It is a rare thing indeed when I trawl through the pages of the Subservient only to emerge with a smile and a jaunty spring in my step but today is just such an occasion.
Since the credentials of both the author of the article, a Liberal Democrat MP, and the organ in which the article appears, are impeccably federast I think it is safe to say that dire warnings of a split between the UK and Europe is not merely a product of wishful thinking.
“But there are two more profound reasons for the plunge in Britain’s status within the EU that should give Tony Blair real cause for concern. First, there is the euro. Last month, the Portuguese Prime Minister, Jose Durao Barroso, voiced in public what EU heads of government have long whispered in private – why should the UK be granted a leadership role as long as it is unwilling to sign up to one of the central tenets of EU membership? As long as EU leaders believed Tony Blair was merely biding his time before putting the issue to a referendum, there was sufficient goodwill to forgive Britain’s procrastination. But, as the Continent looks on with perplexity at the gridlock between the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, fears have deepened that Mr Blair has missed his chance.
And then, most important of all, there is Britain’s special relationship with the United States. It is difficult to capture the conflicting reactions which Blair’s ostentatious loyalty to George Bush’s foreign policy elicits within the rest of the EU.”
As I have indicated previously, our strategic alliance with the USA is something which the EU cannot tolerate alongside it’s new-found ethos of being a rival to the US and not an ally. The day of British liberation is not at hand and may not even be close but it is just a little bit closer than it was a year ago.
Tony Blair has turned out to be a love-rat; forever declaring his affections for Europe while flaunting his high-profile affair with George Bush. The question is how long he can go on two-timing them both? Surely one of these girls is going to put her foot down and demand Tony’s fidelity before much longer and who can resist the heady romance of being a war-time bride?
I didn’t vote for Blair and I do not count myself among his fans but I find myself being forced to concede that he is doing more to pave the way for British independence than any number of phoney, careerist Tories.
Is the 26,000 troop deployment a dowry?
federast? this isn’t a word i’m aware of, and the only related word i can think of is pederast…
Oh, I think Herr “Bimbo Bonker” Schroder will deserve an important place in future British history as well.
Hey random, I think that was indeed the association intended for ‘federast’ 🙂
Snide
Correct!
Britain’s missing a chance to join the euro? Well, I guess so, since it seems to be on a slippery slope that will get ever steeper as the dodgier states to the east sign up to the euronary tract.
Might be interesting to know whether Blair, deep down realises that the antics of the likes of Schroder means that however much he craves leadership in Europe, Europe, or more accurately, the EU, is not an entity worth leading.
Wouldn’t it be nice to see a story about Europe that libertarians could applaud?
Dave Farrell:
…”euronary tract”???!
I think you’ve coined a new winner!
It is sad no one in Britain can diplomatically yet firmly explain to Continentals like Portugual’s Jose Barroso that the UK should be able to opt out of Continental schemes yet still lead because Britain keeps turning out to be right and the Continentals keep turning out to be wrong.
If Britain disagrees with every other country in Europe about something, the odds are high that we are right and they are wrong.
The central problem with Euro-British relations is that many on both sides secretly know this, but the Continentals, understandably, find it galling to admit, and our politeness and business sense force us to shut up about it too.
Everyone hates the smartarse know-it-all who is repeatedly being proved right, which is why Continental Europe [I know – I translate from a Continental European language for a living, live out here and have friends from many different European countries] has such a chip on its shoulder about us. For the same reason, we are terrified of rubbing their faces in it, and keep as quiet as we can on the topic.
Awkwardly, if resentment is indulged it grows into self-delusion like that in many Continental cabinet ministers now. This mutual embarrassment can’t go on. We must find a way to tactfully remind them how regularly over recent centuries they sneered at us but never apologised each time we turned out to have been right again.
“If Britain disagrees with every other country in Europe about something, the odds are high that we are right and they are wrong”.
Please name some examples, Mark.
Well I’m very pleased that a Lib Dem has finally figured out what I and a lot of others figured out ages ago – that Britain will have to make a choice sooner or later between the US and Europe. I suspect the point of his piece – at least on the strength of your quotes from it – is that we should ditch the US (I mean, he is a Lib Dem after all). And today we have the Franco-German summit thing rubbing our faces in that fact.
Ralf:
reasonably low taxation (until Gordon Brown dumped Prudence)
restricted union rights (until Labour started eroding the Thatcher reforms)
Common Law (until etc.)
I could go on.
Where the UK generally screws up is when it agrees with Europe (which means France and Germany, or more accurately their governments). The French/German government stance on an issue is a pretty good reverse barometer. Blair’s desire for closer ties with the EU mean that a fortiori he is making things worse.
I am starting to think it would be easier for all parties concerned if the populations of Canada and Britain were to just trade places. You get NAFTA membership and we get the European style socialism we crave for some unfathomable reason.
Yes, Steven
It used to be that we Americans worried only about our porous southern border with Mexico.
Now, we also have to be worried about the Canadian border, since Canada seems determined to admit every person claiming asylum.
Unfortunately, that includes a lot of terrorists who then just “drive or fly south” to carry out their assigned missions.
Good challenge Ralf! Well, let me think:
right to silence [following from] presumption of innocence so that inquisitors should not carry out general investigations without listing charges against someone, not killing or exiling aristocrats but peacefully compromising with a constitutional monarchy while at the same time giving people without property the vote earlier than most, getting rid of grammatical gender, getting rid of grammatical case endings, 1939, 1588, 1805, not banning an industrial revolution, and not forcing it either, having slightly less trashy or dull television than everyone else.
What’s striking is how regularly Continentals bring something up, suddenly launching into some impassioned attack on Britain [in the shape of me] from nowhere.
I once got harangued by a Hungarian, apropos of nothing at all, about Britain having “different electric sockets and plugs” from “all of Europe”. He had no idea that first [since Edison piloted electric mains supply in London] it was the other way round, with European countries stubbornly deciding to have different socket/plug conventions from the ones Britain started with, nor that just within the EU today, there are still over twenty incompatible socket and jack standards, so it’s not “all of Europe” at all.
I have at least three times been hectored for the UK driving on the left – not once I bring the subject up. Of course, considering that 14 out of 15 people are right-handed, if we were designing a road system today from scratch, we would probably think that driving on the right, so having the opposing stream of traffic on the less responsive side of most people’s field of vision, was rather more dangerous. Figures for road deaths [France 7989, Germany 8549 {or around 6000 if it was 60 million people}, Italy 6226, Britain 3559 in 1997 – even 15 million Dutch people managing 1163 deaths] are hard to interpret, but I think at least the figures don’t suggest driving on the left is obviously more dangerous?
More seriously, England’s last massacre of Jews [150+ deaths] was in York in 1190. I rather doubt even European cultures I admire like the Dutch or the Swiss can go back quite that far to date their last pogrom.
Much as Continentals are likeable, I find them also insular and a bit parochial. When I suggest to fellow Brits that our children should be learning Chinese, Arabic, Hindi at school they usually agree, sometimes enthusiastically. In the same conversations I find Continental friends disgusted or even angry at the idea of teaching Asian languages at school. Perhaps that’s why fascist parties are so much more popular on the Continent, while we gave our Asian and African immigrants passports and votes?
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