But of course the nutjobs will tell you hers wasn't Brexit.
They have wrecked this country for at least a generation. Arseholes.
If Mrs May’s deal wasn’t Brexit, then all those opposed to Brexit should have voted for it.
I "liked" this, and then I "unliked", because I remembered that of course the problem with May's deal was that those opposed to Brexit thought it was Brexit while those in favour of it thought it wasn't. Which in retrospect (hell, even at the time) means it was probably the perfect compromise and everyone should have just agreed to vote for it. Instead, no-one did.
I believe one or two on here suggested as much at the time.
One of the principal arguments of the Brexiteers was that it committed us to 'vassalage' since it was unthinkable that we'd ever threaten to abrogate a treaty...
Quite possibly both are true. Many applications for settled and pre-settled status are from abroad. I know several myself, who want to keep visa free work travel possible.
"Think 6m EU citizens live in the UK? Think again - many may not live in the country at all, said experts at the Office of National Statistics and the Migration Observatory at Oxford uni." https://t.co/ek837aLx4a
Can the govt not easily clarify some of this? They must know what proportion of the 918,000 are at least claiming to live in the UK currently and what proportion said they were living abroad from the application forms.
Quite possibly both are true. Many applications for settled and pre-settled status are from abroad. I know several myself, who want to keep visa free work travel possible.
"Think 6m EU citizens live in the UK? Think again - many may not live in the country at all, said experts at the Office of National Statistics and the Migration Observatory at Oxford uni." https://t.co/ek837aLx4a
And yet the FT report makes clear that many Romanians etc who ARE in the UK will not have applied for settled status (language problems, wariness of officialdom and so on)
These probably cancel out the Romanians abroad taking a punt?
As the same FT report concludes, it is factually obvious that there are many more EU citizens in the UK than we realised. Hence this HUGE discrepancy
Quite possibly both are true. Many applications for settled and pre-settled status are from abroad. I know several myself, who want to keep visa free work travel possible.
"Think 6m EU citizens live in the UK? Think again - many may not live in the country at all, said experts at the Office of National Statistics and the Migration Observatory at Oxford uni." https://t.co/ek837aLx4a
And yet the FT report makes clear that many Romanians etc who ARE in the UK will not have applied for settled status (language problems, wariness of officialdom and so on)
These probably cancel out the Romanians abroad taking a punt?
As the same FT report concludes, it is factually obvious that there are many more EU citizens in the UK than we realised. Hence this HUGE discrepancy
I’ve heard it said that the supermarkets are the only ones who know the true population. Because they know how many squares of toilet paper they sell a year and have excellent historic data on how many squares get used on average per person per year. Pre Brexit I heard it pegged by someone at Tesco as much as 5 million more than the census. Take that as you will.
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
It's a good question. A problem with the EU, arguably, is that it is NOT a superstate and its members will not allow it to become one. So you end up with a brittle and legalistic construct. The EU has its own contradictions - not as bad for the UK as the Brexit contradictions - but they exist nevertheless.
"Herd immunity is not the policy goal of the government."
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 1h I mean, it quite literally is. And there is no alternative policy other than eternal crisis.
The words "herd immunity" have come to mean "culling the herd" in the imagination of many. The meaning those words had in 2019 no longer applies.
The problem is we have the media at the same time spreading scary story nonsense that 4000 a day hospitalisations are incoming if we carry on as we are.
Quite possibly both are true. Many applications for settled and pre-settled status are from abroad. I know several myself, who want to keep visa free work travel possible.
"Think 6m EU citizens live in the UK? Think again - many may not live in the country at all, said experts at the Office of National Statistics and the Migration Observatory at Oxford uni." https://t.co/ek837aLx4a
Can the govt not easily clarify some of this? They must know what proportion of the 918,000 are at least claiming to live in the UK currently and what proportion said they were living abroad from the application forms.
I’ll take a random guess that quite a number of them are now living back in Romania or elsewhere, living a good life on the U.K. furlough scheme.
Needless to say the charming Mr Heath did not relay this info to British voters
Because it was bollocks
I’d say it has already come true for nations inside the euro. They are more ensnared in the EU than any individual US state and with less autonomous control of laws and regulations
In theory, unlike US states, these euroland countries have the crucial right of secession - that infamous article 50 in Lisbon - but in practise no euro country can or will ever quit the euro as the ensuing chaos would be ruinous. This is why Greece accepted perpetual penury and rule from Berlin rather than leaving the €
Britain got out, arguably, just before this Heathite prediction came true for us
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
Bet it all, and lost. Would it have been worth it if theyd succeeded? Perhaps. But they went in with eyes open and those holding out, on both sides, knew they risked a far worse (in their eyes) outcome. None can say they didn't know what was possible.
"Herd immunity is not the policy goal of the government."
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 1h I mean, it quite literally is. And there is no alternative policy other than eternal crisis.
By default, yes, the policy is Herd Immunity. I am certain a fourth wave wasn't part of the plan, however attenuated. But governments are exhausted, out of ideas and out of cash.
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
It's a good question. A problem with the EU, arguably, is that it is NOT a superstate and its members will not allow it to become one. So you end up with a brittle and legalistic construct. The EU has its own contradictions - not as bad for the UK as the Brexit contradictions - but they exist nevertheless.
The final defining aspect of statehood to be gained by the EU, if ever, would be the ability to declare war and conscript the citizenry to fight in that war.
Quite possibly both are true. Many applications for settled and pre-settled status are from abroad. I know several myself, who want to keep visa free work travel possible.
"Think 6m EU citizens live in the UK? Think again - many may not live in the country at all, said experts at the Office of National Statistics and the Migration Observatory at Oxford uni." https://t.co/ek837aLx4a
And yet the FT report makes clear that many Romanians etc who ARE in the UK will not have applied for settled status (language problems, wariness of officialdom and so on)
These probably cancel out the Romanians abroad taking a punt?
As the same FT report concludes, it is factually obvious that there are many more EU citizens in the UK than we realised. Hence this HUGE discrepancy
I’ve heard it said that the supermarkets are the only ones who know the true population. Because they know how many squares of toilet paper they sell a year and have excellent historic data on how many squares get used on average per person per year. Pre Brexit I heard it pegged by someone at Tesco as much as 5 million more than the census. Take that as you will.
It squares with anecdotal evidence. Eg every so often a council raid on a house in newham or Tottenham finding 15 Bulgarians to a room, with 10 in a shed at the back
Surely the tip of the iceberg, which suggests millions of undocumented migrants
And that also makes human sense. If your sole intention is to come to the UK, do hard crap work for ok-ish money (by Sofia standards) and do it with minimal spending so you can go home with enough to buy a house - after 3 years or so - why would you bother registering with the UK authorities?
You don’t want to pay tax. You will tolerate illegally cramped living conditions (to save money). So. Stay off the books. Do the work. Go home
This is not aimed at migrants as some kind of snark. It’s what migrants have always done through history. It’s what the Irish and Jews and many others did in 19th century New York, building the USA (tho they seldom went home, in the end)
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
It's a good question. A problem with the EU, arguably, is that it is NOT a superstate and its members will not allow it to become one. So you end up with a brittle and legalistic construct. The EU has its own contradictions - not as bad for the UK as the Brexit contradictions - but they exist nevertheless.
The final defining aspect of statehood to be gained by the EU, if ever, would be the ability to declare war and conscript the citizenry to fight in that war.
I'm sure Putin would be happy to give them a reason to do that.
She's complaining that the lack of access to government modeling means she can't make an informed choice? Just how useful has government modeling been up until now....
Quite possibly both are true. Many applications for settled and pre-settled status are from abroad. I know several myself, who want to keep visa free work travel possible.
"Think 6m EU citizens live in the UK? Think again - many may not live in the country at all, said experts at the Office of National Statistics and the Migration Observatory at Oxford uni." https://t.co/ek837aLx4a
Can the govt not easily clarify some of this? They must know what proportion of the 918,000 are at least claiming to live in the UK currently and what proportion said they were living abroad from the application forms.
I’ll take a random guess that quite a number of them are now living back in Romania or elsewhere, living a good life on the U.K. furlough scheme.
perhaps the ONS could get off their asses and stop pretending that 3.5m is still their best guess.
She's complaining that the lack of access to government modeling means she can't make an informed choice? Just how useful has government modeling been up until now....
And if you aren't a moron you can read about it....hence why we know Warwick model was horseshit, as it used old vaccine efficacy data
Needless to say the charming Mr Heath did not relay this info to British voters
Because it was bollocks
I’d say it has already come true for nations inside the euro. They are more ensnared in the EU than any individual US state and with less autonomous control of laws and regulations
In theory, unlike US states, these euroland countries have the crucial right of secession - that infamous article 50 in Lisbon - but in practise no euro country can or will ever quit the euro as the ensuing chaos would be ruinous. This is why Greece accepted perpetual penury and rule from Berlin rather than leaving the €
Britain got out, arguably, just before this Heathite prediction came true for us
You think we were just about to join the Euro?
No. But I do think we were close to being so enmeshed in EU laws and the like, leaving would in future have been impossible. Indeed this is obviously true, one of the best arguments put by Remainers during the euroref was that exiting would be ‘impossibly painful and complex’. As it turned out, they were almost right. It wasn’t quite impossible, but it was fiendishly difficult and even dangerous - cf Ireland
If we’d waited another 10 years to do Brexit, it could not have been done
"Herd immunity is not the policy goal of the government."
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 1h I mean, it quite literally is. And there is no alternative policy other than eternal crisis.
So the government policy is to fail on the vaccination programme?
Isn't the problem that 'herd immunity' can mean many different things depending on where you are in a pandemic? It's an end-game; an objective. In the early days of a disease, it would mean letting the disease rip through a population until it cannot spread any more, protecting the rest of the population. Now, with some good (but not perfect) vaccines, it means letting it spread through the unvaccinated population for the same aim - but it is a very different beast to March 2020.
So what are the alternatives to herd immunity, particularly where you have people who cannot be vaccinated, and where you have Contrarians who choose not to? Wait until more people have had vaccinations, despite the slowing rates? Wait for better vaccines? Wait for improved treatments for Covid?
"Herd immunity is not the policy goal of the government."
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 1h I mean, it quite literally is. And there is no alternative policy other than eternal crisis.
So the government policy is to fail on the vaccination programme?
Isn't the problem that 'herd immunity' can mean many different things depending on where you are in a pandemic? It's an end-game; an objective. In the early days of a disease, it would mean letting the disease rip through a population until it cannot spread any more, protecting the rest of the population. Now, with some good (but not perfect) vaccines, it means letting it spread through the unvaccinated population for the same aim - but it is a very different beast to March 2020.
So what are the alternatives to herd immunity, particularly where you have people who cannot be vaccinated, and where you have Contrarians who choose not to? Wait until more people have had vaccinations, despite the slowing rates? Wait for better vaccines? Wait for improved treatments for Covid?
Its because the government are scared of it being misrepresented. The narrative being pushed is again Boris is out to kill everybody with his massive gamble.
The level of debate in the media and on the twatters is infantile.
That is not the same as saying COVID, as a condition, is like flu. I appreciate you probably don’t know it but those misrepresenting what he said certainly do.
"Herd immunity is not the policy goal of the government."
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 1h I mean, it quite literally is. And there is no alternative policy other than eternal crisis.
The words "herd immunity" have come to mean "culling the herd" in the imagination of many. The meaning those words had in 2019 no longer applies.
The problem is we have the media at the same time spreading scary story nonsense that 4000 a day hospitalisations are incoming if we carry on as we are.
Ultimately I don't think it will matter. Not long until we're all double-dosed, well about 90% of adults, and the hospitals will not be full again. That will be that.
We have this awkward situation only because we were a bit unlucky on Novavax, and HMG were negligent on travel from India, but no-one will be pointing to petty arguments over reopening dates this summer as a major turning point when we look back next year.
I've decided now to try really hard not to engage directly with people's fears over the reopening. Many people will need to wait and see that disaster doesn't strike again. It's understandable for people to be apprehensive.
I imagine there will be parts of the media that will run scare stories on Covid for ever. It will become one of those staple paint-by-numbers stories like cancer research, house prices, dodgy weather forecasts, etc.
