From City AM:
“They’re on the back foot, momentum is with us, and I think we’re going to win,” Carswell says.
“[The CBI] are not neutral players in this. They tend to favour big corporate lobbying because they are a big corporate lobbying organisation. They produced a poll that even the British Polling Council admitted was questionable,” he adds, using a recent corporate scandal to land another punch on the business group.
“The CBI is to measuring what British business thinks about EU membership what Volkswagen is to carbon emissions tests. They’re methodologically rather suspect.”
Some businesses want to stay in the European Union, Carswell concedes. But that’s because “those businesses – big corporations and banks in particular, but also lobby groups – that have a clear vested interest in a commercial system based on lobbying and the granting of permission, who are going to love the EU.”
“But they are not representative of the broad bulk of business in this country, who can’t afford to rig the rules. I also happen to think there is something unethical about gaining market share by fixing the rules by hiring lobbyists.”
“I believe in the free market, and the corporatist vested interest in Brussels who are rigging the system to their advantage are not helping us be competitive. Competitiveness, like red tape and all problems in the EU, has been a problem all Prime Ministers have said they’ll address, but nothing ever changes.”
Which is what I have been saying for years. The Outers should not be just attacking the EU from 'the right' by focusing on immigration (even though in the light of recent events, that's becoming ever easier), they should be attacking the EU from 'the left' as well.
I was at a UKIP event in London a few years ago, and when it was finished, I told the others that I was off to the Occupy London thing at St Paul's. That took some of them by surprise, but I explained that as far as I was concerned, in some ways, UKIP and the Occupy people are fighting for the same thing, they just don't realise it.
Put On Your Big Boy Pants, Maybe?
3 hours ago
10 comments:
Last para - bang on. There's an excellent video of Peter Schiff taking this exact fight to Occupy Wall Street ( found it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahMGoB01qiA ).
All true 'capitalists', 'entrepreneurs', technologists and savers could only agree with both the Occupy people (who mostly don't understand the economics) of the rest of us who want free trade.
The thing is, we have a Party for Labour - the Labour Party. And we have a Party for landlords - the Tory Party. What we don't have is a party for capital.
@L
Yep - we need a properly liberal (libertarian?) party rather than the wishy-washy part-time social (liberal) democrats we have now.
@S. The Libdems are socialists with a snobbery problem.
The Common Market was constituted to encourage competition, which is what's the matter with it.It kiboshed out economy by abolishing Resale Price Maintenance which protected small shops and manufacturers against competition from aggressive discounting by cartels.It encouraged low wage countries to take our industry abroad see British Timken and Avon Cosmetics in Northampton alone .The globalising pretensions of UKIP will complete the de-industrialising ambitions of the Conservatives who, as Lola says, have
reverted to being the party of land (price inflation).
"The Common Market was constituted to encourage competition"
Do you have any reference to support this, DBCR, or is this yet another effusion from your copious bottom?
I could refer you to the many aspects of EU Competition policy on Net but with your poo-poo wee-wee fixation that would be a waste of time.
DBCR Yes indeed, the EU talks all about competition, but that's a bit of misdirection. It's actually all about crony corporatism. The EU bureaucrats have read a book about how competition is useful in economics and have tried to fit a whole set of bureaucratic rules all around it, not appreciating that is just what NOt is needed.
DBCR yes...you have realised that real knowledge tends to dissipate your weird fantasies.
as usual, words fail DBCR
@G
As I have said before you should try developing a counter argument, instead of your invariable but trivial ad hominem abuse.
The following argument contains elements Lola has touched on (in a very different way) and points I have made on here or elsewhere. There should be something which draws some kind of response from anybody interested in the subject:
"Your report on the latest spat within the Conservative party over the EU referendum(Cabinet crisis for Cameron as ministers break ranks over EU,13 May) raises an interesting question about what Tories the real agenda is. Big business and the City, the latter now largely owned by US investment banks which view the UK as an important bridgehead into Europe, clearly want to retain access to the single market- but without the employment, health and safety and welfare protections negotiated by the labour movement. This suggests that much of the Tory dissension is disingenuous posturing, designed to negotiate repatriation of powers in these areas and take the sting out of the UKIP threat, or represents "Little Englander" attempts to replace control of our economy by international monopoly capital with that of British monopoly capital.
But this shouldn't obscure the progressive argument for leaving the EU. The EU growth and stability pact outlaws Keynesian-style reflationary policies. Competition policy prevents state aid to strategic industries. The EU services directive forces privatisation of what remains of the public sector. And European court of justice rulings undermine collective bargaining and wage levels. Social Europe is a con. The left needs to make the case for an alternative, progressive future outside the EU- where we have the right to self determination, can rebalance the economy away from finance towards manufacturing and can construct a society on democratic, socialist terms."
Chris Guiton
There you are : any number of arguments some highly nuanced.Lets see if you can deal with them without being distracted by the identity of the writer.
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