Id say.
Right = immigrants they can earn money on.

I think, what with the precedent set when Australia entered the Eurovision Song Contest, that it's time for Canada, Australia and New Zealand to join the EU. That would not only make the free movement thing possible without any of the problems the EU would cause, but it would make the Union seem a far more friendly place from a British perspective.

When the US becomes a more developed nation in line with the Western model, it might even be possible to let them join as well.

I am a strong supporter of Brexit, but I would like Britain to follow it by building an alternative, without the flaws the EU has. Immigration has never been my problem with the EU - TTIP and workers rights are; along with the idiotic idea of the Eurozone. I would support open borders and a free trade area within Commonwealth countries *with similar economies*. Realistically this would be Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (the so-called Anglosphere, minus America, which has a far bigger economy and would thus dominate any union there... bad). Ireland could also join if/when it left the EU (or, hopefully, the EU collapses entirely)

I would however be quite happy to accept the Carribbean and Pacific Island countries. I would not support them joining any potential future currency union between CANZUK because that would replicate the flaw of the eurozone - unbalanced economies joining it and thus ending up with a new bunch of Greece, Portugal, Cyprus etc. But their demographics would not unbalance a trade zone, and they don't have economies based around doing what we do for less money, so there is no reason to keep them out.

As for the African and Asian members of the Commonwealth - I don't support them joining a free-trade zone with us simply because it'd be disastrous for our economies, by making outsourcing of jobs and relocation of factories that much easier, and I support tariffs and protectionism there. Visa-free travel would be nice, but total freedom of movement is not good. Those members of the Commonwealth have massively higher populations with far lower wages, and that just doesn't work out well for us.

Immigration from countries which have a significantly lower GDP per Capita and lower wages creates a downward pressure on wages for natives; which is why large-scale migration from poorer countries is bad. Until we live in a Global superstate (which I hope we never live to see) unilateral action toward one is a terrible idea. The social side of immigration doesn't especially bother me, because if it's well planned then it doesn't really cause significant issues. Bradford in the UK is a prime example of bad planning, but as of yet Germany has not had any such modern day "ghetto" crop up.

A governments primary duty is to its own people, not toward those of other nations. Inequality could be fixed (or at least lessened) at a national level. At international level that's just a pipedream.

Divine Octavious, like us antipodeans the USA is only a young nation so please be patient with them. We've heard some media chatter about the UK introducing much higher charges and tougher conditions for working visa's for the UK...one group that this might affect are all the Australian "young doctors" who traditionally travel to the UK soon after they complete their training here to work in your hospital system as well as then take up post graduate training in the UK

Oh, you don't get me, I'm part of the union
You don't get me, I'm part of the union
You don't get me, I'm part of the union
Until the day I die, until the day I die

Tougher visas for Aussies? Who the hell will man the bars?!?

There is certainly no desire amongst any segment of British society to keep Australians out. The only possible reason for it would be because of misguided notions of fairness and not discriminating between different nations.

Personally I am all in favour of discriminating between different nations. Damn it, the Irish are allowed to vote in UK elections! The Scandinavian nations have all sorts of special agreements between themselves. Long may it continue.

The Brexit business has to be the most suicidal thing in international politics. The only thing the UK economy has done since Thatcher, as far as I can tell, is handle foreign exchange and banking with Europe, and the Little Englanders want to wipe that out. There's even this absurd idea of having closer economic relations with the English speaking world, when the British couldn't even manage an imperial preferences system back when they actually had an empire.

So good luck with all that. I imagine the EMU countries are not so secretly hoping London votes itself out of existence. Gone will be the days of the UK whining and extorting them for special favors, and generally acting like a nuisance on behalf of the United States.

I think its hilarious that HR wants to wind back the clock 50 years. I would remind you that England was once Australia's largest trading partner and was fully integrated with its Commonwealth, but chose to turn its back on it in favour of the EU experiment.

