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As the EU disintegrates, due to the Muslim bid for power and the madness of Net Zero, and the subsequent rise of the Right to fight this catastrophe, rejoining will look increasingly like lunacy. Britain would be forced to pay billions of pounds into a bottomless pit in an fruitless attempt to prop-up a power bloc that is intent on committing suicide.
It seems to me that those on the Left are completely and utterly devoid of common sense, and are creating a society that is so weak and feeble that they are consequently opening the door to the enemies of Western democracy, which will see our destruction at the hands of the barbarian hordes, in a fashion that exactly mirrors the destruction of Ancient Rome. Trump is our only hope, not the hideous EU.
Actually some countries in Europe are taking steps to curb Muslim behaviour that we have yet to take. Austria has banned the burka and nicab. It has insisted that German has to be spoken in mosques, not Arabic. It has curbed the number of mosques being built. Also it will not allow foreign educated Imams leading mosques. Not far enough but further than us in Britain. It has also banned religious symbols in schools including the hijab and there are discussions about going further to curb political Islam.
Ancient Rome started to import 'barbarian' workers prior to its collapse as it could not find enough of its own people to do the work. Nothing changes in this world.
Lebanon was a Christian democracy with sizeable Sunni and Shia minorites. It worked pretty well and as a result, was a prosperous, stable country. Beirut was known as the Paris of the Middle East. As a society, it was still male led and the women had to mind their Ps and Qs, but they were free to wear what they wanted, to go unhindered about their business and generally to marry who they wished.
Then a whole load of refugees turned up, became residents and demanded that Islam, not Christianity ran the show. A vicious civil war broke out, Islam won, Hezbollah took over and Lebanon now is just another middle east cesspool of a dictatorship.
That is what is heading our way. We now have Islamic MPs demanding our tax payer money to build airports back home and others linking themselves closely with Islam until there are enough Muslims to get their own chap elected. Needless to say, women will not get a look in.
Many will point out that life in the Old Testament was pretty brutal with lots of stonings and massacres. This is perfectly true, but where the Judeo Christian faith differs is that we have moved on. What we regard as acceptable behaviour has drastically changed. We protect gays, divorce and the right not to worship anyone or thing. Adultery is not punished by a slow, brutal death. Where we can prove it, rape is punished. If you wish to change faith, you can.
Islam is firmly rooted on 700 AD. For a woman to successfully charge a man with rape, she needs male witnesses. Some chance of that. In fact, her husband can accuse her of adultery and get her stoned to death. The Saudis still do this, but have gone high tech. Rather than encouraging the crowd to throw individual stones, they load up a big digger bucket with stones and dump the whole lot on the unfortunate woman.
If an Islamic man gets fed up of hios wife, he simply says 'I divorce you' three times and kicks her out. Not being a virgin, her only means of employment is prostitution or a sympathetic male family member allowing her to stay with his family.
Never mind child brides. Infants and toddlers are betrothed. Mohammed's first wife was old enough to be his mum, while his second wife, Aisha, was 6 when he married her and 9 when the marriage was consumated. Never let it be said that Mo did not have wide ranging tastes.
Women are valued as an asset, the same as a farmyard animal and if they do not do as they are told, they are beaten until they do.
So when the idiotic Jess Phillips bleats on about women's rights and Islam, she had better watch her back. Such insubordination will not be tolerated by the peaceful mullahs.
Absolutely ! Reform need to be much more open in giving the general public the low down on what is happening to European economies compared to Uk since brexit- it’s delusional to think we would be better off now in Europe - not enough emphasis has been given to this and it looks as though it is what is swinging the vote the wrong way.
The UK would have to borrow yet more ££££ for this disaster. From what I have read this week the bond markets are already concerned about our massive debt that we are paying high rates of interest on.
They want to pass the buck back to Brussels as they did before…’sorry chaps, we know this is unpopular, but Brussels demands it so it’s out of our hands you see’, terrified of taking ownership of their own mess
Yes indeed. Status and salaries, the appearance of power without accountability. I don’t accept idealism as enough of an excuse for giving up on a homeland which has served us well for centuries.
Europe is moving rightwards - Brussels is not. Brussels is in fact desperately breaking every rule it can (and destroying what little democratic credibility it ever had) to not just slow down European voters' rightward direction, but to actually pretend that it's not happening. See the Romanian elections (and, many say, the Hungarian elections too).
