assumption that Europe is going to allow Britain free access to markets etc. without free movement of people is an illusion - not to mention the effects which Brexit would have on tourism (particularly in London) - London receives over 11 Billion pounds per year from tourism and most of that is European, 65% of its exports go to Europe - do you think that you can reject Europe in this way without repercussions. I have heard so often from the Brexiters about how vibrant and inovative Britain is yet the same people are also projecting the idea that we are the helpless victims in Brussels (ie. without influence) - these 2 pictures do not fit well to each other. Why is Britain, as the 2nd biggest economy, not able to exert influence in Brussels - significantly more than outside of it. Do the British think that they will compensate for this through the goodwill of the rest of the World, when the only World leader actually in favour of Brexit is Putin ? A vote for Brexit is also a vote for constitutional crisis in the UK. Cameron would have to resign. The Brexiters would have no mandate to govern - the majority in favour of staying is over 300 in the house of commons. Scotland (and Northern Ireland ?) would probably also leave - so little England can be left alone with the Welsh as their only reluctant allies in the World. There are other solutions to the issue of uncontrolled immigration which fall short of complete withdrawal - in any case if Britain did withdraw then the present laws would still exist for the next 2 years, at least, which means that immigration could well actually rise over that period. I also rather resent the tone of the article in assuming that Britain has a monopoly on democracy - and that they are somehow innately more democratic than other Europeans (Europe is not full of people wearing jackboots) - bearing in mind Britain's way of conducting elections - lack of PR., the role of the British newspapers etc. I would say that the real position is the reverse of that indicated in this article.
