Britain’s biggest unions call for much closer UK-EU ties amid ‘volatile’ global economy
Britain’s biggest unions call for much closer UK-EU ties amid ‘volatile’ global economy
Exclusive: union umbrella body calls for new cooperation agreement ahead of Keir Starmer’s reset talks with Brussels
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I was bitter and felt a bit betrayed that you left us, but thats History now. I would be happy if we can get the Gang back together. Britons are good People and you built a great Nation.
Lets go!🇬🇧🇪🇺🇵🇱
If it’s any comfort, many of us Brits felt just as bitterly betrayed that slightly over half of our voters decided to vote for something so obviously stupid - and 28% just didn’t bother to vote at all.
Britain will always be European 🇬🇧🇪🇺🇬🇧🇪🇺 We stand with our continental brothers and sisters against tyranny and for democracy 💪 Together!!
(Much love to 🇵🇱 - Polish RAF pilots were heroes in the Battle of Britain and the bomba kryptologiczna turned the course of the war. Our nations are bound together in blood and freedom. May we never forget.)
Thx. Oh and a i know i created a misunderstanding: I use the Polish Flag because its just the same as my Lands(officially "Province" yuck) Flag. :)
I’ve been seeing you across multiple posts use the Polish flag an have been wondering myself like „nah, that’s impossible, he can’t be proud to be a Pole’ xD
Savage bantz, truly the thing that binds Europe together 😆
Oh, do tell, if you don’t mind me asking which Lands you’re speaking of? Monaco? Indonesia..?
My thoughts exactly. Britain got targeted by Putin puppets before the rest of us did so they weren't prepared. It's easy to point fingers but I think recognizing the common threat and focusing on the future will get us further.
It was a perfect storm event.
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The conservatives ran with a vote as a manifesto item, planning to drop it when they had to form a coalition (they won however).
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The government had used the EU as a whipping boy for their own problems.
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There was a strong minority in the conservatives with a nationalistic bend.
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A relatives element wanted out of the tax transparency laws the EU was enacting.
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It turned into a popularity against Cameron, who wasn't popular at that point.
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No one thought leave would win, since it was such a shot in the foot. This meant a lot of people didn't bother to vote against it.
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The remain campaign was lackluster, while the leave campaign was impressive and shameless (this is where Putin likely put his foot in hardest).
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The main opposition leader was also anti EU (for very different reasons) counter to most of the labour party, and so flopped around like a beached fish.
Basically, a nationalistic minority got it on the table (intended to shut them down for good). Lies and deceptions got it through, and the escape from tax laws put the bit between the teeth, as we got ran down by it.
A change at any point would have likely killed it, but here we are.
FYI, I would consider myself more in line with European right now than British. I'll keep fighting, tooth and nail, to get us back in as soon as viable.
Thanks for the summary. What I think is important to note is that in Russia's version of Project 2025 (published in 1997) the author had already announced it:
The United Kingdom, merely described as an "extraterritorial floating base of the U.S.", should be cut off from the European Union.
The book also states plans for Germany and France that are interesting in the light of recent events:
Germany should be offered the de facto political dominance over most Protestant and Catholic states located within Central and Eastern Europe
France should be encouraged to form a bloc with Germany, as they both have a "firm anti-Atlanticist tradition".
Bottom line is Brits aren't more naive, nationalistic or what have you than the rest of us, we've just been assigned different roles by Moscow.
I think we are more prone to nationalism. We fundamentally have a moat between us and the rest of Europe. Our empire also wasn't collapsed. Instead it morphed (under threat of collapse) into the commonwealth. That left us with a lot more soft power than would otherwise expected. There's also a lot more nostalgia for the "good old days" than France or Germany seem to have.
It made us an easier target to manipulate.
There's also a lot more nostalgia for the "good old days" than France or Germany seem to have.
