Quote Originally Posted by InsaneApache View Post
You know as well as I do the MEPs are members of a toothless talking shop. The real power is the Commission.
The real power is the UK Parliament, whose MPs we elect. Most European bodies are practically powerless unless we decide we want to implement whatever it is they're suggesting. There is a powerful movement in the EU that transcends national government, but it's to do with the euro and hence something that doesn't concern us. Nearly everything in the EU that overrides national government we've opted out of. There may well be a good argument within the eurozone for exiting a body that has powers that they can do nothing about, but the UK is free of nearly everything of that sort. For the UK, the EU is not much more than an EEC with some social additions that our national government wants anyway. A Nexit may make philosophical sense on those grounds. Not so much a Brexit.

Even if we do exit the EU, we're not big enough to stand alone in global markets. So we're going to have to look elsewhere for a bloc that will support our interests. The closest alternative is the US. The problem with a US-UK economic bloc is that the US is even keener on what we see as the worst parts of globalisation than the EU is. The US, after all, is keen on an absolute free market, while the biggest use of EU money is propping up local economies. Exiting the EU because we don't like their bigger vista only sends us towards an even greater supporter of globalisation.