Mel Cooper writes:
John
BREXIT
What precisely did David Cameron ask? How clearly did he ask it?
what precisely do you have against the EU and are you really confident that leaving
before making a severance agreement is not both premature and dangerous?
My impression of Cameron
is of a political lightweight with no real vision and little appetite really to
understand or explain either our relationship with the EU, what it does for us,
what essentially needs reforming or what benefits us enough already to outweigh
our quibbles and dissatisfactions. I think the referendum was premature and
both sides never entered into an intelligent debate. I feel both sides cheated
but that Brexit was astonishingly dishonest in its NHS promises and several
other things. I also believe that the rush to Brexit No Matter What is a
potential disaster and that it is not only a betrayal but also gives permission
to xenophobic, racist and economically divisive attitudes.
Marine Le Pen is
feeding off Brexit and seemingly legitimised for many because of Brexit. Are
you really pleased by that or simply refusing to see the connection?
Brexit is
good news for Trump and Putin too. To me that seems obvious. How can that in
itself not give you pause?
I do despise Cameron for not taking the time
to run a positive Remain campaign to educate everyone, myself included, as to
why we should vote Remain; and as for Jeremy Quisling Corbyn, that miserable
self-righteous and smug Fifth Columnist, he has a lot to answer for.
Maybe I am
wrong but I firmly believe we have been propelled prematurely into abandoning
virtually the only hopeful economic and political experiment since WWII. It may
have been flawed but it was not broken and many of the things it is accused of
are actually the faults of our own governments or are misunderstandings of a
wider picture or flat lies promoted by the likes of Nigel Farage. If it is
working, essentially, and you (we Brits) have the best deal of anyone in the club, why
abandon this for what is bound to be a lesser deal and so much dangerous
uncertainty?
And you are gloating like a Donald Trump. You are crowing
that by leaving we win and they lose and may collapse. Even if they are
mistaken about some things, would it not be better to remain and work for a
Win-Win solution? Maybe in the light of intransigence or stupidity you could
consider leaving in 5 years or so but not by a whirlwind Referendum. This is a
Parliamentary democracy and, frankly, it is Parliament that should debate this
properly, transparently, intellectually and as unemotionally as possible. The
Referendum should be advisory and not binding on an issue that is so complex
and has successfully a long-term impact unless there is a much, much larger
majority.
Frankly, even if you think Brexit is expedient, at this time and in
this way, I perceive it also as unethical. And it is also a major distraction
from more urgent and far more troubling problems and very likely to give
licence not only for more narrow nationalism and bigotry but for undoing
positive progress in all kinds of socially sensitive legislation that was not
actually imposed upon us but agreed to.
I grew up in Canada where Quebec
threatened a kind of Brexit scenario on a regular basis. It was always a very
bad idea. And if you are being consistent then you have to let Scotland and
Northern Ireland go independent too. And yes, logically if you do leave the EU
only a hard Brexit makes sense because otherwise you are still in the single
market but with a worse deal. But if you prefer Isolationism to working for
Reform and think the exhilaration of a clean break outweighs the ideal of the
EU, then let's just see how that plays out over the next five years. I foresee
a hell of a mess and I think you are promoting an act of self-harm for the UK
morally, economically and politically.
Yours,
Mel
More Mel Cooper:
BREXIT - BE VERY AFRAIDMore Mel Cooper:
ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE
---- John wrote:
Mel
In what way do you think we have a responsibility to the EU
when we asked them to change the way they did things and they refused.
The EU had its chance and did not take it. Wilfully refused
to change. The saying is, you've made your bed now lie on it.
Many other European countries also seeing the light.
Best
John
On 23 Feb 2017, at 14:30, Mel Cooper wrote:
Hey! I have a better idea. The whole world is falling apart and not
fulfilling our dreams so just get into bed, pull the covers over your head and
leave that too. After all, what possible responsibility could you have to
anyone else? Mel
---- John wrote ----
...and if the link does not allow you to see the whole article here it is:
Allister Heath
22 February 2017 • 8:37pm
The EU is at its weakest, most vulnerable since its creation, and it is now
touch and go whether it survives 2017 or whether it is
swept away in a catastrophic populist revolt
Hand over a €60 billion ransom or we won’t even start to discuss a trade deal:
that, if Jean-Claude Juncker is to be believed, will be the European Union’s
opening gambit ahead of Brexit. Bring it on, I say: the best way to expose a
very weak adversary who is pretending to be very strong is to call their bluff.
Yet it may never even get to that. At this rate, what is left of the EU could
soon be begging us for a trade deal, not the other way around.
The reality is that the EU is edging ever-closer to the abyss: it is at its
weakest, most vulnerable since its creation, and it is now touch and go whether
it survives 2017 or whether it is swept away in a
catastrophic populist revolt.
Trouble is not only brewing in France, where Marine Le Pen keeps gaining
ground, but also in the Netherlands, in Greece, in Italy and in eastern Europe.
Even if the dissidents fail, for now, the EU will soon be crippled by Britain’s
departure, robbing it of its financial centre and billions of pounds a year in
net contributions.