There definitely was at the time but we've caught up since. Even in Germany despite what the "good old days" refer to here. The specific rhetoric varies between countries but ultimately this is just what happens when you rally morons and make them feel like they understand politics no matter the place.
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now that you mention Putin i always think:
no we have plenty of Idiotic Thoughts ourselves, we dont need foreign interference(obv the Russians helped a a bit/a lot) for that. xD
Felt sad as well when the UK decided to leave the EU as well. Also gave us a lot more stuff to deal with as my wife is British. So I really hope we get the gang back. Love the UK as a country and it's people, we should be working together as an European continent and work our way away drom the US
I would be happy if we can get the Gang back together.
Love this. Hope its not long before we're part of the gang again.
I was living in the UK as an immigrant back during the Leave referendum and for Brexit and, frankly, I would not welcome them back until they get over their problem of widespread delusions of grandeur, xenophobia and Fascist thinking (though, unlike most, a posh mix of elements from Fascism).
They're basically Hungary, only posher and with more money and looking to America (and we all know how those are doing nowadays, now don't we?!) rather than Russia.
It might not seem so from the outside since that country's elites and middle classes have a deeply entrenched culture of tightly managing appearences (something one learns to to see through when living there long enough) so the form of Far-Right that has contaminated both main parties (with a First Past The Post system, they suffer from a similar lack of Democracy as America, hence they have 2 dominant parties) over there is a lot less rough, uncut an loud than what you seen in places like Hungary and the US.
I've lived in a couple of countries in Europe, North, South and Western and Britain is further to the Right than any of them and their citizens still hold hard onto the delusions of being inherently superior to foreigners (from the time of the Empire, kept alive and fed over the years by the way the Press covers and spins international affairs).
Even before Leave, the UK was never in the EU with team spirit and treating it as a project for the common good, rather it always had a "what's in it for me", "win-lose" take on it.
In my opinion, which I believe is well informed, Britain should only be allowed back in once they grow up into a well-adjusted run-of-the-mill middle-sized nation.
I would not welcome them back until they get over their problem of widespread delusions of grandeur, xenophobia and Fascist thinking
The Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and France would like a word 😉
Having lived in The Netherlands let's just say they're not even in the same bloody universe as Brits when it comes to thinking they're better than everybody else (in fact as far as I can tell the Dutch in general have almost no Nationalistic delusions of grandeur) and as for their Far-Right, the Dutch Far-Right took off led by a guy who was from the start very openly gay (something that would never happen in Britain) and it never exceeded 25% of the votes, whilst in the UK it took over the Tory Party during the Leave Referendum and went on to rule for 3 consecutive governments.
The kind of anti-immigration talk being pushed from the sidelines by the Far-Right in all those other countries is what the Tories (on of the two main British parties) has been pushing for over a decade in government.
Britain is pretty much 10 - 20 years ahead of the rest of Europe when it comes to the Far-Right dominating politics.
Having also lived and worked in the Netherlands they are some of the most casually racist people I've ever met. If you're not white life is very different to if you are. This is not everyone, of course. I have life long friends that are Dutch and ok the whole they are warm and friendly. But you might have a different point of view of racism depending on how you look.
Far right populism is alive and well in Europe. The UK doesn't have a monopoly on that. We should all be worried.
In Britain those casual racists were in power for the last 12 years (and have been replaced by a supposedly left-of-center mainstream party that's so much to the Right they're repeating the same anti-immigration bullshit as the other party).
Whilst living there I've had multiple non-white friends (from quite the range of origins and ancestries) being victims of racism and I myself was a victim of racism (whilst I'm supposedly "white", I'm from Southern Europe, so a lot of Brits have massive prejudices against the likes of me).
In The Netherlands I had non-white friends and I never once heard any of them complain of "casual racism". That said, it was more than a decade ago before the Theo van Gogh murder and I hear anti-Islamist really took off after that.
Bringing Britain back into the EU now would be like bringing Hungary in now if they were out.