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
It's a good question. A problem with the EU, arguably, is that it is NOT a superstate and its members will not allow it to become one. So you end up with a brittle and legalistic construct. The EU has its own contradictions - not as bad for the UK as the Brexit contradictions - but they exist nevertheless.
The final defining aspect of statehood to be gained by the EU, if ever, would be the ability to declare war and conscript the citizenry to fight in that war.
Which is never going to happen in any of our lifetimes, even without Britain. As I mentioned further down thread in answer to Philip's simplistic crap about "ever closer union", anyone who thinks France will ever enter into full political union with Germany is a dunderhead.
What’s the effing point in repeating an obvious lie? On PB? We are not idiots
We all know what Javid said and what he meant. We will deal with covid as we deal with other serious and potentially fatal respiratory viruses. Eg flu. We will tolerate some deaths, but try to mitigate the worst, because the only alternative is a permanent cessation of economic life
What he did not say is that ‘covid is just like flu, it only kills 2 in a thousand, hahahah’
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
It's a good question. A problem with the EU, arguably, is that it is NOT a superstate and its members will not allow it to become one. So you end up with a brittle and legalistic construct. The EU has its own contradictions - not as bad for the UK as the Brexit contradictions - but they exist nevertheless.
The final defining aspect of statehood to be gained by the EU, if ever, would be the ability to declare war and conscript the citizenry to fight in that war.
Which is never going to happen in any of our lifetimes, even without Britain. As I mentioned further down thread in answer to Philip's simplistic crap about "ever closer union", anyone who thinks France will ever enter into full political union with Germany is a dunderhead.
I linked to the polling earlier which showed that proposition isn't all that unpopular in either country.
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
It's a good question. A problem with the EU, arguably, is that it is NOT a superstate and its members will not allow it to become one. So you end up with a brittle and legalistic construct. The EU has its own contradictions - not as bad for the UK as the Brexit contradictions - but they exist nevertheless.
The final defining aspect of statehood to be gained by the EU, if ever, would be the ability to declare war and conscript the citizenry to fight in that war.
I'm sure Putin would be happy to give them a reason to do that.
Yes. I'm not sure that the EU would be able to though.
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
Completely agreed. I agree with every single word of this.
The sad reality is that some today would rather lie and pretend that Ever Closer Union is not a thing despite the Euro, see the dishonest remarks from Nigel earlier in this thread, than actually advocate for a democratic European federation as the end state to be in favour of.
The only thing I'm not certain of is if the dishonest people claiming that Ever Closer Union isn't real are just lying to us, or if they're lying to themselves and actually believe that too.
Once there is a Euro and an ECB it isn't possible to believe that there is no intention of a single state, whatever you tell other people. Overriding law making powers, a parliament, currency, central bank, a court which overrides state courts, flag, anthem, cabinet, treaty making powers, embassies....all add up. This is not the stuff of a glorified Hanseatic League
It's no good to pretend it has no such ambitions because it doesn't have cricket team. And there is nothing wrong with the vision in itself. it's the denial that is the killer, because that involves failing to develop a coherent idea of the European future.
It would be rather good to have all the good bits of the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the Western Church of Erasmus, a shared classical and Judeo Christian culture together with robust British empiricism, with all the bad bits removed and democracy added. But that was not offered to us.
Its not only not possible to believe it, it runs completely against history.
If you read the US Constitution the Federal state never originally had that many powers and the 10th Amendment is much clearer on the principle of subsidiarity than the EU Treaties have ever been, but over time the ratchet effect has driven powers too the centre. The same is happening with the nascent European state just as it did with the nascent American one in the past.
The only element of a federal state the EU currently lacks is the ability to raise its own tax rates, though developments are ongoing in that already as per the two trillion Euro Covid recovery fund.
To believe that the EU is not going to have any further integration runs completely against the past few decades of European history, the past couple of centuries of federal history globally, and the stated desires of European leaders like President Macron and others.
There has always been a tension between the ideals of the EU - which were certainly towards a single state ("Ever-closer union") and the natural reluctance of national leaders at any one time to cede powers. Most Europhiles that I know are pessimistic that the former will ever overcome the latter - there is always one EU national head who says "We're not having that". On the other hand, the idealistic strain makes it very difficult to undo any integration that has already happened - witness the extreme efforts made to save the Euro even when it clearly wasn't working well in Greece. What you therefore have is an asymptotic curve which moves fractionally towards unification over time but doesn't in practice ever get close to it.
So it's not really deception (or self-deception) when we're told that it won't happen. It's pragmatic realism. What you currently see is more or less what you'll get in any one generation.
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
It's a good question. A problem with the EU, arguably, is that it is NOT a superstate and its members will not allow it to become one. So you end up with a brittle and legalistic construct. The EU has its own contradictions - not as bad for the UK as the Brexit contradictions - but they exist nevertheless.
The final defining aspect of statehood to be gained by the EU, if ever, would be the ability to declare war and conscript the citizenry to fight in that war.
Which is never going to happen in any of our lifetimes, even without Britain. As I mentioned further down thread in answer to Philip's simplistic crap about "ever closer union", anyone who thinks France will ever enter into full political union with Germany is a dunderhead.
So Macron is a dunderhead? He wants a European defence policy etc
France will not cease to exist, any more than Texas or New York have ceased to exist, but the EU is a nascent federal state and makes no pretensions to hide that fact. Only people like you live in the grand state of Denial.
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
It's a good question. A problem with the EU, arguably, is that it is NOT a superstate and its members will not allow it to become one. So you end up with a brittle and legalistic construct. The EU has its own contradictions - not as bad for the UK as the Brexit contradictions - but they exist nevertheless.
The final defining aspect of statehood to be gained by the EU, if ever, would be the ability to declare war and conscript the citizenry to fight in that war.
Which is never going to happen in any of our lifetimes, even without Britain. As I mentioned further down thread in answer to Philip's simplistic crap about "ever closer union", anyone who thinks France will ever enter into full political union with Germany is a dunderhead.
The eu would be a superstate long before it gained the ability to conscript.
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
When a country needs the permission of the EU to leave.
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
It's a good question. A problem with the EU, arguably, is that it is NOT a superstate and its members will not allow it to become one. So you end up with a brittle and legalistic construct. The EU has its own contradictions - not as bad for the UK as the Brexit contradictions - but they exist nevertheless.
The final defining aspect of statehood to be gained by the EU, if ever, would be the ability to declare war and conscript the citizenry to fight in that war.
Which is never going to happen in any of our lifetimes, even without Britain. As I mentioned further down thread in answer to Philip's simplistic crap about "ever closer union", anyone who thinks France will ever enter into full political union with Germany is a dunderhead.
Think again. Many in the Franco-german elite know that full on economic and political union is the only way to make the euro work. Direct EU taxes. An EU budget. All of it. And they are right.
It won’t ever be sold as ‘political union’ as that would upset voters. France probably won’t be asked to rename its UNSC seat. But it will be de facto union
See the argument over pooled EU debt. That was once a massive taboo and it would never happen. Under cover of covid, it has happened
Clearly a fall-off in demand for 1st doses, now that everyone has had the chance to book a jab for at least 3 weeks. In England 60% of those aged 18-24 and 63% of 25-29 have had at least one dose, which is a good start - challenge is to drive those numbers up now.
What’s the effing point in repeating an obvious lie? On PB? We are not idiots
We all know what Javid said and what he meant. We will deal with covid as we deal with other serious and potentially fatal respiratory viruses. Eg flu. We will tolerate some deaths, but try to mitigate the worst, because the only alternative is a permanent cessation of economic life
What he did not say is that ‘covid is just like flu, it only kills 2 in a thousand, hahahah’
So you think he said we will manage it the same way as we manage flu because there are no similarities between them at all?
There has always been a tension between the ideals of the EU - which were certainly towards a single state ("Ever-closer union") and the natural reluctance of national leaders at any one time to cede powers. Most Europhiles that I know are pessimistic that the former will ever overcome the latter - there is always one EU national head who says "We're not having that". On the other hand, the idealistic strain makes it very difficult to undo any integration that has already happened - witness the extreme efforts made to save the Euro even when it clearly wasn't working well in Greece. What you therefore have is an asymptotic curve which moves fractionally towards unification over time but doesn't in practice ever get close to it.
So it's not really deception (or self-deception) when we're told that it won't happen. It's pragmatic realism. What you currently see is more or less what you'll get in any one generation.
Yes, quite right. In addition, with us out of the Euro, and with the other opt-outs, and with Cameron's negotiation codifying that status, we were always going to be semi-detached compared with the core countries.
We wantonly threw away the best possible status of all possible statuses.
Now we'll spend a decade trying to recover some of the lost ground.
"Herd immunity is not the policy goal of the government."
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 1h I mean, it quite literally is. And there is no alternative policy other than eternal crisis.
So the government policy is to fail on the vaccination programme?
Isn't the problem that 'herd immunity' can mean many different things depending on where you are in a pandemic? It's an end-game; an objective. In the early days of a disease, it would mean letting the disease rip through a population until it cannot spread any more, protecting the rest of the population. Now, with some good (but not perfect) vaccines, it means letting it spread through the unvaccinated population for the same aim - but it is a very different beast to March 2020.
So what are the alternatives to herd immunity, particularly where you have people who cannot be vaccinated, and where you have Contrarians who choose not to? Wait until more people have had vaccinations, despite the slowing rates? Wait for better vaccines? Wait for improved treatments for Covid?
The main serious alternative is to vaccinate everyone (including children) who doesn't actively refuse or cannot for medical reasons, and THEN relax. Because long Covid is serious and not infrequent in the young, there's a very strong case for at least completing the vaccination of adults (bar refusers) before relaxing. The example upthread of a poster who thinks he'll be forced back to work before being vaccinated is a good example. Surely that's indefensible and should be considered as constructive dismissal, in the same way as if my employer required me to work on a rickety floor that might well collapse?
What’s the effing point in repeating an obvious lie? On PB? We are not idiots
We all know what Javid said and what he meant. We will deal with covid as we deal with other serious and potentially fatal respiratory viruses. Eg flu. We will tolerate some deaths, but try to mitigate the worst, because the only alternative is a permanent cessation of economic life
What he did not say is that ‘covid is just like flu, it only kills 2 in a thousand, hahahah’
So you think he said we will manage it the same way as we manage flu because there are no similarities between them at all?
Get a grip, lads.
He didn't even say that. He said we will find ways to cope with it, as we find ways to cope with the flu.
On topic, who gives a shiny shit? Boris got an 80 seat majority. 19 months on, he still has an 80 seat majority. He is likely to have a majority close to 80 for the rest of his term, 2023/24.
Therein lies the problem - you win a majority and can then do whatever you like but it comes from our unrepresentative electoral system rather than from the voters. It's a manufactured majority - in any other European country it wouldn't have happened.
On the longer term EU issue there has never ever been a decisive majority for leaving in the way there was for joining. Whilst rejoining is clearly not an option in the short term the political base for it is already strong.
The Tories own Brexit lock, stock and barrel and while that may have given them a short term advantage let's see how it plays out in the long run. Even at this early stage a plurality of voters believe that Brexit was wrong and many won't be voting Tory again in a hurry. They had better hope that Brexit delivers enough to keep their new best friends in places like Hartlepool on board.
Europeans love the EU project so much that only 5.6m of them want settled status in Brexit Britain.
That's a total non-sequitur, but I guess we should be used to that by now.
The remainer's attitude is turning into the longest sulk in history.
Britain's democracy is far from perfect, but its good enough that if the electorate really wanted brexit stopped, it would have been.
Similarly, we are going back to freedom because that is what people want. Its not what the commentariat want. Or the opposition. But then these days their wishes and those of much of the electorate rarely coincide.
With the risk of getting into one of those arguments that we have all had over and over again for the last x years, what freedom have we actually gone back to? I have gained none. Personally all I have had is extra paperwork, my freedom to travel in Europe curtailed (which is currently a real headache) and a pensions campaign I am involved with potentially scuppered by the changes regarding the European Court.
Freedom to set our own laws, for one.
I'm currently wading through the proposed changes to insurance company capital regulation, that is only possible because we're now out of the EU and hence have some freedom to diverge.
Also I saw a news article the other day about a private member's bill on overturning the EU's ruling on requiring vehicles kept off road to have third party insurance. The bill has Government support and is expected to pass.
That's just my industry, and it's only been six months, and there's a pandemic on which is severely draining available Parliamentary time.
