Farage bottles it?

[Chinahand]

He is a politician and they are the general public. 'Twas ever thus. Are you trying to tell us that other political leaders and their target audience are different? To a man and a woman they all speak in sound bites aimed to the lowest common denominator.

There are consequences of it being ever thus ... now who said this, I wonder?

 

“The multitudes remained plunged in ignorance … and their leaders, seeking their votes, did not dare to undeceive them. The newspapers, after their fashion, reflected and emphasised the prevailing opinions. Few voices were raised to explain … No one in great authority had the wit, ascendancy, or detachment from public folly to declare fundamental, brutal facts to the electorate; nor would anyone have been believed if he had."

 

Farage pretends everything is easy, that all these problems will just slip away if only we got rid of the EU.

 

The reality is far more complex with just as many and just as serious problems if he got his way and pulled up the draw-bridge and threw out all those horrid foreigners who are ruining his idyll of the UK. The consequences for British trade and relations would be huge, and for the economy too.

 

Polish plumbers may make life harder for British ones, but they make things overall better for us all - that is the essence of competition.

 

Putting up barriers will just result in worse plumbing overall, and more costs. And it wouldn't just be plumbers, and fruit pickers affected, but major industries as the UK is on the outside in EU open border debates, and has to adopt their regulations to be allowed into to these vital markets.

 

Farage dismisses this with a hand wave and a claim we can go and trade with the Chinese - guess what - it is far far harder to trade with the Chinese than with the Dutch - with far more complex hoops to leap through.

 

Look at any engineering standard - getting these standardized across an economic unit as complex as the EU is bureaucratic and hard work. But having those common standards - whether in engineering, finance, aviation, shipping etc etc - are huge economic goods. Farage pretends they aren't important - they are, they are the essence of the trading world upon which our prosperity is based.

 

It's hard, bureaucratic sub-section 4c, paragraph 15 detail, but it allows planes to fly, credit cards to be accepted, electronics to be standardized and quality standards be accepted for 100s of millions of common customers.

 

Farage would just make a farting noise if he had to deal with it, and the electorate like to listen to animal noises far more than bureaucratese, but guess what ... our economy works better by engaging with these issues than ignoring them.

 

In or out of the EU the UK will have to make products compatible with standards in the markets it wants to sell in.

 

It is better to negotiate these standards by being on the inside, than ignoring them and pretending they aren't important while going down the pub.

 

Farage encourages everyone to just pretend we can go down the pub and still be prosperous.

 

It aint true.

[woolley]

One wonders how the rest of the world manages to get out of bed in the morning, let alone build prosperity outside this EU nirvana.

[Chinahand]

No one is claiming there aren't problems with the EU.

 

It is simply that Farage's prescriptions for the Good Life are simplistic, unworkable bollox.

 

They do nothing to solve the EU's problems, and create more for the UK as it makes access to the UK's most important partners more bureaucratic and give us less power to negotiate proposals in our interests.