Rejoining would not put us mystically in touch with our European brothers and sisters on the ground: it would simply connect a huge power-cable between Brussels and Westminster - one marked "To Voters: Do Not Touch".
So I guess the result _would_ be that we'd have more in common with European people, but only in the negative sense that we could join them in their suspicion of a gigantic, corporatist, technocratic apparat in Brussels.
So you are not optimistic about the outcome. What if right wing leaders were elected in the major countries of the EU that refused to toe the line in Brussels. The right wing leaders might join together to thwart Brussels?
Sure, if enough leaders were prepared to stand up to Brussels (and I don't particularly mind whether they call themselves "left-" or "right-" wing), there might be an adjustment.
I'm not optimistic about a short-term outcome. Given the dirty tricks Brussels have already pulled out of their bag to try to stop precisely that from happening - and their dirty-tricks bag is far from empty yet.
The revolt in France has nothing to do with the EU. It is a bunch of frustrated students who have been infiltrated by the radical, violent left and dicovered that rioting can be fun.
I can assure you that French students are generally charming and polite. I visit the Caen Students' Carnival every year to assist with emergency communications. Last year, 32,000 students turned up and save for one stupid youth, were uniformally charming and polite. Some of them were also very, very drunk. It is quite usual to find them on the ground in the recovery position, cuddling their own vomit slick. Arrests? A few, probably 5-10, if that.
I know from talking to senior French police officers that peaceful demonstrations are always infiltrated by the anarchists and then the block paving starts flying. The gilets jaunes were peaceful for weeks and then suddenly, it all kicked off. There were no demos during the week because everyone was at work, unlike the radical left which now does not even have to get out of bed to cash their Giro.
I hope you're right, in the sense of "Burnham is _only_ posturing". Because as a serious political proposition, this is a non-starter. I voted Remain and I can see that.
It's loathsome - show a little flash of ankle to this constituency, smile winningly at that one, without the least intention of actually doing what he says.
Matt - you will be pleased to hear that at a packed 1,000+ Brexit debate on Saturday at the Times Cheltenham Literature festival that the motion for coming out of the EU has been shown now to have been the right decision. In favour for being out and not to go back in were Fraser Nelson and a very impressive Penny Mordant - both made a great job of defending Brexit , fully backed up with facts and stats. On the Remainer side was economist Vicky Price and Anhil someone from London University who were outplayed by the other side. Being a Lib Dem stronghold, the Remainer vibes were clear early on but significantly muted by the end of the 75 minute debate which was played live on Times Radio - hopefully it can be picked up on You Tube.
The trouble is that we have not experienced Brexit. The advantages have not been demonstrated and we will not get terms that are acceptable and the Euro would be a complete disaster as we cannot compete. That we have incompetent politicians is generally accepted but we also have incompetent voters who are ignorant and selfish encouraging the short termism that all politicians display. Alexander Tytler is supposed to have said this....“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy". .................. Strike a chord anyone? This is exactly where we are with a dictatorship as the next step in this evolutionary journey. Do we want a Thatcher dictatorship or a Corbyn one, that is the question. We may not have the choice
The Thatcherite era was a lot more prosperous than this one and those who worked hard and showed enterprise profited. Labour want to make the middle classes poor while ensuring riches for themselves and their media supporters. Labour are devoid of a moral compass but are taking us all back to the era of autocracy.
Latest estimates on rejoining the EU are an annual fee of some £35billion per annum(based on UK GNI relative to EU multi-year Budget) with no rebate,commitment to join the Euro Zone,and an as yet undisclosed rejoining fee and an open ended liability to EU indebtedness should the EU suffer financial distress by individual nation or bloc.Add in immigration,QMV,regulation and trade issues and one senses a lunacy virus has permeated this Labour government.
Jess Phillips is the Minister for Women, conspciuous by her absense when women's issues come to the fore. Like everybody on the left, she is happy in the theory zone but when reality bites, she retires, baffled and confused.
The left anyway is a mass of contraditions. It really thinks that Islam, radical or otherwise, loves gays and trans. It does not and will kill the lot as soon as possible.
