Precisely. And since, in terms of economic strength, everybody in the expanded EU most certainly isn't equal (please note that this is not intended as any sort of insult, merely a statement of fact) the free movement principle does not work well.

In particular, what has really happened in certain cases, for example with Poland and England, is that most of the movement has been one way. This puts strain on English services, but it's important to recognise that it also means many of the people who would be best placed to help Poland develop its own economy are among the most likely to find working in richer European countries more attractive and/or lucrative, creating a "brain drain" effect back home. In the long term, both nations could end up worse off because of the imbalance.

In principle, freedom of movement is a good idea, for both business and pleasure purposes. But on the business side, it does require reasonably balanced parties so the traffic at least roughly cancels out. This was the case in the early days when there were far fewer nations in the shared European machine, but with the expansion to nearly 30 actual or aspiring member states with much more diverse economic conditions, the same logic no longer holds.

Which of course was itself neither caused nor amplified by the underlying financial strains within the EU and particularly the Eurozone, right?

It has plenty to do with the Common Market.

It has very little to do with the rest of the stuff the EU added on top of that Common Market.

There is no reason why in the long term that should not be the case. It worked before, something similar works today with the EFTA nations, and it is still in everyone's interests for a separated UK and the nations still in the EU to remain effective trading partners.

Where did that "and privileges" come from? What privileges are these, and why do you keep adding extra one-sided straw men to the discussion when no-one else is suggesting them?

If EU skeptics have come to power elsewhere, why does the EU have any right to try to prevent them from leaving? You could hardly blame, for example, the Greek, for having second thoughts. Though of course the general population in Greece seems to be consistently in favour of trying to make the Euro work rather than going back to their old currency anyway, so this is just another straw man.

And the same number of people are actually suggesting each of those deals here: zero. You seem to be making up random straw men for reasons I don't understand, and I don't see how that is furthering any useful debate here.

No, it's not. One of the strategies requires everything to work almost immediately or it almost immediately starts building up to a failure that undermines the economies on both sides. The other strategy can be used over arbitrarily long timescales, with full integration determined by when everyone is ready instead of artificial pressures because of unwanted economic side-effects, and in fact full economic integration not necessarily ever being required at all.

What referendum and what agreement?

The beginning of the European Union as we know it today was the Maastricht Treaty in 1991.

The last referendum on major European integration in the UK was held in 1975, and it was about membership of the European Economic Community, which was explicitly about trade -- in fact, it was widely known as the Common Market.

This went as far as some provisions for freedom of movement, but was long before the kind of centralised government and economic integration we see with today's European Union.

For those keeping score at home, yes, that means no-one under the age of 57 in the UK has ever voted in a referendum on European integration at all.

Because the EU today doesn't just have the useful trade agreements, but also a lot of other baggage.

An interesting perspective, considering how unequal the footing is between different EU member states today, and how much this is responsible for many of the serious problems facing Europe recently.

Now you're just making things up and fear-mongering again.

For example, one of the widely reported pre-leaving business comments recently was from some of the senior executives at JCB, which is a large organisation that makes engineering vehicles and the like. They made a reasonable point that there is relatively little demand for such vehicles within Europe under the current economic conditions, while there is a great deal of demand and even more potential in rising global economies like China, to which the vehicles can be exported in large numbers. Limiting potentially beneficial trade agreements with those developing economies for the sake of keeping the EU happy simply isn't in the interests of a business like that, and in turn of that sector of the UK economy. This has nothing to do with the kind of exploitation of the workforce you're alleging.

The numbers are what they are. The UK has a healthy balance in trade with most of the more economically advanced EU member states, but overall it is the non-UK side that tends to export slightly more at the moment, so they have more to lose if the bureaucrats throw their toys out of the pram instead of dealing with any UK exit like adults.

And there is no particular reason to assume the trade rules would change dramatically in any new agreements anyway. As I said before, the trade agreements are one of the areas where everyone saw common ground long before the EU was around, and they are one of the areas where there is still a lot of common ground today. You're just fear-mongering, again.

It hasn't really worked out very well for anyone over the past few years. That's the point: closer integration between partners who aren't starting from a broadly similar position is often a lose-lose proposition. The visionary sees the potential for what might be a better future for everyone, but the pragmatist also asks how we're going to get there starting from where we all are today.

Sorry, but that is just unfounded fear-mongering.

There is no reason that skilled and motivated immigrants should have to leave the UK, for the same reason that roughly half our immigrant population comes from outside the EU today. However, the UK could impose stricter controls on those with less to offer and/or who don't speak the local languages or share the local culture entering the country. Given widespread -- and at least somewhat justified -- popular concern about less productive immigrants taking advantage of the social security system in the UK and about isolated communities that never integrate significantly, that seems one of the most likely outcomes in the event of a UK/EU split.

Similarly, the average UK ex-pat retiree now living elsewhere within the EU probably isn't a benefits scrounger. With things like the cost of housing being so low in much of continental Europe compared to the UK, these people are probably sufficiently wealthy to look after themselves for as long as they need to, contributing to the local economy in the process, and simply enjoy the more laid back culture and local environment in their later years. Again, there would be little reason to force such people out just because of a UK/EU split.

