UK Politics - summer edition

[Eggegg]

Just now, lessthanluke said:

If there is no logic behind the unhappiness then what is it other than racism?

Because I don't believe it is purely racist to be upset about a rapidly changing cultural landscape, I think its a natural human condition seen the world over. Had immigration been handled sensibly in a more controlled manner then there would have been no Brexit. 

[SeanF]

45 minutes ago, Werthead said:

And it was changed for the Scottish referendum because it was recognised that it was only fair for the long-term future of the country to be decided by those who would be impacted the most (i.e. the young). The same argument applied for the EU referendum.

 

And the same was true of the European Parliamentary elections, which of course many people didn't vote in, didn't know who their MEPs were, ignored the European Elections, and then complained that their voices were not represented. They were, they just chose not to get involved.

 

In the case of Scotland, a strong argument is that the rest of Britain is moving in a less progressive, less economically stable and more chaotic direction which Scotland profoundly disagrees with and in which its voice, although heard, is unable to effectively change anything. In the case of the EU, Britain's influence and power within the bloc was actually increasing and growing. We'd supplanted France as the second-most-important voice in the bloc, we were rapidly closing on Germany in key areas such as economic growth and we had a strong network of alliances (particularly with the Netherlands and Poland) which gave us tremendous influence within the European Union. The old Franco-German domination of the union had effectively become a thing of the past and if trends had continued, we could have emerged as the most powerful voice in the EU within a decade or so, giving us tremendous clout on the world stage.

The problem is that Britain does not build anything, does not have a homegrown industry that no other country can replicate and our most successful businesses - in the banking and service sectors - are partially (if not majorly) reliant on our membership of the European Union with passporting services and access to the single market. Without these factors, it is unclear what will keep Britain afloat and our influence on the world stage will be undeniably massively diminished.

One can argue whether the voting age should be 16 or 18, but I think it's unreasonable to change it just for one referendum.

WRT the EU Parliament, we can make a difference at the margins, with list PR, but it's nothing like as decisive as FPTP.

 Our trading performance is actually a good deal better with countries outside of the Single Market than with those inside of the Single Market.  It is generally in surplus with the former, and heavily in deficit with the latter. That suggests to me that the Single Market has not worked out terribly well for this country.

[mormont]

4 hours ago, Eggegg said:

I think this is where I suspect you are out of touch with the average Brit.

Nope. I understand what the 'average' Brit believes very well, and why they believe it (if we are to take it that by 'the average Brit' you mean 'people who are concerned about immigration': this is a, not a unitary group of people and b, not necessarily the 'average' person). I will bet hard cash money that I am at least as 'in touch' on this issue as you are. 

Of course, what you really mean by 'out of touch' is the same as what people mean when they talk about 'concerns' that aren't being 'listened to'. It's all code for 'you have to go along with us on this or we will slag you off'. See, for example:

4 hours ago, Eggegg said:

The levels of immigration were extraordinary, FAR above normal levels. When you are talking about Half a million people arriving a year and you don't expect some sort of kick back from the native population then you are living in cloud cookoo land.  Your attitude is exactly the same as those who didn't listen, that anyone who has concerns about the vast numbers of people arriving in their country is simply ignorant or racist or uninformed. Walk around any town in the South East of England and I think your opinion would change rapidly.

Look, people can have concerns. That's fine. But those concerns can be misguided and misinformed. Take climate change. Lots of voters have concerns about actions that are being taken to tackle that. But it would be a nonsense to suggest that politicians must ignore the facts and follow the herd on that topic. If they were to do so, climate change wouldn't stop, would it?

And that's the difference. Yes, politicians need to listen to and address concerns about facts that some people find difficult to deal with. But that does not mean agreeing to put your fingers in your ears and pretend that those facts aren't true. 

Quote

Which is precisely what you appear to be doing.

At no point have I done that, no. Suggesting that someone is factually wrong or acting from ignorance is not accusing them of being traitors. That's really scraping the barrel. 

3 hours ago, SeanF said:

That's a curious question from someone who voted for Scottish independence.  

Only if one has a somewhat one-eyed approach to the independence issue. 

[Eggegg]

3 minutes ago, mormont said:

Nope. I understand what the 'average' Brit believes very well, and why they believe it (if we are to take it that by 'the average Brit' you mean 'people who are concerned about immigration': this is a, not a unitary group of people and b, not necessarily the 'average' person). I will bet hard cash money that I am at least as 'in touch' on this issue as you are. 

