Brexit - The UK and the EU

The Daily Mail's new saccharine fake news approach to May and Remain is extremely sinister. All the French wars and the two World Wars for Great Britain to surrender to a Continental rule and a system without any control or representation. The sell-out and capitulation will go down in history as the ultimate end of Great Britain/UK PLC's power and cultural significance.

All the world can see it for what it is: a nation enslaved, no matter how gilded the intended cage.

May has inflicted on the UK what Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler couldn't do.

The Tories must rectify this, otherwise they will consign their party to the dustbin of history and rightly so. Better Corbyn's Labour than this humiliation.
 
How the Daily Mail is bigging up the quisling Prime Minister:
How beans on toast, a glass of Welsh whisky and Philip's rock-like support helped Theresa May survive a week of treachery... but the PM has STILL had to do the washing as she vows to keep 'fighting the good fight' on Brexit
By Simon Walters for the Daily Mail

The stench of lies and treachery cannot be polished by such cheap and cheery journalese!
 
I expect large and "spontaneous" pro Remain demonstrations, especially in London.
Of course there will be no investigation over who is sponsoring the ongoing campaigning of the Remain side.
 
. The sell-out and capitulation will go down in history as the ultimate end of Great Britain/UK PLC's power and cultural significance.

The UK hasn't had power and cultural significance in 40 years. I don't know where you guys get this wild eyed notion.
 
The UK hasn't had power and cultural significance in 40 years. I don't know where you guys get this wild eyed notion.

Your first point (power) is correct, I would probally go back further than 40 years actually to Suez. Your second point (cultural significance) is wrong.

edit sp?
 
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Some of the Arthurian legends and William Blake predicted this time when hirelings were sent to sell Albion into slavery.....

Fear not gentle reader, events dear boy, events! And fear not our own shadow, for we have stood alone before.....

But wait, another former great empire, that of the Romans are with us & others too. Two great forces for civilization are now on a head on collision with the Continental system of Germany and France, two nations that always went out of their way to subjugate, control and dominate.

I was at a 50th yesterday and this was with some of the wife's academic and political friends. This professor of linguistics latched onto me straight away and was greatly impressed with my accent and intonation and the way my speech sang. And then after some conversation she said it's just dawned on me, you have the same speech patterns and wit of The Beatles! She quizzed me about Brexit of course and she spends a bit of time at Oxbridge and various universities in mainland Europe. She's unimpressed with the arrogance of the pro-EU establishment and says the gulf between them and the working people seems as rigid as the old class system. She was unimpressed with the decline of the many of the European cities into replicas of each other with no national identity.

Speaking to several people over the night, Brexit was always brought up as I was the token Brit, only one person was for the EU. Everyone else was had a lot of agreement and hope for the UK in breaking out.

The only other not worthy discussion of the evening, was with this poor chap who thought we would be completely fossil fuel free and I mean 100% by 2030.
 
But wait, another former great EX-empire, that of the Romans are with us & others too.

Unlike the Visegard nations, Italy has been under the control of globalist moneylenders since WWII, very much like Germany, France, the UK and the US. Not surprising, given that these nations are home to the Rothschilds.
Ironically, it seems that Italy's massive debt is now it's biggest leverage when it comes to the EU. If the EU forces it's rules onto Italy the next bank crash is certain and this time the EU nations won't have the money or the will to bail out the banks again.
It should also be mentioned that Italy, unlike the UK, does oppose the globalist UN migration pact that is due for signing this month.
 
Some of the Arthurian legends and William Blake predicted this time when hirelings were sent to sell Albion into slavery.....

Fear not gentle reader, events dear boy, events! And fear not our own shadow, for we have stood alone before.....

But wait, another former great empire, that of the Romans are with us & others too. Two great forces for civilization are now on a head on collision with the Continental system of Germany and France, two nations that always went out of their way to subjugate, control and dominate.

I was at a 50th yesterday and this was with some of the wife's academic and political friends. This professor of linguistics latched onto me straight away and was greatly impressed with my accent and intonation and the way my speech sang. And then after some conversation she said it's just dawned on me, you have the same speech patterns and wit of The Beatles! She quizzed me about Brexit of course and she spends a bit of time at Oxbridge and various universities in mainland Europe. She's unimpressed with the arrogance of the pro-EU establishment and says the gulf between them and the working people seems as rigid as the old class system. She was unimpressed with the decline of the many of the European cities into replicas of each other with no national identity.

