Adi_Dem
Well-known member
More jaundiced interpretation and selective observations.
Of course being members of the SM and CU concedes power to EU on the conditions of inclusion in those specific arrangements. We can't stand alone and we do need Trade agreements.
We supposedly had input into the Maastricht and Lisbon political concentration and centralisation of European power. We had PM's who had no intention of vetoing and no intention of putting anything to referendum. These were fundamental changes.
I am not delighted with all aspects of the SM or CU but economically we can't have our cake and eat it. It is what it is and given we are unlikely to change it, we are better in it than out of it.
If we do rejoin those, and further political development and centralisation of the EU then attempts to change the SM and CU, then we would have a clear choice to make about leaving those arrangements again; but it would then be a much bigger deal to vote on joining once more the whole bloated showboat and where that had sailed and was sailing to.
It depends where your belief lies.
Some believe we can influence best within and are happy to let the behometh grow in scale and reach. They believe there are voting rights and vetos that leave us still in ultimate control. They point to rules and terms and hypotheticals of their own.
Others believe we don't have to be all in, accept we will take rules on some things as we would have to with any economic agreement. They don't conceptually like the central project and don't trust in conceptual rights and vetos that give illusion of influence and security.
There's nothing jaundiced or selective about it. I am setting out what the legal position was when we were part of the EU. No hypotheticals. You and others are setting out hypothetical bogeymen about what future PMs (the election of whom you will vote on) may or may not have done with the undeniable opt outs, rights of veto and influence we carried within the EU. And on the basis of those bogeymen you say we would be better off as members of the SM and CU through which you accept we would be rule takers but argue that we would carry influence because the EU would want us to be part of it despite the avalanche of evidence to the contrary.
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