I personally share tom’s thinking on the EU…. but agree – any genuine movement to make democracy real by offering a free vote has to be a winner ?
(not satire – it’s Labour!)
For some strange reason being anti-EU is seen as right-wing.
Personally I would vote for the UK to stay in the EU, but some of the most left-wing people I know – and I know a few – believe the UK should leave the EU.
We should never forget that it was a Tory government which signed the accession agreement for the UK to join the EEC, and it was Tory Prime Ministers who signed the Single European Act and Maastricht.
And in 1975 it was a Labour government which held a referendum on EU membership.
If Ed Miliband and Labour were brave enough they would offer a no-conditions promise to the electorate that if they win the next election they will hold an in-out referendum on EU membership.
And if they did that, they would walk the next election.
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jaynelinney 
In the previous Referendum under Harold Wilson most on the left voted against membership with the EEC, based on the grounds that it was a capitalist club which really only served corporate business interests The economic impact on Britain was also evaluated by the TUC and concluded that Industry and jobs would naturally migrate to the Centres of activity, namely Europe and rather than creating jobs here would slowly drain away to Europe.
During the Thatcher years and the attacks here on welfare and public services the Left did an about turn and saw Europe as a defender of these very services, until of course Neo-Liberalism took a greater hold and the Financial crash accelerated the privatisation and dismantling of everything we thought Europe would resist.
Instead we now see that Europe is conducting secret talks with with American Corporations to introduce TTIP. This is of course the final element in the Neo-Liberal agenda that enshrines legal redress for corporate interests against the democratic aspirations of ordinary people.
The only way we can now escape the pernicious affects of this agreement, would be to leave the EU.
That I believe would also revive the kind of spirit that prevails now in Scotland and reinvigorate the debate against Neo-Liberal dogma, and bring about the radical change that we need to survive.
To continue in the way we have been will only lead to economic ruin and the kind of divisions in society we saw before the last war.
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