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The mask slipped — Emmanuel Macron's Trumpian qualities have been on display. Credit: Chesnot/Getty
It’s the ultimate political fantasy: the sudden revelation that exposes your opponents for exactly who they are. It might be a stolen letter, a leaked email, an unguarded moment captured on camera.
Sometimes — just sometimes — the fantasy becomes fact. On 28 April 2010, Gordon Brown was caught on microphone calling Gillian Duffy a “bigoted woman”. All she’d done to earn the Labour PM’s insult was to raise the issue of immigration with him. What followed was a humiliating apology — but neither he, nor arguably the Labour Party, ever recovered. It wasn’t just the incident itself, but what it symbolised: the disdain that the modern Left has for its traditional supporters.
In any walk of life, regaining someone’s trust is much harder than losing it — and with good reason. It was Maya Angelou who said it best: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
That is how we should judge the behaviour of the European Commission over the past few days. Disregard the climb-downs — especially the claim that activating the Article 16 to impose a hard border on the island of Ireland was a “mistake”. As for apologies, the only thing they’re sorry about is the criticism they’ve received — which wasn’t only from the usual sceptics, but also from those such as Michel Barnier, Carl Bildt and the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Had there been no complaints — just a cry of “uncle!” from AstraZeneca — there’d have been no remorse from the Commission. Indeed, they’d be patting themselves on the back and planning the next shakedown. As it is, no amount of backtracking can change the fact that they showed us who they are.
For British Eurosceptics this is a teachable moment. They told us the EU was a bureaucratic nightmare, a protectionist racket, a mercantilist scam — and now they have the evidence. Meanwhile their opponents, the diehard Remainers and Rejoiners, are in a tight spot. How on Earth do they defend such reckless behaviour?
One approach is to admit that the European Commission was wrong, but for the right reasons. After all, there are lives at stake — and putting one’s own people first is a sentiment we can all understand.
But if lives were their main concern, why choose the path of confrontation instead of cooperation? Both AstraZeneca and the UK have every interest in seeing the vaccine supply issues resolved. Even more important, they have practical experience of getting them resolved. The UK contract also had its problems, but these were quietly addressed rather than turned into a diplomatic incident.
Perhaps making a drama out of a crisis was the whole point of the Commission’s tactics. The drama distracts from the underlying scandal, which is the EU’s mismanagement of its vaccine procurement programme. But let’s be generous and assume that they were only out to save their citizens, not their own necks. In this reading of the situation, the Commissioners chose the path of confrontation because that is how they roll.
The EU is big. It has clout. For a certain kind of Eurocrat, there should be no embarrassment about using this strength to get what Europe needs. Consider the speech given by Guy Verhofstadt — not a man shy of showing us who he is — to the 2019 Lib Dem party conference:
“The world of tomorrow is not a world order based on nation states or countries. It is a world order that is based on empires… The world of tomorrow is a world of empires in which we Europeans, and you British, can only defend your interests, your way of life, by doing it together, in a European framework and in the European Union.”
An imperial mindset would certainly explain why the Commission acted in the way it did. Empires aren’t famous for asking nicely.
This brings us to the other Remainer defence, which is to admit that the EU did the wrong thing and for the wrong reason — and that this is precisely why we’d be safer as part of the empire. To adapt the old adage about tents and micturition “it is better to be inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent being pissed on”. The argument is as cynical as it is cowardly, but that’s not all that’s wrong with it.
For a start, it assumes that no one inside the tent gets pissed on, which is clearly untrue. For instance, the Republic of Ireland, an ultra-loyal member of both the EU and Eurozone, wasn’t even informed (let alone consulted) about the decision to invoke Article 16.
Anyone who was surprised by this hasn’t been paying attention. If it suits the most powerful core members of the Union to betray the interests of the peripheral members, then they will do it. Just look at what they did to Greece during the first Eurozone crisis or what Germany is doing to its eastern neighbours by building the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Russia.
The real difference between being outside and inside the tent is how you get pissed on. Outside, the main threat is trade policy — which is exactly the weapon being used by the EU against the UK in regard to vaccines. But inside the tent, you can get hosed-down in other ways. For instance, last year the European Commission acquired the power to borrow hundreds of billions of Euros from the money markets — for the purpose of protecting the Eurozone from the impact of the Covid crisis. If the UK had voted to Remain, we’d have been on the hook for that colossal debt — despite staying out of the single currency.
As always, the key point is that we didn’t just leave the EU as it was, but as it is becoming. Equally, the opportunities we have outside the EU weren’t fixed in 2016 either, but are constantly evolving. Studies into the economic impact of Brexit — especially those undertaken by British governments — are unambitiously static in their assumptions. For instance, see page 31 of the 2018 long-term economic analysis for examples of the important global trends that are explicitly not modelled. These include technological, demographic and other changes that could be of huge benefit to an advanced, knowledge-driven economy like our own.
Of course, there’s no guarantee that the UK will use its freedom to take advantage of new opportunities as they arise. However, the success of the UK’s vaccine procurement programme does provide a powerful proof of concept. As an example of what could and should be possible, it is made all the more compelling by the contrast to the EU’s approach. Despite the advantage of a much bigger internal market, the EU procurement programme has been bogged down by performative politics, bureaucratic delay and government lobbying on behalf of vested interests.
Finally, it’s not only integration that’s changing the EU. For the last 16 years, it’s been anchored to the Chancellorship of Angela Merkel. She has steadied the ship through numerous crises including the Great Recession, the eurozone crisis, Brexit and the pandemic. While she’s made mistakes, the “Queen of Europe” is nonetheless a force for continuity. Not for much longer, though. Her reign is drawing to a close — and the vaccine debacle is a sign of what the EU could look like in the hands of less impressive leaders.
We should be especially concerned about an EU in which Emmanuel Macron is the leading light. Last week, it wasn’t just the European Commission who showed us who they were — we also saw the Trumpian qualities of the French President on full display. His absurd claims about the efficacy of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine are a warning sign that should not be ignored. The same goes for the opinion poll that showed Marine Le Pen running him close in a run-off vote for President. Yes, that’s the candidate of the far Right within four percentage points of leading the EU’s second largest economy. Meanwhile her ideological soulmate, Matteo Salvini, is in poll position to become the next Prime Minister of Italy (the EU’s third largest economy).
We therefore cannot assume that the EU of the future will be like the EU of the present. The EU of last week was just a glimpse of how bad things could get.
Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.
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SubscribeThe totalitarian nature of the awful Ruling Caste in the western democracies – which class is made up of ‘elites’ without competence and ‘meritocrats’ without merit – insists ever more and more on having its own way in every single thing. That is the meaning of the latest attempts at bullying AstraZeneca in particular and the peoples of Ireland and the UK in general.
Determined to have absolute power, resolute to accept no remonstrance from any public, the EU hierarchs answer to Voltaire’s description of the French aristocracy in the 18th century: ‘They forget nothing and they learn nothing’.
If the disgraceful voters of Ireland, Denmark, France, Holland, Italy and Greece (and the United Kingdom) repudiate in referenda or national elections anything the hierarchs want to do, then such rebuffs are simply ignored or subverted and the will of the rulers is sheerly imposed.
We have the same thing in a lesser degree, but very preponderant, on this side of the Channel: a Conservative Party and a Labour Party which are fantastically slow to learn anything from electorates which keep trying to infuse them with a sense of populist priorities.
However, for once in many years, a British government has got one thing right [cue a brilliant fanfare from long-silent trumpets].
It has appointed in charge of procurement of vaccines a lady who is informed, rational, sensible and therefore competent. She, Kate Bingham, has taken the sane decisions, the
correct steps, and so this country is now powering ahead with a vaccination programme practically as early and as rapidly as could humanly be done.
The EU’s handling of the issue has been exactly contrary and wholly characteristic of ITS competence in all matters. This has produced huge delays and bottle-necks. The hierarchs of that unhappy realm are determined to lay the blame on others – and guiltless private companies and the British people are set in their stocks for pelting with threats.
Having produced international disgust at their willingness to jeopardise the fragile peace in Ireland, and domestic exasperation at their handling of procurement in their own countries,
the EU hierarchs double-down on going to war with the individuals who have got things right.
If the Occidental peoples desire deliverance from this quality of rule, they have got to start sending to their parliaments persons who are among the brightest and best in their societies and no longer stuffing their legislatures and Cabinets with samples of their stupidest and worst.
‘Voltaire’s description of the French aristocracy in the 18th century: ‘They forget nothing and they learn nothing”
The ‘forget nothing, learn nothing’ quote comes from the 1820s and was said of the Bourbons following their restoration in, I think, 1820. Funnily enough I am currently reading about this period in a very good little book about Louise Colet, the model for Mme Bovary.
That aside I fully I agree with every word of your post. And you perfectly express something I have said countless times with:
‘the awful Ruling Caste in the western democracies – which class is made up of ‘elites’ without competence and ‘meritocrats’ without merit
Always had the idea that the French slaughtered the wrong half of their population in their revolution.
I note in the pic at the top, that Macron is wearing the colours of his country’s flag on his mask, for when he meets with Merckle
Ouch!
Nice.
All illegitimate regimes resort to nationalism and xenophobia, blaming others for their failures. One difference between facism and communism for example is that facism has nationalism and racism built in, communism without fail quickly ends up the same despite it’s slightly more ‘noble’ aims.
Remain is racist. The EU is racist.
But the Left is winning because it doesn’t call itself ‘communism’ any more. Now it is called ‘racism’ or ‘gender issues’, etc.
And Britain today is top of the league for nationalism and xenophobia, putting the selfish wishes of a marginal elite before peace in Europe! Can be no argument about that
Hosiery mannikin.
JF
Yes totally.. have you got any actual data to back that up?
Every international survey I’ve seen shows the UK to be at the Top of the least xenophobic and racist countries.
We’re now got a none racist immigration policy, unlike when we were in the EU – which is great. I do realise that some remainers miss the defacto white first EU immigration policy, sad little racists that they are.
I don’t believe the UK population is particularly racist or xenophobic. Though you would get that impression if you thought those who comment on Unherd articles were representative of the population.
The EU screwed up on this one. The UK government got lucky on picking Astra Zeneca and acted decisively and uncharacteristically by ordering shed loads of vaccine. It also let the NHS run the vaccine programme rather than outsourcing it.
The ‘non-racist’ immigration policy is no such thing. It discriminates on wealth rather than country of origin. The vast majority of the world’s poor are black or brown. The policy is a way of letting the rich in while closing the door on the undesired poor black and brown people.
I’ve found commenters on Unherd some of the most polite and erudite people online. I encounter more racism and xenophobia in the comments sections in publications like Slate, the Guardian and Washington Post.
See post in these comments about France’s national flag being white? Polite?
Or another about Germans wanting to forget the war and the French pretending they won it?
It characterises one of our most endearing traits, irony. Lighten up.
2 points.
The government didn’t get ‘lucky’ it invested 7 times as much per head as the EU in vaccines and limited pharma liability. This wasn’t luck, it was a very rare case of making a sensible decision by the UK.
The EU in contrast was stuck in politics and penny pinching for months. In the great scheme of things the EU savings will be a few Billion Euros, for a loss 1000s of lives and 100s Billions of economic damage. Really silly.
Immigration wise whilst part of the EU the UK hlgave preference to very white poor Eastern Europeans (vast bulk of one sides immigration) over anywhere else in the world. It was de facto racist, the number of non white Eastern Europeans is tiny.
The EU does not have a de facto white first immigration policy, since there are large naturalised ethnic minority populations in much of the continent. An Algerian-born resident in Marseilles, an Indonesian in Rotterdam, or a Afghan in Malmö, has, provided that they have acquired French, Dutch or Swedish citizenship, just as complete a right to move freely around the EU as does an ethnic Frenchman, Dutchman or Swede. By contrast, a French Canadian, a Afrikaner from Johannesburg, or a Minnesotan of Scandinavian heritage has no such right. A genuinely racist immigration policy would focus on ethnicity rather than passport.
I’m not sure a young French person of Algerian descent will be re-assured that they will be treated equally as an ethnic French person. Racism in France is alive and well, despite its attempts to hide it under the fig leaf of republican citizenship. I had a long conversation with three amusing and very vocal French Algerian guys who were on parole from prison and walking the Chemin du Puy with their prison chaplain. They told me exactly what it is like to be in their situation.
