Merged Now What?

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Francesca R said:
I think so (it would make remain look more attractive) but would have required a large U-turn on the part of may campaign leaders.
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Do you seriously think that politicians who have spent the last decade arguing for reducing immigration would argue that it is a positive thing in the EU referendum? It would be a U-turn of massive proportions.

I agree with you that it is a positive thing, but there's nobody willing to take that position in the face of anti-immigration sentiment from Joe Public. Only Nicola Sturgeon was able to look even slightly pro-immigration because the landscape up here is quite different.
 
SusanB-M1 said:
But what fact, what information, what serious consideration of the past and the future determined your leave vote?
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In short THR (Tobacco Harm Reduction).

I am an ex smoker, turned vaper. I passionately believe that vaping is one of the best methods to reduce the harm smoking causes to society and to individuals.

I also used to run a company producing vaping products in the UK that has closed because of overbearing EU regulations.

I stress that the loss of my business wasn't the main driver of my vote.
It was the underhanded and unscientific TPD (Tobacco Products Directive) that was forced through the European Parliament(EP) undemocratically.

A much better example, aside from vaping, is Snus.

Snus are basically like tobacco filled teabags, for want of a better description that a user places under their lip. They come from Sweden. Sweden has special dispensation to sell these items in Sweden, as does Norway. They are banned from sale in the rest of the EU.

If you look at smoking related disease in Europe as a whole and number of smokers, the European average is 28% of the adult population smoke. In Sweden 13% of adults smoke.

Lung cancer mortality in Sweden is the lowest in any European country.

Despite overwhelming scientific evidence, that Snus is a positive thing for THR policy the EU forced through the TPD which recommended snus sales in the EU outside of Norway and Sweden remain banned, for "health reasons".

I find this to be reprehensible.

If the UK was not a member of the EU we could permit sales of snus and other products that are scientifically proven to reduce smoking and save a lot of unnecessary suffering for smokers, and their families. We could save a lot of future NHS spending.

Because at the time I had a vested interest I paid special attention to the passage of the TPD through the EP. I hadn't followed the ways the EP made laws prior to that and I was very surprised and dismayed at how they work.

That experience got me to wondering how many other directives and laws got created with similar methodology and how many future directives might be so dismissive of good scientific evidence. On balance I decided therefore that the best course of action was for the UK to leave the EU and take control of our own statute books once more.

Despite the economic cost in the short term I think being more in control of how we govern ourselves will allow us to pass laws that greatly impact things like smoking prevalence (allowing Snus sales would be a great start) instead of debating ideas that have been shown to have little if any effect, like the plain packs debate.

In a nutshell that is why I voted to leave, and why I would vote Leave again if I knew then what I know now.
 
Archie Gemmill Goal said:
Do you seriously think that politicians who have spent the last decade arguing for reducing immigration would argue that it is a positive thing in the EU referendum? It would be a U-turn of massive proportions.
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I agree, they wouldn't, they had almost all painted themselves into a corner.

I agree with you that it is a positive thing, but there's nobody willing to take that position in the face of anti-immigration sentiment from Joe Public. Only Nicola Sturgeon was able to look even slightly pro-immigration because the landscape up here is quite different.
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I have agreed before that Sturgeon's position on migration is/was head and shoulders above that of every other politician in the limelight. Nick Clegg (if anyone remembers him) was also in that camp.

I want to be unequivocal: freedom of movement between EU member states is a good thing.

http://www.libdems.org.uk/nick_clegg_s_immigration_speech
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(slightly)
 
Ambrosia said:
Despite overwhelming scientific evidence, that Snus is a positive thing for THR policy the EU forced through the TPD which recommended snus sales in the EU outside of Norway and Sweden remain banned, for "health reasons".
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And the UK government supported the Tobacco Products Directive.
If the UK was not a member of the EU we could permit sales of snus and other products that are scientifically proven to reduce smoking and save a lot of unnecessary suffering for smokers, and their families.
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But would the UK have come to a different position?

The "extricate ourselves from Brussells regulation" argument is substantially weakened by the UK agreeing to such a lot of it when it is formed.
 
Francesca R said:
And the UK government supported the Tobacco Products Directive.
But would the UK have come to a different position?
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Yes they supported it, Labour MEP Linda McAvan was the lead rapporteur for the TPD in 2014.

It's quite possible that the UK would have come to a different view. As recently as May this year there was a debate in the House of Lords who were strongly opposed to various measures enacted by the TPD.

The Royal College of Physicians strongly support vaping as an good alternative to tobacco smoking.

It would also be significantly easier to persuade the UK Government to look at changing THR policy here than it would be to persuade the EP to change the TPD.
 
Ambrosia said:
A much better example, aside from vaping, is Snus.

Snus are basically like tobacco filled teabags, for want of a better description that a user places under their lip. They come from Sweden. Sweden has special dispensation to sell these items in Sweden, as does Norway. They are banned from sale in the rest of the EU.
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What's special about Snus as opposed to chewing tobacco?
 
Ambrosia said:
It would also be significantly easier to persuade the UK Government to look at changing THR policy here than it would be to persuade the EP to change the TPD.
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I hear this quite often but is there any evidence to support it? It seems fairly hit and miss in both cases.

