It’s always weird to read stuff from the UK to do with brexit. That paper is clearly some right wing rag and the reality is that we are connected via the channel tunnel and all that this is doing is leaving us off the maps and probably the reasoble prices.
But people like to rile it up like we are missing out on some grand EU mega plan that is going to save the world. The EU has plenty of problems and is not some sort of nirvana. Would I rather be in the EU? Yes it is better to be part of something. However it is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination and to be honest day to day it makes little difference to me. People in the UK are not crying into their union jack hankies, we have bigger problems like a completely corrupt and incompetent ruling class.
Because anti-globalism is the most widely held opinion on earth. You can find people supporting it in every country and they use the power of infrastructure built up by countries working together to spread their message. It is like some weird variant on the paradox of tolerance. A nationalist can only recirculate their unoriginal ideas because internationalism existed for so long.
Every time I hear about Brexit I’m reminded how 17 million people directly fucked up my ability to be part of something just to spite themselves. If you don’t want to be part of something then just take yourself and leave, don’t drag everyone else out too.
I lived in Britain during the Leave campaign and it was all about getting the benefits without the responsabilities or costs.
In fact, the sequence of political events that lead to the Leave Referendum was Britain in the EU trying to have less and less obligations whilst keeping the benefits of Membership to the point that eventually, when the UK demanded “otherwise we have a Referedum on Leave” to not to have to abide by Freedom Of Movement into their country whilst keeping all the rest including Freedom Of Movement for Britons into other EU countries, the rest of the EU said “No!”. After this, David Cammeron was under huge pressure to do the Referendum “to show the EU” and the rest is History.
The La-La-Land fantasism of the Leave side was always unbelievable, with everything from genuine expections of, post leave, having “Same Rights as Members With No Obligations”, to after Brexit “Other EU Nations will Follow Us Out”.
I would say that by this point it’s clear that whatever Britain is “showing the EU” isn’t quite what was in Leaver fantasies.
To be fair that is because it was sold to the public on outright lies and the readings of a couple of unscrupulous twats.
Johnson for example had always been pro-eu and reportedly had two articles written, one remain and one leave, and based his decision of which one to publish on which was more politically expedient for him, not on what he actually thought was better for the country.
Switzerland participates in Schengen and the european free trade association while not being an EU member state. The UK doesn't do any of those things.
Scheming EU to make an EU travel plan for countries that didnt voluntarily leave the EU to pursue some racist bullshit propaganda that even the people who started brexit, deep down, didnt want, and never thought would actually happen.
There is this saying ‘people are not islands’ to mean people are interconnected with each other. The literal sense being applied by the last decade and by extension the last semicentennial is weird. The EU is a federation and any country can leave, but I still think Brexit was a mistake.
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