For people who complain about “post-fact” politics, y’all are incredibly naive when it comes to the EU. Right now, it’s a creditor’s wet dream - the euro contracts economies with deficits and prevents governments from addressing the problems with any sort of demand-side stimulus. It is, at the current juncture, collapsing.
Oh, and by the way, the President of the Commission, Jean Claude Juncker, was PM of Luxemburg for nineteen years - a period over which it became a tax haven - and he claims he had no idea it was happening! And his predecessor, Barroso, just accepted a position at Goldman Sachs.
only member states with unwanted governments - both France and Germany broke the stability pact more than once without any penalties.
currently the best example are Spain and Portugal: Schäuble is threatening the evil commie gov of Portugal with the euro bailout fund, while Spain got financial reliefs from the commission before the general elections
I voted remain. But
yes, the lies were very easily disproven - particularly the £350m a week to the NHS promise, which was disproven time and time again because a. the EU does not cost net £350m a week to start with, and b. clearly it’s not all going to the NHS even if that was the true cost. I have not much sympathy for those who woke up on 24th having voted leave and suddenly realised that they hadn’t really been paying attention.
I also don’t think it’s appropriate to hold a second referendum, or discount the decision made in this one. Can you imagine the civil unrest that would result? Farage, IDS, and all the other arseholes would be elevated to saintly status by the still-huge numbers of people who think we should be out. Yes, as a country we made a decision and now we have to learn from it. If we hold a general election with one party running on the promise of no article 50, and they then achieve power, then maybe we can overturn it. But a second referendum fixes nothing. It also doesn’t encourage anyone of the 48% to try to understand the mindset of the 52%. I’ve been pretty upset by the rage on both sides of the argument, including the (demonstrably, statistically) better-educated and better-off voters on the remain side.
The anger goes to the leaders on both sides for running dishonest campaigns, not effectively calling out the dishonesty of others, and not credibly and compellingly describing why ‘remain’ was the right option even for the disenfranchised.
Not surprised at all that the govt threw this out - this is not the way to avoid article 50. I hope there is one though.
I don’t think any EU government has so far actually been sanctioned for stability pact violations. There’s usually a big ado about this country or that breaking the deficit limit, but in the end nothing bad happens to anybody. This may have something to do with not wanting to cast the first stone.
In any case, as a matter of principle, it obviously makes great sense for the EU to take money from a country as a fine for being too deeply in debt when that country is presumably in debt because they don’t have a lot of money in the first place.
Yes, exactly. Everything you’ve said is correct. The only solution now is, May 2020, go vote for a new government with the mandate of petitioning the EU for a new membership. In the meantime, as we say in the US, “you broke it, you bought it.”
Presently I heard the sound of the distant bell giving the alarm, and I knew that the town was on its way to the scene. Hitherto I had felt like a guilty person — nothing but shame and regret. But now I settled the matter with myself shortly. I said to myself, ‘Who are these men who are said to be the owners of these woods, and how am I related to them? I have set fire to the forest, but I have done no wrong therein, and now it is as if the lightning had done it. These flames are but consuming their natural food.’
It has never troubled me from that day to this more than if the lightning had done it. The trivial fishing was all that disturbed me and disturbs me still. So shortly I settled it with myself and stood to watch the approaching flames. It was a glorious spectacle and I was the only one there to enjoy it. The fire now reached the base of the cliff, and then rushed up its sides. The squirrels ran before it in blind haste, and three pigeons dashed into the midst of the smoke. The flames flashed up the pines to their tops, as if they were powder…
It burned over a hundred acres or more and destroyed much young wood. When I returned home late in the day, with others of my townsmen, I could not help noticing that the crowd who were so ready to condemn the individual who had kindled the fire did not sympathize with the owners of the wood, but were in fact highly elate and as it were thankful for the opportunity which had afforded them so much sport, and it was only half a dozen owners so called, though not all of them, who looked sour or grieved, and I felt that I had a deeper interest in the woods, knew them better, and should feel their loss more, than any or all of them…
Some of the owners, however, bore their loss like men, but other some declared behind my back that I was a ‘damned rascal;’ and a flibbertigibbet or two, who crowed like the old cock, shouted some reminiscences of ‘burnt woods’ from safe recesses for some years after. I have had nothing to say to any of them…I at once ceased to regard the owners and my own fault, — if fault there was any in the matter, — and attended to the phenomenon before me, determined to make the most of it. To be sure, I felt a little ashamed when I reflected on what a trivial occasion this had happened, that at the time I was no better employed than my townsmen…”
I think that what the EU had that we lacked in things like say NAFTA was the freeing up of PEOPLE to move more freely across borders, rather than just capital.
Freedom of movement of people was the #1 reason I voted Remain. It’s the thing I most valued about being a European citizen. If I’m confined to that crappy little island trading off centuries old past glory, I’m not much interested in keeping my British citizenship. I’d happily swap it for any of the other 27 EU nationalities right now.
As New Dealers sought to remake the meanings of liberal and liberalism, a new term entered the political lexicon: neoliberalism. Much in vogue today among academics and activists, the phrase is usually understood to mean market-oriented approaches to structural problems. It is almost always used as shorthand pejorative for policies or programmes consonant with right-wing global capitalism. In the US, however, the term was initially, and frequently, used by critics of the New Deal to highlight its alleged betrayal of traditional liberalism. For these critics, neoliberalism did not mean a purified form of free-market mania but quite the opposite: a dangerous combination of planning and collectivism that verged on socialism.
Saying something is neoliberal isn’t a critique. It’s a wish washy, mushy term that doesn’t mean much of anything. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if some were using it to argue against “Zionist Occupational Government.”
Now you can argue that it’s a doctrine that privileges the rights of capital over human rights, technocracy over democracy. But when Angela Leadsom’s priorities include getting the UK out of the ECHR, inchoate invocations of neoliberalism simply won’t do.
Well, since your opinion is based on a fact-free argument I’m hardly about to change it. But I wasn’t criticising the people who voted Leave. I think I’ve made it clear elsewhere that my anger is aimed at:
a)Politicians who lied
b)Politicians who saw the referendum as a way to fight an internal party battle
c)Newspapers who reported the lies as truth
d)Newspapers who over the years have misrepresented the truth about the way the UK is governed to ordinary people.
I was criticising you for making a blanket statement (that the EU is a colonial project) which is obviously wrong. Someone else has taken you up on neoliberal.
Some statements are worthy of derision. The political right enjoys name calling and threats but gets all upset if moderates do it. I was rather pleased when Nicholas Soames called one of the Leave arguments “bollocks” because sometimes rudeness is necessary.
…when we expected to be able to go and settle anywhere in the world we wanted to and Johnny Foreigner just had to put up with it. But we let Frenchies and Germans in without passports when we weren’t at war with them.
“Great” Britain, freedom of the seas etc., was in many ways a borderless world.
Is there any evidence for that aside from google trends? If not, see this article from Medium about why any story that claims the public is ignorant of something based on google trends is probably nonsense.
Free movement of capital, goods, services = economic benefit
Free movement of people = social benefit.
There is a very good case that you can have the former and healthily lack the latter. But eventually, it resolves into the wealthy taking advantage of the poor. And that causes problems. Big problems.
The EU mistake was free movement of people but without providing infrastructure for those people. That resolves in the longer term, but creates focused, short-term anger.
One important thing that Farage and Co never mentioned was that many people - Poles are a great example - came to the UK, skilled up, and then went home as soon as was economically feasible, to start a new life in the communities they grew up in.