If you are talking about the chewing tobacco things Skoal Bandits were banned by the UK government not the EU as far as I know and this was the start of that bandwagon. There's no real reason to think the UK would be more receptive to them than the EU is.

It also seems like a rather small issue to tank the economy over. Personally speaking.
 
Ambrosia said:
The main advocates of the Leave campaign. i.e. Johnson, Gove and Leadsom.
(I'm ignoring Farage as he is clearly a buffoon)
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But how would you expect them to come up with a plan which would commit anyone? Government policy, remember, was Remain. What would Cameron or Osborne, or anyone on here, have said if they had said "this is what is going to happen if we win"? It's just wishful thinking. The government would never ever be tied by anything that a pressure group or campaigning organisation said, particularly one which was actually opposing the government's official line. I really can't believe anyone takes this notion seriously.
 
MikeG said:
But how would you expect them to come up with a plan which would commit anyone? Government policy, remember, was Remain. What would Cameron or Osborne, or anyone on here, have said if they had said "this is what is going to happen if we win"? It's just wishful thinking. The government would never ever be tied by anything that a pressure group or campaigning organisation said, particularly one which was actually opposing the government's official line. I really can't believe anyone takes this notion seriously.
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Instead of "this it we will do" they could say " this is what we could do". We didn't even get that, except for a bunch of BS about money being spent on the NHS.
 
uke2se said:
Instead of "this it we will do" they could say " this is what we could do". .......
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How do you imagine that conversation would have gone between Boris (Conservative) and Gisela Stuart (Labour)?
 
MikeG said:
But how would you expect them to come up with a plan which would commit anyone? Government policy, remember, was Remain. What would Cameron or Osborne, or anyone on here, have said if they had said "this is what is going to happen if we win"? It's just wishful thinking. The government would never ever be tied by anything that a pressure group or campaigning organisation said, particularly one which was actually opposing the government's official line. I really can't believe anyone takes this notion seriously.
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I don't take what you say seriously. It is pathetic. You are saying that leavers are allowed to lie and make promises they know they can't keep because despite including a number of government ministers, they are not The Government. However the remainers who are an equally diverse group including people who are not part of the government you criticise for lying.
 
Archie Gemmill Goal said:
If you are talking about the chewing tobacco things
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No, I am talking about THR policy in the UK, which is basically straightjacketed by the EU TPD. We could have much better rules on smokeless tobacco products, all of which would serve as good alternatives to smokers which could cut smoking prevalence and smoking related disease in half.

Trust me, I know the THR issue very well and could write pages and pages of detail about it, and how and why it's a terrible piece of legislation on multiple fronts. That's not the point of this thread though.

It also seems like a rather small issue to tank the economy over. Personally speaking.
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That's not the point. My point is if they screwed the TPD up *this* badly then what else did they screw up, and what else might they screw up in the future?

The economy is hardly tanked either, it's in a sharp downturn sure, but we are barely 2 weeks past the referendum result and there's not going to be a settling down of things until we have a new PM and a plan to give financial markets more certainty.
 
MikeG said:
But how would you expect them to come up with a plan which would commit anyone?
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I wasn't expecting that. I was expecting a "now that we have voted to leave we should do X,Y,Z" kind of plan.
 
Ambrosia said:
Campaign promises are campaign promises.

They are the half truths and exaggerations etc that politicians tell you to try to win your vote.

Saying "We will do X" does not in any way mean that they know how to go about actually doing X or that they have planned in advance how X might be achieved.

They damn well should have had a plan, and I hope that there are teams of civil servants scrambling like **** as I type to work out a sensible plan. While the Tories work out who the new PM who's going to be they have a window of a month or so to work out the outline.
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The civil servants from the departments will come up with various policy options and associated options and impacts appraisals including full costings and then the Minister for the department will then ask them to work on those that the cabinet office agrees should be the policy way forward.
It normally takes about 6 months to do just one of these and here it will be a huge amount of work in every department as there are major EU impacts in everything from small business loan guarantees to University course structures.

I can't think of a department that will not have to spend a considerable amount of time working up numerous plans and I suspect that there may need to be a cross department mapping exercise to identify all the various parts of policy and related legislation that will be affected. You cannot just take out the EU bits you need to research and cost out what it will be replaced with. In some cases this may be straightforward but in many cases it will not be.

This, of course,is not counting if a new act or a change of an existing act also needs parliamentary and House of Lords time.

I suspect that most departments will need to run parallel operations, one delivering the plan set out in the Queens speech and manifesto, the other a Brexit plan for the department.

I really hope that the 18 departments decide to work together and do not get derailed by various pet policy initiatives of their Ministers, and that we have enough policy officers left given the cuts in the public sector, otherwise this could take a long number of years to get finished.
 
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Archie Gemmill Goal said:
It also seems like a rather small issue to tank the economy over. Personally speaking.
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I see where you're coming from but whatever small issues lay behind the result the figures are in and we're out. Our European dream is over. No recount, no re-run, just endless re-plays : Portugal 2 Wales 0.

It was a great adventure, though, and I'm glad to have lived it.
 
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