> "No, it's not a compelling reason for the UK to leave. It was a compelling reason for the average Briton to learn and educate himself. Now they shot themselves in the foot. Well done!"
Au contraire, mon frère. There were compelling reasons for the UK to leave the EU, they're just clearly reasons you either don't know about or don't care much about.
To give one example, the Five Presidents report from 2015 made it clear that there would be a push towards greater integration of the Eurozone, and there were fairly clear implications for what this would mean for the UK.
""The world’s second largest economy cannot be managed through rule-based cooperation alone," says the report, drawn up by the heads of the European Commission, the EU Council, Eurogroup, the European Parliament and the European Central Bank (ECB)."
"The eurozone “will need to shift from a system of rules and guidelines for national economic policy-making to a system of further sovereignty sharing within common institutions, most of which already exist and can progressively fulfil this task," it adds."
""In practice, this would require member states to accept increasingly joint decision-making on elements of their respective national budgets and economic policies.""
"These changes should be possible witin the current EU treaty but other ideas such as eurozone finance ministry by 2025 are likely to require treaty changes.
“Euro area member states would continue to decide on taxation and the allocation of budgetary expenditures according to national preferences and political choices. However, as the euro area evolves towards a genuine EMU, some decisions will increasingly need to be made collectively while ensuring democratic accountability and legitimacy.”"
So with all that in mind, you can see that 'rule-based co-operation' was seen as not effective enough, and that moves were being made to set up a EU Treasury, which would control taxation throughout the Eurozone. The UK would clearly have been marginalised at this point, as the Treasury would be incentivised to make sure investment from Eurozone countries stayed within the Eurozone. However, even with this compromised position, they wouldn't have been able to strike new trade deals on their own terms as the responsibility for doing so had been taken over by the EU.
This is just one example of many, and I'd say the democratic issues in the EU were even more problematic than the financial ones. You can try to pretend that Leave voters were uninformed if it makes you happy, but there were legitimate concerns about the EU, including concerns that had nothing to do with racism.
Au contraire, mon frère. There were compelling reasons for the UK to leave the EU, they're just clearly reasons you either don't know about or don't care much about.
To give one example, the Five Presidents report from 2015 made it clear that there would be a push towards greater integration of the Eurozone, and there were fairly clear implications for what this would mean for the UK.
https://euobserver.com/economic/129218
""The world’s second largest economy cannot be managed through rule-based cooperation alone," says the report, drawn up by the heads of the European Commission, the EU Council, Eurogroup, the European Parliament and the European Central Bank (ECB)."
"The eurozone “will need to shift from a system of rules and guidelines for national economic policy-making to a system of further sovereignty sharing within common institutions, most of which already exist and can progressively fulfil this task," it adds."
""In practice, this would require member states to accept increasingly joint decision-making on elements of their respective national budgets and economic policies.""
"These changes should be possible witin the current EU treaty but other ideas such as eurozone finance ministry by 2025 are likely to require treaty changes.
“Euro area member states would continue to decide on taxation and the allocation of budgetary expenditures according to national preferences and political choices. However, as the euro area evolves towards a genuine EMU, some decisions will increasingly need to be made collectively while ensuring democratic accountability and legitimacy.”"
So with all that in mind, you can see that 'rule-based co-operation' was seen as not effective enough, and that moves were being made to set up a EU Treasury, which would control taxation throughout the Eurozone. The UK would clearly have been marginalised at this point, as the Treasury would be incentivised to make sure investment from Eurozone countries stayed within the Eurozone. However, even with this compromised position, they wouldn't have been able to strike new trade deals on their own terms as the responsibility for doing so had been taken over by the EU.
This is just one example of many, and I'd say the democratic issues in the EU were even more problematic than the financial ones. You can try to pretend that Leave voters were uninformed if it makes you happy, but there were legitimate concerns about the EU, including concerns that had nothing to do with racism.