Of course, what you really mean by 'out of touch' is the same as what people mean when they talk about 'concerns' that aren't being 'listened to'. It's all code for 'you have to go along with us on this or we will slag you off'. See, for example:

Look, people can have concerns. That's fine. But those concerns can be misguided and misinformed. Take climate change. Lots of voters have concerns about actions that are being taken to tackle that. But it would be a nonsense to suggest that politicians must ignore the facts and follow the herd on that topic. If they were to do so, climate change wouldn't stop, would it?

And that's the difference. Yes, politicians need to listen to and address concerns about facts that some people find difficult to deal with. But that does not mean agreeing to put your fingers in your ears and pretend that those facts aren't true. 

At no point have I done that, no. Suggesting that someone is factually wrong or acting from ignorance is not accusing them of being traitors. That's really scraping the barrel. 

 

Basically what you are saying is that there isn't too much immigration, people are just misguided and misinformed.

[lessthanluke]

31 minutes ago, Eggegg said:

Basically what you are saying is that there isn't too much immigration, people are just misguided and misinformed.

Which is correct.

[Eggegg]

2 minutes ago, lessthanluke said:

Which is correct.

In your opinion. 

[lessthanluke]

16 minutes ago, Eggegg said:

In your opinion. 

Then explain WHY there is too much immigration then and what bad effects it is having. Instead of saying 500k is too much just because it is a big number.

[Werthead]

27 minutes ago, Eggegg said:

In your opinion. 

No, according to facts, logic and the requirements of British businesses and public services.

A more intelligent way of dealing with the issue would have been to have reduced the need for large-scale immigration into the United Kingdom by encouraging more British-born people to work as fruit pickers and in factories and to train more doctors and nurses in the UK. With a native workforce willing to do all of those things, arriving immigrants would find there was no work for them and they would return home or go somewhere else. There's a reason why tens of thousands of Romanians and Poles want to come and work in the UK and why British people don't want to go and work in Poland or Romania or Hungary: there is no economic need or inducement to do so.

"Let's reduce immigration to help reduce pollution and help reduce demand for housing!" is a fine idea, but it ignores the fact that people were migrating to the UK because of economic reasons. Nothing has been done to address those economic reasons and now that immigration will be halted, the country will suffer the cost of that: longer NHS waiting times, fewer trained medical staff, British businesses going under because they can't recruit staff because British people won't do those jobs for those wages (in some cases quite reasonably and in others not). In order for agriculture to survive, for example, it will require even larger subsidies from the British government than it did from the EU so they can increase wages to what British people expect for doing eight hours of manual labour a day. But the British government has pretty much made it clear that agriculture can go whistle for that extra money. The government has also made it clear it will not restore the doctor or nurse training bursaries that have been reduced or eliminated altogether over the last few years and they simply can't afford to open or run the tens of thousands of more training places that will be required for British medical staff.

The alternative is that after Brexit we will discover how badly we needed those immigrants and some form of migration will continue, perhaps at a lower level but I suspect the difference will end up not being as great as some believe. We will end up with the perceived same "issue" as before but none of the advantages and power we had from remaining in the EU.

Brexit, ultimately, was about the success of some in the Conservative Party blaming the ill effects of austerity on immigration and making migrants the scapegoats for their own failures. The mistake of the Remain campaign was assuming that this argument would be easily seen through as the total bullshit it was. They underestimated the Faragian argument that the impoverishment of the nation would be a price worth paying for "taking back control", whatever that means.

[Eggegg]

2 minutes ago, Werthead said:

No, according to facts, logic and the requirements of British businesses and public services.

A more intelligent way of dealing with the issue would have been to have reduced the need for large-scale immigration into the United Kingdom by encouraging more British-born people to work as fruit pickers and in factories and to train more doctors and nurses in the UK. With a native workforce willing to do all of those things, arriving immigrants would find there was no work for them and they would return home or go somewhere else. There's a reason why tens of thousands of Romanians and Poles want to come and work in the UK and why British people don't want to go and work in Poland or Romania or Hungary: there is no economic need or inducement to do so.