What’s the effing point in repeating an obvious lie? On PB? We are not idiots
We all know what Javid said and what he meant. We will deal with covid as we deal with other serious and potentially fatal respiratory viruses. Eg flu. We will tolerate some deaths, but try to mitigate the worst, because the only alternative is a permanent cessation of economic life
What he did not say is that ‘covid is just like flu, it only kills 2 in a thousand, hahahah’
So you think he said we will manage it the same way as we manage flu because there are no similarities between them at all?
Get a grip, lads.
Bloody hell. If I say I eat oysters, just as I eat Tunnocks tea cakes, am I saying they are the same thing?
What’s the effing point in repeating an obvious lie? On PB? We are not idiots
We all know what Javid said and what he meant. We will deal with covid as we deal with other serious and potentially fatal respiratory viruses. Eg flu. We will tolerate some deaths, but try to mitigate the worst, because the only alternative is a permanent cessation of economic life
What he did not say is that ‘covid is just like flu, it only kills 2 in a thousand, hahahah’
Covid is now killing less than 1 in a thousand cases. 0.7 in a thousand to be precise.
What’s the effing point in repeating an obvious lie? On PB? We are not idiots
We all know what Javid said and what he meant. We will deal with covid as we deal with other serious and potentially fatal respiratory viruses. Eg flu. We will tolerate some deaths, but try to mitigate the worst, because the only alternative is a permanent cessation of economic life
What he did not say is that ‘covid is just like flu, it only kills 2 in a thousand, hahahah’
So you think he said we will manage it the same way as we manage flu because there are no similarities between them at all?
Get a grip, lads.
Why are you pretending on this point? Theres no upside, his words cannot be magicked into saying something else to suggest he or the government don't take Covid seriously - whether people agree with the latest decision or not the actions of government, which Javid has backed, has not been to treat things like its not serious, which is the intent of your perpetuating the false interpretation.
You haven't missed the last 18 months - whatever mistakes have been made its not because the government has treated this like regular old flu. You dont lockdown the country for flu.
So why pretend you think he believes it is just like flu? We respect your intellect too much to accept you believe that.
"Herd immunity is not the policy goal of the government."
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 1h I mean, it quite literally is. And there is no alternative policy other than eternal crisis.
So the government policy is to fail on the vaccination programme?
Isn't the problem that 'herd immunity' can mean many different things depending on where you are in a pandemic? It's an end-game; an objective. In the early days of a disease, it would mean letting the disease rip through a population until it cannot spread any more, protecting the rest of the population. Now, with some good (but not perfect) vaccines, it means letting it spread through the unvaccinated population for the same aim - but it is a very different beast to March 2020.
So what are the alternatives to herd immunity, particularly where you have people who cannot be vaccinated, and where you have Contrarians who choose not to? Wait until more people have had vaccinations, despite the slowing rates? Wait for better vaccines? Wait for improved treatments for Covid?
The main serious alternative is to vaccinate everyone (including children) who doesn't actively refuse or cannot for medical reasons, and THEN relax. Because long Covid is serious and not infrequent in the young, there's a very strong case for at least completing the vaccination of adults (bar refusers) before relaxing. The example upthread of a poster who thinks he'll be forced back to work before being vaccinated is a good example. Surely that's indefensible and should be considered as constructive dismissal, in the same way as if my employer required me to work on a rickety floor that might well collapse?
So you believe we need restrictions until at least September (or longer if you want all kids doubled jabbed as well)...but then oldies will be vulnerable again and need their boosters, so thats until Christmas. Then there will be new variants and we will all need jabbing again...
He didn't even say that. He said we will find ways to cope with it, as we find ways to cope with the flu.
Why did he say flu?
He could have said polio, but he didn't cos it's not like polio.
He could have said malaria, but he didn't cos it's not like malaria.
He said flu, because covid has certain features that make it quite a lot like flu...
He said:
We are going to have to learn to live with Covid and find ways to cope with it – just as we already do with flu.
Which says that we will have to learn to live and cope with Covid. Like how we learnt to live and cope with the flu. That doesn't imply that we will do the same things, or that they are similar.
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
When a country needs the permission of the EU to leave.
Alternatively, when the legal mechanism for leaving the EU is made so deliberately harsh, one-sided and painful no sane country would ever voluntarily choose to exit
If THAT is the criterion, we have already passed the threshold. The British author of article 50, Lord Kerr, admits that it stacks the tables heavily in favour of Brussels, from the time limit to the framework
This was always one of the best arguments for Remainers: Brexit is bound to be shit because it is designed that way. You can’t resile from it now
What’s the effing point in repeating an obvious lie? On PB? We are not idiots
We all know what Javid said and what he meant. We will deal with covid as we deal with other serious and potentially fatal respiratory viruses. Eg flu. We will tolerate some deaths, but try to mitigate the worst, because the only alternative is a permanent cessation of economic life
What he did not say is that ‘covid is just like flu, it only kills 2 in a thousand, hahahah’
So you think he said we will manage it the same way as we manage flu because there are no similarities between them at all?
Get a grip, lads.
Why are you pretending on this point? Theres no upside, his words cannot be magicked into saying something else to suggest he or the government don't take Covid seriously - whether people agree with the latest decision or not the actions of government, which Javid has backed, has not been to treat things like its not serious, which is the intent of your perpetuating the false interpretation.
You haven't missed the last 18 months - whatever mistakes have been made its not because the government has treated this like regular old flu. You dont lockdown the country for flu.
So why pretend you think he believes it is just like flu? We respect your intellect too much to accept you believe that.
One important caveat - IIRC, wasn't the original emergency plan based on it being treated as flu?
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
It's a good question. A problem with the EU, arguably, is that it is NOT a superstate and its members will not allow it to become one. So you end up with a brittle and legalistic construct. The EU has its own contradictions - not as bad for the UK as the Brexit contradictions - but they exist nevertheless.
The final defining aspect of statehood to be gained by the EU, if ever, would be the ability to declare war and conscript the citizenry to fight in that war.
Which is never going to happen in any of our lifetimes, even without Britain. As I mentioned further down thread in answer to Philip's simplistic crap about "ever closer union", anyone who thinks France will ever enter into full political union with Germany is a dunderhead.
Think again. Many in the Franco-german elite know that full on economic and political union is the only way to make the euro work. Direct EU taxes. An EU budget. All of it. And they are right.
It won’t ever be sold as ‘political union’ as that would upset voters. France probably won’t be asked to rename its UNSC seat. But it will be de facto union
See the argument over pooled EU debt. That was once a massive taboo and it would never happen. Under cover of covid, it has happened
Only in the minds of most swivelly-eyed Brexiteer and one or two arch Euro-federalists. @NickPalmer articulated the realpolitik of this well. Anyone who understands EU politics and the complexity of the 27 know that "ever closer" has got pretty much as "ever closer" as it is going to get, even without the UK applying the brakes. The main concern of the French now is applying said brakes to prevent the Germans from fully dominating the EU, which is also paradoxical and funny because the Germans don't particularly want to. The EU's complexity and diversity is far greater than the average ignorant Brexiteer will ever even begin to understand.
Maybe some trashy right wing novelist could put together an airport page turner where Angela Merkle returns to take over the European Superstate , but is thwarted by an heroic Classics educated Old Etonian who manages to decode secret messages in her memoires that was only revealed when using an Enigma machine cross referenced with Homer's Odyssey, or something like that. What do you think? It's be a jolly jape eh?
What’s the effing point in repeating an obvious lie? On PB? We are not idiots
We all know what Javid said and what he meant. We will deal with covid as we deal with other serious and potentially fatal respiratory viruses. Eg flu. We will tolerate some deaths, but try to mitigate the worst, because the only alternative is a permanent cessation of economic life
What he did not say is that ‘covid is just like flu, it only kills 2 in a thousand, hahahah’
So you think he said we will manage it the same way as we manage flu because there are no similarities between them at all?
Get a grip, lads.
Why are you pretending on this point? Theres no upside, his words cannot be magicked into saying something else to suggest he or the government don't take Covid seriously - whether people agree with the latest decision or not the actions of government, which Javid has backed, has not been to treat things like its not serious, which is the intent of your perpetuating the false interpretation.
You haven't missed the last 18 months - whatever mistakes have been made its not because the government has treated this like regular old flu. You dont lockdown the country for flu.
So why pretend you think he believes it is just like flu? We respect your intellect too much to accept you believe that.
One important caveat - IIRC, wasn't the original emergency plan based on it being treated as flu?
I'm not sure how that is relevant. When it became obvious it wasn't, they weren't following it.
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
It's a good question. A problem with the EU, arguably, is that it is NOT a superstate and its members will not allow it to become one. So you end up with a brittle and legalistic construct. The EU has its own contradictions - not as bad for the UK as the Brexit contradictions - but they exist nevertheless.
The final defining aspect of statehood to be gained by the EU, if ever, would be the ability to declare war and conscript the citizenry to fight in that war.
Which is never going to happen in any of our lifetimes, even without Britain. As I mentioned further down thread in answer to Philip's simplistic crap about "ever closer union", anyone who thinks France will ever enter into full political union with Germany is a dunderhead.
Think again. Many in the Franco-german elite know that full on economic and political union is the only way to make the euro work. Direct EU taxes. An EU budget. All of it. And they are right.
It won’t ever be sold as ‘political union’ as that would upset voters. France probably won’t be asked to rename its UNSC seat. But it will be de facto union
See the argument over pooled EU debt. That was once a massive taboo and it would never happen. Under cover of covid, it has happened
Only in the minds of most swivelly-eyed Brexiteer and one or two arch Euro-federalists. @NickPalmer articulated the realpolitik of this well. Anyone who understands EU politics and the complexity of the 27 know that "ever closer" has got pretty much as "ever closer" as it is going to get, even without the UK applying the brakes. The main concern of the French now is applying said brakes to prevent the Germans from fully dominating the EU, which is also paradoxical and funny because the Germans don't particularly want to. The EU's complexity and diversity is far greater than the average ignorant Brexiteer will ever even begin to understand.
Maybe some trashy right wing novelist could put together an airport page turner where Angela Merkle returns to take over the European Superstate , but is thwarted by an heroic Classics educated Old Etonian who manages to decode secret messages in her memoires that was only revealed when using an Enigma machine cross referenced with Homer's Odyssey, or something like that. What do you think? It's be a jolly jape eh?
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
When a country needs the permission of the EU to leave.
You mean like the UK superstate that enslaves Scotland
What’s the effing point in repeating an obvious lie? On PB? We are not idiots
We all know what Javid said and what he meant. We will deal with covid as we deal with other serious and potentially fatal respiratory viruses. Eg flu. We will tolerate some deaths, but try to mitigate the worst, because the only alternative is a permanent cessation of economic life
What he did not say is that ‘covid is just like flu, it only kills 2 in a thousand, hahahah’
So you think he said we will manage it the same way as we manage flu because there are no similarities between them at all?
Get a grip, lads.
Bloody hell. If I say I eat oysters, just as I eat Tunnocks tea cakes, am I saying they are the same thing?
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
It's a good question. A problem with the EU, arguably, is that it is NOT a superstate and its members will not allow it to become one. So you end up with a brittle and legalistic construct. The EU has its own contradictions - not as bad for the UK as the Brexit contradictions - but they exist nevertheless.
The final defining aspect of statehood to be gained by the EU, if ever, would be the ability to declare war and conscript the citizenry to fight in that war.
Which is never going to happen in any of our lifetimes, even without Britain. As I mentioned further down thread in answer to Philip's simplistic crap about "ever closer union", anyone who thinks France will ever enter into full political union with Germany is a dunderhead.
So Macron is a dunderhead? He wants a European defence policy etc
France will not cease to exist, any more than Texas or New York have ceased to exist, but the EU is a nascent federal state and makes no pretensions to hide that fact. Only people like you live in the grand state of Denial.
I don't know why I bother to answer you. Go and spend some time in France Philip and less time on here. Maybe then you might understand. Try reading the Express a little less and then your views may be a little less black and white and more nuanced.
Quite possibly both are true. Many applications for settled and pre-settled status are from abroad. I know several myself, who want to keep visa free work travel possible.