I’ve no doubt that’s true; but the comment referred specifically to immigration policy, which clearly does relate to passport rather than race.
Evidence please
Clown ..Totally Eurowash, 1995 Germany recognised Wartime allies Croatia, Worsening Civil War.NATO had to stop..Same Ukraine in 2014 EU stirring up the Russian bear..it is NATO keeping the peace Not Sclerotic EEC,EC,EU
Advice (free):
1. Find tree.
2. Bark up it.
Marginal élite ? I thought it was us stupid plebeians who voted for Brexit. You cannot have it both ways.
From which rich seam of fantasy did you mine this exquisite 24 carat nugget of dross?
Critical Race Theory teaches that every white person is racist at birth. I take it from that it doesn’t then matter what form of government rules the racist populations. As for xenophobia, I take it you are a globalist cosmopolite.in favor of open borders. .
Read it properly. Critical race theories assert that society is inherently racist. If you’re part of that society you will have absorbed that racism – that applies to black and white people. If you’re white and in a society that is racist in favour of white people and not black people you start from a position of privilege compared to black people. Is that such a difficult concept?
If that were true, Western societies would have a caste system similar to that of India. As such, anyone can make it in the West, regardless of their skin tone or circumstances of birth. I’ve found Critical Race Theory an unreliable epistemology with which to describe inequality in Western societies. It’s simultaneously parochial and condescending in its treatment of what it perceives to be the ‘oppressed’ group.
It all falls apart when Black Africans come here and outperform White and Black Brits. The same story is repeated for other groups. A very similar pattern is followed in the US and Canada.
It shows more than anything that culture is hugely important to success. A lot of British born whites and blacks are nursing various grivences rather than getting on with succeeding.
CRT and other leftwing grifters are holding people back, it’s s tragic and causing huge tensions.
Don’t forget a theory is just that, it’s not real, it hasn’t been proven. As soon as it is, it ceases to be a theory and becomes a ‘law’. I can never understand why people get so juiced up over something that is really just a guess and can fall flat on its face when someone else proves it wrong, like the “steady state theory”. A theory only holds water until someone proves or disproves it then it ceases to be. That’s why critical race theory is nothing but a load of tosh dreamt up by the woke-ist left. And it’s not a theory, it’s an ideology but they know that if they told the truth instead of using psycho-babble people would just laugh at it. CRT is nothing but a con.
But who is responsible for this allegedly inherent racism? I doubt that many CRT ideologues think that blacks have anything to do with the racism; rather, they are solely the victims of it. And I use the word “ideologue” advisedly, as CRT is not a theory. A theory can be verified if true, disproven if false. The promoters of CRT would never allow such an inconvenient thing as the truth to interfere with their narrative.
Why always try to find blame? I know I’ve got away with stuff (minor illegal acts) because I’m a white middle class bloke and if I’d been black I wouldn’t. It doesn’t mean I’m to blame and doesn’t mean I feel guilty. But having recognised that fact I can’t ignore it.
For a more modernist interpretation look no further than the Empire in Star Wars punishing the outlying worlds for not joining “the Empire” and succumbing to its rules and of course its protection. As I recall it was smiling Chancellor who turned out to be the Evil Emperor – you have fun casting it in Europe….
EU needs more a round table of independents with some strong overlapping/common interests
Vive la diference!
Overlapping / common interests like managing the production of coal, iron and steel in order to control the mass production, again, of Panzers. This, as `i understand it, was at the heart of the original idea. Everything else can and should be left to individual nation states and the free market. The people of Europe sleep walked into Verhofstadt’s empire. The British woke up and walked out of it.
It has been too easily ignored in this debate that the UK has fared quite badly with many more deaths per million than other countries (if you can believe the way these numbers are calculated). Consequently it can be argued that the needs of the British people are paramount for their own sake and that of their nearest neighbours.
You can’t believe any of the numbers . . .
An NHS Nurse Writes”¦
A registered nurse who has been working in NHS hospitals throughout the crisis has written the following article for us about his experience.
Matt Hancock said that there are 37,475 patients in hospitals in the UK with coronavirus ““ yet no context was offered. So there are approximately 120,000 NHS beds in England, which would make Hancock’s figure around 30% of NHS England bed capacity (and that’s not taking into account bed capacity of Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland). That also doesn’t take into account extra potential capacity from private hospitals nor the Nightingale hospitals. A headline grabbing statistic like “37,000 Covid admissions” might sound alarming, but without context it is meaningless.
It is also important to stress that this figure of 37,475 are patients admitted for any health reason, with a positive PCR test on admission or within the last 14 days ““ it is definitely not 37,000 patients who are unwell with Covid respiratory symptoms.
Patients are tested on admission to determine whether to be put in “green” or “red” areas. I have seen first-hand patients admitted to hospital for completely unrelated conditions, nil Covid symptoms, but have a positive PCR test on admission. These go down as “Covid admissions” but they are actually admitted for conditions completely unrelated to the respiratory system, such as heart failure or kidney disease.
I am sure by now we all have known somebody who has had a positive Covid test result but no symptoms. This is true also for hospitalised patients being admitted for other reasons ““ massively inflating the “Covid admission” numbers.
I have also had first-hand experience of patients who have been admitted into hospital for an unrelated reason, and caught Covid whilst there (nosocomial infection) ““ and then they also go down in the NHS statistics as Covid admissions.
Hancock’s figures without context are not only unhelpful, they are misleading the public.
WE have certainly had a lot of deaths, but international comparison is fraught with problems of different counting systems. You’d think that a death is a death is a death, but no – wait. WE over count, counting any death where the deceased has had a positive covid diagnosis within 28 days. In a ridiculous but true example, if a 25 year old died after a positive covid test within 28 days in a motor bike crash, he WOULD be counted. Meanwhile, in France, you only count if the covid death was registered within 3 days, and in Spain, you only count as a covid death if you die in hospital. Since avast number of our covid deaths happened in care homes – about a third, you can see the issue.
I’m not claiming we didn’t suffer a lot of deaths, just that international comparison of top line covid death figures are unreliable. The best method is to look at age adjusted excess deaths per hundred thousand of population. This irons out not only these counting anomalies, but also adjusts for population size.
If the Gvnmt. published the ages of the deceased as well, it might shock some of the idiots who ; party, rave and congregate in large numbers. It’s not just us oldies that peg out. Also hear the death rate from ‘Flu’ has dropped considerably. Good one Tom.
According to The Sunday Times yesterday, flu has virtually and mysteriously vanished this past year.
Also, wrt Covid numbers counted, France does not count deaths in care homes. Were that the case in the UK, it would clearly make a huge difference, with over 30% of fatalities ascribed to care homes.
“According to The Sunday Times yesterday, flu has virtually and mysteriously vanished this past year.”
Hardly mysterious. Social distancing, masks, lockdown, handwashing – all very effective against flu.
On a personal note, I discovered that another person I know died of the pestilence. Horrible; a fit, active, funny and lively woman. She was over eighty, but had years of active life left to run. She had been sheltering herself for best part of a year, but met up with her wider family for Christmas celebrations with the horribly predictable result. She was the sort of person who would have been out walking and meeting her friends for coffee at the age of ninety…. Not to be, sadly.
I feel particularly sad for the ITU staff coming off shift in London who have been harassed by the conspiracy theory nutters. January was extremely rough with a lot of working-age people dying in ITU.
Yes. I know that’s true. I just heard of a bus driver in his forties known to a neighbour of mine who died alone in a foreign country. He was a Pole who came here to work and send money to his family in Poland. I don’t know the man, but he was by all accounts an ordinary man, without the weight or health problems in his late forties. There are people here who think this disease should be left to let rip and tear its way through the population. They seem blind enough not to realise what that would do to the availability of medical services of all kinds when hospitals were overwhelmed.
“The best method is to look at age adjusted excess deaths per hundred thousand of population.”
Indeed. But those numbers are not exactly being widely publicised.
Yes, just not in the news. Look at https://www.euromomo.eu/
Roughly the numbers are that every year 1% of the population is expected to die of old age, disease, accidents, etc.
Last years we had ±0.1% deaths above average, which is 1 in 1000. Worst hit places like Belgium & New York were at 0.33%. This explains quite well why I do not know a single person who died.
The US is even worse in respect of that extended time period, as I understand it. Here in the States, any positive Covid-19 within 60 days of death counts. Perhaps now that Democrats don’t need such stats with which to justify beating Trump over the head, the policy will be changed. And the mass media will be all aglow with the news of how much better Biden is at handling the virus.
I think the key issue is to focus on the problem rather than who the President is.
“The best method is to look at age adjusted excess deaths per hundred thousand of population”
Agreed. Data is available for the UK and in the first weeks of January that metric fell back to the average for 2016-2019 (2020 was excluded due to the epidemic in the UK)
There is no doubt that the respiratory unit, high dependency and critical care beds in the UK are full, but this isn’t being reflected in excess deaths. at least not any longer. The purpose of the lockdown seems to have been to prevent the (mainly political) fall-out from having specific ‘bits’ of the NHS overwhelmed, whilst all the other bits sat on their hands. Many surgeons were effectively furloughed during the worst periods, especially when their case mix required higher than ward-level care.
I read Capt Sir Tom Moore was admitted to hospital with pneumonia on 12 January but was tested Covid negative on admission. He was discharged on Jan 22 and tested positive for Covid-19 on that day, still with pneumonia. He was in the late stages of cancer. Will he be registered as another Covid-19 casualty? One presumes so.
This issue can’t be raised often enough Andrew. A VERY substantial number of the now deceased victims of covid-19 were in fact victims of poor infection control in NHS hospitals. it was said a little while ago that at least 20% of the dead caught their disease in hospital.
My partner retired as a GP eight months ago and has been trying to volunteer as a vaccinator. After 35 years in the NHS with unbroken service, she has been made to jump through a ridiculous number of hoops, Today’s was a two hour course on emergency resuscitation – as if she needed it!!! I asked her if she thought the course was covid safe an hour ago, and she though not. There were ten people confined in a large room for two hours without adequate ventilation and ordinary non medical, self provided masks.
For her at least – well practised in resuscitation since her earliest time at medical school, this was a stupid and unnecessary risk. The influence of NHS bureaucrats on ANYTHING at all is inevitably negative. They are hoop jumping jobsworths, whose sole function seems to be to slow any initiative down and to generate paperwork and obstruction.
Why shouldn’t he be registered as a covid-19 casualty? He was one. Without Covid he would be alive now.
I was once almost fanatically pro-EU, but it became obvious at least 15 years ago that these people are very, very nasty indeed. And one could argue that they have been demonstrably incompetent for at least 20 years. Certainly, they had been warned since 1970 that a single currency would destroy the economies of southern Europe, so its imposition was an act of both malice and incompetence, at least in economic terms.
Anyway, if the last week or so has awoken more people to the sheer evil of this wannabe empire, that can only be a good thing. The fact is that if you want to be an empire, you need some competent people in charge, and the EU has not possessed or displayed any competence since the 1980s. (Remember how hopeless is was as Yugloslavia fell apart?)
von der Leyen is, perhaps the worst of the lot. Her record in domestic politics is one of utter disaster. There are good articles on this in both The Spectator and der Spiegel right now. She makes Kinnock and Cahty Ashton look useful, although I’m beginning to think that we sent both those horrors as part of a deliberate plan to undermine this most wretchedly hopeless organization.
I was a huge EU fan too…I had an EU flag hung up in my room at university, signed myself right up to study EU law, did an Erasmus year and went out to live on the continent as soon as I possibly could. I was going to be the best European that Britain had to offer!
I also voted remain, but now I’ve changed my mind. To lose faith is a terrible thing – but to lie to oneself to keep it alive is much worse. Love Europe, can’t stand the EU.
Love Europe, can’t stand the EU.
This. I may be being nitpicky but I wish the title of this article said ‘The EU’ rather than ‘Europe ‘.
that’s because the author bleeds through his wounds… unable to see the difference 🙁
I was a rabid supporter of the idea of a COMMON MARKET for Europe, but with the United Kingdom in the centre. I am now convinced that 90% of the worlds problems are caused by politicians and beurocrats, a conviction only reinforced by the arrogant vindictivness of the Brussels Mafia.
I think it has long been obvious that 90% of the world’s problem are cause by politicians and bureaucrats.
