Nothing to do with the Donald, imo. He's really only marginally less popular than any other American president there's ever been, so far as I can judge. Overall, we simply don't like Americans.Originally Posted by Mo Britain less Europe
Nothing to do with the Donald, imo. He's really only marginally less popular than any other American president there's ever been, so far as I can judge. Overall, we simply don't like Americans.
"Plenty of strikers can score goals," he said, gesturing to the famous old stands casting shadows around us.
"But a lot have found it difficult wearing the number 9 shirt for The Arsenal."
Not true. The European chattering classes loved Obama.
Fair point. Also I think that Germans might reasonably take exception to being forced to buy expensive US LNG because of the sanctions imposed for the (evidence-free) claims of Russian 'hacking' in the US election. Oh the irony of that accusation, from the most interferey country in the world.
Yes. The Europeans are now suspicious that many of these US-led sanctions are actually geared at giving US companies an advantage. There is a school of thinking in US politics that has always seen trade as an extension of warfare rather than a substitute.
In a sense, I don't blame the EU lot. They're just doing what they've always said they wanted to do: destroy the nation state and replace it with a vast, centralised superstate run by a largely unelected bureaucracy - this neatly taking those pesky citizens and their feelings out of the equation. The people who irritate me are the UK-based EU advocates who have spent years denying that this is the case.
Well, quite naturally, this sort feels exactly the same way; that their fathers and grandfathers, and possibly even their great-grandfathers too, let them down, basically sold them off into wage-slavery. Or, at the very least, simply weren't interested in them.
And who's to say they don't have a point.
"Plenty of strikers can score goals," he said, gesturing to the famous old stands casting shadows around us.
"But a lot have found it difficult wearing the number 9 shirt for The Arsenal."
You do realize that this is the intellectual equivalent of the Remainers making the assumption that all the most dire consequences of Brexit will be realized and then using that assumption as a basis for criticizing it?
Why lower yourself to their level?
Errr, you realise that this stuff was said by the President of the EU Commission, right? In his State of the Union address? This is not conjecture or alarmism, this is the direction of travel desired at the highest level of the EU. Will all of it happen? Probably not. Will some of it happen? Yes, absolutely. Could we ever rejoin the EU if any of it happened? No, absolutely not.You do realize that this is the intellectual equivalent of the Remainers making the assumption that all the most dire consequences of Brexit will be realized and then using that assumption as a basis for criticizing it?
Why lower yourself to their level?
Despite the fact that you never stop going on about how undemocratic the EU is, it is a democratic body even if it isn't as democratic (for good reasons) as some would like it to be. The President of the EU Commission can think whatever he likes, unless Merkel et al (and that et al would include the British Prime Minister if we were staying in the EU) agree to it, it isn't going to happen.
We have no idea where the EU is really going over the next 5-10 years, there are simply too many variables and too many unknowns. To attempt to predict the direction and then use that prediction as a basis for the argument that Leave was correct is no different than someone assuming that the British economy will go in the toilet post Brexit and therefore criticizing the result of the referendum.
Both are intellectually disingenuous.
Well the advent of Qualified Majority Voting put paid to any idea that the Council of Ministers exerts ultimate control over the Commission, I'm afraid. And, of course, the veto is a weapon used more in threat than reality, so it's something of a paper tiger. Equally, since the Commission is the only body capable of proposing legislation, they do have rather a lot of influence over the direction of travel. It is therefore highly disingenuous to pretend that the mission statement of the ideologically-driven body that controls the legislative direction of the EU is anything but highly significant.
But as I say - and this is where the real disingenuousness is at play - this is not news. The EU have their mission of a borderless, centrally-controlled, united European superstate literally written on the walls of their buildings in Strasbourg and Brussels. To pretend the EU was ever anything else or ever had any other intention was the single greatest lie the British political class has ever perpetrated.
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