"The reality is that the EU is edging ever-closer to the abyss: it is at
its weakest, most vulnerable since its creation, and it is now touch and go
whether it survives 2017 or whether it is swept away in
a catastrophic populist revolt"
The EU’s modus operandi has always been to buy support with German and British
money, especially in poorer regions and in France’s agricultural heartlands:
when the cash runs out, or is replaced by some euro-tax, tensions will flare up
again.
We keep worrying about how Brexit will affect Britain. But the real question is
how Brexit will debilitate Brussels, shift the balance of power and ideology on
the continent, with smaller, more pro-market nations losing their British
champion, and trigger a new dash to yet more unpopular centralising treaties,
fuelling more range and anger. Yet the Eurocrats in Brussels and some Remainers
in Britain keep on talking as if nothing has changed, as if the UK were leaving
some powerful, eternal, economically successful superpower. The status quo is
gone, forever, and what is left could be smashed further in just three months’
time.
Marine Le Pen
Marine Le Pen: her election would detonate a neutron bomb under all post-war
institutions and the global economic order
The most urgent threat to the EU system comes from Le Pen. Her rise, the extent
of which has confounded everybody, is the most important story of the year. Her
hard-Left views on big companies, capital and trade are incompatible with EU
membership, as are her views on immigration; and she wants to quit the euro.
France’s current, already broken constitutional arrangements and “social
contract” wouldn’t survive. Le Pen’s election would detonate a neutron bomb
under all post-war institutions and the global economic order; a disorderly
French withdrawal from the euro, which would also lead to others such as Italy
following suit, would wipe trillions off asset values and trigger another
global financial crisis.
Le Pen is now polling around 27 per cent in the first round and while she would
still be defeated in the second, surveys suggest she would grab an unprecedented
42 per cent of the electorate. Given that this is a rise of around five
percentage points in just a few weeks, anything is now possible, and it
reflects the extreme, explosive disenchantment among the French public with
decades of economic, social, immigration and crime policies. Even if she loses,
the genie will be well and truly out of the bottle.
The likes of Juncker, a Marie Antoinette figure if ever there were one, are now
so firmly ensconced in a parallel reality, replete with alternative facts and
constructs, that they no longer understand what is happening. They still look
at the shiny new Europa building in Brussels, which cost €321
million, and see a powerful, purposeful force for progress, rather than an
increasingly loathed, soon-to-be bankrupt bureaucracy whose demise threatens
the peace and prosperity of our civilisation.
They labour over their preposterous economic models, telling us how
impoverished the UK will become as a result of us loosening our ties with an
imaginary fast-growing European economy, not realising that they are the victim
of an extraordinary case of cognitive dissonance. They look at the world, but
only see what they want to see, rather than what exists.
"Le Pen’s election would detonate a neutron bomb under all post-war
institutions and the global economic order; a disorderly French withdrawal from
the euro, which would also lead to others such as Italy following suit, would
wipe trillions off asset values and trigger another global financial
crisis"
One of the reasons why I backed Brexit was because the UK is the only major
European country able and willing to extricate itself from the doomed project
in a rational, pro-trade, pro-market way. Brexit allows us to show the world
that there is a better, more sustainable way to embrace real globalisation
without having to hand over power to corrupt, unelected technocrats, and that
wanting self-government doesn’t necessitate voting for extreme, destructive
National Front-style parties. So far, it looks even better than I hoped, thanks
to Theresa May’s enthusiasm for free trade and her commitment to keep the
country open to capital and talent.
But where I may have been over-optimistic was that I was hoping that the EU
would survive for at least another five years to 2022,
giving Britain more time to build new institutions, diversify our trade and
show the rest of Europe how it could be done. I was counting on the cyclical
economic upturn, which will give all European economies a boost, as well as on
an assumption that someone other than Le Pen would win in May, before going on
to fail to reform France and thus delivering the country into her hands the
next time around. Jacques Chirac failed to reform France, as did Nicolas Sarkozy;
one must hope that Francois Fillon would pull it off, but that’s unlikely.
Emmanuel Macron, a fashionable neo-Blairite with no party backing, would fail
disastrously.
I’m no longer so sure that we have so much time. It still seems likely that the
EU will stagger on for a few more years, just as it survived earlier crises,
but the day of reckoning is getting ever closer. We need to leave, urgently, to
insulate ourselves as best we can from the fallout.
Given the gravity of the situation in France, the House of Lords should be
debating how to accelerate our withdrawal from the EU, not how to delay it. Big
banks should be planning on shifting bankers to Britain from France, not (in
one case) the other way around. Remainers should stop producing anti-Brexit
reports that massively exaggerate all of the difficulties caused by leaving,
and turn their attention instead to ways of mitigating the fallout from the
EU’s implosion.
It is in Britain’s interest that the EU’s demise be carefully managed.
Unfortunately, it increasingly looks like the opposite will be true. The
Government should be hoping for the best, but planning ever-harder for the
worst.
(I imagine that Allister is an alt-truth graduate of The Trump University of Journalism) - Ed
(I imagine that Allister is an alt-truth graduate of The Trump University of Journalism) - Ed