I’m sure you have statistical evidence for that profound statement.
One example was Obama and Clinton sending their marines out to murder bin Laden in his bed.
Un autre puppet de sock.
JF
Ha ha! Fraser always makes these enormous sweeping generalised statements. What can anyone say to them in reply, since we will always have politicians and bureaucrats (assuming we don’t in some way let AI quantum computers take over…)
It is far more interesting to discuss why some countries are so much more competently governed and administered than others. Taiwan and Singapore seem to be among the best. The UK used once had a reputation once of being quite well governed, but both the government and the administrative state have failed pretty spectacularly in this crisis, though perhaps we will be able to learn and apply some lessons for the future.
Per Perry Anderson, in his LRB series on the EU, this organizaiton has become an oligarchy of unaccountable, nondemocratic institutions that have increased their power via “stealth coups.” With the result that they can arrogate to themselves powers and rights that are NOT in any actual treaties. And there are no “consitutional” means to rescind those powers —for the same reason. There is no law or constitution to refer to. So, comparing the dysfunctional EU bureacracy to both UK and disastrous USA regimes, Anderson notes that at leaset in the latter two there is a theoretical possibility to change things via votes. Not the case in the EU, Anderson maintains and demonstrates via numerous examples.
Puppet de sock.
JF
Eyes.
The long game in the UK’s interests must surely be for the EU to break up and be reconstituted as a free trade bloc. The existence of the euro and the need for any seceding countries to come up with a replacement currency are severe obstacles to this, however.
The euro countries are now de facto satellite states of Germany and to some extent France, much like the Warsaw Pact states vis a vis the USSR.
Exactly how important the colonies’ interests are to the ruling junta was demonstrated this weekend, when an unelected official decided to close Ireland’s border without telling Ireland.
‘The long game in the UK’s interests must surely be for the EU to break up and be reconstituted as a free trade bloc’.
This might not even require a ‘long game’. Assuming a ‘right wing’ coalition comes to power very soon in Italy, there is every chance that Italy will leave the EU. Meanwhile, le Pen is more or less 50/50 with Macron in the opinion polls when it comes to the run-off next year.
But yes, the existence euro is a significant obstacle.
I wish I shared your optimism on this, Fraser, but Italian governments never last very long. It’s hard to see how they could get from referendum promise to exit in any less than the 4.5 years we took, especially with the need to replace the euro as well.
Any extended timetable means there would need to be several successive governments, each with the resolve to make this happen in the face of EU bullying.
A euro member seceding and surviving would be an existential threat that the EU could simply not tolerate.
Good point on Italy. Let’s hope we are the ‘euro member seceding and surviving’.
Well, luckily, Alan, we weren’t a eurozone member. But this difference will certainly be brought up, and its significance as an obstacle used, to dissuade any eurozone country from following our example, no matter how successful we are.
It is probably valid to do so, because the currency issue is certainly an insuperable obstacle to Joxit, which is why the SNP is anxious to handwave it away.
The EU knew this, of course, and as Graham points out just below, the euro’s real purpose was not what it was said to be.
“Well, luckily, Alan, we weren’t a eurozone member. But this difference will certainly be brought up, and its significance as an obstacle used, to dissuade any eurozone country from following ourexample, no matter how successful we are.”
This view is very strongly reinforced by Perry Anderson, writing in the London Review of Books.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-p…
Well worth a read (part 3 in a three-part series—the whole thing is very valuable). Probably free (not behind paywall) if you don’t access the LRB very often.
Per Anderson Brexit was only possible because Britain had NOT joined the Eurozone. The longer things/life goes on, the more i think future Britons will thank their mums and dads for voting Leave.
No We were in the ECU from October 1990,the issue Which Tories deposed Thatcher for..in November 22,1990 ..ECU cost to Uk Taxpayers,john Major economic folly,is believed to have Cost,depending on sources, £20-68billion…
Yes, you are probably correct on all those points. Still, the entire spectacle would be entertaining, if nothing else.
Very entertaining? Only provided one does not hold assets in euro
There IS the example of Britain, which Britain did not have when fighting for Brexit.
Yes, that should warn them off trying it. If we had had such an awful debacle like this to refer to then even the simple lies of Leave would have struggled with traction.
The Euro was introduced to ‘in the darkness bind them’ anyone trying to leave would be asked to pay their share of the € debt as part of the process, that means, unless there was a catastrophic failure of the € leaving is a non starter.
As would Scotland be required to repay part of the UKs debt should they seek to leave.
Macron won’t make the run off. Barnier says he will stand against him. Eduard is standing. That split’s macron’s vote.
Yes, I have many friends in Italy and this is what they are all talking about. Added to the fact that Italy has always devalued the currency in bad times and now it can’t. A referendum for sure.
A slight problem is that Italy gets its fair share of refugees and it will have to decide what to do with them if the border is not open.
Death of the euro does not need a ‘right wing’ coalition in Italy and/or France to happen. The euro Target 2 trade imbalances have become huge sums. In the coming years (may take 4-5) the ECB will be unable to sell Bonds in order to finance the borrowing needed to support the Target 2 trade imbalances.
My view is that the ‘Money Markets’ will trigger the death of the euro with a refusal to buy ECB Bonds. Similar situation to the UK leaving the EMS but a financial crisis bigger than 2008. Gordon Brown will be considered a hero for not joining the euro.
Mark, your point is interesting but sadly, for me, a bit too technical. Is it possible for you to signpost me/us to an idiot’s guide to your argument? Many thanks!
‘How the euro dies’ by Nickoli Hubble is a good guide. Next track the Target 2 trade imbalances which the ECB funds by buying Government debt from Italy, Greece, Spain etc (data from interweb). These trade imbalance are a growing bubble. All bubbles burst eventually, who knows when. History of UK crashing out of EMS was when ‘sentiment’ in money markets turned against Norman Lamont, and George Soros made a fortune by betting against Sterling.
There are many videos etc on T2 available to watch on YouTube. As one of the videos explains, imagine you are paying Monopoly with some who goes bankrupt. You then lend them some money but they go bankrupt again and cannot repay you. T2 is lending from Germany to souther Europe. It stands at over 2 trillion euros. None of it will ever be repaid.
But will the ‘right wing’ be allowed to be elected? The US has shown the way to subvert elections.
What is the real purpose of the disastrous Euro? – Clue; it’s not the removal of exchange rate risk.
That’s easy; to keep Germany’s exchange rate artificially low so they can sell those expensive cars relatively cheaply.
Is it that or is it to superglue together countries that adopted it, because it will become impossible to secede?
If you look at all the problems in the world, ask the question are politicians involved?
True, very good.
Also if you look at all A&E deaths in the world medical staff are involved…
Ask yourself why no accountant has been able to certify the EU accounts?
Its complicated… https://fullfact.org/europe…
Marta Andrearson? She was kicked out of her job for just trying to tell the truth!
Yes – I voted to stay in in about 1975. It was a common market not an undemocratic empire and fraud machine.
The structure of the EU makes it impossible for it to ever have a credible leader. The powerhouses of France and Germany will never allow a EU leader with competence and power to be appointed. This would allow the EU to act in the interests of all nations, rather than primarily in the interests of the Germany / France alliance.
There was one true reason for the formation of the Eu, commencing with common market.
That was to allow Germany to hide its terrible past and pretend it never happened. Also, to allow France to pretend it won the war.
This episode of Yes Minister is informative! https://youtu.be/rvYuoWyk8iU
I have never cared for the EU. Not one jot. Had some time for EFTA and the EEC but it has always been a project geared around the original ECSC members, just as Churchill advocated. As a patriot of Britain I could never agree to support the monster called the EU and still harbour ill feelings of Major, Blair and Brown because of their deceits.
Though Gordon Brown will go down in history probably as the person who more than anyone else kept the UK out of the Euro. Robert Tombs – no Europhile he – has recently written that once you are in the single currency, it becomes almost impossible or at least extremely painful for most ordinary people to leave it.
I don’t know who Robert Tombs is but it doesn’t take a genius to work out that is one of the primary reasons for the Euro. To ensnare witless and gullible members.
Brown was and is a despicable man. Bigoted and a liar. Both he and Blair said we would have a vote before signing the EU Constitution which miraculously morphed into the Lisbon Treaty when it was rebuffed by France and Ireland and Denmark if I recall correctly. We didn’t have a vote but Brown signed it anyway.
So yes his 5 tests that could never be met were ostensibly the reason we didn’t join the Euro but more fundamentally that was just a ploy to undermine Blair.
well said.
You should read Tombs’ The English and their History – very sound
You mean the Muppet who announced he was selling UKs gold BEFORE he did so? That Gordon Brown?
and Heath,Howe,Rippon all lied &Knew they were lying..roy Jenkins earned £62,000pa when UK Average wage was £2,500pa
I would add to that list the opportunistic Mrs May who treated Brexit leadership like the mythically indecisive Grand Old Duke of York marching his ten thousand men towards an advantageous hilltop before battle, changing his mind, then changing it again, until confusion reigned. We sang:
‘And when they were up they were up
And when they were down they were down
And when they were only half way up
They were neither up nor down.’
It so describes Mrs May’s idea of generalship it would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.
Your first para is false concerning the single currency. The same assertion about its effects could be said of the US, yet the US with it’s single currency, same divide N to S, is the strongest, most prosperous and internally peaceful country in the world.
Pantyhose marionette.
JF
Yes, but the US has direct transfers of money from north to south. The EU has not yet implemented this, even though they were warned of its necessity from 1970 by Kaldar and other economists. Eventually it will have to happen, at which point the tax payers of the Frugal Four will start to get very angry indeed.
Well said.
Very good summary of the EU quagmire. And nice to hear it coming from someone who was so deeply into it, too.
I would not disregard the EU’s claim that it was a mistake to activate Article 16, or even to talk about doing so. It very clearly was a mistake. One in a very long string of mistakes the EU has made recently. Threatening drug companies, not really a good look, is it? And just think, not long ago everyone was lauding the EU’s COVID performance. Brexit is looking increasingly like the best decision the UK ever made.
How utterly ridiculous to uphold Brexit because the Commission has attempted to misuse its power. It was a big mistake – and hopefully they will learn from it.
Brexit is also a huge mistake. I wonder how many years it will take for the UK to learn from it?
There are counless other reasons that Brexit was a good idea.
Ah yes, “sovereignty” cannot be counted, can it? Especially when so many have no idea what it means. Brext was a stupid, self-harming idea.
Only in your “stupid” mind
It wasn’t a mistake until the backlash started.
Brexit doesn’t look much like a mistake these days. And the Commission was always one of the reasons for Brexit. But the larger question is how many EU members will now feel somewhat misused by the EU’s wrong footed ness with Covid. It can’t feel good to Ireland, can it? Nor can it feel good to watch Germany trying to buy vaccine for itself outside the EU. It seems like EU members really are on their own.
So you fee that a mistake, quickly rectified and with no negative impact, completely outweighs the debacle of red tape and border issues that are forcing businesses to reduce their operations and lay off UK staff while opening, on UK government advice, outlets in the EU? The loss of freedom of movement, the loss of access to security information and the damage to the UK economy amount to nothing in your eyes?
Sock. Puppet.
JF
Profound
Didn’t say anything like that. Merely pointing out that the EU did recognize its mistake. As one of many it’s made. You probably should not add a bunch of stuff to it.
This. I abstained in the EU referendum because I thought both sides were unworthy of support: Leave because buffoons like David Davis clearly had no idea how the EU and our EU departure worked, and Remain because its campaign was so patently dishonest. The most dishonest part of the Remain pitch was exactly its insinuation that to Remain would be to remain in the EU of 2016.
My question, “Remain in what, exactly?”, was never honestly answered. The mug voters were left to suppose that we’d Remain in something similar to what we were now in. But this has never been true in the previous 40 years, and in 2016 there was no reason to think it would change – and many reasons to think the process of absorption would continue, to a point where it became irreversible.
Just as any UK euro entry would have been, to Remain in the EU on its present trajectory would have been unconstitutional (which has never once since 1973 occurred to the Queen, disappointingly, who’s supposed to uphold the constitution). It would represent a decision to do something literally irreversible by any future government.
The most shameful aspect of Remain behaviour has been not only the woeful, total failure of our institutions to respect this constitutional principle before the referendum, but Remainers’ connivance at overturning the result subsequently.