Germany was the industrial powerhouse in the EU but is now waning fast. Part of the problem is the ECB. It has vast debts on its books which must be underwritten by the rich nations of Europe, namely Germany. Some years ago, Italy was on the edge of bankruptcy. If Greece fails, that is embarrassing. If Italy fails, that would probably break the ECB and thus, the euro. In fact, the euro is broken anyway, thanks to some frankly eccentric accounting, even by EU standards.
If a Greek dealership buys a car from a Germany manufacturer for say 20,000 euros, on the face of it, that is a normal transaction. The money is taken from the dealer's account and goes, via the Bank of Greece, to the Germany manufacturer. Where it get strange is that the money does not go direct, but rather via the ECB. Anyway, the German gets paid, the Greek gets his car and all is well.
Except it is not. The ECB has seen the Greek balance sheet reduce by 20,000 euros. Now, how will that money be replaced? Very simply, the Germans are selling high value goods while Greece only has olives and goats' cheese to sell. It takes an awful lot of olives to make up the cost of a new car.
Unless something is done, Greece will quickly run out of money. So the ECB simply credits the Greek account with 20,000 euros as a never ending, interest free loan. Eventually, the ECB will come under pressure and try to get the loan repaid by the Greeks, which will never happen. So it goes to the rich Germans instead. Unsurprisingly, they are not in the least bit keen. Suddenly, the music stops.
It has not yet stopped, but it soon will and that will herald the end of the euro. We have sterling, so do not care. Well, we should. All sorts of companies listed in the UK are in the EU. Our pension funds invest in these same companies. If they go down, so do our pension plans.
Look no further than Greece or Cyprus. When the crisis hit, people could only take out something like 60 euros from an ATM and their accounts were frozen. Then the government simply helped itself to peoples' savings and other cash. One story covered a couple who had paid a deposit on a property. The money was quite correctly held by the solicitor in the client account. Which was raided. Their deposit was gone forever and they were homeless.
That is what a euro failure would look like. The Greeks were trapped because they could not tinker with their interest rates. Increasing the rates would tempt buyers looking to make a few quid and thus stabilise the currency. That lever was denied them thanks to the euro. Had Greece retained the drachma, it could have alleviated the problem.
We absolutely must steer clear of the EU. Buy and sell stuff, for sure, but do not share the same bedroom, never mind bed.
"Unless something is done, Greece will quickly run out of money. So the ECB simply credits the Greek account with 20,000 euros as a never ending, interest free loan. Eventually, the ECB will come under pressure and try to get the loan repaid by the Greeks, which will never happen."
Really? Is that still happening? Are they still fudging it?
You'd have thought that the Clever Powerful People (those Varoufakis termed the "Adults In The Room") would have come up with something a bit more - er, sustainable - since 2013. Privately, at least - wouldn't do to admit publicly that Varoufakis (and Lapavitsas, since your opinion is that "go back to the drachma" was the best course) were right!
Agree totally once more Matt ! I just cannot get my head around the fact that remoaners cannot see where the EU is going and want to join in ??? That includes this fellow Burnham . Unless he sees some short term votes from said remoaners in upcoming election ?? Unbelieveble !
"Their comforting image of a stable, united, prosperous, and politically left-leaning or centrist organisation simply no longer exists."
You might be surprised that someone who didn't just vote for but campaigned for Remain - partly motivated by this image - agrees entirely with everything Matt says here.
In terms of domestic UK politics, Burnham's statement is - well "risky" would be too mild a word. The rewards for stirring up such antagonism, for reopening the Leave/Remain division in a new form, had better be enormous, and certain. And I think they just aren't. As Matt says, the present-day EU is nothing like the comforting image presented above.
Back in 2016, it may have _aspired_ to a reality something like that image (and since I had no illusions about the, shall we say, "imperfections" of the EU, part of my rationale was that, by staying in it, the UK could improve it - because the criticisms Leavers made made a lot of sense).
Since 2016, this aspiration (if it existed then) has degenerated into a delusion which Brussels is clinging on to, in the face of a political reality on the ground which is now light-years away from it. It is so estranged from reality that it looks like - and probably is - a desperate attempt to retain power merely for power's own sake. The name Ursula van der Leyen conveniently symbolises this naked power-seeking, but it's far from being a problem confined to just one personality. (Thomas Fazi's recent book agrees with this estimation, from the left).
