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Originally Posted by roughbeast
1. Some might argue that given that a proportionate number of elected decision makers and appointed Brussels civil servants were British, we weren't governed by a foreign entity.
2. How did that technical gain in sovereignty actually translate into having more control over the destiny of the country? For example. did that mean that we could get better trade deals than we did through the EU? I know it's early days, and Moggy's 50 years aren't up yet, but have Mr and Mrs Soap seen positive outcomes from this increase in sovereignty?
3. Did we need to leave the EU for an investment wizard to make the country prosperous? After all, up until the global crash of 2008, it could be argued that the outcomes of Labour's investment in people and things were improved by access to the Single Market and other EU institutions..
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Membership of the EU was always a trade-off between the pros & cons of being part of such an entity. It is plain to see who much we benefited when you look at the economic growth since we joined the Common Market all those years ago. What was never recognised by the small cabal of sovereignty zealots that drove the Brexit agenda was the fact that the economic DNA of the UK was intertwined with the EU at the smallest level of business. From zero-tariff trade, just-in-time supply chains sources parts from the EU to the ability to source workers, who were economically net-positive, to fill the gaps in our domestic labour market.
Surgically extracting a 40+ year old economic nervous system was always going to be a lose-lose situation. Always. Now here's the rub, those zealots who voted Brexit based on their perception of sovereignty, will never address the lies told at the time to get their project over the line. They still won't. The damage to the country in so many ways will never be honestly discussed and here lies the real problem.
What is less than obvious is the technical gain in sovereignty much celebrated is actually a danger of sorts. While we were part of the EU, as a rules-based organisation, we had checks & balances in place that curbed the excesses of member state governments. We had to abide by environment controls & standards, we had common standards on all sorts of things: food ingredients, etc.
Now, we have no such controls and as such, our Government can take us in a direction far beyond what would have been tolerated when in the EU. Elect a right wing, populous, Government and we're on a crazy train to being a 1st world banana republic. You could argue we on that train already.
In summary, it was all a big con. The sovereignty pot of gold at the end of the rainbow turned out to be, as it always was going to do, a handful of dried beans sold to you by a pack of non-dom spivs. The only funny part of all this is that many of those who voted Leave in the hope that we would have fewer immigrants, now have so many more and here's the kicker, they are not the colour they may have wished for
The inexorable tide of demographics will lead us back into the EU, probably via incremental steps e.g. EFTA first, in approx. 10 years.