Agree with most of this, but the characterisation of David Davies seems unduly harsh.
Being mainly focussed on principles – rather than the means of leaving – seems perfectly understandable.
This is something Theresa May didn’t seem capable of when Davis resigned.
David Davis said on Twitter on 26 May 2016:
“Post Brexit a UK-German deal would include free access for their cars and industrial goods, in exchange for a deal on everything else. Similar deals would be reached with other key EU nations. France would want to protect £3 billion of food and wine exports. Italy, its £1 billion fashion exports. Poland its £3 billion manufacturing exports.”
So Leave advocate and subsequent actual Brexit Minister did not understand until a month before the referendum that there could be no UK-German deal, nor any bilateral deal with France, or Italy, or Poland.
It’s still there to read. So I think buffoon is more than fair.
Isn’t that the Brexit Free Trade deal though? Haven’t the Germans maintained access for their cars? Hasn’t the UK obtained a series of things in return? I expected the EU, rather than the UK, would ‘hold most of the cards’; and that’s reflected in the deal. isn’t it?
Davis thought he was going to be negotiating trade deals bilaterally with individual EU countries. He did not understand that no such thing is possible. Despite advocating Leave he had not a clue how Leave would work.
Davis, and his boss, T May, knew, as we all do, that the rest of the eu will do whatever Germany tells them to do. Even though occasionally, the Germans allow Macron to pretend things are his ideas.
If you read that meaning into his statement then it it not DD who is the buffoon.
It was not a statement, it was on Twitter.
The first calling point of the UK’s negotiator immediately after #Brexit will not be Brussels, it will be Berlin, to strike a deal
(1/3) Post #Brexit a UK-German deal would include free access for their cars and industrial goods, in exchange for a deal on everything else
(2/3) Similar deals would be reached with other key EU nations
(3/3) The truth is existing trade deals with non-EU countries would stay in place until either side wanted to renegotiate
all of which is total, utter ba11s. He actually thought that after Brexit we would be doing individual deals not with the EU (“not be Brussels”), but with “other key EU nations”. Not with the EU on behalf of them but individually. He further thought that existing trade deals would be grandfathered.
That’s not all he didn’t understand. He also claimed that “within two years, before the negotiation with the EU is likely to be complete, and therefore before anything material has changed, we can negotiate a free trade area massively larger than the EU.” The UK was not in a position to negotiate new trade deals until after it left the EU.
The man is an utter clown.
Davis was pointing out what the key decision-makers different positions were going to be at a national level ….. however the EU rebuffed any U.K. to nation conversations that the U.K. preferred.
I still think you are on the wrong track here …
Davis is correct. He’s just outlining what a win-win deal looks like.
That the EU said no to this, means the EU is responsible for the job losses.
Davis was promising the undeliverable, due to either ignorance or dishonesty. The job losses, closed businesses, lost opportunities and crashed dreams are the fault of the Leave side, not the EU.
David Davis was correct. His mistake was in thinking that his boss, the May creature, actually wanted to leave the eu. He also mistakenly thought that our “negotiators” were willing to negotiate for British interests.
No, he thought he was going to go to Germany and elsewhere and negotiate a series of bilateral deals. It beggars belief that someone whose opposition to the EU was that it usurps national powers had not troubled to find out whether trade negotiations were a power the EU had appropriated. His ignorance was profound, but then I have heard anecdotally that he is bone idle.
Do you mean in the same way that May had secret meetings with Merkle before publishing her ‘Withdrawal Agreement’?
..
No, I mean in the way that there was never going to be a withdrawal agreement with Germany, another with Italy, another with Poland, etc. There was going to be one, and if it threw various EU countries under the bus, it was just their tough luck.
Davis did not understand this and thought we would leave and he could set up lots of side deals with individual countries bilaterally and without involving the EU.
One of the initial post Referendum problems was that as a Remainer PM May put the key cabinet posts of Chancellor and Home Secretary in the hands of uber Remainers. The Chancellor then refused to create a no deal resource of £6 billion which would have sent a very early and clear message to the EU about our intentions if the withdrawal negotiations were not conducted fairly and in good faith.
Phillip Hammond has given EU investment bank 20 years to ”Pay back” Uk £20billion…
Largely semantics – so we will have to agree to differ on this interpretation.
Don’t you think history will repeat, and that the EU nations, and UK, cannot actually live together, and it’s only a matter of time before it falls apart; and UK is beginning, very slightly & slowly, to be back in it’s time-honoured role of divide and conquer? The Brexit deal can be reformed once the individual nations start pushing for what’s in their interests, e.g., exports to UK.
Like you, I chose not to vote because both sides were clearly being dishonest and manipulative.
The EU’s response to the outcome of the vote, the negotiation process, and now this, have made it clear that we are better out than in – even if I still don’t believe the cakeist arguments for leaving.
I still hope that one day there will be a retreat from these dreams of empire, enabling the UK to collaborate effectively with like-minded countries that are currently in the EU.
I’d be happy with the EU if it had any democratic integrity. If a comfortable majority in each country was happy with the creation of a superstate and the erasure of their nations then that’s fine with me – as long as the EU was also run by elected politicians not Civil servants, appointments and a rubber stamping chamber.
The dishonesty of those who claim that it’s not becoming a superstate or that it’s democratic is huge. For the record I also beleive the UKs democracy is pretty rubbish, a vote for an MP once every 5 years. We should have Swiss style referndums every few months on matters of interest, including what to spend money on, health policies, immigration etc.
Of course some people will claim that Brexit shows the danger of direct democracy, either because of the result or the years of anomosity. Both are entirely disingenuous arguments from people who want democracy to continue to mean the elite class doing exactly what they want with the veneer of democratic accountability.
Totally agree. I love the Swiss approach to referendums, i.e. they’re frequent and therefore not a big deal. Better to have more frequent and less dramatic strategic course-corrections, providing well defined boundaries within which government can operate.
Its easy when you have a predominantly homogenous cultural and political outlook and a population barely larger than London.
Culturally, aren’t there significant differences between German-, French-, and Italian-Swiss? I had always assumed that but don’t have evidence either way (I only know German-Swiss people).
One could also argue this the other way round, that effective democracy in Switzerland has resulted in political homogeneity – but here too I don’t know the history!
I did not vote for Brexit because of ‘dreams of Empire’. I am under no illusion that we would return to the ‘good old days’ .
One of the reasons I voted to leave was because of the expensive if not exorbitant, and stifling bureaucracy .
This debacle seems to be one example of it in practice
I think Mark was talking about the EU’s dreams of empire. If they stopped dreaming of becoming the USE, they would be less angry with us for our insulting secession, and more likely to engage rationally and co-operatively, to mutual advantage.
They won’t do so, because they want us to be disadvantaged by Brexit, no matter what the cost to individual EU states, companies and individuals.
This is not cutting off their nose to spite their face. We damaged their empire building project and their project is the end in itself. It’s not about what benefits Europeans. It’s somebody else’s nose and somebody else’s face.
Oops – by dreams of empire I meant the EU!
I haven’t observed any dreams of – or nostalgia for – the British Empire.
Sorry – over reacted – Brexiteers have been unjustly accused of harking back to the ’empire’. When on holiday in Italy (remember when we could do that?), soon after the vote, this was the comment made by a dutchman and seemingly shared by other europeans present at dinner. and repeated by remainers as a slur since then.
I do agree with your general point
I have many times heard that accusation, but never heard a leaver express the nostalgia of which they are accused. So the thought didn’t cross my mind…
Well, I’ve heard many leavers express nostalgia for a time when UK was a great maritime power leading trade (and warfare) around the world. The same people who get upset when tributes to slave traders and colonialists are criticised. The Empire lasted until the fifties. There was plenty of WW2 rhetoric around the leave campaign – nostalgia for Empire.
Our groups of leaver acquaintances clearly don’t overlap! I’ve not heard any discussion where as you put it “tributes to slave traders” are discussed because that all blew up when lockdown was already in effect and social conversations outside the family have pretty much ceased.
The only people dreaming about, or talking about Empire were remainers. They never stop going on about “the Empire”.
No one who voted leave gives a tiny toss about the British empire.
The EU will not exist in 2021. It will end this year.
What does that look like?
Hopefully like Nostradamus you will be proved correct…
Exaclty. Where were the 5, 10, 15, 20 year plans?
No remainer knew what they were voting for on that front.
Plus given the EU is statistically white, India statistically Brown, advocating for different rules is racist.
Remainers are racists.
Good point – there is no status quo. Apart from the band of course!
However, I did vote – based it on my thoughts on what the future might hold for the EU project. Here a couple of the incidents noted in the article were instructive – especially Greece (well documented in Yanis’s ‘Adults in the Room’). On the single currency, I found Mervyn Kings (‘End of Alchemy’) commentary compelling alongside Bernard Connolly’s seminal contribution in 1995.
“It would represent a decision to do something literally irreversible by any future government.”
Exactly, And the same goes for narrower issues within the EU (that is, narrower than leaving the EU altogether). No democratic way to influence the actions of the Brussels, Luxembourg, and Strassbourg oligarchs.
The declaring of Article 16 and the weaponisation of NI in order to further the EU’s own perceived aims and what it sees as the necessary humiliation of a post Brexit UK should have come as no surprise to anyone following this over the last four years.
Barnier and his Brexit ‘negotiators’ were captured on film brazenly stating their cynical intentions to use the NI peace process as a tactic back in 2018-19 in a Danish directed BBC aired ‘Behind Closed Doors’ Storyville documentary following their machinations, showing them up for what they really were all about.
The clip is still there on YouTube for anyone and everyone to see in all its gory glory, plus there’s a rather charming accompanying 30 second clip (part 22) as they all have a jolly old gloat about the whole thing.
The level of cynicism on display in parts of the documentary is quite shocking – most notably from the Irish EU officials.
My sentiments exactly. Shocking.
‘Friends like that’ as the old saying goes….
Indeed. Why we are apparently prioritising these creatures over our own people and diverting “excess” vaccine to Ireland I can’t think. Haven’t the Irish killed enough of the British?
Maybe the Irish are aiming to match the British number of Irish killed in the ‘famine’ genocides?
Except most of Europe was starving at the time so very little to do with the British. Just myth.
The British were in charge at the time. That’s why they got the blame.
And yet the same crisis due to the American potato blight occurred multiple times across 10 years and the people didn’t learn. You can’t force people to change their food sources: that would be EU imperialism. What about the Somerset, Norfolk, Lincolnshire, East Anglia potato blight crises that happened at the same time?
Happened in Scotland, too. With a similar, though less comprehensive, result of starvation and emigration. Cereal crops were exported from ‘famine’ Ireland to England for profit. Not to feed the starving of Norfolk.
I think this comment is very harsh.. I am English but I have read enough of what the British did to the Irish at the time of the famine. There are so many people in the UK who are descended from those desperate people who emigrated in the 1840’s to escape starvation. I don’t believe in reparations for acts carried out in the past but surely an awareness of that cruelty should influence our behaviour now. I hope we do help out Ireland with vaccines as soon as we can.
Well said.
You are talking about inadvertence ~200 years ago versus the deliberate murder by the Irish of men, women and children less than 25 years ago. They’re entirely unrepentant, and indeed vaccines sent to Ireland could easily end up going to unreconstructed, unapologetic Irish terrorists. And let’s not forget Irish posturing during Brexit.
“deliberate murder by the Irish”. What, all of them? You realise that vaccines sent to England could go to drug dealers, child molesters and (whisper it) Remainers. Maybe we should cancel the whole thing.
Yes, of course you are right about the events in more recent history. I, too, lived through those times but things are healing between our two countries and, in that spirit, a kiss is always better than a kick.
In BBC parlance ‘Irish Veterans’.
I’d say you’re xenophobic but I think your level of vitriol and belief that the Irish are murderers, as a people, makes you a good old fashioned racist.
With the centuries of to-and-fro migrations between the islands of Ireland Great Britain I find it hard to draw such a distinction between Irish and British. In my view historical bonds are important – like when one falls out with family, they don’t stop being family.
So while top priority for helping out other countries should probably start with poorer commonwealth countries, Ireland and Poland should also be on the list.
.. like when one falls out with family, they don’t stop being family.”
Well…up to a point. They can become something far worse.
