Originally posted by aeolium
View Post
One of the things that has been most striking during this period is just how influential the United States remains in terms of Europe and its prospects. Mr Gove was asked recently whether it was somewhat ironic that having argued against the worst aspects of American big business in the Brexit debate he was overjoyed that this country was now electing to be much closer to that very business. His garbled answer was that it wouldn't be an opaque Davos sort of arrangement but a different, more constructive sort of arrangement. So there you have it - it's one American big business led economy in the EU and another but same American big business led economy outside it. Britain first? No, Britain shrinks.
The EU did none of us any favours with its never ending expansion, nor its lack of transparency on its accounts, nor in terms of the limited accountability you mention, nor its failure to be flexible when one of the worst Prime Ministers in our history was unable to get a sensible deal before June 2016. The worst of it, though, was its partial abandoning of European social democratic ideals for a Friedmanite dream with the emphasis on dream. Britain was finally able to pay off its war debt to the US in the early 2000s - yippee, we're free, yes? No actually the story was barely a footnote in the broadsheets possibly because the American led media ensured it. Oh yes, and it avoided joining the Euro. Now it is "breaking free" by becoming alternatively intertwined. The timing is absolutely lousy, of course, for we had only just started to recover from that crash of 2007/8. The election of Mr Trump promises close ties with a version of America that will give even less of an inch than it did before. I am hearing little about what the British produce or could produce when the going gets tough. A start might be to say cheerio to Starbucks and companies of that kind so that cheap British coffee shops can fill the vacuum while also paying taxes.
Comment