Speaking to several people over the night, Brexit was always brought up as I was the token Brit, only one person was for the EU. Everyone else was had a lot of agreement and hope for the UK in breaking out.

The only other not worthy discussion of the evening, was with this poor chap who thought we would be completely fossil fuel free and I mean 100% by 2030.

On the subject of academics, I was chatting to a friend's wife the other week, who is an academic, an urbane an well educated woman and the conversation turned to Brexit. I told her that one of the saddest things to come out of this is that of supposed progressives using rhetoric and arguments last used 100 years ago by reactionary Tories to deny working class people and women the vote. That is: that they are too stupid, that they don't understand what they are voting for, that they are not rational and given to fancies &c

She was stunned when I pointed this out to her. She simply hadn't, or perhaps, couldn't make the connection. A breathtaking failure of the intellect made worse by her being a women, and this being the centenary of the women's vote.
 
Experts don’t define democracy; people do

British history has been shaped by the will of the majority. The same must 
be true of Brexit

By Robert Tombs.

Source: The Telegraph


Our present turmoil seems to be a lurch away from our historical traditions of pragmatism and frankly rather dull politics. Are we not a sensible people, who have a suspicion of “extremes” and “ideology”, and who regard “moderation” and “compromise” as the essence of political wisdom?

It is true that we have a political system whose outward appearance is one of long continuity. We have avoided violent political conflict for over three centuries. For one thing, evolutionary change is easier without a codified constitution. Political extremism is hobbled by first-past-the-post. So our system seems stable.

But every so often, the pot boils over. Indeed, our political constitution is the result of a long series of crises and upheavals. We don’t need to go back as far as Magna Carta – though it is worth remembering that what is still the basis of our fundamental legal rights was the consequence of a rebellion. It was foreign invasion backed up by popular resistance that consolidated our parliamentary system in 1688. It was mass violence that began a succession of reforms in 1832. The primacy of the Commons was the result of an angry “Peers versus People” battle. Our three main parties hatched from crises. Division over agricultural tariffs wrecked the old Tory Party. Divisions over Ireland did permanent damage to the Liberals. It took the First World War to bring us genuine democracy and to bring Labour into the front rank of politics. None of these great changes was planned by the political elite: they came about through the inability of that elite to stop changes they disapproved of.

Parliamentary sovereignty really meant, and still means, the unchallenged right to put the people’s will into law. Past rulers had the good sense to accept the inevitable: that, more than anything, is the secret of our political stability. Those who claimed the elite knew best found themselves on the scrap-heap of history. Now part of the elite is making a sustained and possibly successful effort to oppose a legally enshrined majority choice: made first in the 2016 referendum, then confirmed in the 2017 general election, when 85 per cent of the vote went to parties committed to respecting the result.

I cannot think of a precedent in modern times on this scale and with this persistence. Of course, there has been plenty of elite dissidence in the recent past. The 20th century saw both Right-wing and Left-wing minorities paying allegiance to foreign ideologies and foreign powers. They were vocal and sometimes influential, but few in number. They are now more numerous. Globalisation and our membership of the EU have created a new elite whose careers, interests and social relationships largely exist outside the boundaries of Britain. For them, the idea of “taking back control of our borders” is a threat and even a moral affront.

What is now being proposed by the government as the best deal available is in historical terms a monstrosity. It is practically unheard of in modern international relations for an independent state to place itself under foreign jurisdiction and foreign legislation. One would have to think of colonial status (for example of the American colonies before 1776) for an adequate analogy. For a modern democratic state to deny its own citizens even an indirect voice in deciding the laws governing them for an indefinite period would previously have been unimaginable: taxation without representation, to the tune of £39 billion.

I am not presuming to judge the motives of today’s Remainers, or whether they are right or wrong in their analysis of Brexit and its consequences. Now, as in the past, one can oppose the will of the majority on principle, argue against it and try to alter it. But the extremism of their arguments, the predictions of disaster, the assertions that people will die due to lack of medicine, the unwillingness to look dispassionately at the evidence are more strident than is normal in our politics. The lavishly funded campaign to undermine and block a democratically chosen policy has gone far beyond previously accepted political bounds.
To behave in this way seems to me reckless and fundamentally subversive of democracy. The purpose of democracy is not to find the right answer to technical problems, as judged by “experts”, but is to maintain an acceptable political community based on consent. The EU has aspired to establish the rule of experts in order to constrain democratic choices that the elite thought dangerous.