… not only is there a special link with Ireland but there is the imperative to protect Western civilisation and its values and peoples. When that is done, the Congo and the Central African Republic will no doubt be welcome to supplies ” the UN won’t of course help much ” should they not have developed their own by then. How controversial ! How close to BadThought !
Can you post a link to ‘Behind Closed Doors’ you mention.
Suggest you enter it into the youtube search engine, adding ‘Storyville’ to the title.
The gloating bit. https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Can’t post links on Unherd unfortunately, but if you type in ‘audio confirms Michel Barnier weaponised Irish border to trap UK in trade negotiations’ it should take you there.
I’ll never forget the bit where an apparatchik gloats, ‘we’ve turned them into a colony’ (this was when May was still in charge).
Don’t forget that the newly-appointed EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakidou actually stated that the EU doesn’t do queuing and has the right to push in at the front of the queue however late in the day they arrive.
To my mind queuing is a fundamental part of civilised society – but perhaps it’s only the British that think that – and perhaps we’re mugs to do so?
… immigration ended orderly queuing years ago … I haven’t passed a bus queue for years …
Its not just this big mistake that sends strong warning signals – consider the Stasi like attitude at the ports in confiscating food for personal consumption or rejecting and thus ruining thousands of tonnes of fresh fish for the sake of a wrong coloured Biro used on a from – absolutely nothing wrong with the form details just the ink colour
A small but very significant and damming use of control that in the past would have caused a war with such waste of peoples livelihood
The people fo the member states really need to see these acts for what they are and the Article 16 “mistake” was actually caused by a very fearful mindset – fear that these unelected, untaxed, nationally failed bureaucrats will actually be found out..
Its time for Journalists in Europe to ask the question – Is this the sort of Europe we really want?
I am pro a Common Market, Joint defence and intelligence including the police and would love to see a return to this without the waste of the EU parliament, commission et al
Its hard to be friendly to a neighbour who steals our EIB money, cuts us out of Galileo, undermines national integrity – blocks our borders and tries to partition parts of our country
‘Its time for Journalists in Europe to ask the question…’
If you think the journos in Europe will ever ask any questions you are utterly deluded. They are hopeless beyond all salvation. I write as one who has lived in France, Germany and the Netherlands, and who still follows the Dutch press. It’s a joke.
From recent conversations I’ve had with Dutch friends, there is a lot of disillusionment with the EU at the moment, and there has been for quite a while. I was working in the Netherlands when the euro was introduced. It basically slashed my wages by half.
Reference the remainer defence, “which is to admit that the EU did the wrong thing and for the wrong reason ” and that this is precisely why we’d be safer as part of the empire.” Sadly, many remainers are far more entrenched in their views. I’ve been informed that the EU are right to take issue with the UK because some of the UK’s supply of vaccines were manufactured in the EU and that effectively we have stolen the EU’s vaccine supply. To argue thus is to twist the facts into a tangled ball of half-truths to support their argument that the EU is some benevolent entity and it is the British who are behaving nationalistically, and to ignore the facts. I think even if the EU constituted it ‘EU Army’ and invaded across the channel, such ardent remainers would argue that the UK was at fault.
Just about in living memory, there was another group of the UK great and good so enamoured by a foreign creed that they would truck no criticism or dissent and were absolutely prepared to sacrifice their own country on the alter of this creed
Well Sinn Fein,Scottish nationalist parties were pro-nazi 1930s through WW” ,so nowts changed!
A noticeable change in role for the EU has emerged in the past few months. The EU is starting to act as if it is a unitary country, centrally commanded, able to issue edicts to member states and to set policy that must then be applied at a country level. Previously, it felt that the EU was more of a council of consensus for member countries – like the icing on the cake – but individual countries having primacy.
The evolution to a command body has been coming for a while, but it feels that Brexit, Covid and Covid relief and the change of EU President has finally seen the EU actively taking political charge for itself, over and above its members.
As you say, the counterweight was the UK. The Commisson are no longer constrained.
It is not a recent thing Saul. Research how the commission went about the Schengen agreement or how it has treated Greece following since 2008. It has not been a “council of consensus” for many years, or perhaps ever.
I understand that the EU has been moving in this direction since at least the change from being the EEC and that the project has continued in spite of the votes of local electorates. The difference is a significant change in tone. In the last few months, the EU itself has adopted a position that it has reached primacy on decision making. It’s not a consensus of Macron and Merkel talking on the EU’s behalf, but the EU itself directing affairs in Europe – a subtle but new political phase.
And in so doing, realising the vision of a unitary state enshrined by law in the Lisbon Treaty.
Except it’s not a state.
Problem is that will push some members out.
Surely though in a time of emergency. I would like to think that, had we remained we would take a similar decision to Hungary’s rapid acceptance of other vaccine.
… and soon : The Army of the EU … ( la biche Francaise has the desired convenient nuclear capability … excellent ) .
The activation of article 16 without consulting the member state is very very dangerous .
What if the EU had decided to close the border with the Russian enclave of Kalinigrad without consulting Poland or Lithuania ( both NATO members ).
The EU seems to be run by arrogant reckless fools.
As Basil Fawlty ”Well done,Stating the Bleeding obvious”..
Yes-replace” seems to be” with is.
To all the fbpe, remainers and rejoin people out there, 1 question?
Where’s your God now?
Is there any acknowledgement that leavers may have had a point or is it still xenophobia and racism that made us vote leave?
‘Where’s your God now?’
Ha, ha, as someone said: ‘When people no longer believe in God they will believe in anything.’
They will even believe, it seems, in the EU.
That’s the thing with religious types… They have a way of twisting the facts to fit their beliefs. If all else fails “God moves in mysterious ways” and “you’re a racist” are enough to let the EU off the hook.
I’m happy to let the EU off the hook; but blow me down they will insist on jumping back on it !
Oh no, of course not, leavers weren’t xenophobes or racists. Well, some of them weren’t. And as for God, I seem to remember rather a lot of Christians (on the lines of the religious right in Trumpland) thought of the EU as a modern version of the Tower of Babel. You know, all those nasty foreign languages and, even worse, furriners. So you and Mike Boosh might try being a little more subtle in your arguments. Perhaps in your minds too. Just because some Christians happen to make a judgement one way doen’t mean that others see things differently.
…so, in 2014,15, and 16, we Brexiteers were trying to tell you the true nature and ideology of what the EU really was, but we were called “little Englanders”, racists, Xenophobes, uneducated knuckle-dragging neanderthals, and even conspiracy theorists, but in actual fact, what we were, was well researched.
That’s perhaps another clue – when your opponent’s idea of “debate” is mindless insult, chances are that your argument is the stronger one.
Exactly. There was a picture floating around on facebook a couple of years ago which said it all, It showed a 1940’s Nazi Rally, an ISIS parade of black-clad jihadi’s brandishing swords and weaponry, an ANTIFA rally, and then a small group of aging UKIP pensioners who were labelled as “far-right extremists”. Honestly, you couldn’t write this stuff.
Well said.
Don’t forget ‘gammon’!
true…a term which I never fully understood BTW?
Gammon is a pejorative term used in British political culture since around 2012, which received press coverage in 2018. In 2018, it became particularly known as a term to describe working class middle-aged or older men on the political right or who supported Brexit, in reference to the pink colour of their skin when emotional.
Just because we’re out of the EU doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods yet. Remember the “unelected rulers” of the UK, the Civil Service are entrenched Remainers almost to a man and woman (assuming two genders). They belittled any Brexiteer in their midst and fought tooth and nail against Brexit.
Unless the civil service swamp is properly drained then Britain will be continually hampered in the future by these fifth columnists. In addition the ruling classes are in charge of a cosy political monopoly with our First Past The Post voting system. Our choice is between liberal heavy – Labour -or liberal light – Tory – the problem with that is that the silent majority are conservative with a small c.
Until we radically change both the civil service culture and the political monopoly we will never achieve our destiny rather we will continue to underperform as an economy and a nation.
I want a new radical common sense party not driven by ideological precepts, political correctness and wokism. Let’s hope the Reform Party can grow into those shoes!
The polls since the referendum show a consistent majority for remaining in the EU. I suspect that majority will grow from slight to substantial, as becomes ever clearer that leaving the EU has no benefits whatsoever – only losses, costs and disappointment.
I think the return of a Pro Brexit government with the biggest majority for decades puts a lie to those polls you refer to.
Pretend “Pro-Brexit” government
Maybe, but they got the vote on the basis of delivering Brexit
Yougov is ”Run” by Peter Kellner A labour Remainer,&Independent” editor ..Very Wrong on past two general Elections & last 4 european Elections..
Dream on.
Given what has just happened this week this post seems almost touchingly whacky.
Yes, it’s hard to tell whether it is sublime irony or a failure to accept the truth.
Voice of QIslington? You should get out more. Utterly delusional!
I am sure that we will rejoin as the older people die and the young people have more of a say. They will vote to join the EU because it will feel more cosy and warm and protective.
I can’t quite tell if you’re being ironic but as people age they do gain more experience. “Feeling cosy and warm” are rather ephemeral emotions that dissipate in the cold reality of facts, actions and bitter experience.
I suspect our younger generations will come to the same conclusions about the EU as the older generations have.
I was being ironic but, as you see, the point works in both directions – with and without irony. Really, I see this site as mainly for older people and the youth are clearly completely different. The Welsh Assembly has just lowered the voting age to 16 and Labour would also do this if they got to power.
Ok great.
Sounds desperate if they have to keep lowering the voting age to chase votes. If you can’t convince adults of the rightness of your policies then lower the voting age and if all else fails fix the postal vote.
its Chasing ‘Brainwashed’ Schoolchildren, ie Try to have A ‘Reasoned’ debate on Climate …Most think Schoolchildren ,think Cars Affect Climate, but sun, Volcanoes dont! one benefit of lockdown is Some of the Propaganda will be tempered?.. Although I oppose Lockdowns ,because Spikes Always follow
Which hospitals will we close to pay for that?
Which industry will we destroy? Last time it was fishing.
The “Tell Them Again” campaign slogans write themselves.
The EU will collapse Like Berlin Wall ( October 1989) .suddenly &unexpectedly…
What was so fascinating about Brexit was how it ‘flushed out’ the ‘Establishment’, or what the Americans call the ‘Swamp’. As you say they fought tooth and nail, and thought nothing of trashing Commons Standing Order nor in the end the Constitution. We need a reckoning for all of this. But the fact is they very nearly Won and actually the Brexit we have is far from ideal thanks to them and their ‘Treason’.
I totally agree we need radical change, but to do this we need to vastly reduce their power. We need diversity in Broadcasting which means the axe needs to be taken to the BBC. It is a huge task, but never again can these arrogant people be allowed to think they can just overturn an election result. As Paddy Pantsdown once said when the people speak it is the job of the politicians to listen and obey and they should fear the people.
However, we are in a better state than the USA where the Swamp ‘did’ for President Trump. They thought of nought at instigating a never ending ‘Coup’ and then a fraudulent election. And now they are seeking to disbar him from ever holding office again. They really do fear him.
I don’t take a label in the Brexit or Remain camp as I didn’t believe either side put forward a coherent case in 2016; however, on that basis I went with ‘inside the tent’ as my argument. This weekend challenged that to the core as has recent experiences of EU procurement which is not just bureaucratic but is punitive and dysfunctional. This article gets it spot on and the EU has brought shame upon itself as has Macron with his Trump type claims. The vaccine programme in this country is going very well and logistics, procurement, systems and processes are all working well. The EU should learn that certain things should be done behind closed doors, using diplomacy and not through petulant thrashing about to cover their ineptitude.
As we sit in a country where things are certainly done “behind closed doors” with the UK government’s procurement practices, such as secret deals with politically connected parties and government contracts handed out with no scrutiny or competition or public tenders. Added to that we have had threats to unleash the gunboats on unarmed fishing vessels, threats to use Article 16 uttered in parliament and, instead of negotiations we have had a government that passed legislation that broke international law – on a agreement that we had signed a few months earlier but apparently not read or understood. You talk about petulant thrashing about to cover ineptitude but this UK government has pretty much got that market cornered.
Utter guff
ðŸ‘ðŸ¼
Actually if you engaged brain a bit you would see that this past weeks actions by the EC have clearly underlined why the clauses in the Internal Market Bill were required and they should be passed as a matter of urgency. And by the way: the EU broke the Agreement in triggering Article 16 in the manner they did.