"Think 6m EU citizens live in the UK? Think again - many may not live in the country at all, said experts at the Office of National Statistics and the Migration Observatory at Oxford uni." https://t.co/ek837aLx4a
And yet the FT report makes clear that many Romanians etc who ARE in the UK will not have applied for settled status (language problems, wariness of officialdom and so on)
These probably cancel out the Romanians abroad taking a punt?
As the same FT report concludes, it is factually obvious that there are many more EU citizens in the UK than we realised. Hence this HUGE discrepancy
I’ve heard it said that the supermarkets are the only ones who know the true population. Because they know how many squares of toilet paper they sell a year and have excellent historic data on how many squares get used on average per person per year. Pre Brexit I heard it pegged by someone at Tesco as much as 5 million more than the census. Take that as you will.
It squares with anecdotal evidence. Eg every so often a council raid on a house in newham or Tottenham finding 15 Bulgarians to a room, with 10 in a shed at the back
Surely the tip of the iceberg, which suggests millions of undocumented migrants
And that also makes human sense. If your sole intention is to come to the UK, do hard crap work for ok-ish money (by Sofia standards) and do it with minimal spending so you can go home with enough to buy a house - after 3 years or so - why would you bother registering with the UK authorities?
You don’t want to pay tax. You will tolerate illegally cramped living conditions (to save money). So. Stay off the books. Do the work. Go home
This is not aimed at migrants as some kind of snark. It’s what migrants have always done through history. It’s what the Irish and Jews and many others did in 19th century New York, building the USA (tho they seldom went home, in the end)
This is why those who argued ‘b-b-b-but if you look at research by so and so from this or that think tank, EU migration only decreases pay at the lower end by 1p in the pound’ were always talking complete balderdash. Anyone not living in an ivory tower knew
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
It's a good question. A problem with the EU, arguably, is that it is NOT a superstate and its members will not allow it to become one. So you end up with a brittle and legalistic construct. The EU has its own contradictions - not as bad for the UK as the Brexit contradictions - but they exist nevertheless.
The final defining aspect of statehood to be gained by the EU, if ever, would be the ability to declare war and conscript the citizenry to fight in that war.
Which is never going to happen in any of our lifetimes, even without Britain. As I mentioned further down thread in answer to Philip's simplistic crap about "ever closer union", anyone who thinks France will ever enter into full political union with Germany is a dunderhead.
Think again. Many in the Franco-german elite know that full on economic and political union is the only way to make the euro work. Direct EU taxes. An EU budget. All of it. And they are right.
It won’t ever be sold as ‘political union’ as that would upset voters. France probably won’t be asked to rename its UNSC seat. But it will be de facto union
See the argument over pooled EU debt. That was once a massive taboo and it would never happen. Under cover of covid, it has happened
Only in the minds of most swivelly-eyed Brexiteer and one or two arch Euro-federalists. @NickPalmer articulated the realpolitik of this well. Anyone who understands EU politics and the complexity of the 27 know that "ever closer" has got pretty much as "ever closer" as it is going to get, even without the UK applying the brakes. The main concern of the French now is applying said brakes to prevent the Germans from fully dominating the EU, which is also paradoxical and funny because the Germans don't particularly want to. The EU's complexity and diversity is far greater than the average ignorant Brexiteer will ever even begin to understand.
Maybe some trashy right wing novelist could put together an airport page turner where Angela Merkle returns to take over the European Superstate , but is thwarted by an heroic Classics educated Old Etonian who manages to decode secret messages in her memoires that was only revealed when using an Enigma machine cross referenced with Homer's Odyssey, or something like that. What do you think? It's be a jolly jape eh?
You’re in your 70s, aren’t you?
Rough guess. Think I’m right
I fear you are being ageist. Can't you be critical without using that as an excuse?
Added to Susan "Communist Party" Michie. there's also Michael Gove, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, who cites Antonio Gramsci [*] as one of his main inspirers! Bloody pinko! And so close to the heart of the state too.
Note (*) It says a lot about Gramsci that Piero Sraffa, fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge - albeit brought to Cambridge by a world-famous bursar of King's - was such a mate of his.
As you well know, he cited him specifically in context as inspiration for value of the working class being properly educated, nothing to do with wanting to implement a Marxist state.
I should have put a smiley after the words "Bloody pinko". Gove's speech was high quality compared to the usual soundbite rubbish from British politicians. His problem is that he doesn't have much of a clue about how to achieve such a worthwhile aim. He may well be aware of that. Perhaps that's why in that speech he proposes more experimentation. Which is fine. Go for it. But then he comes in with stuff about parents comparing schools by value added, giving the impression that he remains imprisoned by ideology, as also was Gramsci.
What’s the effing point in repeating an obvious lie? On PB? We are not idiots
We all know what Javid said and what he meant. We will deal with covid as we deal with other serious and potentially fatal respiratory viruses. Eg flu. We will tolerate some deaths, but try to mitigate the worst, because the only alternative is a permanent cessation of economic life
What he did not say is that ‘covid is just like flu, it only kills 2 in a thousand, hahahah’
So you think he said we will manage it the same way as we manage flu because there are no similarities between them at all?
Get a grip, lads.
Why are you pretending on this point? Theres no upside, his words cannot be magicked into saying something else to suggest he or the government don't take Covid seriously - whether people agree with the latest decision or not the actions of government, which Javid has backed, has not been to treat things like its not serious, which is the intent of your perpetuating the false interpretation.
You haven't missed the last 18 months - whatever mistakes have been made its not because the government has treated this like regular old flu. You dont lockdown the country for flu.
So why pretend you think he believes it is just like flu? We respect your intellect too much to accept you believe that.
This isn’t unusual behaviour kle, why act like it is?
So you believe we need restrictions until at least September (or longer if you want all kids doubled jabbed as well)...but then oldies will be vulnerable again and need their boosters, so thats until Christmas. Then there will be new variants and we will all need jabbing again...
When do we say its enough?
What I'd do is start a booster programme before it's proved to be necessary, so we wouldn't need to wait for that - the evidence that current vaccinations stop working after 6 months is scanty AFAIK. September does seem a reasonable target for relaxation IMO, with the overwhelming majority of adults vaccinated. July, not so much.
One can of course disagree. But it's not true to say "We must relax now because we'll otherwise never be able to."
Conservatives and [Boris] Johnson supporters are less ecstatic. Some seem to believe that Southgate is becoming a tool of deep Woke — with one Tory strategist telling me that the England manager’s patriotism essay was “suspiciously well-written”. https://www.ft.com/content/f177cfd0-24b8-49ba-bdd8-99b975828d23
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
Completely agreed. I agree with every single word of this.
The sad reality is that some today would rather lie and pretend that Ever Closer Union is not a thing despite the Euro, see the dishonest remarks from Nigel earlier in this thread, than actually advocate for a democratic European federation as the end state to be in favour of.
The only thing I'm not certain of is if the dishonest people claiming that Ever Closer Union isn't real are just lying to us, or if they're lying to themselves and actually believe that too.
Once there is a Euro and an ECB it isn't possible to believe that there is no intention of a single state, whatever you tell other people. Overriding law making powers, a parliament, currency, central bank, a court which overrides state courts, flag, anthem, cabinet, treaty making powers, embassies....all add up. This is not the stuff of a glorified Hanseatic League
It's no good to pretend it has no such ambitions because it doesn't have cricket team. And there is nothing wrong with the vision in itself. it's the denial that is the killer, because that involves failing to develop a coherent idea of the European future.
It would be rather good to have all the good bits of the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the Western Church of Erasmus, a shared classical and Judeo Christian culture together with robust British empiricism, with all the bad bits removed and democracy added. But that was not offered to us.
Its not only not possible to believe it, it runs completely against history.
If you read the US Constitution the Federal state never originally had that many powers and the 10th Amendment is much clearer on the principle of subsidiarity than the EU Treaties have ever been, but over time the ratchet effect has driven powers too the centre. The same is happening with the nascent European state just as it did with the nascent American one in the past.
The only element of a federal state the EU currently lacks is the ability to raise its own tax rates, though developments are ongoing in that already as per the two trillion Euro Covid recovery fund.
To believe that the EU is not going to have any further integration runs completely against the past few decades of European history, the past couple of centuries of federal history globally, and the stated desires of European leaders like President Macron and others.
There has always been a tension between the ideals of the EU - which were certainly towards a single state ("Ever-closer union") and the natural reluctance of national leaders at any one time to cede powers. Most Europhiles that I know are pessimistic that the former will ever overcome the latter - there is always one EU national head who says "We're not having that". On the other hand, the idealistic strain makes it very difficult to undo any integration that has already happened - witness the extreme efforts made to save the Euro even when it clearly wasn't working well in Greece. What you therefore have is an asymptotic curve which moves fractionally towards unification over time but doesn't in practice ever get close to it.
So it's not really deception (or self-deception) when we're told that it won't happen. It's pragmatic realism. What you currently see is more or less what you'll get in any one generation.
The ratchet almost always only works one way and that's what has been found not just in the EU's own evolution but time and again for federations as they've evolved: the USA, Australia and even Germany and other federations.
It only takes the leaders agreeing to cede powers once and then they've been ceded. How those powers can then be used is up to future generations of federal politicians.
The idea that the ratchet is going to stop with the EU as the way it is today is absolutely delusional. There is no argument or evidence behind it other than wishful thinking.
So you believe we need restrictions until at least September (or longer if you want all kids doubled jabbed as well)...but then oldies will be vulnerable again and need their boosters, so thats until Christmas. Then there will be new variants and we will all need jabbing again...
When do we say its enough?
What I'd do is start a booster programme before it's proved to be necessary, so we wouldn't need to wait for that - the evidence that current vaccinations stop working after 6 months is scanty AFAIK. September does seem a reasonable target for relaxation IMO, with the overwhelming majority of adults vaccinated. July, not so much.
One can of course disagree. But it's not true to say "We must relax now because we'll otherwise never be able to."
The counter-arguments are
(a) Pupils will be back to school in September (b) Worsening weather (c) the onset of the flu season.
So you believe we need restrictions until at least September (or longer if you want all kids doubled jabbed as well)...but then oldies will be vulnerable again and need their boosters, so thats until Christmas. Then there will be new variants and we will all need jabbing again...
When do we say its enough?
What I'd do is start a booster programme before it's proved to be necessary, so we wouldn't need to wait for that - the evidence that current vaccinations stop working after 6 months is scanty AFAIK. September does seem a reasonable target for relaxation IMO, with the overwhelming majority of adults vaccinated. July, not so much.
One can of course disagree. But it's not true to say "We must relax now because we'll otherwise never be able to."
How would you start a booster programme early? With what supply? And we don't yet have any new updated versions of the vaccines for the variants*. And what evidence is there that starting it much earlier than 6 months is any good?
* They probably aren't even coming until start of next year. Mix and match does look to give some boost, but a new version targeting the specific variants should be much better still.
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
It's a good question. A problem with the EU, arguably, is that it is NOT a superstate and its members will not allow it to become one. So you end up with a brittle and legalistic construct. The EU has its own contradictions - not as bad for the UK as the Brexit contradictions - but they exist nevertheless.
The final defining aspect of statehood to be gained by the EU, if ever, would be the ability to declare war and conscript the citizenry to fight in that war.
Which is never going to happen in any of our lifetimes, even without Britain. As I mentioned further down thread in answer to Philip's simplistic crap about "ever closer union", anyone who thinks France will ever enter into full political union with Germany is a dunderhead.
Think again. Many in the Franco-german elite know that full on economic and political union is the only way to make the euro work. Direct EU taxes. An EU budget. All of it. And they are right.
It won’t ever be sold as ‘political union’ as that would upset voters. France probably won’t be asked to rename its UNSC seat. But it will be de facto union
See the argument over pooled EU debt. That was once a massive taboo and it would never happen. Under cover of covid, it has happened
Only in the minds of most swivelly-eyed Brexiteer and one or two arch Euro-federalists. @NickPalmer articulated the realpolitik of this well. Anyone who understands EU politics and the complexity of the 27 know that "ever closer" has got pretty much as "ever closer" as it is going to get, even without the UK applying the brakes. The main concern of the French now is applying said brakes to prevent the Germans from fully dominating the EU, which is also paradoxical and funny because the Germans don't particularly want to. The EU's complexity and diversity is far greater than the average ignorant Brexiteer will ever even begin to understand.