"Let's reduce immigration to help reduce pollution and help reduce demand for housing!" is a fine idea, but it ignores the fact that people were migrating to the UK because of economic reasons. Nothing has been done to address those economic reasons and now that immigration will be halted, the country will suffer the cost of that: longer NHS waiting times, fewer trained medical staff, British businesses going under because they can't recruit staff because British people won't do those jobs for those wages (in some cases quite reasonably and in others not). In order for agriculture to survive, for example, it will require even larger subsidies from the British government than it did from the EU so they can increase wages to what British people expect for doing eight hours of manual labour a day. But the British government has pretty much made it clear that agriculture can go whistle for that extra money.

The alternative is that after Brexit we will discover how badly we needed those immigrants and some form of migration will continue, perhaps at a lower level but I suspect the difference will end up not being as great as some believe. We will end up with the perceived same "issue" as before but none of the advantages and power we had from remaining in the EU.

I don't think anyone is suggesting we stop immigration altogether. There are many net positives to immigration when properly controlled. The difference here is that the immigration levels were not controlled, the floodgates were just left open. 

I'm not even against immigration, my point is that telling an english person that has seen large scale immigration into their area over the past decade, where the demographic make up of the local population has rapidly changed, telling them that they should just get on with it because these people are helping the economy (an economy btw that doesn't seem to help the average person very much) is really not helpful at all.

I mean just looking at the stats, there are staggering levels of immigration into the UK

"Between 1993 and 2015 the foreign-born population in the UK more than doubled from 3.8 million to around 8.7 million. During the same period, the number of foreign citizens increased from nearly 2 million to more than 5 million."

"In 2015, the UK population was 13.5% foreign-born (up from 7% in 1993) and 8.9% foreign citizens (up from 4% in 1993)."

The point is, the average person isn't feeling any of the benefits you are talking about, so discussing the matter in terms of economics is completely pointless. They see that most of the people they see every day don't speak their language, don't share the same culture as them and don't tend to integrate very well into the native society. Thats a genuine issue for some people, and you are seeing the same complaints across Europe. You can't just expect an influx of workers from poorer less developed countries to arrive and not expect the native populations to feel aggrieved.

I also don't quite agree that we need that level of immigration to survive. Was Britain and Europe on its knees before the large scale Eastern European immigration started? Has the life of the everyday citizen gotten better because of the immigration? But who are the people benefiting from their arrival? The businesses who pay slave labour levels of wages? I wouldn't cry were they to go out of business quite frankly. 

Of course the Housing issue has far more to do with other factors such as loose monetary policy and land prices, and the NHS has been underfunded for decades, and I'm not blaming those problems on immigration at all. But I'm not sure what the net benefits to the country are for the average person for all this immigration either, you can talk about the dependency ratio but by importing people all you are doing is kicking that can down the road and hoping someone figures out what to do about it later on.

[lessthanluke]

"I mean just looking at the stats, there are staggering levels of immigration into the UK

"Between 1993 and 2015 the foreign-born population in the UK more than doubled from 3.8 million to around 8.7 million. During the same period, the number of foreign citizens increased from nearly 2 million to more than 5 million."

"In 2015, the UK population was 13.5% foreign-born (up from 7% in 1993) and 8.9% foreign citizens (up from 4% in 1993).""

 

You haven't stated why you think these figures are a bad thing. Or are they bad just because British born people are better than foreigners?

[Eggegg]

6 minutes ago, lessthanluke said:

"I mean just looking at the stats, there are staggering levels of immigration into the UK

"Between 1993 and 2015 the foreign-born population in the UK more than doubled from 3.8 million to around 8.7 million. During the same period, the number of foreign citizens increased from nearly 2 million to more than 5 million."

"In 2015, the UK population was 13.5% foreign-born (up from 7% in 1993) and 8.9% foreign citizens (up from 4% in 1993).""

 

You haven't stated why you think these figures are a bad thing. Or are they bad just because British born people are better than foreigners?

I stated above why I think that I don't think its unreasonable that the native population would feel concerned about it. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

On 20.11.2017 at 9:00 PM, Werthead said:

In April David Davis said that Britain could hold onto the EU agencies based in the UK (bizarrely). Today two of them confirmed their movies: the European Banking Agency is moving to Paris, the European Medicines Agency is going to go to Amsterdam, taking over a thousand jobs between them. I'm still trying to work out why on Earth Davis thought they would or could stay.

