Will we regain sovereignty by leaving the EU?

 Progressive European Party

Some people claim that we will we regain sovereignty by leaving the EU

Official EU voting records show that the British government has voted ‘No’ to laws passed at EU level on 56 occasions, abstained 70 times, and voted ‘Yes’ 2,466 times since 1999,
In other words, UK ministers were on the “winning side” 95% of the time, abstained 3% of the time, and were on the losing side 2%.


https://fullfact.org/europe/eu-facts-behind-claims-uk-influence/


This hardly qualifies as a loss of sovereignty.


The only country in the world with complete sovereignty is north Korea. For us to have complete sovereignty we would have to leave the WTO NATO and probably the United Nations as well as the EU. 

"Trade deals" would become virtually impossible.

In the EU we have the benefit of being part of a large bloc that has strong bargaining powers. Outside of it we will not be in the same strong position and would therefore have to give more away to get the deals we want.


Outside the EU we will have less sovereignty than we currently have now as members.


Most decisions made by the EU are taken on a majority vote. So we can, on some occasions, be outvoted. This is a small loss of sovereignty but we are nevertheless a part of the decision-making process and can have an influence over the outcomes. By contrast, if we only use WTO rules we have no control over them whatever. We can only trade under the WTO rules as they currently stand.


Outside the EU our biggest trading partner will still be the EU. So we will still have to follow EU standards on any goods that we sell to them. However, we will no longer have any say in what those requirements will be. In other words, we will have far less sovereignty when trading with the EU than we currently have as members.

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When we do deals with countries such as India and Australia they will want to bring their staff over with their businesses without going through UK Home Office bureaucracy. I am sure that Leavers will say that we can just refuse their demands. As we have just thrown our bargaining chips on the fire along with our EU membership, this would be well-nigh impossible.


The Leave campaign was all about the "taking back of control". What this really meant to many people was depriving EU nationals of the right to come here. Many of our future trade deals will also include free movement of people. The only difference will be that in future more people will be coming from outside of the EU.

How is this a regaining of sovereignty?


There are almost one hundred deals that we now have via our EU membership that we will have to renegotiate. It is highly unlikely that we will get as good a deal with any of them as we currently have now. Each new deal could take many years to negotiate and even more sovereignty will be lost.


Advocates of leave seem to have a totally deluded notion of how the world works and of the UK's place in it.


It seems to me that there is no medicine that can fix our national sickness other than a large and unpalatable dose of reality.


It is all very well for politicians who are not in government to make exaggerated claims about how the world will look when we are on the outside of the EU. However, at present, even our "Government" is also doing exactly that. We may have to wait for the proverbial to hit the fan before normality can be restored.

And "Sovereignty" is the biggest turd of all heading straight towards the Brexit fan.

Philip Notley #progEuroparty