Maybe some trashy right wing novelist could put together an airport page turner where Angela Merkle returns to take over the European Superstate , but is thwarted by an heroic Classics educated Old Etonian who manages to decode secret messages in her memoires that was only revealed when using an Enigma machine cross referenced with Homer's Odyssey, or something like that. What do you think? It's be a jolly jape eh?
You’re in your 70s, aren’t you?
Rough guess. Think I’m right
Hahaha. No, Sherlock, your analysis is about as good as your political insight. I am in my 50s. Your Col. Blimpish outlook might put you in the Septuagenarian club though perhaps? Or maybe that is unfair on other Septuagenarians of a more moderate and less crass viewpoint? Perhaps a young fogey, roughly same age as SeanT by any chance? My deduction on you is that whatever age you are, you spend a lot of time on your own, and that is probably best for all concerned.
Conservatives and [Boris] Johnson supporters are less ecstatic. Some seem to believe that Southgate is becoming a tool of deep Woke — with one Tory strategist telling me that the England manager’s patriotism essay was “suspiciously well-written”. https://www.ft.com/content/f177cfd0-24b8-49ba-bdd8-99b975828d23
What the heck is "deep Woke"?
Definitely about something being under the bed.
It'd have to closer than under the bed to be deep woke surely.
What’s the effing point in repeating an obvious lie? On PB? We are not idiots
We all know what Javid said and what he meant. We will deal with covid as we deal with other serious and potentially fatal respiratory viruses. Eg flu. We will tolerate some deaths, but try to mitigate the worst, because the only alternative is a permanent cessation of economic life
What he did not say is that ‘covid is just like flu, it only kills 2 in a thousand, hahahah’
So you think he said we will manage it the same way as we manage flu because there are no similarities between them at all?
Get a grip, lads.
Why are you pretending on this point? Theres no upside, his words cannot be magicked into saying something else to suggest he or the government don't take Covid seriously - whether people agree with the latest decision or not the actions of government, which Javid has backed, has not been to treat things like its not serious, which is the intent of your perpetuating the false interpretation.
You haven't missed the last 18 months - whatever mistakes have been made its not because the government has treated this like regular old flu. You dont lockdown the country for flu.
So why pretend you think he believes it is just like flu? We respect your intellect too much to accept you believe that.
One important caveat - IIRC, wasn't the original emergency plan based on it being treated as flu?
Yes. The assumption was that you'd have a virus that was very transmissible, and would make most people too sick to work for a while, but not so sick that they would fill the hospitals. Or we were expected to stoically die quietly at home.
So I worked somewhere a few years ago that did a pandemic preparedness exercise, the bulk of which was telling managers which of their staff were sick so they had to work out how to keep essential operations going while it worked its way through.
In retrospect it's bizarre that the planning was for a virus with such a narrow range of characteristics - deadly enough to be disruptive, but not too deadly. Or maybe it was the internet that made asking most people to stay at home for so long possible in a way that it wasn't twenty years ago.
What’s the effing point in repeating an obvious lie? On PB? We are not idiots
We all know what Javid said and what he meant. We will deal with covid as we deal with other serious and potentially fatal respiratory viruses. Eg flu. We will tolerate some deaths, but try to mitigate the worst, because the only alternative is a permanent cessation of economic life
What he did not say is that ‘covid is just like flu, it only kills 2 in a thousand, hahahah’
So you think he said we will manage it the same way as we manage flu because there are no similarities between them at all?
Get a grip, lads.
Bloody hell. If I say I eat oysters, just as I eat Tunnocks tea cakes, am I saying they are the same thing?
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
It's a good question. A problem with the EU, arguably, is that it is NOT a superstate and its members will not allow it to become one. So you end up with a brittle and legalistic construct. The EU has its own contradictions - not as bad for the UK as the Brexit contradictions - but they exist nevertheless.
The final defining aspect of statehood to be gained by the EU, if ever, would be the ability to declare war and conscript the citizenry to fight in that war.
Which is never going to happen in any of our lifetimes, even without Britain. As I mentioned further down thread in answer to Philip's simplistic crap about "ever closer union", anyone who thinks France will ever enter into full political union with Germany is a dunderhead.
Think again. Many in the Franco-german elite know that full on economic and political union is the only way to make the euro work. Direct EU taxes. An EU budget. All of it. And they are right.
It won’t ever be sold as ‘political union’ as that would upset voters. France probably won’t be asked to rename its UNSC seat. But it will be de facto union
See the argument over pooled EU debt. That was once a massive taboo and it would never happen. Under cover of covid, it has happened
Only in the minds of most swivelly-eyed Brexiteer and one or two arch Euro-federalists. @NickPalmer articulated the realpolitik of this well. Anyone who understands EU politics and the complexity of the 27 know that "ever closer" has got pretty much as "ever closer" as it is going to get, even without the UK applying the brakes. The main concern of the French now is applying said brakes to prevent the Germans from fully dominating the EU, which is also paradoxical and funny because the Germans don't particularly want to. The EU's complexity and diversity is far greater than the average ignorant Brexiteer will ever even begin to understand.
Maybe some trashy right wing novelist could put together an airport page turner where Angela Merkle returns to take over the European Superstate , but is thwarted by an heroic Classics educated Old Etonian who manages to decode secret messages in her memoires that was only revealed when using an Enigma machine cross referenced with Homer's Odyssey, or something like that. What do you think? It's be a jolly jape eh?
You’re in your 70s, aren’t you?
Rough guess. Think I’m right
I fear you are being ageist. Can't you be critical without using that as an excuse?
That wasn’t remotely critical. Nigel is articulate and cogent. I disagree with much of what he says, but he says it eloquently enough, and sometimes with a dash of wit
My point was rather this: there is a kind of europhile mindset which was formed when the EU was in its ideal infancy, a thing of hope and opportunity. From the 1950s to the early 80s?
People who have this mindset tend, therefore, to be quite old. See the europhile Tory grandees - Heseltine and Clark. Old men now. Their positivity about the EU is in some way admirable but it is also based on misperception. They don’t understand how the EU has dramatically evolved and quietly accrued huge powers, they just see the EU as a ‘good thing’ and therefore not worthy of further consideration. I’d put NPXMP in this same bracket
My words were just a shorthand way of saying all that. I’m sitting on a balcony in Majorca and typing is a pain
Soon enough I will be advanced in years and young PB tearaways in their 50s will aim snappy judgements at ME
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
When a country needs the permission of the EU to leave.
You mean like the UK superstate that enslaves Scotland
Not sure I agree with "enslaves" but yes. You need a definition of sovereignty for these purposes otherwise the debate lacks focus. And this is the one that imo works best. If you can unilaterally choose to leave the larger entity you are sovereign. If you can't you aren't - the larger entity is sovereign.
On topic, who gives a shiny shit? Boris got an 80 seat majority. 19 months on, he still has an 80 seat majority. He is likely to have a majority close to 80 for the rest of his term, 2023/24.
Therein lies the problem - you win a majority and can then do whatever you like but it comes from our unrepresentative electoral system rather than from the voters. It's a manufactured majority - in any other European country it wouldn't have happened.
On the longer term EU issue there has never ever been a decisive majority for leaving in the way there was for joining. Whilst rejoining is clearly not an option in the short term the political base for it is already strong.
The Tories own Brexit lock, stock and barrel and while that may have given them a short term advantage let's see how it plays out in the long run. Even at this early stage a plurality of voters believe that Brexit was wrong and many won't be voting Tory again in a hurry. They had better hope that Brexit delivers enough to keep their new best friends in places like Hartlepool on board.
Europeans love the EU project so much that only 5.6m of them want settled status in Brexit Britain.
That's a total non-sequitur, but I guess we should be used to that by now.
The remainer's attitude is turning into the longest sulk in history.
Britain's democracy is far from perfect, but its good enough that if the electorate really wanted brexit stopped, it would have been.
Similarly, we are going back to freedom because that is what people want. Its not what the commentariat want. Or the opposition. But then these days their wishes and those of much of the electorate rarely coincide.
With the risk of getting into one of those arguments that we have all had over and over again for the last x years, what freedom have we actually gone back to? I have gained none. Personally all I have had is extra paperwork, my freedom to travel in Europe curtailed (which is currently a real headache) and a pensions campaign I am involved with potentially scuppered by the changes regarding the European Court.
Freedom to set our own laws, for one.
I'm currently wading through the proposed changes to insurance company capital regulation, that is only possible because we're now out of the EU and hence have some freedom to diverge.
Also I saw a news article the other day about a private member's bill on overturning the EU's ruling on requiring vehicles kept off road to have third party insurance. The bill has Government support and is expected to pass.
That's just my industry, and it's only been six months, and there's a pandemic on which is severely draining available Parliamentary time.
Sounds like bollox, no way is there anything near to £2B insurance sitting on cars off the road.
At c.£500 per vehicle, that's 4m vehicles, covering ordinary vehicles off the road as well as "motorsports, agricultural machinery and light electric vehicles (LEV)".
Go on, what's your estimate for that number of vehicles then?
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
It's a good question. A problem with the EU, arguably, is that it is NOT a superstate and its members will not allow it to become one. So you end up with a brittle and legalistic construct. The EU has its own contradictions - not as bad for the UK as the Brexit contradictions - but they exist nevertheless.
The final defining aspect of statehood to be gained by the EU, if ever, would be the ability to declare war and conscript the citizenry to fight in that war.
Which is never going to happen in any of our lifetimes, even without Britain. As I mentioned further down thread in answer to Philip's simplistic crap about "ever closer union", anyone who thinks France will ever enter into full political union with Germany is a dunderhead.
Think again. Many in the Franco-german elite know that full on economic and political union is the only way to make the euro work. Direct EU taxes. An EU budget. All of it. And they are right.
It won’t ever be sold as ‘political union’ as that would upset voters. France probably won’t be asked to rename its UNSC seat. But it will be de facto union
See the argument over pooled EU debt. That was once a massive taboo and it would never happen. Under cover of covid, it has happened
Only in the minds of most swivelly-eyed Brexiteer and one or two arch Euro-federalists. @NickPalmer articulated the realpolitik of this well. Anyone who understands EU politics and the complexity of the 27 know that "ever closer" has got pretty much as "ever closer" as it is going to get, even without the UK applying the brakes. The main concern of the French now is applying said brakes to prevent the Germans from fully dominating the EU, which is also paradoxical and funny because the Germans don't particularly want to. The EU's complexity and diversity is far greater than the average ignorant Brexiteer will ever even begin to understand.
Maybe some trashy right wing novelist could put together an airport page turner where Angela Merkle returns to take over the European Superstate , but is thwarted by an heroic Classics educated Old Etonian who manages to decode secret messages in her memoires that was only revealed when using an Enigma machine cross referenced with Homer's Odyssey, or something like that. What do you think? It's be a jolly jape eh?
You’re in your 70s, aren’t you?
Rough guess. Think I’m right
I fear you are being ageist. Can't you be critical without using that as an excuse?
That wasn’t remotely critical. Nigel is articulate and cogent. I disagree with much of what he says, but he says it eloquently enough, and sometimes with a dash of wit
My point was rather this: there is a kind of europhile mindset which was formed when the EU was in its ideal infancy, a thing of hope and opportunity. From the 1950s to the early 80s?
People who have this mindset tend, therefore, to be quite old. See the europhile Tory grandees - Heseltine and Clark. Old men now. Their positivity about the EU is in some way admirable but it is also based on misperception. They don’t understand how the EU has dramatically evolved and quietly accrued huge powers, they just see the EU as a ‘good thing’ and therefore not worthy of further consideration. I’d put NPXMP in this same bracket
My words were just a shorthand way of saying all that. I’m sitting on a balcony in Majorca and typing is a pain
Soon enough I will be advanced in years and young PB tearaways in their 50s will aim snappy judgements at ME
Aw, that is almost complementary, and quite gallant. I feel somewhat bad about being so mean now.
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
It's a good question. A problem with the EU, arguably, is that it is NOT a superstate and its members will not allow it to become one. So you end up with a brittle and legalistic construct. The EU has its own contradictions - not as bad for the UK as the Brexit contradictions - but they exist nevertheless.
The final defining aspect of statehood to be gained by the EU, if ever, would be the ability to declare war and conscript the citizenry to fight in that war.