Remainers are attempting to fix us to that system not merely by opposing a democratic decision, but by denying that such a decision is possible. This, they assert, is harsh “reality”: There Is No Alternative. As the EU accumulates crises, it is a strange kind of reality. If Brexit is defeated, it will prove not only the impotence of democracy in Britain, it will confirm the impotence of democracy throughout the EU. The lid will have been screwed down. We all know the eventual consequences of that. Our long history of peaceful politics has been based on accepting the will of the majority. Attempting quite openly to thwart it is a dangerous step backwards – and a long way backwards.
 
What is now being proposed by the government as the best deal available is in historical terms a monstrosity. It is practically unheard of in modern international relations for an independent state to place itself under foreign jurisdiction and foreign legislation. One would have to think of colonial status (for example of the American colonies before 1776) for an adequate analogy. For a modern democratic state to deny its own citizens even an indirect voice in deciding the laws governing them for an indefinite period would previously have been unimaginable: taxation without representation, to the tune of £39 billion.

That sums up the predicament perfectly.

Seems popular amongst some Americans to compare their current situation with that of the Fall of Rome.

I was referring not to the fall of Rome, but the power and prestige of the Roman and British Empires. The Italians take great pride in their cultural history and have IMCO a sense of exceptionalism. I also see that Macron was eyeing-up ENI and the Fincanteri shipyards last week. The Italians will not accept vassalage like the Greeks.
 
That sums up the predicament perfectly.



I was referring not to the fall of Rome, but the power and prestige of the Roman and British Empires. The Italians take great pride in their cultural history and have IMCO a sense of exceptionalism. I also see that Macron was eyeing-up ENI and the Fincanteri shipyards last week. The Italians will not accept vassalage like the Greeks.

I wasn't refering to you, I was refering to a common theme lately amongst some US commentators.
 
That sums up the predicament perfectly.



I was referring not to the fall of Rome, but the power and prestige of the Roman and British Empires. The Italians take great pride in their cultural history and have IMCO a sense of exceptionalism. I also see that Macron was eyeing-up ENI and the Fincanteri shipyards last week. The Italians will not accept vassalage like the Greeks.

Yeah, there really isn't any prestige to the Roman Empire is the point, it was an abject shithole. Misplaced Italian exceptionalism is just one of the myriad idiocies from that ridiculous idea. I wouldn't let the Italians run one of my landscape crews, much less a country or empire.
 
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/spain-brexit-uk-gibraltar-1.4911777

"Noting how Spain was obliged to accept British positions on Gibraltar when it was negotiating its 1986 accession to the bloc, a decade after Britain had joined, a senior EU official said London now had to accept that 'the tables have turned.'"

What tables have turned ? The only obliging Spain has to do is recognise British rule.
 
Yeah, there really isn't any prestige to the Roman Empire is the point, it was an abject shithole. Misplaced Italian exceptionalism is just one of the myriad idiocies from that ridiculous idea. I wouldn't let the Italians run one of my landscape crews, much less a country or empire.

After the first string of emperors, it wasn't exclusively Italian. That was part of the genius of the empire - being able to integrate and put Spaniards, Africans, Balkans, Syrians, etc into the governing apparatus. How enduring is one's identity when after the fall of the capitol and the namesake another group of mostly Greek speaking people continued the same principles and ethos for nearly another thousand years and called themselves Rhomaioi or Romans.
 
After the first string of emperors, it wasn't exclusively Italian. That was part of the genius of the empire - being able to integrate and put Spaniards, Africans, Balkans, Syrians, etc into the governing apparatus. How enduring is one's identity when after the fall of the capitol and the namesake another group of mostly Greek speaking people continued the same principles and ethos for nearly another thousand years and called themselves Rhomaioi or Romans.

Romanes eunt domus!

The Greeks in particular are probably the best teaching point when trying to contrast the relatively new and silly concept of the nation state.
 
Romanes eunt domus!

The Greeks in particular are probably the best teaching point when trying to contrast the relatively new and silly concept of the nation state.

