22 Comments

• Dane Clouston 28th Mar '13 - 9:51am

  In 1984 New Zealand abolished all agricultural subsidies overnight. We should do the same thing. Why should the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy pay hundreds of thousand of pounds each and every year to wealthy landowners who have inherited their land tax free, thanks to unlimited exemptions from Inheritance Tax?

  What may suit some countries does not suit others. The only way we can stop this nonsense is by leaving full membership of the EU. And the sooner the better!

• Helen Dudden 28th Mar '13 - 10:11am

  What ever happens there are some members, who are clearly suffering a great deal.

  I must admit, when I visit one of those countries I find the situation very disturbing.

• Mark Valladares 28th Mar '13 - 10:27am

  Dane,

  Always interesting to see how the Liberal Party turns its back on our shared internationalist tradition. I’m assuming that had you been around at the time of Gladstone, the Bulgars would have been left to fend for themselves…

  But given that it is ALDE policy to shrink the size of the Common Agricultural Policy budget year on year, I’m happier to stay and fight for a better Europe than to simply wash my hands of the whole affair. But if one follows your argument to its logical conclusion, you end up with English Regions declaring their independence because they don’t like United Kingdom policy, and by logical extension villages declaring UDI because they don’t like their district council.

  The argument of pooled sovereignty versus glorious isolation is one that I’m quite happy to argue.

• Simon McGrath 28th Mar '13 - 12:24pm

  This is all very well but misses the point. Why do we send money to Brussels for them to send some of it back to us. Why should we have to ask the Commisisoner for flexibility, why not keep the money here and decide for ourselves.

  I am notasuggsting we should not be giving money to other regions but that is a different. As believers in devolution of power why can these decsions not be kept in the UK ?

• Paul R 28th Mar '13 - 1:22pm

  @Simon – because the EU isn’t just the UK and the UK has agreed to collective decision making (and funding) at EU level. That is part of being a member just as is other member states agreeing to allow UK firms to exports products and services tariff-free from the UK to their domestic markets and be sold there.

  If the UK doesn’t want to accept that membership comes with a “membership fee” then the other member states won’t extend the “membership benefits” to the UK.

• Dane Clouston 28th Mar '13 - 2:58pm

  Mark,

  When Gladstone was around there was no EU bureaucracy telling us what to do, and he would not have taken kindly to one if it had tried! Just because I am opposed to our membership of the EU does not mean that I am not an internationalist. Nor do I accept your reducctio ad absurdum argument re local government, which ignores all sorts of aspects of our country.

  I was deceived by Ted Heath in 1975 and voted for an European Economic Community, not for an EU dead set on a country called Europe, with so much ideological baggage that it cynically introduced a single currency in the hope that a consequent crisis would lead to that single country. So European nations and others now all suffer from the twenty first century version of the Gold Standard.

  The Liberal Party is an internationalist party that quite rightly and wisely opposed the UK joining the Euro. Thank goodness Gordon Brown was in power at the time and that the EU- and Euro-enthusiastic Liberal Democrats were not!

  The LIberal Party’s policy now is to try to reform the EU from within, while recognising that it may be necessary to leave if that is impossible, as I firmly believe it will be to a sufficient degree. So I personally would like us to get out of full membership now, while remaining an internationalist in other ways, as well as minding very much about the welfare of the people of our country, which is the UK, not the EU.

• Mark Valladares 28th Mar '13 - 3:04pm

  Dane,

  Or, in other words, you hold a view which is in a minority even within your own very small party.

  Have you thought of forming your own, perhaps?

• John Dunn 28th Mar '13 - 7:42pm

  Mark
  I don’t think wanting to leave the EU is a minority view. And if we had something resembling democracy, we could of course test it.

• Mark Valladares 28th Mar '13 - 9:28pm

  John,

  Do pay attention! He’s a member of the Liberal Party which is very small and is pro-EU. So, he has a minority view in a small party.

  Why don’t you find someone else to play with? Look, we get it, you don’t like the EU and you won’t be persuaded otherwise. And most of us don’t agree with you, and won’t be persuaded either. Don’t you think that you’re wasting your time here?

