17 Responses

  1. Steven
    Steven at |

    Interesting, very well written piece. Most of it is correct and in the instances where it is wrong, they could be considered a grey area. It is not a balanced argument but I do not think that you set out to do that. You do not consider the down side at all. If a country such as Britain were to leave then to a large extent they could pick and choose which of these supposedly 21 great reasons they wished to continue with. Britain has already said freedom of movement won’t be one of those.

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  2. celt darnell
    celt darnell at |

    Very glad I voted leave.

    Reply
  3. Anonymous
    Anonymous at |

    You need to change that top picture of the Azure Window in Gozo. In case you have not heard it crashed into the sea a couple of weeks ago after a violent storm.

    Reply
  4. Anonymous
    Anonymous at |

    Hello Rodrigo

    I am a very sad UK 66 year old remainer. I loved being a citizen of the EU for the sense of inclusiveness it gave me. I lived through the Thatcher era and felt it protected me from the government’s excesses. This year has been particularly bad for me because of family circumstances and I had been considering leaving the UK because I can no longer identify with what it has become. It would be hard for me to leave now but I will always consider myself a European above anything else. So I wish all my fellow EU citizens a happy and prosperous life.

    Reply
  5. Sam
    Sam at |

    Really? Are those the top 15 (now 21) reasons you could come up with? Reasons that are mostly “ooh shiny things” aimed at a specific demographic at a specific point in time or just plain naive or ill-informed…

    Allow me to retort!

    1. So what? Most people don’t care to and/or never will
    2. So what? I might have to queue at customs a bit longer once a year on my holiday? Oh no!….
    3. Seriously? Most people will not do this. I studied for my degree is sunny old Britain, as did the vast majority of others…
    4. Which is used when? On holiday? Ever heard of health insurance?
    5. Because of course it would be impossible to have an FTA with another country unless you’re part of the EU….
    6. Back to the benefits of being a student again eh? Again something that not matter to the vast majority
    7. Oh for gods sake…another “super duper benefit” that matters to hardly anyone for brief periods of time
    8. Oh no, an extra £100 a year for foreign holiday – my life is over…
    9. Because I spend thousands of ££’s buying things from the EU nearly every day…
    10. We aren’t part of Schengen and have no land border with any other EU or non-EU country except The Republic of Ireland. And Schengen was such a good idea too….
    11. We don’t use the Euro and thankfully never will
    12. Because no-one in the UK cares about trees – damn you Johnny Foreigner for not letting me torch the Peak District…
    13. They already do, and the EU is a slave to them
    14. Because we all do this every day
    15. Trade helps prevent war – you don’t have to a member of an unelected autocracy to avoid war…
    16. These exist in the UK too you know and will be controlled by a democratically elected body…unlike the EU
    17. Hahahahahahaha I honestly don’t know where to start on this one
    18. We have consulates embassies everywhere, and guess what? They protect your interests too
    19. Where does this money come from? A magic tree? The UK puts in more than it gets out. These investments are with our money Einstein…
    20. We put more money and resource into this than any other member state, and will continue to do so. We don’t need to a member of the EU
    21. No, NATO is…and guess what, we will continue to be a member

    The best part of this is that I have seen your list quoted elsewhere as some kind of hard and factual list of definitive reasons not to leave the EU…and I thought “Remainers” were the “intellectuals”….

    I vote for democracy over this list any day of the week….

    Fool…

    Reply
  6. Christer Jervhäll
    Christer Jervhäll at |

    Hi agree with you but I think some of the more important arguments comes late when they should be first, like ability to stand up to big cooperations, a balance towards Putin and environment. Let us not forget also that without the EU the east European states might have fallen into new dictatorships like Russia long ago. The dream of getting into EU might very well have prevented this. The Brexit vote very not only about the future of Brittain. In the worst scenario this might bring havoc on us all since (as you so correctly point out) EU has been lousy in marketing itself and pointing out the great things it has done and hopefully will do for all of us. No big project is perfect from day one and EU is a huge project. There will be many times we need to reevaluate, change and reform. This is true for all cooperations and projects and it will hopefully make us move forward and develop to become better and better one step at a time. Just to throw it overboard at the first sign of issues needing new approaches is not what should be done. The first real crises the EU now has encountered is a great opportunity to learn and make changes to be better. And that EU not met any real crises until now almost 60 years after it was first started, even though the complexity of the task is a great feat in itself. It is also as pointed out very easy to blame EU for all issues even when the EU is not the party to blame. Far to long has this been a strategy for local politicians when defending their failures in order to be re-elected.

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