My friend, this is your second daft statement this week. Lay off the Gin :)

No.1

Britain hasn't been cultural significance for 40 years.

What you actually meant to say, or thought you were saying is that Britain HASN'T produced anything of cultural significance for 40 years. Which is still wrong but far less so.

I think you'll find that Shakespeare's plays are still rather popular around the globe, and people as far as I can tell, still read Dickens.

No.2

[...]relatively new and silly concept of the nation state

You do realise that those institutions that you rely upon every day would not exist if it wasn't for the concept of the nation state?
 
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My friend, this is your second daft statement this week. Lay off the Gin :)

No.1

Britain hasn't been cultural significance for 40 years.

What you actually meant to say, or thought you were saying is that Britain HASN'T produced anything of cultural significance for 40 years. Which is still wrong but far less so.

I think you'll find that Shakespeare's plays are still rather popular around the globe, and people as far as I can tell, still read Dickens.

No.2

[...]relatively new and silly concept of the nation state

You do realise that those institutions that you rely upon every day would not exist if it wasn't for the concept of the nation state?

No, they are the state, not a nation state. And Britain ceded cultural relevance ages ago, there's only the last artifacts from the Empire floating about now, mostly labels of a few governing bodies.. The latest you can possibly claim was up until you idiotically handed over Hong Kong with a whimper.
 
No, they are the state, not a nation state. And Britain ceded cultural relevance ages ago, there's only the last artifacts from the Empire floating about now, mostly labels of a few governing bodies.. The latest you can possibly claim was up until you idiotically handed over Hong Kong with a whimper.

There was nothing they could do about Hong Kong. The Chinese has a huge army just over the border. We could have nuked I suppose, but I doubt Clinton would have given us the launch codes! Britain's nuclear deterrent isn't independent as is often claimed and our seat on the Security Council is a mirage.

So, you're wrong on that score too.
 
There was nothing they could do about Hong Kong. The Chinese has a huge army just over the border. We could have nuked I suppose, but I doubt Clinton would have given us the launch codes! Britain's nuclear deterrent isn't independent as is often claimed and our seat on the Security Council is a mirage.

So, you're wrong on that score too.

I mean, I'm not wrong on any score. Nothing I've said is remotely controversial or questioned. I specifically mentioned the Greeks because they are probably the single most used example for teaching students the definitions of nations and nation states. It's literally in almost every textbook.

China was not invading Hong Kong either. Britain just lost it's appetite to maintain it, like the rest of the Empire. It was the last time Britain was actively influencing culture on the world stage though, unless you want to count Downton Abbey. Everything else is just leftover artifacts from the Imperial past

I mean, you know I'm the most avid Anglophile here short of Fwiffo Fwiffo , it's not like I have any vested interest in minimizing British culture. Quite the opposite, I constantly moan at the lack of appreciation of it. Doesn't obviate the fact that it's not a dominant factor worldwide anymore.

The only reason I even stop in this thread is to watch the completely predictable trainwreck. If you scroll back however many thousand pages it's run now, you'll see my position is the UK should have been the Euro-wide hegemon in the first place. All this "Woe is me we're losing our autonomy and subjugated blah blah blah..." is your own fault. The UK is too small to have much global say individually anymore, so Brexit is dumb, but would be a major power as the de facto leader of the EU, much like Germany is today. This is a totally self inflicted situation by lack of foresight.

The EU could have been a thriving coalition under British style governance, who are pretty capable at that sort of thing, but instead y'all let the fucking Germans run the goddamn thing with predictable results.
 
I mean, I'm not wrong on any score. Nothing I've said is remotely controversial or questioned. I specifically mentioned the Greeks because they are probably the single most used example for teaching students the definitions of nations and nation states. It's literally in almost every textbook.

China was not invading Hong Kong either. Britain just lost it's appetite to maintain it, like the rest of the Empire. It was the last time Britain was actively influencing culture on the world stage though, unless you want to count Downton Abbey. Everything else is just leftover artifacts from the Imperial past

I mean, you know I'm the most avid Anglophile here short of Fwiffo Fwiffo , it's not like I have any vested interest in minimizing British culture. Quite the opposite, I constantly moan at the lack of appreciation of it. Doesn't obviate the fact that it's not a dominant factor worldwide anymore.