Which is never going to happen in any of our lifetimes, even without Britain. As I mentioned further down thread in answer to Philip's simplistic crap about "ever closer union", anyone who thinks France will ever enter into full political union with Germany is a dunderhead.
So Macron is a dunderhead? He wants a European defence policy etc
France will not cease to exist, any more than Texas or New York have ceased to exist, but the EU is a nascent federal state and makes no pretensions to hide that fact. Only people like you live in the grand state of Denial.
I don't know why I bother to answer you. Go and spend some time in France Philip and less time on here. Maybe then you might understand. Try reading the Express a little less and then your views may be a little less black and white and more nuanced.
Are you Chris Patten? whenever I read your posts I think of that furious, red-faced, thwarted, pound shop Ted Heath.
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
When a country needs the permission of the EU to leave.
You mean like the UK superstate that enslaves Scotland
Not sure I agree with "enslaves" but yes. You need a definition of sovereignty for these purposes otherwise the debate lacks focus. And this is the one that imo works best. If you can unilaterally choose to leave the larger entity you are sovereign. If you can't you aren't, the larger entity is sovereign.
Doesn't every nation/country have this right? It's encoded in the UN charter.
So you believe we need restrictions until at least September (or longer if you want all kids doubled jabbed as well)...but then oldies will be vulnerable again and need their boosters, so thats until Christmas. Then there will be new variants and we will all need jabbing again...
When do we say its enough?
What I'd do is start a booster programme before it's proved to be necessary, so we wouldn't need to wait for that - the evidence that current vaccinations stop working after 6 months is scanty AFAIK. September does seem a reasonable target for relaxation IMO, with the overwhelming majority of adults vaccinated. July, not so much.
One can of course disagree. But it's not true to say "We must relax now because we'll otherwise never be able to."
The perfect can be the enemy of the good.
There will always be things that can be done to be better prepared - the perfectionist is never finished.
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
It's a good question. A problem with the EU, arguably, is that it is NOT a superstate and its members will not allow it to become one. So you end up with a brittle and legalistic construct. The EU has its own contradictions - not as bad for the UK as the Brexit contradictions - but they exist nevertheless.
The final defining aspect of statehood to be gained by the EU, if ever, would be the ability to declare war and conscript the citizenry to fight in that war.
Which is never going to happen in any of our lifetimes, even without Britain. As I mentioned further down thread in answer to Philip's simplistic crap about "ever closer union", anyone who thinks France will ever enter into full political union with Germany is a dunderhead.
Think again. Many in the Franco-german elite know that full on economic and political union is the only way to make the euro work. Direct EU taxes. An EU budget. All of it. And they are right.
It won’t ever be sold as ‘political union’ as that would upset voters. France probably won’t be asked to rename its UNSC seat. But it will be de facto union
See the argument over pooled EU debt. That was once a massive taboo and it would never happen. Under cover of covid, it has happened
Only in the minds of most swivelly-eyed Brexiteer and one or two arch Euro-federalists. @NickPalmer articulated the realpolitik of this well. Anyone who understands EU politics and the complexity of the 27 know that "ever closer" has got pretty much as "ever closer" as it is going to get, even without the UK applying the brakes. The main concern of the French now is applying said brakes to prevent the Germans from fully dominating the EU, which is also paradoxical and funny because the Germans don't particularly want to. The EU's complexity and diversity is far greater than the average ignorant Brexiteer will ever even begin to understand.
Maybe some trashy right wing novelist could put together an airport page turner where Angela Merkle returns to take over the European Superstate , but is thwarted by an heroic Classics educated Old Etonian who manages to decode secret messages in her memoires that was only revealed when using an Enigma machine cross referenced with Homer's Odyssey, or something like that. What do you think? It's be a jolly jape eh?
You’re in your 70s, aren’t you?
Rough guess. Think I’m right
I fear you are being ageist. Can't you be critical without using that as an excuse?
That wasn’t remotely critical. Nigel is articulate and cogent. I disagree with much of what he says, but he says it eloquently enough, and sometimes with a dash of wit
My point was rather this: there is a kind of europhile mindset which was formed when the EU was in its ideal infancy, a thing of hope and opportunity. From the 1950s to the early 80s?
People who have this mindset tend, therefore, to be quite old. See the europhile Tory grandees - Heseltine and Clark. Old men now. Their positivity about the EU is in some way admirable but it is also based on misperception. They don’t understand how the EU has dramatically evolved and quietly accrued huge powers, they just see the EU as a ‘good thing’ and therefore not worthy of further consideration. I’d put NPXMP in this same bracket
My words were just a shorthand way of saying all that. I’m sitting on a balcony in Majorca and typing is a pain
Soon enough I will be advanced in years and young PB tearaways in their 50s will aim snappy judgements at ME
But Nigel doesn't have that ideal dream of European integration that the grandees had.
Instead his argument is based upon wishful thinking that European integration has for some magical mystical reason completely stopped dead exactly where it is today and there's going to be no further integration and evolution.
That kind of naivety is shared with the likes of David Cameron and his age group instead, except I doubt Cameron actually was so naive as to think Ever Closer Union had died even if he pulled the wool over Nigel's eyes.
Hell in the last year alone we've seen an unprecedented two trillion Euro communal EU bond scheme launched - and still Nigel has the naivety to lie to himself that EU integration has magically stopped dead exactly where it is now and is going no further.
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
It's a good question. A problem with the EU, arguably, is that it is NOT a superstate and its members will not allow it to become one. So you end up with a brittle and legalistic construct. The EU has its own contradictions - not as bad for the UK as the Brexit contradictions - but they exist nevertheless.
The final defining aspect of statehood to be gained by the EU, if ever, would be the ability to declare war and conscript the citizenry to fight in that war.
Which is never going to happen in any of our lifetimes, even without Britain. As I mentioned further down thread in answer to Philip's simplistic crap about "ever closer union", anyone who thinks France will ever enter into full political union with Germany is a dunderhead.
Think again. Many in the Franco-german elite know that full on economic and political union is the only way to make the euro work. Direct EU taxes. An EU budget. All of it. And they are right.
It won’t ever be sold as ‘political union’ as that would upset voters. France probably won’t be asked to rename its UNSC seat. But it will be de facto union
See the argument over pooled EU debt. That was once a massive taboo and it would never happen. Under cover of covid, it has happened
Only in the minds of most swivelly-eyed Brexiteer and one or two arch Euro-federalists. @NickPalmer articulated the realpolitik of this well. Anyone who understands EU politics and the complexity of the 27 know that "ever closer" has got pretty much as "ever closer" as it is going to get, even without the UK applying the brakes. The main concern of the French now is applying said brakes to prevent the Germans from fully dominating the EU, which is also paradoxical and funny because the Germans don't particularly want to. The EU's complexity and diversity is far greater than the average ignorant Brexiteer will ever even begin to understand.
Maybe some trashy right wing novelist could put together an airport page turner where Angela Merkle returns to take over the European Superstate , but is thwarted by an heroic Classics educated Old Etonian who manages to decode secret messages in her memoires that was only revealed when using an Enigma machine cross referenced with Homer's Odyssey, or something like that. What do you think? It's be a jolly jape eh?
You’re in your 70s, aren’t you?
Rough guess. Think I’m right
Hahaha. No, Sherlock, your analysis is about as good as your political insight. I am in my 50s. Your Col. Blimpish outlook might put you in the Septuagenarian club though perhaps? Or maybe that is unfair on other Septuagenarians of a more moderate and less crass viewpoint? Perhaps a young fogey, roughly same age as SeanT by any chance? My deduction on you is that whatever age you are, you spend a lot of time on your own, and that is probably best for all concerned.
I stand corrected! I will only note, with some admiration, that you have mastered the creaking, rheumatic, trying-to-be-funny (but not quite managing it) prose style of a cantankerous 79 year old, with quite remarkable skill
Totally O/t but just seen this in the Guardian, about the Danish football fans; 'British authorities have refused to allow Danish fans to travel to the UK for the semi-final because of coronavirus restrictions. Fans are disappointed but sanguine. “When the Vikings left Denmark to conquer the world, there weren’t so many of them either,” says Pelch. “But they were still victorious.”'
And from Essex Northwards and Westwards there are many reminders of the Danish invasions 1200-1400 years ago. Not fr away there's Maldon where the Earl of Essex invited the Norse invaders to come across the estuary so they could have a fair fight. And lost! Although the leader of the invasion was probably a Norwegian.
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
It's a good question. A problem with the EU, arguably, is that it is NOT a superstate and its members will not allow it to become one. So you end up with a brittle and legalistic construct. The EU has its own contradictions - not as bad for the UK as the Brexit contradictions - but they exist nevertheless.
The final defining aspect of statehood to be gained by the EU, if ever, would be the ability to declare war and conscript the citizenry to fight in that war.
Which is never going to happen in any of our lifetimes, even without Britain. As I mentioned further down thread in answer to Philip's simplistic crap about "ever closer union", anyone who thinks France will ever enter into full political union with Germany is a dunderhead.
Think again. Many in the Franco-german elite know that full on economic and political union is the only way to make the euro work. Direct EU taxes. An EU budget. All of it. And they are right.
It won’t ever be sold as ‘political union’ as that would upset voters. France probably won’t be asked to rename its UNSC seat. But it will be de facto union
See the argument over pooled EU debt. That was once a massive taboo and it would never happen. Under cover of covid, it has happened
Only in the minds of most swivelly-eyed Brexiteer and one or two arch Euro-federalists. @NickPalmer articulated the realpolitik of this well. Anyone who understands EU politics and the complexity of the 27 know that "ever closer" has got pretty much as "ever closer" as it is going to get, even without the UK applying the brakes. The main concern of the French now is applying said brakes to prevent the Germans from fully dominating the EU, which is also paradoxical and funny because the Germans don't particularly want to. The EU's complexity and diversity is far greater than the average ignorant Brexiteer will ever even begin to understand.
Maybe some trashy right wing novelist could put together an airport page turner where Angela Merkle returns to take over the European Superstate , but is thwarted by an heroic Classics educated Old Etonian who manages to decode secret messages in her memoires that was only revealed when using an Enigma machine cross referenced with Homer's Odyssey, or something like that. What do you think? It's be a jolly jape eh?
You’re in your 70s, aren’t you?
Rough guess. Think I’m right
I fear you are being ageist. Can't you be critical without using that as an excuse?
That wasn’t remotely critical. Nigel is articulate and cogent. I disagree with much of what he says, but he says it eloquently enough, and sometimes with a dash of wit
My point was rather this: there is a kind of europhile mindset which was formed when the EU was in its ideal infancy, a thing of hope and opportunity. From the 1950s to the early 80s?
People who have this mindset tend, therefore, to be quite old. See the europhile Tory grandees - Heseltine and Clark. Old men now. Their positivity about the EU is in some way admirable but it is also based on misperception. They don’t understand how the EU has dramatically evolved and quietly accrued huge powers, they just see the EU as a ‘good thing’ and therefore not worthy of further consideration. I’d put NPXMP in this same bracket
My words were just a shorthand way of saying all that. I’m sitting on a balcony in Majorca and typing is a pain
Soon enough I will be advanced in years and young PB tearaways in their 50s will aim snappy judgements at ME
Aw, that is almost complementary, and quite gallant. I feel somewhat bad about being so mean now.
Lol. Fret not, I’ve reverted to being bitchy, so it’s all good
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
When a country needs the permission of the EU to leave.
Alternatively, when the legal mechanism for leaving the EU is made so deliberately harsh, one-sided and painful no sane country would ever voluntarily choose to exit
If THAT is the criterion, we have already passed the threshold. The British author of article 50, Lord Kerr, admits that it stacks the tables heavily in favour of Brussels, from the time limit to the framework
This was always one of the best arguments for Remainers: Brexit is bound to be shit because it is designed that way. You can’t resile from it now
I would say, Occam's razor, that Brexit is shit because it is shit. Being in the EU is better. Be that as it may, the problem five years after the referendum is that no-one has a plan for dealing with the shit. Neither Leavers nor Remainers, for different reasons.
"Herd immunity is not the policy goal of the government."
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 1h I mean, it quite literally is. And there is no alternative policy other than eternal crisis.
So the government policy is to fail on the vaccination programme?
