Brexit means getting the hell out asap.

If I were Davis I'd tell Barnier to take a hike. Looks like it's impasse apropos the Irish Border issue, and as it's one of Barnier's red lines, and obviously by definition one of May's red lines, then there's nothing more to be said, and nothing more to be discussed, so WTF doesn't May just call his bluff and walk? Why the hell the woman propitiates these preposterous un-elected foreign pen-pushing dogs-bodies chucking their weight around by laying down conditions on us is beyond me. 'We'll give you two weeks to make up your mind.' WTF!!! Winston Churchill would turn in his grave. The shame, the shame!


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41941414

 

"We must build a kind of United States of Europe" Churchill?

 

He didn't mean we should give away our sovereignty though, just that we should have better diplomatic relationships with other Euro countries, and mutually advantageous trading agreements - and he certainly didn't mean invent a common currency.

 

You can't have a United States and not give away sovereignty. This is someone who supported a European army and who said that they were "prepared to consider, and if convinced to accept, the abrogation of national sovereignty, provided that we are satisfied with the conditions and the safeguards".

Referring to Churchill really isn't a good idea for a Brexit thread!

 

It was never meant to be 'a united states of Europe', it was a 'softlee-softlee, catchee monkey' subterfuge dreamed up in Brussels in the guise of implementing a common trading bloc, but the real intention was to 'invent' a conglomerate political union with its own common military and its own common currency. In other words all the member states were fooled big-time into voting for the loss of their respective sovereignty. And now it has become the bureaucrats' shangri-la, which is what they wanted all along.

As I've already said - Churchill had in mind a trading partnership, not the surrender of our sovereignty, and you know it!! I'm not sure what your agenda is but leave me out of it.

 

Yes you can it was called the common market.

 

Not only was Churchill for a union, he was prepared to merge France and the UK!
On June 16, 1940, with Nazi Germany on the brink of crushing France, British prime minister Winston Churchill and French undersecretary of defense Charles de Gaulle met for lunch at the Carlton Club in London. These two great symbols of patriotism and national independence made an incredible agreement: Britain and France should be united into a single country called the “Franco-British Union.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/08/dunkirk-brexit/536106/

It amazes me how little some brits know off our history!

 

Perhaps you may wish to expand on the why the French proposed this and when the British attended the meeting?

 

On June 14, German troops entered Paris. During the next 48 hours, British and French civil servants drafted a proposal for a “Declaration on Franco-British Union.” This was no beefed-up wartime alliance, or a plan for partial integration similar to today’s European Union. The goal was to effectively create one country. The document stated: “At this most fateful moment in the history of the modern world, the Governments of the United Kingdom and the French Republic make this declaration of indissoluble union and unyielding resolution in their common defense of justice and freedom against subjection to a system which reduces mankind to a life of robots and slaves.” This meant: “France and Great Britain shall no longer be two nations, but one Franco-British Union.”

 

There you have it. The French were buggered.

 

When aren't they?

 

Treaty of Rome (1957) has set the aims of the EU and its predecessors. In 1972 these aims were as actual as today and nobody can claim that they didn't know about it. The European project was always far more than a common market.

 

Trouble whith that statement is that it lacks context and is that's not what the british people were sold back in the day... Heath's White Paper dated 1971 promised no “erosion of essential national sovereignty”.
This of course was a lie, furthered by Jacques Delores when he made a speech to (up till then a eurospectic party) the British Labour Party in 1981 promising europe as being a social-democratic state which the then Labour party had failed to achieve in the UK.

 

It's just that a lot of British people say that they joined a trade union and not a political union, which the EU always wanted to be. Sometimes I have the impression that all the problems the British think they have with the EU are rather problems with their political class.

 

Of course. Thats' really a statement of the obvious because its a political union. To whom are we going to point the finger at?

 

You've misapplied Churchill. I quoted Churchill directly to prove that. If you want to play pretend then be my guest!

 

To the political and elitist classes, the bountiful blessings of the EU are their retirement scheme for when they're finished in their domestic roles. And it's good for their friends and relatives too - I mean the Kinnocks have been and still are doing very well by it??

 

Do you mean your post number 2 quote "We must build a kind of United States of Europe" Churchill?" unquote? If so, then please point out where he says that 'political union is the way to go'?? Only one of us is playing at 'pretend' and it isn't me.

 

Amusing that you think a United States doesn't involve political union. Perhaps Churchill's willingness to support "the abrogation of national sovereignty" confused you?

 

Jesus will you never let it go? 'united' means joined together for the common good - that doesn't mean surrendering sovereignty for the benefit of others. You don't think the other members are in it to benefit us, do you? Behind the scenes it's 'every man for himself', and it's only natural that it should be - self-survival is a part of the human condition. Can you seriously believe that a patriot like Churchill would have sold us out to a bunch of foreigners who, if the truth were in known, are at best indifferent to us, and at worst, averse?

 

Not exactly....not for the benefit of "others" but for the benefit of "all" - this is in opposition to the Westphalia Model which is basically in (for want of a better word) opposition to the EU model of neo-cosmopolitanism. The Westphalia model accepts state sovereignty and the right to self-governance, however, this concept is/has been challenged (critiqued if you will) by the federalist "constitution" (rules of membership) of the EU. Cosmopolitianism in the context of the EU is (put very simplistically) based on a tripartite agreement of common trade, common law and non-coercive membership.

 

That might be the idealism, and it is certainly the theory, but the practicality is that they're all fighting like rats in a sack, and bureaucrats are crafty enough to bend both of them to their nefarious will. The bottom line is that it could never work - I'm surprised it has worked for this long, but that's only by the intention to keep it afloat come what may, and at whatever cost to the poor bloody taxpayers. NB I've just had to do 2 restarts and a scan because of the detection of two viruses, and it has put me off my stroke in answering. But I suspect you'll have got the message that I curse the EU and everything and everybody it stands for. But I will look up this 'Westphalia model' thingy because it sounds interesting.

 

Yup... that's the downside to a good theory... putting it into practise and fudging over the enevitable emergence of the laws of unitended consequence.

 

that was a bit rude so editied....

 

Not that sort of stroke!