That ship has sailed HR, never to return to port.

Luckily for me I was a 10 pound pom anyway, so I get to live in Oz and work anywhere in Europe if I want as well via my UK passport (also spent a year working in Canada under a bilateral agreement we already have).

Status quo is fine by me thanks :D

Oh I know that ship sailed, but that doesn't mean you can't construct a new one. Australia, Canada, and Britain are all in the Top 15 economies by GDP. NZ is somewhat below that, but either way, an agreement between the four would make the third largest economy in the world after the US and China, which would quite clearly make them a significant player in the global market and allow all of us to negotiate better deals. Making Britain the largest trading partner of Australia isn't the goal - though expanding trade between the four is one of them, but pooling resources to get better deals for all of us isn't a bad plan at all.

The Australian economy is completely tied up with China. That relation of dependence isn't going to change anytime soon, although the liberals are trying to bite the hand that feeds them by signing on to the TPP. Proving once again that politics always trumps economics.

Yes, not sure about the wisdom of the TPP. It has received a lot of negative press in Australia.

Any trade agreement that requires the surrender of sovereignty to Multi-nationals should be immediately torn up and burnt.

As an Australian I support the TPP. It is exactly what we should be doing: promoting trade with countries not called China. We cannot let ourselves be held hostage by Chinese money, even though it is very important to our economy. In fact it makes it doubly important that we diversify our trade links.

As for the argument that it empowers multinational corporations at the expense of the people, I can only say that we have jobs because of said multinational corporations hiring us to produce things that people from other countries want. Producing something that someone else in another country could have done for half the price, just because 'Australian jobs', is a poor way to use the efforts of Australians.

Gobbledydook,

A solution to diversifying your trade links is not signing onto an obviously anti-Chinese project designed for American strategic interests and nobody elses. A solution would be agreeing to a TPP that includes China too. Australia needs to be an independent country not just another American puppet.

American puppets everywhere!

When they should be Soviet puppets. Keep dreaming PuttyPut!

Sorry the truth hurts.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/23/gough-whitlam-1975-coup-ended-australian-independence

I have to agree with Putin here. TPP is just another step to bringing the world under America's shadow. The balance of power was destroyed with USSR's dissolution.

As shadows go it could be a lot worse.

Yes that Gough thing wasn't exactly legal, lol.

The balance of power... America was always 10x more powerful than the Soviets. The 'BOP" was more about mutually beneficial social control. The soviets collapsed all by themselves because their system was not practical under long-term peacetime conditions.

The truth never hurts me Putty, I like it. Thanks for the article.

Yes, if the Soviets had privatized, they might have remained a credible threat to the US today.

Maybe. The fall of the soviets I think was inevitable from the damage done in WW2. Their terrible losses eventually resulted in a general collapse of will 50 years later. This destruction of Russian world power was perhaps the real long-term motivation behind the Nazi invasion. Had the Nazis not invaded Russia but stuck to their pact who knows what kind of world we would now be in. I suspect not one dominated by UKUSA.

Even if Hitler had remained in control of most of Europe, USA would still be a superpower.

Yes USA would be major world power, but perhaps nothing like its current position relative to Eurasia. Certainly the USSR would have been VASTLY stronger having skipped the whole war thing.

I agree. The tension of having multiple superpowers could have stopped USA from making unilateral decisions.

" The fall of the soviets I think was inevitable from the damage done in WW2."

That theory is belied by Soviet industrial production statistics in the 1950s and 1960s. Per capita GDP growth during the 25 years after the war was 3.6%. Not to mention that eastern Europe went from being a grouping of hostile nationalist anti-Russian states (much like today) to being completely militarily and economically integrated with the Soviet Union after the war. In the 1970s Soviet prestige and international influence was unparalleled.