So you provide international development aid before you integrate, and you only allow the tighter integration when the weaker nations are ready for it. This story plays out on a global scale and with much wider gaps in current economic strength all the time, but the EU has spectacularly mismanaged it within Europe, unfortunately with all-too-predictable consequences.

Potentially, but the reports I've seen only disclosed the existence of a planning process, not the results, which don't seem to have been determined yet. Everyone who might be affected in the kind of way you described will have known or assumed that the relevant people would be making these kinds of plans anyway, so it seems no real harm has been done here.

People have been talking about amicable separation from Europe since long before Farage had any significant influence in British politics.

Yes. That's what we signed up for: economic and trade relations. Everything that has come after that has never been asked for or voted for here (or in many other EU member states, for that matter).

Why is this a problem? It worked fine for years, and good trade relations are mutually beneficial.

So do a lot of other people. But the UK isn't asking for a free lunch. It's suggesting that if, say, Germany makes good bread and the UK farms good cows, they trade so everyone can enjoy a tasty burger-in-a-roll for lunch. Plenty of nations outside the EU have this kind of relationship with plenty of nations within the EU today. The UK has, and wants to develop, these kinds of relations with other global trading partners as well.

The UK is a net importer with most of its major trading partners within the EU. Financially speaking, there is probably more benefit to those nations if they preserve good trade relations with the UK than the other way around, but both sides benefit greatly.

The trouble with that argument is that it relies on the stronger members having enough economic power to actually do that. It is far from clear that this is currently the case, with the expansion of the EU in recent years to include many far less economically advanced member states, not to mention a few of the longer-standing ones habitually cooking the books. The likes of Germany can't make up for shortfalls across so many of their fellow EU nations indefinitely; it isn't politically viable, and even if it were, it probably isn't economically viable in the long term either.

Not really. I hear bookies are giving odds of 1/25 on "badly".

The trouble is, the Eurozone hasn't actually solved the underlying problems that caused or amplified most of the troubles in recent years. There is still wide disparity between the economic strengths of different EU member states, including those within the Eurozone. They still share a common currency but control their own taxation, government spending, and trade relations with partners outside the EU.

Measures like quantitative easing (as we seem to call "printing money" these days) might create some temporary breathing space that allows more time to address underlying problems. However, if the real problems aren't addressed then sooner or later they will just undermine the whole economy and cause everything to crash again. And next time, the rest of the world will be even less trusting of the Eurozone's future financial strength, making it even harder for its member states to recover.

People keep posting this, but seem to be referring to only one bank, HSBC. It would be a loss economically if they went, but there is a lot of scare-mongering going on about what would happen to big business if we do/don't leave. No-one really knows how many, if any, of these big businesses would really follow through on their threats if they don't get the result they want.

There have also been leaders of big business arguing for leaving. The main argument is that it would make it easier for the UK to negotiate bilateral trade agreements with other rising economic powers around the world if it were not tied to the EU.

And there have certainly been plenty of small businesses criticising all the badly implemented rules from the EU recently on everything from VAT to consumer protection, which are creating an absurd burden particularly in the growing on-line sector. In theory we are supposed to benefit from more trade as a result, but some less charitable/more realistic commentators have pointed out that many nations in the EU are still in such a poor state financially that they generate almost no custom for things like new on-line businesses anyway.

The difficulty with all of these issues is that since no-one can see far into the future, none of us really know which agreements are more important to keep or develop and which are just getting in the way now. It's all just marginally-educated guesses.

The UK is part of Europe because of geography.

The UK is part of the European Union because of history, and in particular because of trade agreements followed by dubious political manoeuvring to expand the resulting relationship far beyond their originally intended scope.

That seems like a good summary of the current situation, yes.

Why? I haven't made up my mind yet, but I'm erring on the side of leaving for entirely rational reasons.

In short, I think the UK and much of continental Europe have different long term goals. The Eurozone nations have opted for a degree of financial integration that the UK doesn't want or need. Obviously that hasn't worked out very well recently, at least for the economically stronger EU nations, so there is little reason for the UK to join in the foreseeable future. I think the wider EU is also heading for a more centralised, federalised system of legislation and broader government, which again the UK does not generally want to join. I suspect that in the long term these two fundamental types of integration will prove to be inseparable, and those who want to be part of the EU will increasingly lose sovereignty over things like taxation, weakening national governments in favour of ever-more-powerful central EU authorities. That's OK if it really is what they want, but I don't think it is what the UK is looking for in its relationship with its European neighbours.

On the other hand, the UK and many other EU nations are valuable trading partners for each other, so maintaining a liberal trading environment is in everyone's interests. This was what our previous generation actually signed up for by joining the predecessors of the current EU, of course. I think many in the UK also value things like the the European Convention on Human Rights (even if our current administration do not like it) and would be happy to remain a signatory, but that is a different European system, not part of the EU. Similarly I think those from the UK who often travel to Europe or vice versa would see merit in the UK joining the Schengen Area (even though again our current administration are probably strongly against it).

As things stand, it may be that the best way of everybody getting as close as possible to achieving their own goals is for the UK and EU to separate amicably, and then for the UK to establish alternative agreements for mutual benefit with the EU and/or individual member states in those areas where everyone's interests do align. It would no doubt be painful for everyone in the short term, but this might be a having to break eggs to make omelettes situation.