The only reason I even stop in this thread is to watch the completely predictable trainwreck. If you scroll back however many thousand pages it's run now, you'll see my position is the UK should have been the Euro-wide hegemon in the first place. All this "Woe is me we're losing our autonomy and subjugated blah blah blah..." is your own fault. The UK is too small to have much global say individually anymore, so Brexit is dumb, but would be a major power as the de facto leader of the EU, much like Germany is today. This is a totally self inflicted situation by lack of foresight.

The EU could have been a thriving coalition under British style governance, who are pretty capable at that sort of thing, but instead y'all let the fucking Germans run the goddamn thing with predictable results.

Wrong on most accounts, except maybe the Greeks and others detailed below.

The Brits had to return Hong Kong to China as the agreed lease was up.

The EU is set-up as a continental system, such tried and tested vehicles for advancing society, such as common law, favoured by the Brits doesn't go down too well with the likes of the French. It's also specifically set-up not to copy the Brits, but to stop the French and Germans killing each other. But as they revert to type, it's becoming an empire and inherently centralized and trying to be a capitalist-corporatist-socialist hybrid. A horrid creation that's turning authoritarian very vast. The EU could never thrive with the Brits as driving force as it was specifically set-up with something else in mind.

The fact that May has prostrated herself before them in abject capitulation is not a weakness of the British psyche, but if it not rectified, when the EU fails the egg on the face of the UK will be something very difficult to live down. They will be seriously diminished.
 
I mean, I'm not wrong on any score. Nothing I've said is remotely controversial or questioned. I specifically mentioned the Greeks because they are probably the single most used example for teaching students the definitions of nations and nation states. It's literally in almost every textbook.

China was not invading Hong Kong either. Britain just lost it's appetite to maintain it, like the rest of the Empire. It was the last time Britain was actively influencing culture on the world stage though, unless you want to count Downton Abbey. Everything else is just leftover artifacts from the Imperial past

I mean, you know I'm the most avid Anglophile here short of Fwiffo Fwiffo , it's not like I have any vested interest in minimizing British culture. Quite the opposite, I constantly moan at the lack of appreciation of it. Doesn't obviate the fact that it's not a dominant factor worldwide anymore.

The only reason I even stop in this thread is to watch the completely predictable trainwreck. If you scroll back however many thousand pages it's run now, you'll see my position is the UK should have been the Euro-wide hegemon in the first place. All this "Woe is me we're losing our autonomy and subjugated blah blah blah..." is your own fault. The UK is too small to have much global say individually anymore, so Brexit is dumb, but would be a major power as the de facto leader of the EU, much like Germany is today. This is a totally self inflicted situation by lack of foresight.

The EU could have been a thriving coalition under British style governance, who are pretty capable at that sort of thing, but instead y'all let the fucking Germans run the goddamn thing with predictable results.

Dawg, I'll keep this brief.

You're wrong about Hong Kong because as Pimpy said the lease ran out in 97. The Chinese weren't going to extend it so there was nothing that we could do. If we had refused there is a good chance the Chinese would have taken Hong Kong by force when the lease ran out. This was my point about the large Chinese force and our inability to repulse it by conventional military means.

There was no lack of foresight just realpolitik.

As for cultural significance, Britain's rich history, its literature, its language, its thinkers will mean it remains culturally significant for quite some time yet. There is a reason why London is one of the world's most visited cities and why visitors from all other the world visit its cathedrals and country houses.

You're a Savile Row man, you should know all this.

As for Brexit, its mainly a classical liberal argument for me, I want to keep those in power close enough for me to be able to kick their arses., the EU is heading in the opposite direction. I also feel that the British economy is seriously dysfunctional and needs rebalancing. This is made more difficult with OJEU regulations.

Immigration isn't really an issue for me, even though it could have been handled better and this is down to the de haut en bas attitude of the government (see above).

As for Britain being a global power, not interested, been there, done that. Empires come and Empires go.
 
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The Battle of Britain is over, the Battle for Italy is about to begin:

Take Heed Italy, Brussels Doesn't Care One Whit About You


by Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/23/2018 - 02:00
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Authored by Tom Luongo via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
Watching the complete betrayal of Brexit by British Prime Minister Theresa “The Gypsum Lady” May is proving to be a wake up call for Italians. The latest polling results coming out of Italy show that while the populist coalition in Italy is unpopular in Brussels it is still very popular with Italians.
And that’s a good thing because when you look closely at Brexit negotiations it is clear that all that matters is the EU retaining power over the U.K. and not what is in the best interest of anyone involved, British or otherwise.