One thing I always appreciated about Leavers is that they wanted something _different_. So did I, just by different means. And what have we got, since Brexit? Just another Brussels - technocratic, superior, condescending, contemptuous of voters, power-mad - put through a Shrink-o-Ray and relocated to Westminster. The way Brexit panned out was a disaster, for Leavers and Remainers alike.
What would we get, anyway, by filling in the Rejoin form? I predicted back in 2016 that the EU negotiators would drive through our own Sunday-league negotiating team like a knife through warm butter: and so it happened. A second time, creeping back like the Prodigal Son? There's not going to be any fatted calf for us.
The one thing I'd like out of Rejoin would be freedom of movement - but that's only for the selfish reason that I want out of here (and have roots in Europe anyway). I have no illusions about getting anything close to that out of the EU without enormous concessions - too enormous for the now-fragile UK political and economic situation to cope with.
The Poles we had in the past came in large numbers and could afford to send money back home yet still undercut British plumbers, builders and other tradesmen because they lived many to a house and spent as little as possible. I'm sure the large corporations would like us all to live like that but it is not something we should be allowing through freedom of movement, in my view.
Exactly. I haven't kept up with all the twists and turns EU countries have gone through trying to reconciling freedom of movement for citizens with some level of control over immigration. Whatever position they've arrived at, I'm sure it's deeply self-contradictory.
The idea that we could just flick a switch and go back to "freedom of movement" meaning you or I can move to Europe, and Polish/Romanian plumbers/builders can come over here and work is, as you say, delusional.
As the EU disintegrates, due to the Muslim bid for power and the madness of Net Zero, and the subsequent rise of the Right to fight this catastrophe, rejoining will look increasingly like lunacy. Britain would be forced to pay billions of pounds into a bottomless pit in an fruitless attempt to prop-up a power bloc that is intent on committing suicide.
It seems to me that those on the Left are completely and utterly devoid of common sense, and are creating a society that is so weak and feeble that they are consequently opening the door to the enemies of Western democracy, which will see our destruction at the hands of the barbarian hordes, in a fashion that exactly mirrors the destruction of Ancient Rome. Trump is our only hope, not the hideous EU.
Actually some countries in Europe are taking steps to curb Muslim behaviour that we have yet to take. Austria has banned the burka and nicab. It has insisted that German has to be spoken in mosques, not Arabic. It has curbed the number of mosques being built. Also it will not allow foreign educated Imams leading mosques. Not far enough but further than us in Britain. It has also banned religious symbols in schools including the hijab and there are discussions about going further to curb political Islam.
Common sense shown by Austria which we should follow!
Ancient Rome started to import 'barbarian' workers prior to its collapse as it could not find enough of its own people to do the work. Nothing changes in this world.
Lebanon was a Christian democracy with sizeable Sunni and Shia minorites. It worked pretty well and as a result, was a prosperous, stable country. Beirut was known as the Paris of the Middle East. As a society, it was still male led and the women had to mind their Ps and Qs, but they were free to wear what they wanted, to go unhindered about their business and generally to marry who they wished.
Then a whole load of refugees turned up, became residents and demanded that Islam, not Christianity ran the show. A vicious civil war broke out, Islam won, Hezbollah took over and Lebanon now is just another middle east cesspool of a dictatorship.
That is what is heading our way. We now have Islamic MPs demanding our tax payer money to build airports back home and others linking themselves closely with Islam until there are enough Muslims to get their own chap elected. Needless to say, women will not get a look in.
Many will point out that life in the Old Testament was pretty brutal with lots of stonings and massacres. This is perfectly true, but where the Judeo Christian faith differs is that we have moved on. What we regard as acceptable behaviour has drastically changed. We protect gays, divorce and the right not to worship anyone or thing. Adultery is not punished by a slow, brutal death. Where we can prove it, rape is punished. If you wish to change faith, you can.
Islam is firmly rooted on 700 AD. For a woman to successfully charge a man with rape, she needs male witnesses. Some chance of that. In fact, her husband can accuse her of adultery and get her stoned to death. The Saudis still do this, but have gone high tech. Rather than encouraging the crowd to throw individual stones, they load up a big digger bucket with stones and dump the whole lot on the unfortunate woman.
If an Islamic man gets fed up of hios wife, he simply says 'I divorce you' three times and kicks her out. Not being a virgin, her only means of employment is prostitution or a sympathetic male family member allowing her to stay with his family.