Remember how the Germans first reaction at the start of the crisis was to put in a giant order of 20,000 ventilators at Europe’s only major ventilator manufacturer, Dragerwerk, robbing anyone else of any chance of supply? And to deny Italy’s request to treat some of their covid patients in empty German ICU beds ?
So a bit like the UK putting in giant orders for vaccine supplies. Incidentally, Germany took in a significant number of patients from neighbouring countries. UK was never in a position to do that.
The UK has ordered vaccine supplies months in advance of the EU. And actually the AZ vaccine was created because the UK Government brought AZ together with Oxford Uni and funded much of it. The UK has also just placed an order with the latest vaccine developed: by contrast the EU has not even signed a letter of intent, never mind a contract.
Peter you write the EU has ” For the last 16 years, it’s been anchored to the Chancellorship of Angela Merkel”
Or in other words it has been run for the benefit of Germany.
It also begs the question whether Mrs Merkel has been good for any country other than Germany.
E.g.
The gas pipeline from Russia, by passing the so called allies of the east of the EU.
The one million “refugees” that she allowed into the EU – ignoring her “allies” of the SE of the EU.
The “bail out” of Greece, which saved the German banks, but not Greece.
Her refusal to accept that the Euro requires a transfer union to be beneficial to any of the southern countries of the EU.
Her refusal to comply with the goal of funding for NATO.
So, with Mrs Merkel gone perhaps the rest of the EU will get a better chance of their fair share.
In 1945 the German people came away with the idea that they would win the peace. There is nothing fair in the way that Germany has come to dominate manufacturing and France farming. The whole idea of the EU has been to ensure that these two countries dominate.
… it has been run by Berlin and by the Berlin/Paris Axis … ( the one million invited low stratum incomers have, by the way, now soared to nearly two million due to repro, families “reunited”, chain immigration etcetera – all 100% known in advance and predictable in a coldly calculated East German way )
What a pity the Morgenthau Plan was never implemented in 1945.
Henry Morgenthau, US Secretary to the Treasury under Roosevelt proposed the break up of Germany into three parts, to curb her belligerent tendencies. Sadly, confrontation with the rampant Soviet Union ultimately made this impossible.
What a pity the Morgenthau Plan was never implemented in 1945.
Henry Morgenthau, US Secretary to the Treasury under Roosevelt proposed the break up of Germany into three parts, to curb her belligerent tendencies. Sadly, confrontation with the rampant Soviet Union ultimately made this impossible.
– Spending a lot less than the UK per capita on international aid.
– Increasing greenhouse gas emissions by closing nuclear power stations, based on weak evidence and partly following the (largely irrelevant) Fukushima accident.
You don’t have to think that international aid is a compelling moral obligation or that global warming is the biggest threat to the planet to see that in these areas, too, Germany is a very self-interested country. Fair enough, but please be honest about it.
As German Chancellor’s go, is Angela Merkel any better than the late Adolph Hitler?
Discuss.
This morning, out of interest, I had a quick look at the twitter feeds of a few of the leading UK remainers/rejoiners. I didn’t see one post making reference to the invoking of Article 16 or criticising the Eu. It’s like they are ideologically obsessed with the EU and can see no wrong in it’s actions. These same people would be screaming from the rooftops if the roles had been reversed!
If you really looked at remain voters’ twitter feeds then you would have seen a huge number criticising the decision to close the border to the movement of vaccines and a lot congratulating the EU on a quick reversal of that decision. But what are we to make of the silence of the Brexiters about the PM’s threat to do the exact same thing made in parliament about 2 weeks ago? Or the chest beating that accompanied the threat to send in the gunboats against potential foreign fishing vessels? Hypocracy is an ugly thing, especially when it’s so blatant.
hypocrisy
thank you and a good admission too!
Blow them out the water I say. Teach them a lesson.
I looked specifically at the swivel eyed remainers/rejoiners. The ones who would be breathless with outrage if the UK triggered Article 16 because of food shortages in NI. Or who had screamed but us not joining the EU vaccine program. That very specific group all ignored the issues!
… my father refers to the 1930s …
but can he remember what happened yesterday?
With the Empire building going on I have always felt it was closure to 1913.
Like all ‘Empires’, the EU is destined to fall. The nation state is the natural order of things.
Yes, they never fall apart…
Very good article. However, the idea that Salvini and le Pen are soul-mates is a bit strong for my stomach. Salvini isn’t what I personally would call ‘far-right’ while le Pen has been in the past and is now a populist with some pretty bizarre policies. Macron’s current hysteria results from his incredible incompetence which by now he must be internally be aware of. That’s always the problem with technocrats like him… They can go a very long way in their careers whilst possessing the emotional and political intelligence of a flea.
At last the penny has dropped!
Analysis of true colours, and agree with all you have written, and the reason I was set against joining the first time round.
That’s a genuinely interesting perspective, which I don’t think I’ve heard before. Everyone I know who voted in the original referendum has told me that they were in favour because it was supposed to be purely a trading area, and therefore very much in our national interest. I don’t recall anybody ever telling me that they voted against our membership on the grounds you suggest.
Yes. For so long as the EU was just the EEC, it was generally beneficial. But the Germans and French (and probably Benelux, who knew they were squeezed in) wanted “ever more Europe”, by which they meant “more control”. We should have got out at the time of Maastricht, but at least we have (belatedly) left. Even the all-powerful EU could not play their usual trick on the UK, and force us to have further referendums until they got the result they wanted. This current nonsense with AstraZeneca is just one example of their approach.
It is good to learn that we shall supply vaccines to Ireland at the earliest possible stage. I don’t think they have manufacturing capacity of their own, and clearly they won’t get much from continental Europe (in case it leaks into the evil UK).
As for Scotland, well, I love Scotland. But if they vote for independence and join the EU (and by definition the Euro) well, I can only wish them good luck.
Apparently we too have more vaccines on order than we need, according to Taoiseach MÃcheál Martin on the Andrew Marr show yesterday.
33% of SNP voted to leave EU..despite sturgeon,Salmond that is Likely to increase
Things are bound to get bad. I agree with Franklin on that, but not for the reasons he cites. Briefly, two key points may be made. The one is that Jean Monnet’s design for a federal Europe is unworkable; the EU is flawed at conception. Secondly, Angela Merkel has not been the stabiliser, rather the destabliser. The implication of monetary union is that the single currency be accaompanied by a large budget. Merkel has blocked it, and since 2010, essentially told France, integration in the EU on our terms, or…and has left the sentence unfinished. As a result, the French and Italian economies have consistently underperformed. The result is Le Pen and Salvini. But the original nationalism was and is German.
Monnet and Schuman’s plan for a ‘United States of Europe’ is not just ‘flawed’: it is a totalitarian nightmare. It was basically conceived as a conspiracy in total opposition to what the peoples of Europe thought or felt. They both felt that it was Nationalism that had caused two world war, when in reality it was actually German Imperialism that was the cause, just as it had been French Imperialism a century before.
Why people regard Angela Merkel as some sort of genius politician – ‘a stabiliser’ ?? – has always been a mystery to me. The woman is an idiot and all she has done is f*** up Europe because she can’t make decisions and has no vision or wit. All she does is sit on the fence, so much so that the top of the fence post has rooted into her a***. She has been an unmitigated disaster and has done more to destroy the idea of Europe than anyone. Her stupidity over Monetary Union is particularly wicked and immoral, and she deserves all she gets over that alone. Brexit is another of her shining achievements. The list of her disasters is endless.
I think the late Sir Roger Scruton was right when he said (of Europe) ‘we are being ruled by the hands of the dead’. His argument was that the EU (EEC as was) was created in a different time to our own by people who are long dead and who had no conception of our world. What is needed is a New Treaty and a differnt sort of Europe. We wont get it, so we will end up with War.
Read today’s article in the D Express for quotes from a Greenlandic businessman which provide a wonderfully typical account of how the EU screws Greenland regarding sales of fish to EU.
E. G
“They’ve been pushing very hard and threatening Greenland that the agreement won’t be as good as they have made with other countries ““ the EU plays hardball.”
and
“: “We were pushed quite hard to make a fisheries agreement with the EU many years ago as a condition to have access to their market. But now, the biggest market within that, the UK, has disappeared. We should be paying less money for access but it is the same cost.”
No country can regard the EU as a “friend” which is prepared to act fairly. The quicker we appreciate that the better for us
What do you mean a sign of the EU’s future direction? This is very much the direction it’s been heading for years…or at least since the financial crisis.
What the EU is extremely good at is cloaking its bullying, undemocratic behaviour in a veneer of morality which makes it tremendously hard to argue against it. The events of the last few days have made that argument a lot easier.
Diehard remainers currently making themselves look extremely silly by engaging in epic levels of whataboutery, pointing to Britain’s own (regrettable) move on the Northern Ireland Protocol with the Internal Markets Bill. Doesn’t make it any better, people.
“Diehard remainers currently making themselves look extremely silly by
engaging in epic levels of whataboutery, pointing to Britain’s own
(regrettable) move on the Northern Ireland Protocol with the Internal
Markets Bill.”
Regrettable? Entirely necessary as has proved the case.
… leftist whine that Communism “”has never really been tried properly”” … now we hear that the EU “”has never really been” “” .
It would be interesting if Marine Le Pen became President of France and used her power and influence to organise a controlled break-up, or wind-back, of the EU. She seems unlikely to have the statesmanship that this would require, though.
Agree that it would be interesting but, as you infer, it is not very likely. In Europe the Left is winning the battle by focussing on the young people so whatever the (usually older) people say on sites like this, they have lost.
Many young people are utterly fed up with left-wing causes. They’re the generation that have been raised on left-wing ideology from birth and they are forming their own counter-culture toward it.
Remember Inspector Gadget and He-Man? At the end of each episode there was a 20-second snippet where the main character would speak directly to the viewers and make some vapid moral point of the story. Left-wing education and entertainment is becoming like that to many young people. They’re also getting frustrated at being ignored in lieu of people who are perceived as oppressed or different.
I am watching my kids – who are growing up in the UK – learn to tune out their lefty teachers in the same way that I learned to tune out the pro-apartheid bias in South African school history lessons. When I discovered George Orwell (courtesy of the school English curriculum!) I learned what an honest approach to political problems should look like.
The French Presidency is always a fix. That’s why they always ensure that the final round involves 3 candidates. You only need to buy 34% of the vote.
… the biche Francaise has had a marvellous opportunity to spit and scratch at England ” yet again … this time though the pygmy proportioned mind of the little one may have alienated even some of “”his own people”” … the Berlin/Paris Axis must change and, as Red Mutti ” EU Province 1 – goes, so must this incompetent, diversion loving little chap be ousted – EU Province 2. ( how passive the other 25, or whatever, Provinces are ! )
For “Europe” we really only need to consider Germany and France. Surely its not beyond the wit of even our extremely thick political class to exploit this going forward. Given that the EU as a bloc is insolvent their credentials as an empire are thin indeed.
The UK left the EU with a real delayed bomb when we left, because it is we who had pushed the “wider, not deeper” agenda in the 1990s and 2000s to bring more countries into the EU in the hope that it would reduce integration. But what they got in the ex-iron curtain countries (Poland excepted) is gangster- states undermined by vast corruption and who remain open to playing the Russia and even China card against Brussels. Hence it was Hungary’s purchase of Russian vaccines and the demands of other ex-iron curtain states to buy the cheaper Russian and Chinese vaccines that caused the months of delay and bickering. Von der Leyen is a medical doctor and she saw her chance to take control of this and shine by centralising power into her own hands, but without a vaccine of its own the EU then left itself stranded and at the mercy of others.
No, the EU then tried to bully the UK and drug companies. Ursula made a huge mess.
An interesting aspect of our vaccine procurement is that it seems to have been accomplished without the involvement of the Civil Service…
Possibly so, but they are surely incharge of the ‘roll out’. A retired Doctor friend has nobly stepped up and volunteered to become a vaccinator, but has had to fill in 22 or so forms, including ‘Diversity training’ – quite what bearing that has on sticking a needle into arms I’m at a loss to explain. Given how senior a Doctor she was if she can’t do vaccinations no one can. To be made to jump through such hoops (she will probably be rejected anyway) is frankly insulting and I wouldn’t have bothered.
