I suspect for the Liberals it might be another 100 years in the wilderness. As for Labour they need to ditch the Milliband and the Blairites and return to the centre. The Tories will probably continue to lurch even further to the right making even the BNP look like a centrist party eventually.

No we can't. That treaty established an entity that no longer exists. Remaining signatories of the treaty of Rome is not possible without without also signing up for Maastricht and Lisbon.

We will have to negotiate a new status entirely. Worse still, the Euros will have two reasons to drag their feet. Firstly to punish us and make an example of us. Secondly, there are lots of companies who have come to Britain in order to gain access to the European market, the longer our connection to that market remains uncertain, the greater is the pressure to relocate.

In so far as that can be called a sentence at all, it's just an empty tautology. What point are you attempting to convey?


"They" are not able to invite us to join. Unless "they" refers to the US congress, which has made no such offer. A few American right wingers and the subsequently jailed Conrad Black cooked up such a scheme years ago, but it has never gone anywhere and is deeply implausible.


The EU has had exclusive rights to sign trade pacts on behalf of member nations for decades. The UK has no trade pacts, and cannot legally sign any until leaving the EU. Nobody is going to initiate the tortuous process of negotiating with us until they know for sure that we are going to be dealing with them ourselves instead of via the formal arrangements we already have. And they don't get thrown together in an afternoon, there are usually hundreds of special interest groups arguing over every detail, politicians spend months or years horse trading the stupidest [LIFTED], then all the relevant parliaments have to ratify, and then they can take years to come into effect, and any reductions of tariffs are usually gradual.

We will get zero quick wins of any value to us, and all the goodies we are used to will get taken right away from us on a whim. If India wants to promote its whisky industry for some reason, they will raise tariffs on imports of it, and let us go whining to the WTO. They won't do the same to French wine.

In addition, if we quit the EU they won't have any spare representatives anyway because they will be busy working out how this affects their relationship with the far more important trading block we have just left.

Certainly that's a .... wait, what?

I think one of the side effects of Amnesia must be losing a sense of direction.

[quote="ShockWaffle"]

we shall find out when we leave the EU ...

You do realise that, outside of these shores, a lot of the rest of the planet finds us nothing more than faintly amusing? We have very little power, very little influence and no way of getting more of either. We have a political system that is a farce and we are completely in thrall to a few rich entities. We depend utterly on the co-operation other states for our defence and economy.

If we leave the EU, the UK will be taking it up the dirt pipe from everyone for decades to come.

We would do well to learn from the decline of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

no worries, i think our dirt pipes are big enough to handle it, the EU have made sure of that already ...

Exactly what is it that you think the EU has done?

I think that they will get even bigger outside the EU.

we need a good clear out ...

exist ...

Yes it does

Exactly what is it that you think the EU has done?

Turned several democracies into a dictatorship.