Well, you can have your choice. Either it's an example of the British goverment being clueless of how the EU works, or he was simply lying.

Hanlon's razor suggests it was a case of Davis being delusional or ill-informed. Either way, it was hillarious claim to make. As that was never going to happen.

[mormont]

Three brief points about the buzzword bingo above about immigration:

1. Until and unless you can define what 'integration' means, you can't really assess whether immigrants from Eastern Europe (or anywhere else) have 'integrated'. Without that definition, complaining about 'integration' just looks like a polite veneer painted over 'they make me feel uncomfortable because they're different'. 

2. No businesses in the UK can legally employ 'slave labour'. Immigrants from any country in the world must be paid minimum wage the same as UK citizens. If business are illegally refusing to pay that wage, that is not because of immigration, it's because the people running those businesses are greedy criminals who exploit the vulnerable. 

3. The Brexit vote was characterised by large Leave majorities in areas with very low immigration. To pretend that this vote was about the reaction of people in areas with high immigration is either dishonest or ignorant. 

Moving on, it's interesting that nobody cares to challenge the most basic assertion I made a couple of pages back, about how Brexit will wreck the UK economy. Remember how in the campaign we were told it would be great for the UK economy? 

[SeanF]

1 hour ago, mormont said:

Three brief points about the buzzword bingo above about immigration:

1. Until and unless you can define what 'integration' means, you can't really assess whether immigrants from Eastern Europe (or anywhere else) have 'integrated'. Without that definition, complaining about 'integration' just looks like a polite veneer painted over 'they make me feel uncomfortable because they're different'. 

2. No businesses in the UK can legally employ 'slave labour'. Immigrants from any country in the world must be paid minimum wage the same as UK citizens. If business are illegally refusing to pay that wage, that is not because of immigration, it's because the people running those businesses are greedy criminals who exploit the vulnerable. 

3. The Brexit vote was characterised by large Leave majorities in areas with very low immigration. To pretend that this vote was about the reaction of people in areas with high immigration is either dishonest or ignorant. 

Moving on, it's interesting that nobody cares to challenge the most basic assertion I made a couple of pages back, about how Brexit will wreck the UK economy. Remember how in the campaign we were told it would be great for the UK economy? 

We don't yet know what the final shape of any deal with the EU will be.

So far, the predictions made by George Osborne of recession, rising unemployment, and a "punishment budget" in the event of a Leave vote have not materialised.  Employment has risen, and both manufacturing output and exports have benefitted from the fall in the value of sterling.  The downside is that sterling's fall has added about 1% to inflation.

[Werthead]

Also worth noting that Brexit will only impact on people entering the UK from the EU. People arriving from other countries will still have the same obstacles/opportunities they do now, and immigration from outside the EU has been increasing dramatically as well, despite us having full control over that. Talking to people who complained about immigration, it is clear that the "problems" people have with immigration depend a lot on their skin colour and religion. The number of times I heard about "salt of the earth" Polish neighbours was quite striking, and bizarre because they're the people who are going to be blocked from coming to the UK.

There was also a lot of concern about us taking refugees in vast numbers from Syria, but since we weren't and we refused to (taking less than a quarter of what we agreed, compared to Canada taking two and a half times what it originally agreed), that was not really a concern.

Quote

 

Moving on, it's interesting that nobody cares to challenge the most basic assertion I made a couple of pages back, about how Brexit will wreck the UK economy. Remember how in the campaign we were told it would be great for the UK economy?

 

That's why I had some respect (not a lot) for Farage during the referendum when he indicated that the economic ruination of the UK was a price worth paying for "sovereignty" and "taking back control". Not mentioned: he can fuck off to Germany or the USA for a few years if things start looking dicey (using the vast sums of money he gained from working for the EU but not actually doing anything). It was deeply cynical but at least it was honest.

Quote

 

So far, the predictions made by George Osborne of recession, rising unemployment, and a "punishment budget" in the event of a Leave vote have not materialised.

 

These predictions were made on the basis of us triggering Article 50 within days of the vote, which did not happen.

In addition, "technical unemployment" - now almost a meaningless statistic - has not risen but underemployment has risen in the last two years (or rather it's risen significantly in the last six years, cresting 7% with no sign of slowing down). If the underemployment figures were evened out with unemployment, they would show a crisis in employment in the UK resulting from austerity which Brexit has done nothing to solve.