Never mind child brides. Infants and toddlers are betrothed. Mohammed's first wife was old enough to be his mum, while his second wife, Aisha, was 6 when he married her and 9 when the marriage was consumated. Never let it be said that Mo did not have wide ranging tastes.
Women are valued as an asset, the same as a farmyard animal and if they do not do as they are told, they are beaten until they do.
So when the idiotic Jess Phillips bleats on about women's rights and Islam, she had better watch her back. Such insubordination will not be tolerated by the peaceful mullahs.
Absolutely ! Reform need to be much more open in giving the general public the low down on what is happening to European economies compared to Uk since brexit- it’s delusional to think we would be better off now in Europe - not enough emphasis has been given to this and it looks as though it is what is swinging the vote the wrong way.
The UK would have to borrow yet more ££££ for this disaster. From what I have read this week the bond markets are already concerned about our massive debt that we are paying high rates of interest on.
They want to pass the buck back to Brussels as they did before…’sorry chaps, we know this is unpopular, but Brussels demands it so it’s out of our hands you see’, terrified of taking ownership of their own mess
Yes indeed. Status and salaries, the appearance of power without accountability. I don’t accept idealism as enough of an excuse for giving up on a homeland which has served us well for centuries.
Given that Europe is moving rightwards, they might get a nasty shock.
Europe is moving rightwards - Brussels is not. Brussels is in fact desperately breaking every rule it can (and destroying what little democratic credibility it ever had) to not just slow down European voters' rightward direction, but to actually pretend that it's not happening. See the Romanian elections (and, many say, the Hungarian elections too).
Rejoining would not put us mystically in touch with our European brothers and sisters on the ground: it would simply connect a huge power-cable between Brussels and Westminster - one marked "To Voters: Do Not Touch".
So I guess the result _would_ be that we'd have more in common with European people, but only in the negative sense that we could join them in their suspicion of a gigantic, corporatist, technocratic apparat in Brussels.
So you are not optimistic about the outcome. What if right wing leaders were elected in the major countries of the EU that refused to toe the line in Brussels. The right wing leaders might join together to thwart Brussels?
Sure, if enough leaders were prepared to stand up to Brussels (and I don't particularly mind whether they call themselves "left-" or "right-" wing), there might be an adjustment.
I'm not optimistic about a short-term outcome. Given the dirty tricks Brussels have already pulled out of their bag to try to stop precisely that from happening - and their dirty-tricks bag is far from empty yet.
You don't think there might be a massive revolt EU wide as is occurring in France now but far greater.
The revolt in France has nothing to do with the EU. It is a bunch of frustrated students who have been infiltrated by the radical, violent left and dicovered that rioting can be fun.
I can assure you that French students are generally charming and polite. I visit the Caen Students' Carnival every year to assist with emergency communications. Last year, 32,000 students turned up and save for one stupid youth, were uniformally charming and polite. Some of them were also very, very drunk. It is quite usual to find them on the ground in the recovery position, cuddling their own vomit slick. Arrests? A few, probably 5-10, if that.
I know from talking to senior French police officers that peaceful demonstrations are always infiltrated by the anarchists and then the block paving starts flying. The gilets jaunes were peaceful for weeks and then suddenly, it all kicked off. There were no demos during the week because everyone was at work, unlike the radical left which now does not even have to get out of bed to cash their Giro.
Rejoin is a cult,as strange as the Branch Davidians, they are not rational.
It would be madness to drag the UK through that once again. Politics hasn't recovered from the 2016-2019 stasis.
Burnham is clearly posturing to appeal to rejoiner liberals ready for a general election.
I hope you're right, in the sense of "Burnham is _only_ posturing". Because as a serious political proposition, this is a non-starter. I voted Remain and I can see that.
It's loathsome - show a little flash of ankle to this constituency, smile winningly at that one, without the least intention of actually doing what he says.
He seems to have his sticky fingers over the Manchester City/flat building scandal.
Matt - you will be pleased to hear that at a packed 1,000+ Brexit debate on Saturday at the Times Cheltenham Literature festival that the motion for coming out of the EU has been shown now to have been the right decision. In favour for being out and not to go back in were Fraser Nelson and a very impressive Penny Mordant - both made a great job of defending Brexit , fully backed up with facts and stats. On the Remainer side was economist Vicky Price and Anhil someone from London University who were outplayed by the other side. Being a Lib Dem stronghold, the Remainer vibes were clear early on but significantly muted by the end of the 75 minute debate which was played live on Times Radio - hopefully it can be picked up on You Tube.