The Italian coalition partners still command nearly 60% of all Italians’ support, only their preference has changed. Lega now outpolls Five Star Movement (M5S) 33% to 26%, while the other center-right parties, namely Silvio “Stalking Horse” Berlusconi’s Forza Italia have collapsed (from 14% at March’s elections to just 7% now).
And roughly that same number now see the EU as mistreating Italy. These numbers will only get worse if the EU goes through with levying fines against Italy for submitting a budget Brussels doesn’t like.
Moreover, now we’re seeing support for Italeave rise as well. A recent poll by Politico Magazine posted over at Zerohedge shows a slight majority of Italians under age 45 are ready to do just that, leave the European Union.
The over 45 crowd is still enamored with the ideal of the EU tying together a warring Europe rather than confront the reality of what it actually is, a distant and tyrannical oligarchy led by unelected technocrats with strong ties to old money and old power.
The source of this support comes from, I think, the stark contrast between May’s appeasement of rankled EU leadership over the British people’s temerity to want out of their wretched union and how Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini is attacking Brussels’ hypocrisy over fiscal restraints.
Salvini is doing exactly what he needs to do to shore up support and push the Italian electorate away from Brussels. It was a stroke of political genius to submit a budget which placated both halves of the coalition – tax and regulation cuts along with universal basic income – while ever so gently flaunting EU budget rules.
Salvini and his partner in insurrection Luigi Di Maio crafted a perfect piece of political poison for the EU to swallow. There’s nothing really objectionable in the budget proposal. It won’t solve any of Italy’s problems nor make them materially worse.
It was put forth to rankle EU leadership that has grown fat and lazy on having everything rigged in their favor.
And they have over-reacted in the most predictable manner.
Think about what the EU is doing over this budget. They are threatening billions in fines to an Italian government that is in debt up to its eyeballs.
This is the very definition of “bad optics.”
But, consider the way they’ve handled Brexit. They’ve demanded a massive fee from the U.K. for leaving. This is on top of the money it already pays into the EU budget every year.
And don’t forget folks that the only reason the Italian sovereign debt issue isn’t front page news is because the European Central Bank is the only marginal buyer of Italian debt. And ECB President Mario Draghi isn’t doing this out of the goodness of his Goldman-Sachs-trained heart.
He’s doing it because if he doesn’t then the entire European banking system collapses.
So this whole thing is nothing more than Kabuki theatre. And Salvini knows it.
He understands that the euro is a death trap for Italy. He also knows he has all the leverage because of the size of the debt pile.
And yet, watching the EU now is exactly like watching it in handle the Greek debt talks in 2015.
They refused to negotiate. They make unreasonable demands. In Greece’s case they had a feckless Greek electorate which wouldn’t back Grexit and give equally feckless Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras the support he needed to take Greece out of the Euro.
So the strategy worked.
And the same thing is happening with Brexit. The British aristocracy do not want to leave the EU. Theresa May is a Remainer and so obviously on the take it’s not even funny at this point. From the beginning she’s had all the leverage and yet she acts as if she doesn’t.
So now she’s thrown together the exact deal that Brussels wanted all along, control over Britain’s tax and trade policy while removing their voice from the EU parliament. Honestly, Britain’s status once this deal is signed off on is simply a glimpse into every country’s future that stays.
Taxation without representation.
It should, then, come as no shock to anyone that the EU is handling Salvini and his government with the same disdain and derision. And that’s exactly what Salvini wants. He has to maneuver Brussels into making them be the bad guys.
Because if he’s going to get Italy free from Brussels it can’t be his idea. It has to be a popular groundswell.
Thankfully for him and Italians in general, the dopes in high places in Brussels are only too happy to oblige. I think they like being odious jerks, frankly.
They really do think they can lawyer their way through this. But the truth is they can’t.
Why do you think French President Emmanuel Macron and Lame Duck German Chancellor Angela Merkel want a Grand Army of the EU so badly? It’s to invade and occupy wayward member states not protect themselves from Russia.
The more the EU tries to bully and force Italy to do what it wants the more Italians, even older ones, will support Salvini’s crusade against them. Populism is popular all over Europe.
And the EU parliamentary elections in May will likely prove to be a major turning point in the EU’s trajectory. All of the Euroskeptic parties are vastly under-represented versus their current polling numbers. Hundreds of seats are set to change hands in May.
And many of the newcomers will not be in the pay of The Davos Crowd.
Maybe then the EU will realize just how fragile the entire project is.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11-22/take-heed-italy-brussels-doesnt-care-one-whit-about-you

 
The Brits had to return Hong Kong to China as the agreed lease was up.
.