[SeanF]

25 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Also worth noting that Brexit will only impact on people entering the UK from the EU. People arriving from other countries will still have the same obstacles/opportunities they do now, and immigration from outside the EU has been increasing dramatically as well, despite us having full control over that. Talking to people who complained about immigration, it is clear that the "problems" people have with immigration depend a lot on their skin colour and religion. The number of times I heard about "salt of the earth" Polish neighbours was quite striking, and bizarre because they're the people who are going to be blocked from coming to the UK.

There was also a lot of concern about us taking refugees in vast numbers from Syria, but since we weren't and we refused to (taking less than a quarter of what we agreed, compared to Canada taking two and a half times what it originally agreed), that was not really a concern.

That's why I had some respect (not a lot) for Farage during the referendum when he indicated that the economic ruination of the UK was a price worth paying for "sovereignty" and "taking back control". Not mentioned: he can fuck off to Germany or the USA for a few years if things start looking dicey (using the vast sums of money he gained from working for the EU but not actually doing anything). It was deeply cynical but at least it was honest.

These predictions were made on the basis of us triggering Article 50 within days of the vote, which did not happen.

In addition, "technical unemployment" - now almost a meaningless statistic - has not risen but underemployment has risen in the last two years (or rather it's risen significantly in the last six years, cresting 7% with no sign of slowing down). If the underemployment figures were evened out with unemployment, they would show a crisis in employment in the UK resulting from austerity which Brexit has done nothing to solve.

I wouldn't set much store by the Claimant Count, which is constantly altered by the government.

But, I do set quite a lot of store by the statistics of the International Labour Organisation, which show unemployment running at almost half the level of eight years ago, and marginally lower than it was a year ago.

WRT Brexit, we can't know what the economic impact will be, until we know what agreement, if any, is reached with the EU.

[Werthead]

30 minutes ago, SeanF said:

I wouldn't set much store by the Claimant Count, which is constantly altered by the government.

But, I do set quite a lot of store by the statistics of the International Labour Organisation, which show unemployment running at almost half the level of eight years ago, and marginally lower than it was a year ago.

WRT Brexit, we can't know what the economic impact will be, until we know what agreement, if any, is reached with the EU.

To suggest that there is not a catastrophic crisis in British employment which is getting steadily worse is...extraordinary. If underemployment was evened out, unemployment would be running at 3 or 4 million, more than twice the current claimed rate by the government, and would be a national scandal. If we really did have near-full employment (which official figures suggest, since roughly 1 million people are between jobs voluntarily or as part of the normal cycling between one job and another) than we would be seeing wages increasing as companies are forced to offer more money to tempt staff away from competitors and we would also not have the employment crisis in the NHS. This is not the case. Wages continue to fall in real terms, more and more people are being forced onto government assistance and there is more and growing legal action taking place by employees in the so-called gig economy to make sure they are paid fairly, which would be unnecessary in a full-employment economy where people can pick and choose their positions.

[Eggegg]

3 hours ago, mormont said:

3. The Brexit vote was characterised by large Leave majorities in areas with very low immigration. To pretend that this vote was about the reaction of people in areas with high immigration is either dishonest or ignorant. 

 

https://www.economist.com/news/britain/21701950-areas-lots-migrants-voted-mainly-remain-or-did-they-britains-immigration-paradox

 

Quote

MANY of those who voted to stay in the European Union in Britain’s recent referendum play up the lack of contact between Leavers and migrants. Although immigration featured heavily in the campaign, areas with the highest levels of immigration—notably London—were often among those most likely to vote to Remain (see chart 1 above). To mint-tea-sipping metropolitans, it seems absurd that people who live in areas with comparatively low numbers of Poles or Romanians should have been so keen to put a stop to migration.

But that is not the full picture. Consider the percentage-change in migrant numbers, rather than the total headcount, and the opposite pattern emerges (chart 2). Where foreign-born populations increased by more than 200% between 2001 and 2014, a Leave vote followed in 94% of cases. The proportion of migrants may be relatively low in Leave strongholds such as Boston, in Lincolnshire (where 15.4% of the population are foreign-born). But it has grown precipitously in a short period of time (by 479%, in Boston’s case). High levels of immigration don’t seem to bother Britons; high rates of change do. 

