*Sigh*
You asked for the 55 times we've voted against the EU and been ignored, so I provided that in detail, each and every one of the 55. You completely ignore all the other evidence that supports my argument and just say I'm "changing my tune". Eroded influence, no influence, what's the difference - the fact you're focusing on these sub plots and not the issues shows your argument is weak. And has been since you got personal many pages ago.
If I have the weak argument, how come there are so many holes in your argument? Let's ignore the fact that you changed your tune and look at the Brexit campaign pdf.
The two main arguments are:
Since records began, the UK has not managed to prevent a single proposal placed in front
of the Council from becoming European law. This amounts to 55 measures that the UK
has opposed, since 1996, but have gone on to become British law.
However, as the document admits, those 55 votes represent just 1.9% of all the votes since 1996. This is a very small percentage, particularly when we consider some of the votes were against things such as "Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending the Staff Regulations of Officials", "labelling of certain foodstuffs" or "the common organisation of the market in bananas" . Shockingly dreadful stuff and those EU evil doers shoved them down our throats!
Since 1973 the UK’s voting power in the Council of Ministers has decreased from 17% to 8%, in the European Parliament it has decreased from 20% to 9.5% and in the European Commission it has decreased from 15% to 4%.
This argument sounds a bit stronger but not long ago you said:
We are not influential in the EU. You can point to reports about "connections" but as has been discussed in this thread and elsewhere the EU spins on a Franco-German axis.
Can you guess where I'm going now? Both Germany and France dramatically lost their voting power in the Council of Ministers, in the European Parliament and in the Commission. Yet by some magic, they retained their influence as "the EU spins on a Fraco-German axis".
You contradict yourself because it's hard to avoid that when your argument makes no sense. France, Germany and Britain are by far the most influential countries in the EU, it's very difficult to pass anything when they object and probably impossible to take any major decision.
Huh? So presumably you don't dispute the EU is growing the slowest out of India, China, the US, Australia etc in the past 10 years as I proved from the data you linked to!
Over the last 10 years our exports to the EU have grown by 75%, whilst our services exports to China have grown 130% and to Switzerland by 191%.
The fact you continue to focus on a 2 year time frame again just shows how weak your argument is.
You keep rambling about the past 10 years but you are for Brexit
now and if we vote for leave, we have to find new customers for our most important export, services,
now. Also
now, the demand for services in China is decreasing, which was my point when this exchange started. We don't have good options for our exports, should we leave the EU common market.
Switzerland has loads of great trade deals, like
this one with China.
Free trade with China? Are you serious?
We have 18k people working in the steel industry, if we started buying without any restrictions all the steel China is dumping on the global market at lower then production prices, they would all go unemployed. China also regularly dumps other products such as solar panels, a free trade agreement would be disastrous for Britain, it would literally destroy whole production industries.
I work in capital markets.
Again, why only focus on the recent headlines? We're voting over a 40+ year timeframe, China still grew 6% last year despite the slowdown. You're saying our long term trading prospects with China are worth ignoring just because of its recent headlines? Nah, it's well known we need to up our deals with the likes of China, as per Cameron's and Osborne's recent dialogue:
In the long term, the possibility that China will turn into an important customer for services is real. But, as I said, you want to leave now and right now China is not a good potential customer to replace what we may lose in the EU.
This was my point from the start.
The most important clients for services are developed countries and there's not a single developed country in that list. If some of them become developed in a few decades, they will be suitable potential clients. Until then, Britain will focus its services sales on the US and the EU, the only large, developed economies in the world.
Why are you adding EFTA again? You realise the debate is about Britain potentially joining EFTA and leaving the EU?
So you are not against the free movement of people?
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