• Richard Dean 28th Mar '13 - 9:58pm

  Is it really fair to have an equal percentage cut across all regions? What if one region has greater need than another?

• Geoffrey Payne 28th Mar '13 - 10:37pm

  Just to correct you there Mark. The continuing Liberal Party is anti UK membership of the EU.
  Not that it really matters that much.

• Dave Page 28th Mar '13 - 11:13pm

  If the Liberal Party’s policy is to reform the EU from within, then why did they stand under the No2EU banner in the last European elections?

• andrew Colman 29th Mar '13 - 8:15am

  The UK should opt out of both CAP and CFP (Agriculture and fisheries policy). If we can opt out of the EURO and Schengen, why not CAP/CFP. I would much prefer be in the euro and/or in Schengen than in CAP/CFP and I suspect the majority in the UK will agree. Some in the EU will not like this but I do not bleleve twe will be forced out as the EU needs UK markets, we should call their bluff and announce a date when the UK will unilaterally withdraw from CAP and CFP.

• Dane Clouston 29th Mar '13 - 10:26am

  andrew Colman,

  “We should call their bluff and announce a date when the UK will unilaterally withdraw from CAP and CFP.”

  And if that means we have to leave full membership of the EU, so be it.

  Mark and Others

  Just for the record, the latest LIberal Party Assembly Resolution re the EU was in 2011 and was indeed more of a fudge and less EU-withdrawalist than I personally would have liked, but that’s democracy for you. Here it is:-

  “Assembly notes the existing policy of the Liberal Party, being that the UK should consider withdrawal should serious attempts to negotiate substantial reform fail.

  Assembly believes the European Union as it is currently constituted to be fundamentally illiberal. For example, assembly notes that between 1973 and 2002 there have been over 100,000 directives and regulations that are legally binding on EU nations. These directives lack any form of democratic legitimacy because only the unelected EU Commission can initiate such directives and no other body has the power to reject or amend any of them. Further, there are so many EU ‘laws’ that no individual or body of any kind can keep up with them, and there is an ever present danger of people being prosecuted for breaking laws which they could not reasonably have known existed.

  The Liberal Party has campaigned for the creation of a more flexible European Union which allows different levels of integration according to the needs and aspirations of individual nations within a broad free trade co-operative area.

  A more flexible and democratic European Commonwealth remains the Liberal Party’s both immediate and long term goal and we realise that to achieve this we need a constructive dialogue working with like minded Europeans. We reiterate that the loss of sovereignty agreed in the Lisbon Treaty was not endorsed by the British people and therefore we believe has no democratic legitimacy and we support all attempts by parliamentarians and other campaigners to reverse this treaty.

  We believe the current debt crisis in Greece reflects the inherent instability of straight jacket Europe and the instability of having a common currency without full political and economic integration. We will oppose any attempt to have further British taxes diverted to prop up this system.”

  Perhaps at this year’s Assembly we will focus more directly on the CAP and CFP.

• John Dunn 29th Mar '13 - 11:22am

  I would be much more interested to hear the pro European case, from a pro European, whose career and pension did not, rely on its continuance.

• Mark Valladares 29th Mar '13 - 11:40am

  John,

  I’d like to be four inches taller, a few pounds lighter and several million pounds wealthier. Your point being?

• jedibeeftrix 29th Mar '13 - 11:56am

  “Assembly notes the existing policy of the Liberal Party, being that the UK should consider withdrawal should serious attempts to negotiate substantial reform fail.”

  If we consider that “reform” in this instance is directed towards ensuring britain remains a fundamentally sovereign entity – given that we are not interested in the euro, schengen, fiscal integration, etc – then this is an extremely sensible policy.

• Richard Dean 29th Mar '13 - 12:15pm

  The way forward is surely to remain in the EU, to work to reform from within by agreement with others, and to work towards joining the Euro ASAP. No other future seems realistic.