 

 

3 hours ago, mormont said:

2. No businesses in the UK can legally employ 'slave labour'. Immigrants from any country in the world must be paid minimum wage the same as UK citizens. If business are illegally refusing to pay that wage, that is not because of immigration, it's because the people running those businesses are greedy criminals who exploit the vulnerable. 

I happen to know a few Romanians , 2 of which work on a building site. I know they are often paid cash in hand and I don't imagine this is a very rare occurrence. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-25880354. The black market has surely taken advantage of this cheap labour, plus we know of the evils of Zero hours contracts.
 

3 hours ago, mormont said:

Moving on, it's interesting that nobody cares to challenge the most basic assertion I made a couple of pages back, about how Brexit will wreck the UK economy. Remember how in the campaign we were told it would be great for the UK economy? 

I think even the most hardened Brexiteer would acknowledge that Brexit will be bad for the economy, certainly in the short term and probably the medium term too. In the long term it is possible to be advantageous however. The ability to negotiate trade agreements outside of the EU, which might better fit an economy which is more services oriented, instead of Germanys export economy might be a good thing. The EU doesn't even have trade agreements with the US or China, or Chile.. or Singapore. In fact it barely has a concluded trade deal with any major country in the world, unless Trinidad is someone who is going to save your economy. By being a smaller nation we can potentially make these agreements in a more agile fashion:

http://www.civitas.org.uk/content/files/mythandparadox.pdf

There is also the bureaucracy issue, and while Britain is far from perfect in this regard, many businesses often complain about the level of red tape imposed by the EU:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/17/jcb-boss-says-eu-exit-could-lift-burden-of-bureaucracy-on-uk-businesses

 

Quote

“What is needed is a lot less red tape and bureaucracy. Some of it is costly for us and quite frankly ridiculous. Whether that means renegotiating or exiting, I don’t think it can carry on as it is. It’s a burden on our business and it’s easier selling to North America than to Europe sometimes.”

Much of the economic downturn and business fears are based on uncertainty, of which there is a hell of a lot right now and no business likes that. If we ever got our act together and actually put forward a decent vision of the future outside the EU, which I think is perfectly possible (though sadly looking more difficult with the clowns in charge) then I don't see why in the long run this couldn't be a good thing for Britain. 

 

I also think its worth noting that many Brexit voters didn't care that much about an economic downturn. If some people in London lose their jobs and some businesses go under then it doesn't bother them because they didn't seem to be benefiting from any of the supposed advantages people were talking about. Now I think this has more to do with the huge disparity between London and the rest of the country, which is not really a Brexit issue, but it shows that many Brits don't see the benefits of economic growth, or GDP growth, so talking to them in those terms is pointless.

[SeanF]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

To suggest that there is not a catastrophic crisis in British employment which is getting steadily worse is...extraordinary. If underemployment was evened out, unemployment would be running at 3 or 4 million, more than twice the current claimed rate by the government, and would be a national scandal. If we really did have near-full employment (which official figures suggest, since roughly 1 million people are between jobs voluntarily or as part of the normal cycling between one job and another) than we would be seeing wages increasing as companies are forced to offer more money to tempt staff away from competitors and we would also not have the employment crisis in the NHS. This is not the case. Wages continue to fall in real terms, more and more people are being forced onto government assistance and there is more and growing legal action taking place by employees in the so-called gig economy to make sure they are paid fairly, which would be unnecessary in a full-employment economy where people can pick and choose their positions.

I'm fully prepared to accept that the government may lie about unemployment, but I very much doubt whether the Office of National Statistics or the International Labour Organisation does so.

Unemployment of 1.5m is certainly not close to full employment, as traditionally defined, and employers can source labour from all over the EU.  That helps them to keep wages down, and indeed, was cited by Lord Rose as one of the benefits of EU membership.

[Gorn]

2 hours ago, Eggegg said:

There is also the bureaucracy issue, and while Britain is far from perfect in this regard, many businesses often complain about the level of red tape imposed by the EU:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/17/jcb-boss-says-eu-exit-could-lift-burden-of-bureaucracy-on-uk-businesses

One man's red tape is another man's consumer protection. The EU has some of the most stringent consumer protection requirements, and more importantly, its market size gives it enough clout to force companies to change their ways.