Diversity Uber Alles is our uncivil ‘service’s’ mantra, or perhaps “Diversity Macht Frei!”
Ciao Mutti, jetzt kommt EUpocalypse.
The EU nation states on leaving the EU, will just repudiate the Covid debt. They will just pass a law in their own parliaments saying its not their debt.
All the do is claim some fraud, and you cannot be held liable for fraud committed by others.
And that’s precisely what the sainted Nicola will do in Scotland. Repudiate the UK debt.
Don’t worry, Krankie and her SNP, would very quickly make an “independent” Scotland very much indebted.
Of course the next stage is to move vaccine production to a country within the EU sphere of control.
Like Belgium?
To quote The Franklin’s Tale: “an imperial mindset”.
The phrase mirrors the the Pilgrim’s regress.
Sorry to remind you, but the Empire is over my friend.
Now , how about sharing a syringe or two with your neighbours?
“an imperial mindset…but the Empire is over my friend”
Precisely what ’empire’ are we talking about here?
The curate’s egg of one that a vast majority of the British population recognised long ago is now long gone or, as is more likely, fail to remember, or the ’empire’ that a good many misguided Europeans seemingly now fancy their chances of building through the EU?
Perhaps if you had asked us nicely for a few syringes in the first place, rather than stamping your feet and rattling your sabres, you would have them by now. But then we know from experience that our generosity to Europe never goes unpunished.
All empires eventually fall. I wonder if we are seeing the death throes of the EU.
Group selection is just basic science (see Darwin). We cannot seemingly override it and claim that we have beaten Nature. Nature will always win in the end, and it is best to accept Nature and learn to dance with Her. It is natural and healthy to care first and foremost for one’s own genetic group – the group that fails to do this will simply gradually die out or their last vestiges will be dominated by other groups. How can anyone be surprised? It’s almost as if the entire population has gone through some sort of mass brainwashing campaign. … Oh.
The latest YouGov poll showed the Remainers still winning at 54%. Discuss.
You mean the poll from December?
Before the last election
Commissioned by a Remainer Group. I was going to say “odd that”, but then I recalled that in my career that almost whenever we appointed an advisor to research a proposed course of action, they came up with data and results that supported whatever it was we wanted to do
Let’s see what the polls say after this episode has been factored in. Anecdotally, the scales have been lifted from a lot of people’s eyes.
Rubbish
Remainers, what Remainers? We’ve left.
”Only 30% of Remain voters have reached acceptance on the five stages of Brexit grief” quote from latest polls on YouGov. And they called Brexiters stupid ! How lost does an argument have to be for these people before reality dawns?
In a strange way, the Commission’s attitude is correct. It’s the attitude that caused the British to anchor both their Atlantic and Mediterranean squadrons off the coast of Algeciras in 1906 and have the most massive firepower on the planet pointing directly into the conference room. Both the British and the EU would do well to remember two things.
1 – The Europeans should remember that gunboat diplomacy is risky. It won’t work if the other guy has as many gunboats as you or has just had enough of your bullying and says, “screw it, let’s do it”.
2 – The British should remember that they don’t have any gunboats anymore, or an empire that needs them to protect it.
… soon, with inbuilt nuclear capability, The Army of the EU will be formed … surely Germania’s access to the A bomb is denied by various post War treaties ?
Germany is, as you so correctly say, prohibited from acquiring Nuclear Weapons, for all too obvious reasons.
As part of the accession negotiations of West Germany to the Western European Union at the London and Paris Conferences, the country was forbidden (by Protocol No III to the revised Treaty of Brussels of 23 October 1954) to possess nuclear, biological or chemical weapons (NBC). This was reiterated in domestic law by the War Weapons Control Act : The:- Kriegswaffenkontrollgesetz.
However it was a great pity that feckless France was permitted to develop a Nuclear weapon.
Germany is, as you so correctly say, prohibited from acquiring Nuclear Weapons, for all too obvious reasons.
As part of the accession negotiations of West Germany to the Western European Union at the London and Paris Conferences, the country was forbidden (by Protocol No III to the revised Treaty of Brussels of 23 October 1954) to possess nuclear, biological or chemical weapons (NBC). This was reiterated in domestic law by the War Weapons Control Act : The:- Kriegswaffenkontrollgesetz.
However it was a great pity that feckless France was permitted to develop a Nuclear weapon.
The mask has finally slipped.
The mask never distracted anyone who noticed the pointed tail…
“It wasn’t just the incident itself, but what it symbolised: the disdain that the modern Left has for its traditional supporters.” It will be interesting to see just how much the modern Right values its new supporters many of whom are in working couples and on benefits. Even with the extra £20 a week, universal credit is a punishment. Sunak won’t dare drop the £20 for a few months at least. After that I expect him to fulfil H.L.Mencken’s aphorism that ‘democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”
£20 per week or £1,040 per annum.
I wish that as many column inches could be devoted to discussing the real problems of trading with Europe highlighted by Make UK, the RHA and others, as are currently being devoted to the iniquities of the EU.
Nothing to be done for a bit they are still bitter about being jilted. Focus elsewhere for now they’ll get over it.
It is funny that the article criticizes the imperial EU gist through the arrogant lens and great confidence that the recent history of UK as great empire gives. As a Greek woman I assure you it is better to be part of an empire than a free sheep-state in the era of wolf-states (I agree with Guy Verhofstadt) or to rephrase the author “better to be pissed on inside the tent than be raped outside of it”. Greece is held accountable to a great extent for its drama and Europe ,despite the errors made, supported it outside all hardship
You have a very short memory. The EU raped Greece for the rest of time after you stupidly joined the Eurozone.
The Germans now own everything that used to be yours.
Good luck.
Our “arrogance” (I prefer modest self assuredness) comes from centuries of uninterrupted peaceful internal politics without dictatorships as per Greece Portugal and Spain or the scars of Communism; Hungary Poland etc or attacking our close neighbours Germany, Serbia etc. all within living memory. With respect when your “emipre” has been running for a few more centauries will the moment for judgment of its success. I wish you all luck it is by no means a certainty.
OK so how is it that Greece, that is in the EU, is being bought up by China regardless?
Macron is Le Pain grille.
Some very strange views here.
I have a feeling I’ve fallen into a Charles Stross narrative.
I regret our leaving the EU, My clique was outvoted – so let’s get on with life.
In hindsight, I think we were in for the wrong reasons, and really were not prepared to pay the price demanded.
In a striking change, the “ever-closer” union has been effectively shelved, replaced by the tacit acknowledgement that Europe is not one vast common society.
It started off, after all, as an attempt to avoid another round in the cycle of European Wars, which have been irrupting since the demise of the Pax Romana.
I’d agree with most of that except how it started off. It was a trade effort, not a security or war avoidance effort. The EU has never had any force projection ability. It was always going to take NATO to keep the peace. (The Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down)
Err, how do you think the Pax Romana was achieved if not through war?
“War is the father of all things”.
The steady state criticism of the predictions is a good one…. I imagine there were thousands back in 1995 predicted the rise of social media, Google, Facebook, Twitter etc and the swathes of traditional industries decimated by them.
NO?
What a suprise..
Isn’t the point here that the EU bought 400m doses of vaccine before they were even shown to work, on the condition that manufacturing capacity was put in place to ensure that if it was approved the order could be quickly fulfilled.
This made sense for the EU because the risk of having to pay for a vaccine that doesn’t work was tiny compared to the daily cost of the lockdown.
Now that the vaccine is shown to work, Astra Zeneca are saying that they can’t produce the quantities needed, but somehow are able to fulfill new contracts with new governments at 2.5x the price paid by the EU. https://www.theguardian.com…
When the EU asks for data about how much vaccine is being produced AZ refuses to supply it, giving the impression that the vaccines are being diverted so that they can make more profit by not fulfilling their contractual obligations to the EU member states.
Export licenses are a means of finding out how much is being exported, and combined with the deliveries to the EU states, also gives transparency over how much is being produced.
The EU has handled this very badly, but i understand their frustration with AZ.
I voted Remain because it has achieved the most important goal – no war. This is so often forgotten. My father was in the RAMC and came back from WW2 with PTSD. This had a serious impact on family life. I wish the EU had stopped at the single market but it pushed ahead with political union. Even after 300 years of ‘political union’ in the UK the old racial tendencies are still there – as a white English person I have a lot of admiration for Scotland and even considered living there but the only time in my life I have been subjected to racism was in Scotland when at a psychiatric conference I went to the pub with some highland colleagues who started making comments about Sassenachs in a threatening manner. I politely told them to stop, using psychological but polite wording.
The disasters of the way the EU is run are there for us to see. Forcing the Mediterranean countries into the European finance system when they were not economically ready for it. Then not seeing how the insistence of equal wages would disrupt Europe when the East European countries joined.(However Napoleon and Hitler tried to invade East Europe and failed but the EU conquered them without a drop of blood being spilt – the 2nd great achievement of the EU). I am no economist so cannot comment on the Euro. However their attempt to seduce Ukraine into the fold was misguided. Every superpower needs its sphere of influence and their behaviour prompted Putin to respond by invading Crimea. If Putin tried to wine and dine the Isle of Wight I am sure the UK would have acted. I am reluctant to blame Putin for his reaction.
Then of course there are the elite financial powerhouses who squirrel away money into their offshore accounts depriving all of us of superb public services. This applies not just to Europe but also to the UK. In addition the UK is probably the main centre for money laundering. So, yes we can criticise Europe for their behaviour over the vaccine, quite correctly, but the UK is just as corrupt and stupid politically as we are. Unfortunately mankind is not mature enough for more equal and compassionate societies. Maybe genetic manipulation of our brains is the only way ahead.
You have obviously forgotten Yugoslavia. When it was breaking up it was the Europeans who threw a match on the haystack. They had plenty of conferences and talked a lot and all we saw was genocide in Europe again. It was shameful. It was eventually stopped by the USA and the UK. So no it has not ‘achieved. . No War’: it has actually started Wars. What basically has kept the peace in Europe has not been the EU but NATO. And we all know NATO is there to ‘Keep the Americans In; the Russians Out and the Germans Down’.
Britons are imprisoned in their own country for the foreseeable future thanks to their spongiform adaptability to the new travel edicts of their all-wise government.They accept manifold other indignities and infringements on their freedom in the name of a misguided, almost criminal public health-care policy. But at least they have the VACCINE! Science has ridden to the rescue again! National vaccine chauvinism strikes a new low in pathetic bathos.
Everyone on the planet imprisoned in their own country for the foreseeable future !
You were doing so well until the last two sentences…!
Somebody in the EU made a mistake. They were criticized by some of their smallest member states and immediately about-turned, admitting their error. Four days on and nearly every nook and cranny of the British MSM is still trying to make hay out of it. I have never seen so many British people showing such ‘concern’ for Ireland. It all seems, well, a bit desperate, doesn’t it? Revealing, but desperate. My spidey senses suggest that there was more to this debacle than we are currently aware of, irrespective of the narrative this side of the Channel. We’ll wait for the fog to clear …
I could tell you a few things/people who’ve looked ‘desperate’ in the last few days, and it isn’t anyone on this side of the Channel. ‘Your spidey senses’? That’s the first time I’ve heard a tinfoil hat called that.
A ‘mistake’ is buying the wrong thing on Amazon and having to send it back. Undermining the very thing the EU spent 4 years pontificating about within 29 days of signing a deal is not just a ‘mistake’ which will be swept under the carpet and forgotten about.
Desperate ? The only desperation I hear is from VdL’s PR team and the imbecile in charge of the vaccine rollout.
Which private Pharma company are the Police going to raid this week under orders from Bruxelles to distract the true believers from the EU’s incompetence ?
Thing is it wasn’t a ‘mistake’. And triggering Article 16 came right from the very top – Von de Leyen. The truth is that the Commission’s ‘power grab’ of last year when it took control of the vaccine issue has gone horribly wrong and VdL was desperate to appear strong and decisive so sticking the boot into the British was, so she thought, a popular thing to do. It has backfired spectacularly. At a stroke she has destroyed the whole rational behind the Protocol. The woman is a fool and a knave.
