Interesting that no Leave voters have responded to this. May be down to the time difference to where I am.
I think it depends on the nature of the final deal with the EU. In my opinion most of the differences (personally I don’t see them as benefits) will be intangible and emotional, around ‘taking back control’, sovereignty, independence. As this is undeniably important to some people, it shouldn’t be ignored. It’s possible that some of this ‘control’ can be used to increase the competitiveness of some sectors of the economy, but that can only be judged in the light of the final agreement and it will remain to be seen how this will benefit ordinary people. I think the promise of trade deals with lots of other countries is a bit of a red herring, we already have deals with 55 countries through the EU (excluding EU countries) which will have to be renegotiated. Again, if we do get trade deals I think we should judge them by benefits to ordinary people, not just shareholders. If a trade deal with the US leads to workers at company X getting a pay rise, it’s good.
The area of biggest change may be immigration. It’s falling already and will probably fall more, even if (in my view) the government lacks the tools and resources to effectively manage it (just look at non EU immigration). While people like me think this will actually damage our economy, that’s not the point as I think a large number of people voted leave on this issue and there are genuine and understandable concerns about levels of immigrants in some areas. So, Brexit might well deliver on this issue. Whether people who live in areas where there are already high numbers of immigrants in the population will actually see any difference is another question, that would depend on people voluntarily leaving which I guess would depend on how well the economy is doing, how well accepted they feel, and what they have to go back to.
Finally there is the cash, the alleged ‘Brexit dividend’. I am struggling to see how this actually exists, given the £ billions we expect to pay the EU, and the £ billions we will have to spend maintaining grants that come from the EU and replacing infrastructure and functions currently provided by the EU. If any government increases public spending or cuts taxes and directly attributes it to savings from leaving the EU, then we will know.
Obviously this is written from my, remain, perspective, but I have tried to be a little balanced and avoid inflammatory language. I suspect that it will be very difficult to disentangle the benefits and downsides of leaving from what happens due to the general global economy and our own, unrelated to EU government policy, and the same would be true if we stayed.
A good summary, albeit with an understandably remain slant, Stan. In addition, I think you need to look at the direction in which the EU is moving - that is, towards a federal block. Had we remained in the club and not joined the Euro, we would have found increasingly we were members on the outside of the Eurozone members that had become a club within a club and controlled the way the EU was run. This, despite the fact that we were the 2nd largest financial contributors. We would have been faced with the decision either to join the Euro to regain influence or be a rather toothless, negative force to the irritation of the remaining 27 member states.
I believe that our relationship with Europe will be improved when we have our independence and the EU is free (subject to a growing recalcitrance in some parts of the Continent) to go its own way.
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