Independence referenda

[mtbc]

It may be that in a few months the UK will vote on the question of whether to remain in the EU. If David Cameron fails to negotiate strong national controls against immigration or welfare for immigrants then there is the prospect of a vote to leave. That would probably provoke another vote in Scotland about remaining in the UK, with the no votes boosted by those wishing to remain in the EU. It is plausible that Scotland will no longer be in both the UK and the EU.

I like the idea of being able to move to somewhere like France or Germany though it now looks less likely to ever happen. I would like my children to have some stability during their full-time education. Perturbations of the current situation could be a great inconvenience for me: my position at work is funded largely by UK and European Union sources and I have no reason to expect Scottish government funding to replace that so I may find either vote being for independence to be deleteriously life-changing.

While I am hardly an expert on European governance I am disappointed by having the distinct impression that many people don't know who their parliamentary representative is partly because it matters little as in practical terms the European Parliament is underpowered in comparison with the European Commission. I am also disappointed by the great diversity in how assiduously member states actually enforce European law. Voting for membership of the EU could unfortunately seem like an endorsement of the EU as it presently is. Though, not so badly as a vote for independence for Scotland from the UK could be interpreted as a feeling that the Scottish National Party should have their hands even more strongly on the Scottish levers of power.

A greater source of conflict is the sense that the European Union as it is is a mess: the member states are too strong and separate for the EU to live long and prosper. The Eurozone crisis and the Syrian refugee crisis have definitely been throwing some of the faultlines into sharp relief. If the cultural differences can tolerate it then I believe the EU would do better as a superstate with more fiscal and political integration to make it more like the USA than a free trade and visa area. The UK may be as a millstone impeding the EU in finding its way to that workable state.

So while I would like Scotland to remain in both the UK and the EU I wouldn't want that to be taken as support for the EU as currently realized and I wonder if the UK's influence isn't overall a bad thing for the EU.

Comments

[mindstalk]

The UK is at least innocent in the eurocrisis, though of course you had Osborne inflicting austerity on you even without the excuse of a debt crisis.

[gerald_duck]

My objection to EU membership is far more fundamental.

We don't have a written constitution in the UK, but we do have an overarching sense of propriety.

If I lend you my lawnmower, you make sure you can return it when the time comes. You don't give it to a Belgian.

Similarly, when we elect a government, it should make sure that when it leaves office it can return to us the powers that we have temporarily vested in it. Saying "sorry, we signed those powers over to the EU" is unacceptable.

And yet, that's what happened with the Maastricht Treaty, which is the point at which I started to feel we ought to leave the EU. The Lisbon Treaty fiasco cemented this view.

We are faced with an EU that wants to take powers from our national government, and a succession of national governments that are willing to hand them over. Sure, we could try to put things on a legislative footing where that can't happen any more, which requires a referendum before powers are ceded, but I'm worried about remaining in a political union which has such intent. We don't want to spend our lives fighting bureaucrats who are looking for loopholes.

The late great Tony Benn put it rather well: "The rights that are entrusted to us are not for us to give away. Even if I agree with everything that is proposed, I cannot hand away powers lent to me for five years by the people of Chesterfield. I just could not do it. It would be theft of public rights."