#3
"tell us what we gain by being in or lose by leaving."
Oh well, I have had a few tries at responding to you Howard, but the 'actualité' gets in the way.
We would lose a good opportunity to play a major part in world affairs, we would become the ventriloquists dummy in a suitcase lying at the road side.
We would lose a real opportunity to grow the stature of our regions, and fall back to being no more than 'London etc.'
One difficulty in forming a response to you is because I doubt whether
we are actually 'in' the European Union.
Ours seems to be less even than a marriage of convenience, and more of an occasional harem-favourite.
[A brain wave!]
Instead of the idea of 'we' or 'us', let us consider the 'I'.
I have gained much by being (nominally) a member of the EU. At the very top of my list is that I am a Citizen of the EU, not some mere oik, but an Elector, one whose voice
should be heard. Not simply one to be satisfied that 'my' Magna Carta freedoms allow me to shout and to bawl, but leave me (oh so free) to be roundly ignored. Which is all a 'subject' would have the right to wish for.
And when the term 'citizen of the world' is pretty much meaningless, Citizen of Europe, within Europe, bloody well does mean something.
Much of the other gains I feel I get from the EU are more about the 'not-I', (all those others of my fellow Citizens of the EU and the wider world). And with the ECHR, being not quite an EU institution, it is yet a vital part of membership.
I shudder at the thought that our membership of the EU is held so cheaply that we would give it up simply to be able to send people off to be tortured:"Send us your persecuted Aristocrats, send us the exploiters of the world's poor - that have yet to learn of the myriad conveniences of living in a constitution-less pseudo-Monarchy, send us the Politically useful...but leave us the right to get shot of those last few when their usefulness is over."
When it comes down to it Howard, you need to come up with better questions.