Isn't the problem that 'herd immunity' can mean many different things depending on where you are in a pandemic? It's an end-game; an objective. In the early days of a disease, it would mean letting the disease rip through a population until it cannot spread any more, protecting the rest of the population. Now, with some good (but not perfect) vaccines, it means letting it spread through the unvaccinated population for the same aim - but it is a very different beast to March 2020.
So what are the alternatives to herd immunity, particularly where you have people who cannot be vaccinated, and where you have Contrarians who choose not to? Wait until more people have had vaccinations, despite the slowing rates? Wait for better vaccines? Wait for improved treatments for Covid?
The main serious alternative is to vaccinate everyone (including children) who doesn't actively refuse or cannot for medical reasons, and THEN relax. Because long Covid is serious and not infrequent in the young, there's a very strong case for at least completing the vaccination of adults (bar refusers) before relaxing. The example upthread of a poster who thinks he'll be forced back to work before being vaccinated is a good example. Surely that's indefensible and should be considered as constructive dismissal, in the same way as if my employer required me to work on a rickety floor that might well collapse?
And if that doesn't get you to the magic point where R<1 without restrictions? We're in a relatively fortunate position in this country, with a smallish percentage of vax refusers.
Then there's the other side of the balance: the harm the current lockdown does to the economy and people.
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
When a country needs the permission of the EU to leave.
Alternatively, when the legal mechanism for leaving the EU is made so deliberately harsh, one-sided and painful no sane country would ever voluntarily choose to exit
If THAT is the criterion, we have already passed the threshold. The British author of article 50, Lord Kerr, admits that it stacks the tables heavily in favour of Brussels, from the time limit to the framework
This was always one of the best arguments for Remainers: Brexit is bound to be shit because it is designed that way. You can’t resile from it now
I would say, Occam's razor, that Brexit is shit because it is shit. Being in the EU is better. Be that as it may, the problem five years after the referendum is that no-one has a plan for dealing with the shit. Neither Leavers nor Remainers, for different reasons.
Remainers have, I think a plan. Say sorry for causing all the trouble and please may we come back. We'll go back to help making it work, instead of continually trying to mess things up.
So you believe we need restrictions until at least September (or longer if you want all kids doubled jabbed as well)...but then oldies will be vulnerable again and need their boosters, so thats until Christmas. Then there will be new variants and we will all need jabbing again...
When do we say its enough?
What I'd do is start a booster programme before it's proved to be necessary, so we wouldn't need to wait for that - the evidence that current vaccinations stop working after 6 months is scanty AFAIK. September does seem a reasonable target for relaxation IMO, with the overwhelming majority of adults vaccinated. July, not so much.
One can of course disagree. But it's not true to say "We must relax now because we'll otherwise never be able to."
Of course that is an exaggeration. However it is fair to say there will always be more mitigating actions that can be taken prior to relaxation and that cases will rise after relaxation, whenever it occurs. That makes people sceptical and with some justification.
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
It's a good question. A problem with the EU, arguably, is that it is NOT a superstate and its members will not allow it to become one. So you end up with a brittle and legalistic construct. The EU has its own contradictions - not as bad for the UK as the Brexit contradictions - but they exist nevertheless.
The final defining aspect of statehood to be gained by the EU, if ever, would be the ability to declare war and conscript the citizenry to fight in that war.
Which is never going to happen in any of our lifetimes, even without Britain. As I mentioned further down thread in answer to Philip's simplistic crap about "ever closer union", anyone who thinks France will ever enter into full political union with Germany is a dunderhead.
Think again. Many in the Franco-german elite know that full on economic and political union is the only way to make the euro work. Direct EU taxes. An EU budget. All of it. And they are right.
It won’t ever be sold as ‘political union’ as that would upset voters. France probably won’t be asked to rename its UNSC seat. But it will be de facto union
See the argument over pooled EU debt. That was once a massive taboo and it would never happen. Under cover of covid, it has happened
Only in the minds of most swivelly-eyed Brexiteer and one or two arch Euro-federalists. @NickPalmer articulated the realpolitik of this well. Anyone who understands EU politics and the complexity of the 27 know that "ever closer" has got pretty much as "ever closer" as it is going to get, even without the UK applying the brakes. The main concern of the French now is applying said brakes to prevent the Germans from fully dominating the EU, which is also paradoxical and funny because the Germans don't particularly want to. The EU's complexity and diversity is far greater than the average ignorant Brexiteer will ever even begin to understand.
Maybe some trashy right wing novelist could put together an airport page turner where Angela Merkle returns to take over the European Superstate , but is thwarted by an heroic Classics educated Old Etonian who manages to decode secret messages in her memoires that was only revealed when using an Enigma machine cross referenced with Homer's Odyssey, or something like that. What do you think? It's be a jolly jape eh?
You’re in your 70s, aren’t you?
Rough guess. Think I’m right
I fear you are being ageist. Can't you be critical without using that as an excuse?
That wasn’t remotely critical. Nigel is articulate and cogent. I disagree with much of what he says, but he says it eloquently enough, and sometimes with a dash of wit
My point was rather this: there is a kind of europhile mindset which was formed when the EU was in its ideal infancy, a thing of hope and opportunity. From the 1950s to the early 80s?
People who have this mindset tend, therefore, to be quite old. See the europhile Tory grandees - Heseltine and Clark. Old men now. Their positivity about the EU is in some way admirable but it is also based on misperception. They don’t understand how the EU has dramatically evolved and quietly accrued huge powers, they just see the EU as a ‘good thing’ and therefore not worthy of further consideration. I’d put NPXMP in this same bracket
My words were just a shorthand way of saying all that. I’m sitting on a balcony in Majorca and typing is a pain
Soon enough I will be advanced in years and young PB tearaways in their 50s will aim snappy judgements at ME
But Nigel doesn't have that ideal dream of European integration that the grandees had.
Instead his argument is based upon wishful thinking that European integration has for some magical mystical reason completely stopped dead exactly where it is today and there's going to be no further integration and evolution.
That kind of naivety is shared with the likes of David Cameron and his age group instead, except I doubt Cameron actually was so naive as to think Ever Closer Union had died even if he pulled the wool over Nigel's eyes.
Hell in the last year alone we've seen an unprecedented two trillion Euro communal EU bond scheme launched - and still Nigel has the naivety to lie to himself that EU integration has magically stopped dead exactly where it is now and is going no further.
You might be right about a Cameron generation of remainers
You are completely right about covid Eurobonds. How can anyone sane say ‘oh the EU has stopped integrating or it won’t go much further’ when EU states have just taken that fateful and monumental step - pooled debt?
The halfwits are either kidding themselves or the world or both. It is a facile position
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
It's a good question. A problem with the EU, arguably, is that it is NOT a superstate and its members will not allow it to become one. So you end up with a brittle and legalistic construct. The EU has its own contradictions - not as bad for the UK as the Brexit contradictions - but they exist nevertheless.
The final defining aspect of statehood to be gained by the EU, if ever, would be the ability to declare war and conscript the citizenry to fight in that war.
Which is never going to happen in any of our lifetimes, even without Britain. As I mentioned further down thread in answer to Philip's simplistic crap about "ever closer union", anyone who thinks France will ever enter into full political union with Germany is a dunderhead.
Think again. Many in the Franco-german elite know that full on economic and political union is the only way to make the euro work. Direct EU taxes. An EU budget. All of it. And they are right.
It won’t ever be sold as ‘political union’ as that would upset voters. France probably won’t be asked to rename its UNSC seat. But it will be de facto union
See the argument over pooled EU debt. That was once a massive taboo and it would never happen. Under cover of covid, it has happened
Only in the minds of most swivelly-eyed Brexiteer and one or two arch Euro-federalists. @NickPalmer articulated the realpolitik of this well. Anyone who understands EU politics and the complexity of the 27 know that "ever closer" has got pretty much as "ever closer" as it is going to get, even without the UK applying the brakes. The main concern of the French now is applying said brakes to prevent the Germans from fully dominating the EU, which is also paradoxical and funny because the Germans don't particularly want to. The EU's complexity and diversity is far greater than the average ignorant Brexiteer will ever even begin to understand.
Maybe some trashy right wing novelist could put together an airport page turner where Angela Merkle returns to take over the European Superstate , but is thwarted by an heroic Classics educated Old Etonian who manages to decode secret messages in her memoires that was only revealed when using an Enigma machine cross referenced with Homer's Odyssey, or something like that. What do you think? It's be a jolly jape eh?
If this argument is correct then some pretty simple bits of clarity from the EU would have kept the UK in the EU:
1) There is no intention to ever become a single state
2) The Euro is reversible as is the ECB
3) It is only a large trade association
4) All the bits which make it look like an emerging state such as FoM, flags, having powers that override those of real states, embassies, parliaments, elections, presidents, cabinets are um.....er......
5) All the past ambiguity about the long term aims are a mistake.
Well, yes, pro-Remain MPs were wrong to have opposed TMay’s deal in 2019. Doesn't need hindsight, that was completely clear at the time. What the hell were they thinking? Didn't the fact that they were going through the lobbies with Mark Francois, John Redwood, Steve Baker etc - not to mention John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn - not give them a clue?
The long term Remain epic fail is over generations. If you want to support a wholly novel integrationist policy uniting disparate peoples 500,000,000 strong, you have to do it either by democracy and consultation (ie liberal democracy) or by authoritarianism (like China).
Doing it by stealth, diversionary tactics, factual inexactitude and manipulation with a bit of bullying can't work reliably.
So Remain failed from 1972 to 2015, because it failed to win hearts and minds, and failed to set a decent and truthful vision before a properly sceptical public. The Remain campaign was worse; and the Remain tactics post referendum deserve their own courses in management, business studies, politics and history degrees - "How to turn a setback into a catastrophe."
We come, I think, from opposite sides of the Brexit debate - you voted leave? But I tend to agree with everything you write on it.
Successive governments, since Thatcher (and even hers in its later times) took the line that the EU was a shitshow, but that the positives just about outweighed the negatives. Even Blair, who was the most positive in my lifetime, I think, preferred not to talk about it. There was never, in my lifetime, a real positive case made for being in.
Completely agree. I am a leaver, but was perfectly persuadable of the alternative. To be persuaded required lots of real answers. But one alone was critical: What is the destination in terms of sovereignty and statehood? That had to be a clear Yes or No.
Others were How does its democracy work, and is it one? Is it a protectionist rich club? How does the voter change it? Why does it impoverish poor third world farmers? How can it function with some in NATO and some neutral? How does it defend itself?
Once the Euro was established a single state was the unambiguous destination, but the EU and UK was in a spiral of silence and denial about the meaning of the obvious. And people made fun of those who pointed out the obvious. At that point a good cause was a lost cause.
And yet -
(i) The EU becomes a unified single superstate.
(ii) The EU collapses and is no more.
I would bet you a large sum of money at evens - as large as you want - that in 50 years from now neither of the above will have happened. The EU will evolve as it evolves but its members will remain individual and distinct and sovereign.
Kidding on the bet obviously, collection problems, but you see what I mean. All of this eurosceptic analysis, this "common currency = single state' algebra, has a fundamental whiff of absolutist unreality about it.
For such a bet you would have to define at what point the eu becomes a superstate.
For example is it when the EU gains tax raising powers? I have no doubt when it crosses the line it will still claim it is just a bunch of countries with common interests
It's a good question. A problem with the EU, arguably, is that it is NOT a superstate and its members will not allow it to become one. So you end up with a brittle and legalistic construct. The EU has its own contradictions - not as bad for the UK as the Brexit contradictions - but they exist nevertheless.
The final defining aspect of statehood to be gained by the EU, if ever, would be the ability to declare war and conscript the citizenry to fight in that war.
Which is never going to happen in any of our lifetimes, even without Britain. As I mentioned further down thread in answer to Philip's simplistic crap about "ever closer union", anyone who thinks France will ever enter into full political union with Germany is a dunderhead.
Think again. Many in the Franco-german elite know that full on economic and political union is the only way to make the euro work. Direct EU taxes. An EU budget. All of it. And they are right.