• jedibeeftrix 29th Mar '13 - 1:35pm

  A very real future is that the euro-core fiscal convergence leaves us with a caucused eurozone consensus which will always be able to outvote our interests, at which point we will cease to be a sovereign state wielding Gladstone’s “power of the purse, at which point we would have to join the circus or leave. but then you know this, or should:

  ——————————————————————————————–

  “De jure incentives to take common position: This incentive is reinforced by the way the Commission’s ECB/EBA Regulations are currently drafted. For example:
  • The ECB Regulation envisions the ECB acting as a coordinator of eurozone national supervisors, with the view for them to take a common position. The ECB has already dropped hints that it intends to actively discourage dissenting opinions amongst eurozone national supervisors.
  • Through a eurozone caucus, some member states will indirectly boost their influence as their voting weight amongst eurozone countries is proportionally much greater than in the EU-27 (EU-28 with Croatia). This is particularly true of the larger eurozone member states.
  • The safeguards proposed by the European Commission (see Section 5 below) leave the eurozone with the upper hand. Given that the 17 eurozone countries already constitute a simple majority, these countries would only need to seek the support of three ‘outs’ – whereas non-euro countries would need at least four countries.
  De facto incentives to take a common euro position: To avoid banks free-riding on taxpayers in creditor countries, the ECB, Germany and others could well insist on putting into place perfectly harmonised eurozone regulations before moving to financial backstops. This could include single-target capital requirements, rules on leverage or bonuses – and could even spill over to market access issues. In turn, this would heavily shape decisions at the EBA, as the eurozone is unlikely to accept an uneven playing field within EU financial services as a whole.De facto incentives to take a common euro position: To avoid banks free-riding on taxpayers in creditor countries, the ECB, Germany and others could well insist on putting into place perfectly harmonised eurozone regulations before moving to financial backstops. This could include single-target capital requirements, rules on leverage or bonuses – and could even spill over to market access issues. In turn, this would heavily shape decisions at the EBA, as the eurozone is unlikely to accept an uneven playing field within EU financial services as a whole.
  Taken together, the EBA structure will therefore significantly shift the balance of power in favour of the eurozone, at the expense of the UK and other ‘outs’.”

  https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDYQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.openeurope.org.uk%2FContent%2FDocuments%2FPDFs%2FEBAsafeguards.pdf&ei=VbJEUbHOA8rDPJzygfgD&usg=AFQjCNEsLpyBOiimmO__bFcxbsBVSMQYTw&bvm=bv.43828540,d.ZWU

  ———————————————————————————————————-

  Of course we aren’t there yet, and it is to be hoped that we can avert that eventuality by explicitly separating the common market from eurozone governance.

  In this ambition, Cameron has done more than any lib-dem to keep Britain in the euro by negotiating the principles of:

  1. double QMV for non eurozone nations
  2. principle of non discrimination against single market

• Dane Clouston 29th Mar '13 - 2:02pm

  Richard Dean

  “The way forward is surely to remain in the EU, to work to reform from within by agreement with others, and to work towards joining the Euro ASAP. No other future seems realistic.”

  You must be joking! Other futures are indeed reaslistic.

  How can you wish to abolish currency flexibility when you can see how much harm the lack of it is doing to so many EU-zone countries!

• Dane Clouston 29th Mar '13 - 2:05pm

  “jedibeeftrix”

  “If we consider that “reform” in this instance is directed towards ensuring britain remains a fundamentally sovereign entity – given that we are not interested in the euro, schengen, fiscal integration, etc – then this is an extremely sensible policy.”

  That is certainly how I see it.

• Richard Dean 29th Mar '13 - 3:02pm

  Currency “flexibility” is rather similar to “volatility” isn’t it? It means that the value of the currency is determined to a greater extent by market forces. It represents a reduction in a country’s control over what it is worth, and in that sense seems to represent a reduction in sovereignty.

  Devaluation is surely not a solution to anything? Isn’t it just a way of blaming foreigners or markets for a government’s own failures? Aren’t its effects in terms of austerity no better than the effects of being part of a larger currency block and having to adjust in other ways?