Wish I had been at the Festival to hear this.
The trouble is that we have not experienced Brexit. The advantages have not been demonstrated and we will not get terms that are acceptable and the Euro would be a complete disaster as we cannot compete. That we have incompetent politicians is generally accepted but we also have incompetent voters who are ignorant and selfish encouraging the short termism that all politicians display. Alexander Tytler is supposed to have said this....“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy". .................. Strike a chord anyone? This is exactly where we are with a dictatorship as the next step in this evolutionary journey. Do we want a Thatcher dictatorship or a Corbyn one, that is the question. We may not have the choice
The Thatcherite era was a lot more prosperous than this one and those who worked hard and showed enterprise profited. Labour want to make the middle classes poor while ensuring riches for themselves and their media supporters. Labour are devoid of a moral compass but are taking us all back to the era of autocracy.
Latest estimates on rejoining the EU are an annual fee of some £35billion per annum(based on UK GNI relative to EU multi-year Budget) with no rebate,commitment to join the Euro Zone,and an as yet undisclosed rejoining fee and an open ended liability to EU indebtedness should the EU suffer financial distress by individual nation or bloc.Add in immigration,QMV,regulation and trade issues and one senses a lunacy virus has permeated this Labour government.
Jess Phillips is the Minister for Women, conspciuous by her absense when women's issues come to the fore. Like everybody on the left, she is happy in the theory zone but when reality bites, she retires, baffled and confused.
The left anyway is a mass of contraditions. It really thinks that Islam, radical or otherwise, loves gays and trans. It does not and will kill the lot as soon as possible.
Germany was the industrial powerhouse in the EU but is now waning fast. Part of the problem is the ECB. It has vast debts on its books which must be underwritten by the rich nations of Europe, namely Germany. Some years ago, Italy was on the edge of bankruptcy. If Greece fails, that is embarrassing. If Italy fails, that would probably break the ECB and thus, the euro. In fact, the euro is broken anyway, thanks to some frankly eccentric accounting, even by EU standards.
If a Greek dealership buys a car from a Germany manufacturer for say 20,000 euros, on the face of it, that is a normal transaction. The money is taken from the dealer's account and goes, via the Bank of Greece, to the Germany manufacturer. Where it get strange is that the money does not go direct, but rather via the ECB. Anyway, the German gets paid, the Greek gets his car and all is well.
Except it is not. The ECB has seen the Greek balance sheet reduce by 20,000 euros. Now, how will that money be replaced? Very simply, the Germans are selling high value goods while Greece only has olives and goats' cheese to sell. It takes an awful lot of olives to make up the cost of a new car.
Unless something is done, Greece will quickly run out of money. So the ECB simply credits the Greek account with 20,000 euros as a never ending, interest free loan. Eventually, the ECB will come under pressure and try to get the loan repaid by the Greeks, which will never happen. So it goes to the rich Germans instead. Unsurprisingly, they are not in the least bit keen. Suddenly, the music stops.
It has not yet stopped, but it soon will and that will herald the end of the euro. We have sterling, so do not care. Well, we should. All sorts of companies listed in the UK are in the EU. Our pension funds invest in these same companies. If they go down, so do our pension plans.
Look no further than Greece or Cyprus. When the crisis hit, people could only take out something like 60 euros from an ATM and their accounts were frozen. Then the government simply helped itself to peoples' savings and other cash. One story covered a couple who had paid a deposit on a property. The money was quite correctly held by the solicitor in the client account. Which was raided. Their deposit was gone forever and they were homeless.
That is what a euro failure would look like. The Greeks were trapped because they could not tinker with their interest rates. Increasing the rates would tempt buyers looking to make a few quid and thus stabilise the currency. That lever was denied them thanks to the euro. Had Greece retained the drachma, it could have alleviated the problem.
We absolutely must steer clear of the EU. Buy and sell stuff, for sure, but do not share the same bedroom, never mind bed.
"Unless something is done, Greece will quickly run out of money. So the ECB simply credits the Greek account with 20,000 euros as a never ending, interest free loan. Eventually, the ECB will come under pressure and try to get the loan repaid by the Greeks, which will never happen."