And this is just one reason why Britain for now is not a good match for the EU we want to have (which has its own increasing racism problems, especially against people from the middle-east, and doesn't really need to bring in even more Far-Right nutters), not going into other things such as how when in the EU they would often act in the service of American interests and were prone to blackmailing the rest with the veto to extract concessions for themselves alone (hence all the exceptions Britain had).
Bringing Britain back into the EU now would be like bringing Hungary in now if they were out.
No because, as I've explained to you, Britain doesn't have a monopoly on racism or far right extremists. Actual current EU members have the very same issues you claim you don't want to import into the EU. And quite frankly "not having racist incidents" is a daft entry requirement for no other reason than all member states would fail instantly. Which is why the EU doesn't have this as a requirement.
not going into other things such as how when in the EU they would often act in the service of American interests and were prone to blackmailing the rest with the veto to extract concessions for themselves alone (hence all the exceptions Britain had).
You would be extremely naive to believe that the French don't vote in their national interests when it comes to Common Agriculture Policy, or the Germans don't act in thei interest when they negotiated cheap Russian gas to fuel their economy, or the Irish in their interests when they veto and drag their heels on mass corporate tax evasion, or the Poles when they protest and block Ukraine selling grain into the EU to raise funds so that they can stop Russian aggression. Every country in the EU is working in its own interest and insofar as the EU facilitates that they will continue doing so. It's politically and historically naive to think otherwise. And I'm not knocking it, they should be working for their own interests as getting as much out of EU membership as they can. That's why leaving was such a mistake because the UK could have gotten so much more out of the EU whilst being in than out.
First your arguments are either Strawmen (the Racism thing, which is not in my original post and is but an element of a far broader Far Right point I was making) or Appeal To Absurd fallacies (they don't have a "monopoly on Racism" hence it's ok, an argument so absurd that Russia would qualify for EU membership by that logic, and "others too act in their own self interest" hence Britain is ok, again an absurd point which means any country no matter how bad their behavior in the EU is fine because other countries also act in their own self interest, so for example Hungary is just fine in the EU).
By artificially flattening the universe to only to states, totally black or totally white, in that "argumentative" structure of yours, you've reduced it all to "nobody is perfect hence Britain is fine in the EU", which as I said is such a ridiculous reductio ad absurdum that your "argument" would justify bloody North Korea or Nazi Germany in the EU since, "everybody is a bit Racist and every nation acts in their own self interest".
The problem with Britain is not one of "not being perfect" (no nation is, hence why that "argument" of yours is seriously ridiculous), it's one of "given the imperfections that everybody has, how bad are they by comparison?"
Having seen the Leave campaign up close and personal and the arguments of Brexiters before and after the vote, they have a very large fraction of their population (over 1/3, more that the far right vote in all the countries you mentioned earlier) who positively relished the idea of damaging the EU. I don't just mean, they wanted to merely leave, they actually wanted the rest to suffer. That's a reflection of a broader malaise of that country, namely extreme nationalism with huge delusions of grandeur to the point of hate for the other (and this was back a decade ago already), which has been fed over the years by maybe the most disfunctional Press in Europe and by a Political class which is very much to the Right of most of Europe, none of which has changed since the Referendum.
Leave Referendum Britain, with the massive numbers of people who detest the rest of the EU, with such an extremely selfish take on the EU that when they left they had much more exceptions than everybody else and who look to America rather than to their European partners as inspiration, is still there alive and kicking, it's just that in the meanwhile a proportion of the Leavers have pragmatically concluded it's more beneficial for them personally that Britain is an EU member - not a change of heart but a revaluation of the "business argument" for Britain in the EU.
Absolutely, the EU itself isn't perfect and the countries in it are all imperfect in many ways (nothing is perfect), yet when one of the most selfish, ultra-neoliberal (very much US-style) and borderline Fascist countries chooses to leave, that's a win for the rest of the EU (as for Britain then, so it would be for Hungary now) because the leaving of one of the least cooperative and more far right members makes the group as a whole better, and for them return should only happen when they would make the group better, not worse - for Britain that's when they've sufficiently evolved socially and politically beyond the stage they're in now that them as an EU member is a net positive for the EU as a whole, not just good for Britain themselves.