Dawg, I'll keep this brief.

You're wrong about Hong Kong because as Pimpy said the lease ran out in 97. The Chinese weren't going to extend it so there was nothing that we could do. If we had refused there is a good chance the Chinese would have taken Hong Kong by force when the lease ran out. This was my point about the large Chinese force and our inability to repulse it by conventional military means.

I am going to reply to this from memory of my uni days.

The island of Hong Kong was annexed. Like Falklands and Gibraltar. The Kowloon peninsula and New Territories were on a 99 year lease. As Hong Kong was dependent on the peninsula for supplies and water, etc. - it didn't make sense just to keep the island. I believe Thatcher threatened to keep the island when she was in China with Chairman Deng but Deng said China was not Argentina - the recent victory in the Falklands giving her some confidence to bring it up.
 
Dawg, I'll keep this brief.

You're wrong about Hong Kong because as Pimpy said the lease ran out in 97. The Chinese weren't going to extend it so there was nothing that we could do. If we had refused there is a good chance the Chinese would have taken Hong Kong by force when the lease ran out. This was my point about the large Chinese force and our inability to repulse it by conventional military means.

There was no lack of foresight just realpolitik.

As for cultural significance, Britain's rich history, its literature, its language, its thinkers will mean it remains culturally significant for quite some time yet. There is a reason why London is one of the world's most visited cities and why visitors from all other the world visit its cathedrals and country houses.

You're a Savile Row man, you should know all this.

As for Brexit, its mainly a classical liberal argument for me, I want to keep those in power close enough for me to be able to kick their arses., the EU is heading in the opposite direction. I also feel that the British economy is seriously dysfunctional and needs rebalancing. This is made more difficult with OJEU regulations.

Immigration isn't really an issue for me, even though it could have been handled better and this is down to the de haut en bas attitude of the government (see above).

As for Britain being a global power, not interested, been there, done that. Empires come and Empires go.

Other than the Hong Kong point, you aren't disagreeing with me at all then, you just don't care.
 
The traitorous and duplicitous one has given Spain a veto on the Rock now. What madness has led to the future of the UK and her territories be handed over to the private and secretive deals of this wretched woman?

The Tories and Parliament had better grow some balls very quick. There's been no transparency throughout this sell-out.
 
Other than the Hong Kong point, you aren't disagreeing with me at all then, you just don't care.

What are you talking about?

Your points about Britain's cultural significance and the Hong Kong handover are clearly wrong.

Your points about the EU are irrelevant, what we could/should have done doesn't matter, what he did/have done does. Again, realpolitik. Politics is the art of the possible. Understanding this should come naturally to a pragmatist like yourself.

Britain will never be allowed to upset the Franco/German axis in the EU, its essentially their project, and we are seen as being too close to the US (the reason the US is keen for us to stay in). This was one of the reasons De Gaulle vetoed our entry several times.

This conversation is going around in circles at this point and to be honest, I'm fed up with people who don't really understand how the EU and Britain works telling the British what they should do.
 
Surprise: The other EU states just approved the bad Brexit deal.

Oh, they'll do as they're told.

The 'deal' as it is will not get through parliament as it effectively renders Britain what I can only describe as a suzerainty. A no deal wont get through parliament either. So I see two possibilities, both risky. One a GE, the other a second referendum.

A GE risks letting Corbyn and his cronies in. (Corbyn however, is a closet leaver so in that sense it would be interesting)

A second referendum I suspect won't be decisive, unless it is gerrymandered in some way.

There will be significant political instability in Britain for some time to come, mainly due to the cynicism of the remain campaign and it ongoing demonisation and caricaturing of those who voted leave, 17+ million of them.
 
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