In the mid-1980s the Soviet economy was doing just fine. Certainly there was no credible evidence that they were on the brink of collapse. Growth rates were steady and productivity was positive. A problem though was that Soviet foreign trade had become too dependent on the energy sector and therefore vulnerable to sudden shifts in energy prices. In the late 1980s, just as Gorbachov was experimenting with radical reforms, the Soviet Union experienced a sudden collapse in oil prices, and all hell broke loose. The collapse in price and the dismantlement of the planned economy meant the Soviets could not import the goods it needed to function.

"This destruction of Russian world power was perhaps the real long-term motivation behind the Nazi invasion."

I doubt it. The invasion was based on the inability of the two sides to work out their differences over the Balkans. The Germans had been determined to keep the Soviets out of the Balkans, and the Soviets regarded it as an area of traditional interest. After the Vienna awards in which Balkan borders of the USSR were redrawn without consulting Moscow (or for that matter, Italy), the issue became increasingly tense. Italy had been perfectly willing to negotiate with the Soviets, and had even drawn up a plan that would have satisfied both sides. Germany vetoed it because they wanted control of the entire Danubian/Balkan region, even at the exclusion of their so-called Italian ally (which is why the Italians invaded Albania and Greece without consulting Germany).

WWII was invariably a carbon copy of WWI. The same issues that sparked the first war sparked the second. Fear of Russian power became a rationalization for an aggressive policy.

All of that it utter, utter nonsense, and I really don't know where to begin to address it.

'Everything was a paradise until the oil price dropped in the late 1980's' - Putin

Can you even be remotely serious?

Putin actually is actually mostly right about the economy of the USSR. Talk about Soviet inefficiency is mostly myth; it was not for naught that the USSR was able to compete with the US for global supremacy for forty years, after the destruction in the second world war. It was mostly political instability that ended the USSR - Gorbachev moved too fast without sufficient support from the hardliners. And once the government lost credibility, so did its economic system.

One could raise a good counterpoint in East Germany - the situation there was worse than people expected before the end of the cold war. But I think a lot of that could be attributed to the competing desires of the USSR to use East Germany both as a poster child and to enrich itself.

"All of that it utter, utter nonsense, and I really don't know where to begin to address it. "

Well, I see you "addressed it" by concocting a straw man "summary" and doing the whole "are you serious" thing. Good effort.

At any rate, if you're going to do the whole incredulous stare tactic, you might want to have an alternative theory that made a shred of sense, or had an ounce of plausibility. You might want to make explain why other socialist countries which endured devastating wars - China, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, did not experience a sudden regime change and collapse.

I did not argue that everything was a paradise and anybody who isn't wholly dishonest can see that. I said the economy was doing fine prior to the oil shock, there was nothing to indicate economic crisis or exhaustion in the mid-80s, 40 years after WWII where you say they were simply exhausted. I also added the variable of Gorbachov's reforms, which backfired completely as they were too radical. You ignored that. How convenient.

Well anything to give your gallant German heroes credit for saving the hide of Anglo-America, I suppose.

"One could raise a good counterpoint in East Germany - the situation there was worse than people expected before the end of the cold war"

East German standard of living was the highest of all European socialist countries, even after the problem of paying indemnity to the USSR in the early years, the blockade and sanctions inflicted upon it by the west, and being forced to have a city in the middle of the country that was militarized heavily, a frequent source of sabotage, and a nuclear flashpoint. East Germany may have lagged behind the west in terms of overall development and quality of consumer goods, but it provided its citizens with very generous pensions, high quality healthcare, high quality education, paid maternity leave, free childcare, and excellent public transportation. East German benefits were such that West Germany was compelled to offer similar benefits to their own workers. Proof of this is that as soon as the wall came down, reunified Germany wasted no time in revoking a lot of these benefits.

Revolutions happen not when things are so terrible but when expectations increase. This is what led to the protests in Eastern Europe in 1989. It wasn't that socialism wasn't working as such, it was that they wanted access to fancy cars and expensive luxury goods that seemed more available in the west.