Re: Divide and conquer
Yeah, the EU is great at caring for the populous! It must have just been a mistake when they deliberately crippled the Greek economy last year, in order to screw them down in some particularly unpleasant negotations, plunging the country back into recession. Funny definition of caring...
Not that the EU is the fount of all evil or anything. This was just as much about German/Dutch/Finish/Slovak internal politcs, as Greek government incompetence. And is only a symptom of the fact that the Euro doesn't, and can't, work as currently constituted and desperately needs fixing or putting out of everyone's misery.
But this pathetic pretence that someone the UK are uniquely self-interested, and everyone else in the EU are just desperate to be fluffy and lovely, if only we'd stop being so awkward - well it's deeply annoying. As well as being massive bollocks.
If we leave, it should be because we're willing to pay a probably small price for more political accountability and democratic control. There's a chance we may profit out of it too, but I'd imagine that the differences either way will be small - as we're still going to want to trade with them, and they with us. Whatever happens, in or out, is a messy compromise - as so much of politics is. The EU has recently shown itself capable of staggering incompetence and nastiness though, particularly with the Eurozone and refugee crises - so please don't try to pretend that either side has any kind of moral high ground. Also the Eurogroup and European Central Bank have effectively brought down 3 elected governments in the last 4 years, Italy once and Greece twice. All three times deliberately. We're not in the Euro, so probably safe from that kind of meddling, but the Eurocrisis will probably see me voting out.
As for this story, the operative word is "could". Anything could happen. If we leave we'll be subject to the outcome of some very long, and complicated negotiations. I doubt a lot will change in the short term. Things that have come through EU laws won't all magically disappear. Some we'll have to keep, as the price to get the trading relationships we'll want, some we'll chose to keep, some may change over time. We want pharmaceuticals companies to make decent profits, so they'll invest in new drugs and the expensive regulatory systems we choose to have to try to make them safe. We want differential pricing, to allow the developing world access to drugs that they couldn't otherwise afford, even though this means we pay more for AIDS drugs than Africa for example. Our future governments may make changes and screw things up, but the EU have shown themselves perfectly capable of screwing up too. The big advantage of a smaller democracy is that it's easier to change stuff back. The disadvantage of the EU is that it's so big, and it takes so long to negotiate stuff, that it's very hard to change policy.