Today's issue is the waning of British power. William Hague may fancy himself as Lord Palmerston, but any remnant of Britannia's rule has been eroded by recession and dwarfed by the might accruing to the US and China. No wonder talk of the "special relationship" provokes a pitying smile from Obama's henchmen. Europe is the only British show in town. Its institutions are imperfect and inefficient, as the centre-Left should be more willing to admit. Even so, the EU is the sole locus of Britain's future influence and a necessary linchpin of a multi-polar world. That is why the first president is so crucial to the EU and the UK alike.
Mary Riddell's view is simply ridiculous.
Essentially what she is saying is that we should throw away our liberties and accept an anti-democratic EU just so we can pretend to play hard ball with the US and China.
First, do we as a country actually want to stomp around the world like the US and China? No, what we want is peace and trade which is just as easy to acheive as Britain as it as the EU.
And second, do we honestly believe even as the United States of Europe we can threaten the US and China. To really play hard ball with these countries the EU would have to support a large and expansionist millitary. Something which recent history indicates is of little interest to EU member states.
If faux-world-power is the only decent argument in favour of the EU, why do we even bother with it? I have no idea. But what we can be sure of is trading liberties for power really isn't a very good deal at all.
3 comments:
Mary Riddell is merely repeating what the EU have already planned for.
Read Information is Power 4 - Ambitions for EU Defence in 2020
http://tinyurl.com/ybw4jgd
Documents from the EU produced by the EU Institute for Security Studies, an EU policy think-tank. It covers long term EU security strategy.
To avoid "global systemic collapse", the document suggests that the "full spectrum of high intensity combat" be used to protect what is called "globalisers" from "localisers". Localisers, (making up 80% of the world population) include the "bottom billion", states in the Middle East and the so-called "Alienated Modern States" like North Korea.
Globalisers include not only members of the OECD and "Rapid Transition Societies" like China and Brazil, but also "Transnational Corporations"—the "Fortune Global 1000".
Two things seem certain in all this: (1) my views, my votes, don't count, and (2) the past 13yrs of Labour's authoritarian legislation are merely stepping stones to Authoritarian Communitarianism.
IanPJ - agreed, and not just with reference to Labour. Flight may be the only answer - I cannot see how to fight this.
I found it interesting that I am seeing more and more websites listing EU with the differing languages as opposed to the country name and the languages popping up. Soon Britain will be nothing more then a reference to the state of Britain in the E.U.S. Lost will be any trace of the individuality that is England, Ireland, Scotland or Wales.
I bet when voters see/hear the phrase "Change" they really do not see what it will mean.
And now for something completely different...
Today's Word Verification to post this comment...
"ricin"
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