Really? Is that still happening? Are they still fudging it?
You'd have thought that the Clever Powerful People (those Varoufakis termed the "Adults In The Room") would have come up with something a bit more - er, sustainable - since 2013. Privately, at least - wouldn't do to admit publicly that Varoufakis (and Lapavitsas, since your opinion is that "go back to the drachma" was the best course) were right!
Agree totally once more Matt ! I just cannot get my head around the fact that remoaners cannot see where the EU is going and want to join in ??? That includes this fellow Burnham . Unless he sees some short term votes from said remoaners in upcoming election ?? Unbelieveble !
Matt,
This an excellent summary analysis of the massive complexities of rejoining the EU by Dr Richard North
https://www.turbulenttimes.co.uk/news/brexit/politics-the-unreality-show/
Useful facts to counter and bamboozle your opponents in TV debates on this subject 👍🏻
The biggest crime of Brexit was not implementing it.
They're were too many remainers in government who didn't want to take advantage of our new freedoms.
But the main reason Burnham needs to wind his neck in is because the British people voted to leave.
Like most commies, Burnham doesn't like democracy, that's why he is trying to rig elections, the useless little dictator....
Pertinent as always Matt, many thanks for the clarity and common sense ideas in your posts.
Very well written piece. Totally agree. I live across the EU, Belgium France and Spain. The problems are exactly the same.
If people think that rejoining would make us all instantly better off they need their heads tested.
"Their comforting image of a stable, united, prosperous, and politically left-leaning or centrist organisation simply no longer exists."
You might be surprised that someone who didn't just vote for but campaigned for Remain - partly motivated by this image - agrees entirely with everything Matt says here.
In terms of domestic UK politics, Burnham's statement is - well "risky" would be too mild a word. The rewards for stirring up such antagonism, for reopening the Leave/Remain division in a new form, had better be enormous, and certain. And I think they just aren't. As Matt says, the present-day EU is nothing like the comforting image presented above.
Back in 2016, it may have _aspired_ to a reality something like that image (and since I had no illusions about the, shall we say, "imperfections" of the EU, part of my rationale was that, by staying in it, the UK could improve it - because the criticisms Leavers made made a lot of sense).
Since 2016, this aspiration (if it existed then) has degenerated into a delusion which Brussels is clinging on to, in the face of a political reality on the ground which is now light-years away from it. It is so estranged from reality that it looks like - and probably is - a desperate attempt to retain power merely for power's own sake. The name Ursula van der Leyen conveniently symbolises this naked power-seeking, but it's far from being a problem confined to just one personality. (Thomas Fazi's recent book agrees with this estimation, from the left).
One thing I always appreciated about Leavers is that they wanted something _different_. So did I, just by different means. And what have we got, since Brexit? Just another Brussels - technocratic, superior, condescending, contemptuous of voters, power-mad - put through a Shrink-o-Ray and relocated to Westminster. The way Brexit panned out was a disaster, for Leavers and Remainers alike.
What would we get, anyway, by filling in the Rejoin form? I predicted back in 2016 that the EU negotiators would drive through our own Sunday-league negotiating team like a knife through warm butter: and so it happened. A second time, creeping back like the Prodigal Son? There's not going to be any fatted calf for us.
The one thing I'd like out of Rejoin would be freedom of movement - but that's only for the selfish reason that I want out of here (and have roots in Europe anyway). I have no illusions about getting anything close to that out of the EU without enormous concessions - too enormous for the now-fragile UK political and economic situation to cope with.
Freedom of movement would mean tens of thousands of people who are now coming in dinghies, not the Poles we had in the past!
The Poles we had in the past came in large numbers and could afford to send money back home yet still undercut British plumbers, builders and other tradesmen because they lived many to a house and spent as little as possible. I'm sure the large corporations would like us all to live like that but it is not something we should be allowing through freedom of movement, in my view.
Exactly. I haven't kept up with all the twists and turns EU countries have gone through trying to reconciling freedom of movement for citizens with some level of control over immigration. Whatever position they've arrived at, I'm sure it's deeply self-contradictory.
The idea that we could just flick a switch and go back to "freedom of movement" meaning you or I can move to Europe, and Polish/Romanian plumbers/builders can come over here and work is, as you say, delusional.
It's another example of our political class not having the confidence, ideas and vision to even attempt to turn things around.