That applies to any trade deal the EU makes. All members must agree, which is liable to be a big sticking point when the UK comes to negotiate with it.
There is a spectrum of possible settlements, with the following deluded extremes : 1. The UK impose draconian movement regime on EU citizens, access to the EU trade market as is. 2. The EU gets the current movement regime of its citizens within the UK, and financial cost for UK access to the EU trade market (punitive as some would have it - to discourage other EU members from thinking similar) . With "deluded" being from the viewpoint of those with brain cells. But again, we are talking about politniks etc here ...
So it's official: using the term Blairite is now considered an abusive term, so i anyone has paid their £25 to the Labour party to vote in the upcoming leadership election but used the word Blairite just once on their social media, the Blairites will use this as grounds to disqualify them from voting in the vain hope that their prison romance with the democratic process will get their Blairite candidate installed as Labour leader. However, it's perfectly okay to refer to Corbyn supporters as "infiltrators", "loony left", "Marxists" and all manner of other ignorant labels. In other words, it's not a good week for Croydon in the news, as we've had Blairites banning the word Blairite and CofE school pupils turning a school trip to London Zoo into Chavvy Fight Club...
The Labour Party appears to have split into two camps. The Corbynites and the others. Which is why the party will almost certainly split pemanently. You could just as easily argue that anybody who doesn't support Corbyn is automatically labeled a 'Blairite' which is patently nonsense.
please log in to view this image Shame virtually no Brexiter knew what "being in Europe" means. It means lots of things. Part of the fantasy they were sold was that UK could leave the EU then effortlessly renter the EEA. But to even sit at. Negotiating table to do that you need to agree to a) have free movement of people and b) join and obey the European Council. These are minimum requirements and considering how massively the UK has pissed off Europe and cost everyone billions (or trillions) of pounds I don't think the other members will want to make it easy for us. It is imperative that they do not give the slightest encouragement to other countries to do what the UK just did. The "we can be like Norway/Switzerland" arguments were gigantically disingenuous. There are clear reasons why that won't happen. But I won't get into that. The people have spoken. Only now the establishment must think "Oh **** - why the hell did we ask *them* anything?! We do everything in our power 24/7 to keep those ****ers as thick as possible! Bollocks." I agree with HBIC's comment about how the vote and the landscape for the vote was the culmination of decades of misinformation, lazy thinking, ****ty journalism and general stupidity and xenophobia from the British press. A press which is surely now the lowest in quality that it has ever been. When comments sections are seen as more important than having sub editors...
I'd agree with most of that. However, there is no reason why the UK cannot enter into a similar arrangement to that both Norway & Switzerland have. It just has very little point, we might as well have stayed within the EU. The EU will have to change. It is not workable in its current format over the long term. But then a federal Europe was always the original aim.
Indeed the EU will have to change, but was showing no signs of doing so constructively. The argument that it is better to change it from within is very powerful, but if anything it was showing less signs of change over time as more and more countries joined. Holding out for the hope of change is one thing, but at some time you've just got to say that it isn't going to happen, in fact a federal states of Europe was perhaps more likely. Some of the problems I have with the EU are detailed in the excellent book "The Establishment and how they get away with it" by Owen Jones (the last chapter on the illusion of sovereignty is most pertinent) but the whole book is good (and frightening).
To slightly qualify what I've said above. I'm not going into too much detail, it would take too long now. Suffice to say that you cannot have a central 'one size fits all' monetary policy and all the countries that are members of the single currency operating their own separate fiscal policies. It's unworkable, and always has been.
Would it be fair to say that the issues could be put under the following headings : 1. legal control ( a) EU law, b) Human Rights thingy) 2. monetary control ( a)Euro, b) joint fiscal policy) 3. a) free movement b) free trade And that by voting to leave the EU : - we have effectively decided to leave the arrangement of being subject to EU law - 2b, 3a, 3b are still up for grabs / negotiation ?
I favor a federal Europe. I think it would represent democracy and human rights in a far more consistent and less hypocritical way than the US (not to say it wouldn't have inconsistencies and hypocrisies of its own). That would be good for democracy and human rights, which are humanity's best hopes. But the EU as it stands falls between two stools and is worse than nothing. Unfortunately, that leaves me agreeing with a lot of people I can't stand.
The west's obsession with democracy has destroyed the middle east and consequently brought terrorism to europe. Turkey's democracy sees it ruled by a religious tyrant. Democracy in the UK sees us leaving the EU for reasons the people who voted dont even understand.
The Shoah, the Second World War and the murders of tens of millions in Stalinist Russia and Maoist China pale by comparison.
It could be argued that the growth of fascism in Nazi Germany was a direct result of WW1 which was caused by a clash of the most powerful capitalist countries fighting for control. So it could be argued that, although WW2 is seen as a war against Fascism, its roots lay in the debre of WW1. Imo Capitalism (control of resources, wealth, regions of ghetto world, expansionism etc) is responsible for most if not all wars rather than it being an issue of democracy being the issue.
Democracy is a nice idea, but I'm not sure how well it works in reality. It's definitely being poorly implemented at the moment, largely due to the corruption of the media. People can't make a constructive decision about how to vote, if they're being lied to about everything all the time.
Donald Trump is polling rather poorly with black voters at the moment. How badly? Well he's much less popular than David Duke, who's running for the Senate in Louisiana. Why's that a bad thing? Duke's a former Grand Wizard of the KKK! A recent Fox News poll had Trump's approval rating with African-Americans at 4%. Duke got 14%. That's the highest Donnie's got, rather unbelievably. Others have him at 2%, 1% and even a few 0% results. How do you alienate that many people without trying to?
Both democracies and dictatorships were involved, anyway. So that leaves the Shoah and the murders of tens of millions of citizens by Stalinist Russia and Maoist China as the pure fruit of dictatorships.