It won’t ever be sold as ‘political union’ as that would upset voters. France probably won’t be asked to rename its UNSC seat. But it will be de facto union
See the argument over pooled EU debt. That was once a massive taboo and it would never happen. Under cover of covid, it has happened
Only in the minds of most swivelly-eyed Brexiteer and one or two arch Euro-federalists. @NickPalmer articulated the realpolitik of this well. Anyone who understands EU politics and the complexity of the 27 know that "ever closer" has got pretty much as "ever closer" as it is going to get, even without the UK applying the brakes. The main concern of the French now is applying said brakes to prevent the Germans from fully dominating the EU, which is also paradoxical and funny because the Germans don't particularly want to. The EU's complexity and diversity is far greater than the average ignorant Brexiteer will ever even begin to understand.
Maybe some trashy right wing novelist could put together an airport page turner where Angela Merkle returns to take over the European Superstate , but is thwarted by an heroic Classics educated Old Etonian who manages to decode secret messages in her memoires that was only revealed when using an Enigma machine cross referenced with Homer's Odyssey, or something like that. What do you think? It's be a jolly jape eh?
If this argument is correct then some pretty simple bits of clarity from the EU would have kept the UK in the EU:
1) There is no intention to ever become a single state
2) The Euro is reversible as is the ECB
3) It is only a large trade association
4) All the bits which make it look like an emerging state such as FoM, flags, having powers that override those of real states, embassies, parliaments, elections, presidents, cabinets are um.....er......
5) All the past ambiguity about the long term aims are a mistake.
They didn't.
That didn't (and won't) happen because "ever closer union" is a classic bit of EU fudge.
There are too many competing interests to make ever closer union proceed at anything more than a glacial pace. But ever closer union is the dream (or nightmare) and, for some, the core ideology. So, everyone pretends that it is happening, will happen, is everyone's shared goal, but at the same time everyone does very little about making it happen and, when bits and pieces do happen they have exceptions, de facto if not de jure (e.g. Euro and Sweden being obliged to join the Euro under accession treaties, but not obliged to join ERM II, but they can't join the Euro until they've been in ERM II for two years).
That's why stating that ever closer union did not apply to the UK, while looking like nothing of worth to most ove here, must have been a damn difficult thing to get through - had the UK stayed in under those conditions, it would have been a real admission that ever closer union was never going to happen, at least not for all.
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One of the principal arguments of the Brexiteers was that it committed us to 'vassalage' since it was unthinkable that we'd ever threaten to abrogate a treaty...
These probably cancel out the Romanians abroad taking a punt?
As the same FT report concludes, it is factually obvious that there are many more EU citizens in the UK than we realised. Hence this HUGE discrepancy
@PickardJE
Downing St spokesman:
"Herd immunity is not the policy goal of the government."
Andrew Lilico
@andrew_lilico
·
1h
I mean, it quite literally is. And there is no alternative policy other than eternal crisis.
Surely the tip of the iceberg, which suggests millions of undocumented migrants
And that also makes human sense. If your sole intention is to come to the UK, do hard crap work for ok-ish money (by Sofia standards) and do it with minimal spending so you can go home with enough to buy a house - after 3 years or so - why would you bother registering with the UK authorities?
You don’t want to pay tax. You will tolerate illegally cramped living conditions (to save money). So. Stay off the books. Do the work. Go home
This is not aimed at migrants as some kind of snark. It’s what migrants have always done through history. It’s what the Irish and Jews and many others did in 19th century New York, building the USA (tho they seldom went home, in the end)
If we’d waited another 10 years to do Brexit, it could not have been done
It’s like all of those blue ticks on twitter claiming Sajid Javid said COVID was just like the flu.
So what are the alternatives to herd immunity, particularly where you have people who cannot be vaccinated, and where you have Contrarians who choose not to? Wait until more people have had vaccinations, despite the slowing rates? Wait for better vaccines? Wait for improved treatments for Covid?
We are going to have to learn to live with Covid and find ways to cope with it – just as we already do with flu.
https://twitter.com/sajidjavid/status/1411588996979900416
The level of debate in the media and on the twatters is infantile.
That is not the same as saying COVID, as a condition, is like flu. I appreciate you probably don’t know it but those misrepresenting what he said certainly do.
Back to twitter for you.
We have this awkward situation only because we were a bit unlucky on Novavax, and HMG were negligent on travel from India, but no-one will be pointing to petty arguments over reopening dates this summer as a major turning point when we look back next year.
I've decided now to try really hard not to engage directly with people's fears over the reopening. Many people will need to wait and see that disaster doesn't strike again. It's understandable for people to be apprehensive.
I imagine there will be parts of the media that will run scare stories on Covid for ever. It will become one of those staple paint-by-numbers stories like cancer research, house prices, dodgy weather forecasts, etc.
We all know what Javid said and what he meant. We will deal with covid as we deal with other serious and potentially fatal respiratory viruses. Eg flu. We will tolerate some deaths, but try to mitigate the worst, because the only alternative is a permanent cessation of economic life
What he did not say is that ‘covid is just like flu, it only kills 2 in a thousand, hahahah’
So it's not really deception (or self-deception) when we're told that it won't happen. It's pragmatic realism. What you currently see is more or less what you'll get in any one generation.
France will not cease to exist, any more than Texas or New York have ceased to exist, but the EU is a nascent federal state and makes no pretensions to hide that fact. Only people like you live in the grand state of Denial.
It won’t ever be sold as ‘political union’ as that would upset voters. France probably won’t be asked to rename its UNSC seat. But it will be de facto union
See the argument over pooled EU debt. That was once a massive taboo and it would never happen. Under cover of covid, it has happened
🏴 63,859 1st doses / 107,977 2nd doses
🏴 10,235 / 16,935
🏴 1,082 / 15,504
NI 1,786 / 7,398
Clearly a fall-off in demand for 1st doses, now that everyone has had the chance to book a jab for at least 3 weeks. In England 60% of those aged 18-24 and 63% of 25-29 have had at least one dose, which is a good start - challenge is to drive those numbers up now.
https://twitter.com/HugoGye/status/1412399515626315781?s=19
Get a grip, lads.
We wantonly threw away the best possible status of all possible statuses.
Now we'll spend a decade trying to recover some of the lost ground.
He could have said polio, but he didn't cos it's not like polio.
He could have said malaria, but he didn't cos it's not like malaria.
He said flu, because covid has certain features that make it quite a lot like flu...
He was reported and criticised for saying COVID was like flu. He didn’t say that,
That’s all there is to it.
You haven't missed the last 18 months - whatever mistakes have been made its not because the government has treated this like regular old flu. You dont lockdown the country for flu.
So why pretend you think he believes it is just like flu? We respect your intellect too much to accept you believe that.
When do we say its enough?
We are going to have to learn to live with Covid and find ways to cope with it – just as we already do with flu.
Which says that we will have to learn to live and cope with Covid. Like how we learnt to live and cope with the flu. That doesn't imply that we will do the same things, or that they are similar.
But flu, well, that is something we have to live with. So it makes sense to compare it to flu.
If THAT is the criterion, we have already passed the threshold. The British author of article 50, Lord Kerr, admits that it stacks the tables heavily in favour of Brussels, from the time limit to the framework
This was always one of the best arguments for Remainers: Brexit is bound to be shit because it is designed that way. You can’t resile from it now
People are denying he said it.
Maybe some trashy right wing novelist could put together an airport page turner where Angela Merkle returns to take over the European Superstate , but is thwarted by an heroic Classics educated Old Etonian who manages to decode secret messages in her memoires that was only revealed when using an Enigma machine cross referenced with Homer's Odyssey, or something like that. What do you think? It's be a jolly jape eh?
Rough guess. Think I’m right
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/quarantine-rules-germany-madeira-summer-holidays-green-amber/
Gove's speech was high quality compared to the usual soundbite rubbish from British politicians. His problem is that he doesn't have much of a clue about how to achieve such a worthwhile aim. He may well be aware of that. Perhaps that's why in that speech he proposes more experimentation. Which is fine. Go for it. But then he comes in with stuff about parents comparing schools by value added, giving the impression that he remains imprisoned by ideology, as also was Gramsci.
One can of course disagree. But it's not true to say "We must relax now because we'll otherwise never be able to."
It only takes the leaders agreeing to cede powers once and then they've been ceded. How those powers can then be used is up to future generations of federal politicians.
The idea that the ratchet is going to stop with the EU as the way it is today is absolutely delusional. There is no argument or evidence behind it other than wishful thinking.
(a) Pupils will be back to school in September
(b) Worsening weather
(c) the onset of the flu season.
* They probably aren't even coming until start of next year. Mix and match does look to give some boost, but a new version targeting the specific variants should be much better still.
Whatever deep woke is. Is it better than cider?
So I worked somewhere a few years ago that did a pandemic preparedness exercise, the bulk of which was telling managers which of their staff were sick so they had to work out how to keep essential operations going while it worked its way through.
In retrospect it's bizarre that the planning was for a virus with such a narrow range of characteristics - deadly enough to be disruptive, but not too deadly. Or maybe it was the internet that made asking most people to stay at home for so long possible in a way that it wasn't twenty years ago.
My point was rather this: there is a kind of europhile mindset which was formed when the EU was in its ideal infancy, a thing of hope and opportunity. From the 1950s to the early 80s?
People who have this mindset tend, therefore, to be quite old. See the europhile Tory grandees - Heseltine and Clark. Old men now. Their positivity about the EU is in some way admirable but it is also based on misperception. They don’t understand how the EU has dramatically evolved and quietly accrued huge powers, they just see the EU as a ‘good thing’ and therefore not worthy of further consideration. I’d put NPXMP in this same bracket
My words were just a shorthand way of saying all that. I’m sitting on a balcony in Majorca and typing is a pain
Soon enough I will be advanced in years and young PB tearaways in their 50s will aim snappy judgements at ME
Go on, what's your estimate for that number of vehicles then?
Edit: either way, the link to the study is below, and the breakdown of the £2bn figure is on p5 of the exec summary. I'd be delighted to hear some reasoned criticism of the analysis.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vnuk-decision-the-effect-on-domestic-motor-insurance
There will always be things that can be done to be better prepared - the perfectionist is never finished.
Instead his argument is based upon wishful thinking that European integration has for some magical mystical reason completely stopped dead exactly where it is today and there's going to be no further integration and evolution.
That kind of naivety is shared with the likes of David Cameron and his age group instead, except I doubt Cameron actually was so naive as to think Ever Closer Union had died even if he pulled the wool over Nigel's eyes.
Hell in the last year alone we've seen an unprecedented two trillion Euro communal EU bond scheme launched - and still Nigel has the naivety to lie to himself that EU integration has magically stopped dead exactly where it is now and is going no further.
'British authorities have refused to allow Danish fans to travel to the UK for the semi-final because of coronavirus restrictions. Fans are disappointed but sanguine. “When the Vikings left Denmark to conquer the world, there weren’t so many of them either,” says Pelch. “But they were still victorious.”'
And from Essex Northwards and Westwards there are many reminders of the Danish invasions 1200-1400 years ago. Not fr away there's Maldon where the Earl of Essex invited the Norse invaders to come across the estuary so they could have a fair fight.
And lost!
Although the leader of the invasion was probably a Norwegian.
Then there's the other side of the balance: the harm the current lockdown does to the economy and people.
You are completely right about covid Eurobonds. How can anyone sane say ‘oh the EU has stopped integrating or it won’t go much further’ when EU states have just taken that fateful and monumental step - pooled debt?
The halfwits are either kidding themselves or the world or both. It is a facile position
1) There is no intention to ever become a single state
2) The Euro is reversible as is the ECB
3) It is only a large trade association
4) All the bits which make it look like an emerging state such as FoM, flags, having powers that override those of real states, embassies, parliaments, elections, presidents, cabinets are um.....er......
5) All the past ambiguity about the long term aims are a mistake.
They didn't.
There are too many competing interests to make ever closer union proceed at anything more than a glacial pace. But ever closer union is the dream (or nightmare) and, for some, the core ideology. So, everyone pretends that it is happening, will happen, is everyone's shared goal, but at the same time everyone does very little about making it happen and, when bits and pieces do happen they have exceptions, de facto if not de jure (e.g. Euro and Sweden being obliged to join the Euro under accession treaties, but not obliged to join ERM II, but they can't join the Euro until they've been in ERM II for two years).
That's why stating that ever closer union did not apply to the UK, while looking like nothing of worth to most ove here, must have been a damn difficult thing to get through - had the UK stayed in under those conditions, it would have been a real admission that ever closer union was never going to happen, at least not for all.