Until then, it's fine if we all cooperate, what we can't have is present day Britain on the inside having votes and vetos on things that impact the lives of the other 470 million people in the EU and blackmailing the rest with threats of having a tantrum all over again, to obtain special conditions for themselves which nobody else has just like they were doing before and which ultimately ended in the Referendum and them leaving.
😉 I'm not sure you've understood, at all, my point. But that's ok. You seem extremely hurt for some reason by the UK, that's ok I'm sorry this happened to you. All I'm trying to explain is that the qualities you dislike in the UK are present all over the EU, and thus your zeal to keep the UK out makes little to no sense.
You have to understand why the EU (and EEC before) was created and formed to understand why, hopefully in the future, the UK will rejoin - despite your objections and hesitation.
Anyways, I wish you a pleasant week. I have work to return to.
Nice attempt at changing your argumentative approach to make it about me and "interesting" that you didn't examine your own motivations in the same way.
The point which you for the 3rd or 4th time now have avoided is that amongst all others members and candidates, uniquelly, the UK has already done it: they went ahead and broke up with the group (a group which they had a history of taking advantage of to begin with, hence all the exceptions) causing damage all around, part of it purposefully.
It's actually the wisest and most rational action for the rest of the group to require trust to be rebuilt that the UK won't simply act in the same way again in before accepting it back - why bring a still disfunctional actor back into a position were they can do the same kind of damage all over again!? - which this being a country rather than a person, means that the social and political culture that caused the population and the power elites there to desire that the country acted as it did, must change.
The EU wasn't formed to understand anything - it's not some kind of Science Collective - the EU was formed for the good of the group, because together we are stronger and better than we are apart, so acting in ways that damage and weaken the whole group is the greatest breach of trust for the rest there is (hence all the talk about how to stop Hungary, whose actions, by the way, make the rest more weary of bringing back an old disruptive member who left acrimoniously).
Whilst I too believe the UK will eventually rejoin the EU because Historically, Culturally and Geographically Britain is European, I think that after what they did it will take decades and the country will have to go through a crisis or two before it has changed enough to be possible to trust it with the powers and responsibilities that come with membership. The stakes here are a lot higher than a book reading club or amateur football, so merely "forgive and forget" isn't really a reasonable option.
Now, since here is now Monday morning, I have got to go work too.
The amount of assumptions you're making without addressing or understanding what I'm saying is hilarious 😂.
"interesting" that you didn't examine your own motivations in the same way.
I'm more than happy to say the UK acted in its own interest whilst in the EU (agreeing with your point), that there are hard elements of disruptive right leaning racists in the UK (agreeing with your point), that the UK is unlikely to be accepted back into the EU in the short term (agreeing with your point). However you've asserted that these aspects don't exist (or exist in minor insignificant ways) within EU member states. Hungary aside, the EU has all the above problems that are very real and already disruptive. Far right minority parties winning significant ground in elections, harsh anti immigration rhetoric from all over the continent, significant othering and second class views towards non white Europeans (just look at how Turkish immigrants in the 1950s are treated still to this day), self interested countries vying for their own benefit rather than that of the whole, members being sanctioned by the EU for not following their own rules. None of these things are exclusive to the UK. This is what you don't understand, or are unwilling to understand.
Please, sir, that not everything is a win lose situation and that other people have valid opinions too. If you want to end this with several paragraphs of prognostication not addressing the point then fair enough.
I think, or at least I hope, that we both agree the UK will someday rejoin. But this won't be because it has suddenly become a more European Utopian country acting in the benefit of others (because such a thing doesn't exist). We'll rejoin for political and economic reasons which is how every other country has joined and no other reason. And I think you know that deep down.