In the words of the Sun, David Cameron has told Europe to shove it and walked out of any plans to save the Euro and it seems nobody knows what to think of that.
The anti-European right wing press are lauding him for his actions while the left wing press are scolding him for isolating us and turning our backs on our Europe brothers and sisters.
My own sympathies are somewhere in the middle and i'm uncertain what Cameron has done is a good thing or not.
If we had signed up to what the French and Germans are demanding, then it would have cost us tens of billions for countries that are not going to be able to claw there way back from the brink they are balanced precariously on.
Harsh to say but the PIIGS are doomed and further bail outs are futile, not that we could afford to dig out Spain or Italy without bankrupting us all anyway so i'm with Cameron on that score.
Where i think Cameron fell down was setting his face against Europe and going in with a list of demands and threatening to walk out if he didn't get them. No negotiation, this is what we want and we will take our ball home with us if we don't get them.
Now he has done that, we are on the outside with no input into how the European system evolves, a European system that we are heavily reliant upon for our own survival. France and Germany now get to make all the calls and mould it into the system they want and we have to just go with the flow.
I have always maintained that what we have is a halfway Europe, with everyone looking out for their own interests and that is never going to work. It needs to be all or nothing along the lines of the US model, an United States of Europe with one person calling the shots rather than 27 separate leaders squabbling.
Now we are outside and in the immediate term, you could argue that Cameron has saved us a fortune but in the long term, we have managed to remove ourselves from the decision making process of a system that we are eventually going to have to join with if we are ever going to have an influence on the World Stage.
The future is China, USA and the EU, Britain on it's own will be sidelined and ignored so it's a case of Cameron saving us a few pound today but we will sure be paying dearly for it tomorrow.
6 comments:
I hope you and I aren't the only ones who want a USE. I guess the realities of union aren't so nice and fluffy.
At some point, Europe is going to have to toss the unanimity requirements for most important things. Germans are going to have to get stuck with laws that they hate and the French and Polish love. The French are going to get stuck with laws that they find detestable that (heaven forbid) the British and Germans love. The EU has to be able to say "this is the way it is," and it has to be painful when national governments say "no" to it.
I wouldn't support enforcement invasions, but punitive isolation would get folks in line about as well. Enforcement isn't enforcement unless it's painful. If Vermont decided it didn't like its citizens paying federal taxes, or it didn't care to honor its debts, DC wouldn't send a letter.
China's going to the same place as Japan, except without the whole full industrialization part.
Hey Lucy,
if yawl act nice, dump your unions, and cut a lot of your welfare programs you can become the 51st state!
kinda ironic don't you think?
q
I don't think there is much support for it here Nog, the little Englanders won't hold sway and it's all about history and if we are not in control, we damn well don't want to be told what to do by the French or the Germans.
If Tony Blair or Margaret Thatcer was still in power it might have come true q, we would be learning the words to thr Star Spangled Banner and dropping all the letter u's from our words. I refuse to say aluminium or route your way though.
you've got nerve... saying your words WIFF all the letters.
i know yawl say sCHedule do you also say sCHool? no you don't...
q
It's almost a song q:
You say Aloominum, we say aluminium, you say rout, we say root, tomato -tomartoe, sem-i - sem-ee, let's call this 51st state thing off.
A USE is further away now than it's been for about 60 years. There's a shitload more to life than economics.
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