Funny to see that you represent 50% of your posts upvotes. There is more to this of course. Bitterness at being jilted. Fear that now without the constitutional pedigree of the UK the EU will fail. The humiliation of vaccine failure. The revealing of the posturing over Ireland. As for the interpretation of AZ contract: well I know it is written in English but it is so clear (see section 5 manufacture) and says the opposite of what EU politicians say. It is all hilarious schadenfreude. We will probably invent a commemorative Morris dance let alone making hay.
I am a remainer – and I see no chance of my changing that position. And I am fully aware of what the EU Commission has just done, and I don’t like the look of it at all. I am not going to try and justify bad bullying behaviour for one minute.
I will however point out that the bad actions of the people currently in charge at the Commission do not define what the EU is, or what it is supposed to stand for – international co-operation, etc. Nor does this diminish in the slightest the many achievements of the EU over decades. I regard UK as a better place for having been a member of the EU – and I didn’t arrive here yesterday – I’ve seen it both before and during its membership.
The idea that the EU is somehow “bad” or a “write-off” or that Brexit now looks like a good idea, because of this one action, I find utterly absurd. My friends sometimes do bad things – that doesn’t mean I think they are bad people beyond all redemption and thus the only thing I can do is to walk away for ever.
I find many things that Boris Johnson – in fact the Tory part ever since I became aware of them with the arrival of Mrs Thatcher in 1979 – utterly disgusting, and totally abhorrent. Does that mean that I somehow write off the idea of “british government” as being a hopeless institution, only fit for the bin? No. I think some clearer thinking on this latest fiasco is needed.
I will however point out that the bad actions of the people currently in charge at the Commission do not define what the EU is, or what it is supposed to stand for – international co-operation, etc.
The actions of those in charge are pretty solid evidence of what the EU stands for; otherwise, they wouldn’t be in charge. It’s a good idea to judge actions and policies by their results, not their stated intentions.
Will the day ever dawn when you Remainiacs will stop the constant, boring bellyaching and whinging? Enough already! We left the EU, and are staying left. Now build yourself a bridge and get over it.
Very good post and totally against the attitude of posts around you. On this site everybody seems to agree with everybody else. Having said that, I did vote for Brexit and would do so again, not so much because of the behaviour of the autocrats in charge but because of the way it has been designed to promote German and French interests above everyone else. Whatever happens in the politics, those two countries will be OK.
Even widening the membership of the EU did nothing to dilute the power of the Franco/German axis. They have at all times coordinated. Whenever either had national interests at stake they would pull together and bribe or bully the smaller states as required.
This doesn’t really add up.
You can’t write off the idea of ‘British government’ unless you want to go for anarchy, or carve the island of Britain up into the heptarchy it last was more than a thousand years ago. Someone has to govern Britain. But it’s very questionable whether the EU is necessary at all, in a Europe full of functioning nation states.
It’s all very well supporting the EU because it ‘stands for’ international co-operation. Don’t look at what it says, look at what it does. Pol Pot said he stood for progress. The Spanish Inquisition said it stood for truth. I’m not saying that the EU is as bad as that, but it has certainly turned the corner from being a force for international co-operation, to being a force that works against it, in practical terms.
”I will however point out that the bad actions of the people currently in charge at the Commission do not define what the EU is” Wrong” ! Farage has been saying, for 20 years as an MEP, that the EU is congenitally a bad actor. Boy has he ever been vindicated.
Was it just Margret Thatcher and Boris Johnson “utterly disgusting, and totally abhorrent” or is there any room for Tony and Gordon. Or, with the exception of Iraq, was it all sunshine and roses. Just musing about your capacity for objectivity
You should come and meet some of my Greek friends who are all but starving thanks to the policies of the EU. And before you start I’m not a ‘Little Englander’: I live partly in Europe and love its diversity. But as I have grown older I have come to see the huge differences there are between most Continental Europeans States and Britain or specifically England. In one very important respect joining the EU was a huge mistake for it allowed the corruption of the Common Law by the Continental system. It needs rooting out.
You can’t really be a Remainer at this point since it’s over and the UK has left the EU. But you could be a Rejoiner.
But what precisely are the many achievements of the EU?
Grow up, Gentlemen. Some bureaucrat in the E.U. made an error. The President of the Commission has said ‘mea culpa’! To echo Mr. Franklin’s original crude metaphor “Stop pissing against the wind” and let us show more care and less of this ‘I told you so’ stuff. Grow up and support the global fight against the pandemic.
Not a lot of hope of that happening with this partisan crowd but a good idea nontheless.
…but now surely you understand part of the reason many are partisan?
Well, I understand the reasons that they would give but they are still, in my opinion, quite incorrect.
“Some bureaucrat in the E.U. made an error…”
If only it were so simple.
What pandemic?There is no pandemic, and hasn’t been since last June.
‘Some bureaucrat in the E.U. made an error’
A grotesque trivialisation of the issue. This was an act of arrogance and hubris that will cost thousands of lives and businesses. Thus far, in terms of deaths, the EU’s serial arrogance and incompetence has only caused a few suicides in southern Europe and a couple of hundred in Ukraine, when the know-nothing Cathy Ashton stirred up a revolt in that unfortunate country.
Few people were aware of these issues, but a delayed and botched vaccination is something else altogether, especially as you now have Merkel crawling to Russia for some of their vaccines when she had forbidden Hungary and others to do exactly that.
The EU has spent nigh on the last four years purporting to care about peace in NI and preventing a land border on the island of Ireland at ALL costs, hence the difficult to stomach for the UK, NI Protocol.
Here we are, a month into this new deal, and precisely what did the EU decide to do in a hamfisted attempt to cover up its own ineptitude regarding vaccine procurement?
That’s right, impose a hard border on the island of Ireland, and yet you have the brassneck to attribute it to some simple bureaucratic error and tell us all to grow up?
Frankly, your fatuous, disingenuous comment beggars belief.
👌
Support the global fight by restricting vaccine exports and threatening to steal pharma IP ?
Yup, that makes sense.
What a wonderful article – four legs good, two legs bad, obviously. Couldn’t wait to get out of the starting blocks to rubbish the other side on the strength of one (admittedly bad) faux pas. If we applied the same criteria to the crowd currently in power here they’d truly be damned, wouldn’t they? In the meantime, chin up and forget the exchange rate, the business and businesses sliding away from Britain, and our own response to Covid – PPE, late lockdowns, venality in alloocating contracts – my little crony, anyone? Oh, certainly world-beating. Just look – it takes real class to get up to 100,000 admitted deaths like that.
Many down votes so few up….
That reflects the political leanings of this site as much as the nature of the comment. I took this to be a site where one could come to read educated and well informed content (whether aligned with one’s own views or not) not puerile remarks. “I’ve got more upticks than you nah nah neh nah nah”.
My sentiments exactly.
I suppose if we want to have fun we have to blame the people stopping us from going out with our mates.
Well said.
For Britons who dislike the British government, why would they vote for yet more government in the form of the EU? Both are incompetent.
Article 16 was never invoked. The EU published a draft clause and took it down a few hours later after its imperfections were pointed out to it. Isn’t that half the point of publishing a draft of something? Maybe if they had left it up, everyone in the media wouldn’t have got the wrong end of the stick about it being a draft clause, because it would have been obvious from reading what was up there.
The position we are now at is that the UK media (including tiny Unherd) is making everyone in the UK believe the EU backed down over something, whilst meanwhile the EU has got on and sorted out its drafting and is now instituting the controls over vaccine exports that it wants and needs, without affecting the Irish protocol under the Brexit withdrawal agreement.
There was never any more than a vanishing possibility of vaccines escaping out of Ireland into the UK over the Irish border and this remains the case.
For anyone in the EU that cares (no-one seems too bothered about the story over there), the illusion that the EU was prepared to be aggressive to get hold of more vaccine doses for them will only do it good.
And ooh look! They’ve found another 9 million of them already.
James, I have a bridge to sell you.
…
not until he’s bought my bag of magic beans
and all my flying pigs!
And I saw 200 lorries all with AstraZeneca written on their side lined up at the Cherbourg ferry terminal waiting to sail to Dublin.
“Nice little factory you’ve got there, be a shame if something happened to it”.
Today Mr Verhofstadt tweeted: “Vaccine nationalism, wherever it comes from, is a dead end. Article 16 mistake shows the importance of constant dialogue and strong UK, EU partnership.
Hmmm, sounds like an admission of a mistake to me.
Nice try, James. Really good effort. So presumably you can point to the process whereby the EU consulted members on the next steps to take, then arrived at a proposed course of action that had the support of all affected parties, informed Ireland of a centrally-directed measure that was going to be implemented in its territory, then explained why and how it had arrived at this when challenged?
(For bonus points, why was only the UK targeted and not other neighbouring countries eg Ukraine or Turkey?
For even more bonus points, when the EU has a beef with AstraZeneca, why did it include Pfizer vaccines in its little hissy fit?)
Of course you can’t. The EU issued a threat, like it issued threats to AstraZeneca, and it blew up in their faces.
That’s not the point. The point was that they even thought about triggering Article 16 without consulting either Ireland or Britain. Even the considering of it is an incredibly damaging act.
The reason why European media haven’t made such a fuss is
a) the reporting in Europe (or at least in the German-speaking media I read) is immensely one sided in favour of the EU. By way of comaprison: there was an outcry for literally months over the Internal Markets Bill;
b) despite all the talk of solidarity, everyone in Europe just cares about themselves and in this case, about whether and when they get the vaccine. What happens in Ireland is not of import – not now, not ever; and
c) the journalists in Austria and Germany never really understood the Northern Ireland issue anyway. They got simple stuff wrong, like stating that an open border “was provided for in the Good Friday Agreement”. Which is something that needs 5 minutes of research to find out isn’t true.
And finally: getting another 9 million doses of Astra Zeneca vaccine only brings the delivery up to 50% of what the EU were expecting. Of course, this is being sold as a huge success and proof of thir bullying behaviour being effective. It’s a bit sad, really.
Um – even The Guardian reports otherwise: https://www.theguardian.com…
If there was ‘never any more than vanishing possibility of vaccines escaping out of Ireland into the UK over the Irish border’ – which seems obvious – then why was the EU proposing invoking Article 16 in the first place, if not to throw its weight around in a disproportionate and incredibly self-damaging manner?
‘No one seems too bothered about the story over there’ – really? A lot of rather Trump-like stories about the UK ‘stealing’ vaccines – which apparently don’t work anyway, ha ha – seem to be washing around over there. In fact, the EU-subservient trolls seem torn between hysteria over a confected Perfide Albion scam and ‘move on, nothing to see here’ nonchalance. The contradiction itself is telling – and unconvincing.
‘For anyone in the EU that cares (no-one seems too bothered about the story over there)…’
Further to my previous comment, I’ve just been over to The Times and found a round-up of stories in European newspapers.
‘Der Tagesspiegel, a Berlin daily, said Brussels’s refusal to own up to its mistakes was “jaw-dropping” and “bordered on shamelessness”. Bild accused Von der Leyen of either “lying to the faces of 447 million Europeans” about the bloc’s contract with Astrazeneca or being ignorant of its contents. Die Zeit, a pro-European weekly, described the vaccine debacle as the best present imaginable for Brexiteers, while Der Spiegel said it could turn out to be the “worst catastrophe of [Von der Leyen’s] political career”.
Austria Österreich, a tabloid, has derided the EU’s vaccination strategy as a “total disaster” and said Von der Leyen’s decision to antagonise the companies as “just about the stupidest thing you could do in this situation”. Niki Fellner, its editor-in-chief, called for her to be sidelined from the talks as soon as possible. “The EU should form a taskforce with three or four heads of government ” in the best case, Merkel, Macron, Kurz [the Austrian chancellor] and Rutte [the Dutch prime minister] ” who will take over these botched talks,” he wrote. “Or each EU member state should negotiate with the vaccine producers bilaterally.”
Perhaps what James meant to say is “no-one [who matters] seems too bothered…
James, what are you smoking? The EU bully showed its true colours. This is a clear example of why I voted leave.
Haven’t we all had those embarrassing slip-ups when we trip over the kerbstone, and try to look as if we intended, all along, to stagger along the pavement like a headbanger.
And when you accidentally announce the revocation of an international treaty without notifying either of the two principal parties. Don’t you just hate it when that happens?
Silly, silly Arseula.
Another 9 million, quite possibly from the UK factories after a couple of words btw Ursula & Boris – Boris, obviously trying to assist where he can, as he has said.