UKIP are nothing more than the monday club 2.0 they hope to grab enough seats to form a coalition with the tories.
If they dont manage to do it then Farage and the whole carnival will be toast.
The Kippers are nothing more than Elm tree guest house buddys scum of the political world.

Well it is relevant, but let's leave that aside then for now (even though other posts have veered outside the strict parameters of the topic) and let's continue this as a civil and structured debate.

Can you post corroborating reasons for your statement that: "Leaving it (the EU)would cause untold economic damage"?

Even were they not to win many seats this time, they will increasingly win more seats as the other two parties are increasingly found NOT to be able to address the very real concerns of the British public concerning the EU and unfettered immigration.

Interestingly, only one party is offering an in/out referendum on Europe, allowing the public to decide our future in the EU and that party is not UKIP. The Tories are slowly waking up to the fact that we have finite resources and hundreds of thousands of incomers every year puts an unbearable strain on our infrastructure.

I personally want out of Europe. For a long time I hadn't formed an opinion but now having satisfied myself on the question I have come out against the EU. As I said on another thread, we do more business with the US than we do with the EU and we have a whole Commonwealth that's not being used in a way beneficial to everyone because we're spending all out time trying to fit into Europe... which we don't. Sadly I believe that UKIP has gained strength because of the fact that no one is allowed to have an adult discussion about immigration because they get labelled racists and xenophobes. UKIP started the conversation and people picked up on it. Sadly the name-calling is still going on. There must be a discussion about immigration though, and I say that as the descendant of refugees.

On the economic point: instability is one of the biggest curses of economies and businesses everywhere, a lot of major companies have expressed worries about even having a referendum on Europe never mind us leaving altogether. It won't be so simple as continuing to trade while being politically separate, there would be incredibly laborious negotiations as we try and unravel our EU membership and then once that's done we would then need to start the equally long task of negotiating on what terms exactly our relationship will be with the rest of Europe. People talk about Switzerland but as I understand it their relationship with the EU is the product of years of complex agreements and treaties which is not particularly stable. If you separate yourself from the EU and reject it then we completely lose the ability to affect change from within and be a part of reforming the EU for the benefit of all that does need to happen.

As you know by now Kirk I have neither the time nor the inclination to post page-long dissertations on these topic as you do, I learned long ago that there's simply very little point. Especially on the Internet. something that I'm surprised you haven't realised yet.

However, two brief reasons:

1) over 50% if the UKs import/export trade is with Eu member states. If you believe that those trades won't be affected (amounting to tens of billions) by removing ourselves from the EU you are lying to yourself.

2) as someone else mentioned, US based and other global multinationals currently use the UK as a "stepping stone" to access the massive European marketplace. They will have very little interest in this scrappy little island without that link. I'll trust you to look into the economic implications of that for yourself.

The UK's place on the world stage is reliant on being a part of Europe. The only people who don't realise this are those who still, unfathomably, have their heads stuck in idea of Britain as an Empire, that we are somehow globally "great" on simple account of our own wonderful Great Britishness. We don't want to be part of Europe because we are somehow "bigger and better than that". We are not.

I have no idea which UKIP pamphlet you read this in but you are massively misinformed.

I find it a little insulting that you would assume I would get my opinions from a UKIP leaflet.

Well I don't know where you did get them from. US exports are worth around 80 billion and EU exports are worth over 150 billion. Germany alone is worth over 40 billion. The EU and US combined account for more than three quarters of our total trade and the EU itself around half.

In other words: we don't do "more trade" with the US than Europe or even close to it. It's about 50% Europe, 25% US, and the other 25% is the entirety of the rest of the world combined.

Greens have offered an in/out referendum.
Tories have offered an in/out referendum.
UKIP have offered an in/out referendum.
Liberal Democrats have offered an in/out referendum. (but why trust them lmao)

not just one party

:joker:

what rot

Why is it rot? If UKIP fail to gain any sort of influence at this election, they will be an irrelevance (once more) by the time the next one rolls round. They're enjoying their 15 minutes of fame but it won't come to much unless it's capitalised upon this year.

Ahh thankyou LT, for providing data showing that Germany and Holland alone ($79bn) are worth more in export revenue than the United States ($52bn).

Throw in France and it's more than double already. :facepalm:

Methinks some people have heard it stated that the US is our biggest trading partner as an individual country and somehow taken that to mean that they are worth more than the entire European Union :joker:.

another sooth sayer who has the ability to see into the future :idc:





who will win the national then?

Pointless tactic LT. We all make predictions or we wouldn't believe anything at all. I'm no more claiming to know the future than you are when you state that we would be better off out of Europe :shrug:.

I have not stated that in this thread :shrug:

Only one party is offering a referendum Josh. One. Only.

Put me down in a medieval stylie...

And only to win votes back from UKIP.

Well, you seem to have insights into all this that even the leaders don't have.

Anyway, that was to Josh, who seems to think everyone's offering a referendum.

It's because of Kirk, he's having an effect on the whole forum and making it more old fashioned. (He was born in medieval times, legend has it).

Forsooth, methinks you could be right.

Biblical, the word you were searching for was Biblical

:hehe: