Uh, oh, yeah, go fuck yourself.
I’m sorry, Britain, but you’re just too puny to prosper outside the EU
More bollocks.
But I have a different message for you, Britain: don’t go. Not because Europe is better off with you, although it is, but because the EU is good for you, too.
Yeah, because being run by an unelected, authoritarian, unaccountable body that we cannot depose is a good thing, eh? Idiot.
A Britain detached from the EU would be measured on its own. And, well, how do I put this delicately? You’re not what you once were.
So what? We would be directly in charge of our own destiny – we can remove elected governments that we don’t like. The plethora of EU imposed regulations need no longer apply to SMEs that don’t trade with the union and we will save money. This is a good thing.
The point is, you’re powerful today only when you are part of a larger team.
So what? Who wants to belong to a “team” over which we have no direct influence, that we cannot remove at the ballot box?
By process of elimination, you’re pretty much left with the EU. But give the EU its due. Yes, it is guilty of bureaucratic overreach, sometimes comically so. But it has also been a democratizing force in Central and Eastern Europe. It will continue to be one in places like Ukraine, and, maybe one day, in Turkey. Awarding the EU its Peace Prize was one of the least silly decisions the Nobel Committee has made when handing out that award in recent years.
Fuck me, that’s some moronic idiocy right there. No, we could go it alone and we would manage perfectly well. Giving the EU a peace prize merely demonstrated the arrant vacuity of the whole stupid process. As for democratising – it is not the place of the EU or anyone else for that matter to poke about democratising anywhere. It being none of their damned business and all that. What a fuckwit this man is.
Alone, Britain would be so much easier to ignore. And without Britain, the EU would fray and possibly fragment.
Good.
How would the rupture of such a large and collectively robust democratic bloc possibly serve Britain’s interests?
No different to now, actually.
Michael Petrou is a Canadian author, journalist and former British resident
How about you fuck off back to Canada, mind your own business and desist from telling us how to vote in an election that is nothing to do with you?
And tell Obama to mind his own business as well. Wind your red neck in.
“I’m sorry, Britain, but you’re just too puny to prosper outside the EU.”
Really? Then why don’t the Argentines just invade the Falklands and take them?
Yeah, thought not.
“The point is, you’re powerful today only when you are part of a larger team.”
Last time I checked, the Commonwealth still existed. Granted, it’s not a major trading bloc, but there’s no reason why it couldn’t become one. Today’s communications technology means there’s really no need for any modern trading bloc’s member states to also share physical borders.
Plenty of other countries are also not members of the EU, yet manage to trade with its members without any obvious difficulties.
“Alone, Britain would be so much easier to ignore.”
Yes, let’s stay in so the EU can continue to ignore us instead. It appears to me that since the in/out referendum was announced we are being ignored rather less, by Canadians for example.
The thing I find most interesting in all of this is the total and absolute deafening silence on the wonderful “deal” mr potato head’s tough negotation secured and which, as I understood it, the yes vote is supposed to be about.
After he was pretty clear that “Europe” wasn’t right for this country so he is offering a better version of it. Isn’t he?
The “democratic” bit I struggle with; where is that bit in the EU I wonder.
“But it has also been a democratizing force in Central and Eastern Europe.”
WTF?
Was it the EU that brought down the Iron Curtain? I think not.
And the EU is, by design, anti-democratic through and through; it was designed from the very beginning to avoid, over-ride, and eliminate democracy.
Tell this ignorant Canadian to go stuff himself with a hockey stick.
And it’s nothing to do with him anyway.
“…Tell this ignorant Canadian to go stuff himself with a hockey stick….”
Bendy end first, of course.
He could also go puck himself.