This evening I will be moving the motion in Middle Temple Hall in London for the 200th anniversary Cambridge Union debate. We will be debating the failure of the European Union. The debate starts at around 8 pm.
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This evening I will be moving the motion in Middle Temple Hall in London for the 200th anniversary Cambridge Union debate. We will be debating the failure of the European Union. The debate starts at around 8 pm.
Comments are closed.
September 26, 2015
When you debate the failure of the EU, give due credit to the basic desire to put an end to European wars. Those who trade together are less likely to indulge in armed conflict with each other.
The real failure has been that of the politicians who have been involved in it’s evolution. In many cases their qualification for office would seem to be failure in their national politics. To use a northern expression, they have developed eyes bigger than their bellies.
They have in fact become so blindly avaricious for power that they have destroyed the goodwill within the original concept, and are alienating the people of Europe who they pretend to serve.
No doubt you can grind out the minutia of the failure very effectively. I am most interested in those who would oppose you, and the arguments they put forwards.
September 26, 2015
Mr Redwood, as a life long member of the Cambridge Union (no really I am), allow me to wish you a successful and productive evening.
Will you also allow me to suggest that one ingredient which seems to be missing in the debate so far is the corruption of the EU elite? (Recent well publicised allegations re a well known football individual ed) actually pales into insignificance compared with that of what could be going on behind very locked doors. Occasionally (Marta Andreassen) a glimpse of light shows through only to be quickly extinguished. The book by Booker and North called “The Great Deception” will lead you to interesting things under “Fraud” in the index.
If you have any journalist friends, they could, if they started digging, discover a wealth of interesting stuff, certainly more than in the expenses scandal which not only rocked the nation, but also increased sales of the Daily Telegraph quite markedly.
September 26, 2015
There’s no debating the failure of the European Union.
Millions of pushy young blokes are forcing their way across our borders. The BBC will never admit that most of the migrants are pushy young blokes. The UN states that 72% are pushy young blokes.
These have left families behind in war zones – if we are to believe they are refugees.
A women and children first policy,as the West would have done, might have saved a lot of lifeboats from being tipped over and border guards being beaten up.
etc ed
Forget the referendum. We need our borders closed and agreements suspended forthwith.
PS, The BBC were at it again last night “Teenager killed in the Channel Tunnel” If he were a child they would have said “Child killed in the Channel Tunnel”. I infer that he was 18 and, therefore, a pushy young bloke.
September 26, 2015
Whether the EU has failed largely depends on what it was meant to achieve.
September 26, 2015
By me — A common trading agreement
By the elite — A United States of Europe
September 26, 2015
Who are the other speakers, I cannot seem to find the speakers’ details on the CUS.org. Hopefully not yet more silly arguments from the likes of Ken Clark, John Major, Geoffrey Howe, Cameron types (or the other 60% + the leadership of the Tories). We have heard them all (only three I think – 50% of trade, the need to be large, and preventing wars) before, They do not stand up to a moments rational thought or scrutiny.
Anyway I have lost my CUS card and cannot be in London for tax reasons anyway, hopefully it will be recorded and made available on line?
September 26, 2015
Good luck.
The failure of the EU is written into its own creation.
In creating it by removing sovereignty by treaty, it means the EU is locked into those treaties, for no one dares to change them, and as such it is incapable of responding to changing events as we have seen over the Euro financial crisis, and EU migrant crisis. The EU is institutionally sclerotic and in not being able to make decisions it is a drag on the development of Europe.
September 26, 2015
Indeed.
September 26, 2015
I hope you convince everyone present that “Out” is the only solution . Good luck .
September 26, 2015
I think the way things are going “out” looks quite likely despite the BBC. But Cameron alas holds the starting gun and has a history of serial ratting. He is quite likely to find an excuse not to hold a referendum should he thinks he will lose it. Something like a treaty is no longer a treaty once ratified or some other complete tosh. Perhaps I have my finger crossed behind my back when I made the 2017 promise. Anyway I did not expect to win the election.
September 26, 2015
It’s thanks to the EU in general and Merkel in particular that we have to put up with this kind of rubbish, as reported on Breitbart:
‘Finland’s no good: disappointed migrants turn back”.
What, these desperate Iraqis have fled their war-torn home country, but having illegally entered the EU and got themselves across to Finland they decide that it is not safe enough for them and so they must move on, continue their long journey to find sanctuary?
Eh, no:
“You can tell the world I hate Finland. It’s too cold, there’s no tea, no restaurants, no bars, nobody on the streets, only cars,” 22-year-old Muhammed told AFP”
“Another group of around 15 Iraqi refugees waiting at the bus station that Tornio shares with its Swedish twin town Haparanda also said they wanted to go back to southern Sweden.
“Finland is no good,” the men echoed each other.”
Meanwhile, the EU foreign policy chief, the previously Communist Italian Federica Mogherini, thinks it would be nice to rename the EU’s illegal immigrant ferry operations in the Mediterranean as “Sophia”, after a baby born on a German rescue ship.
If it seems that the EU isn’t really serious about defending the EU’s external frontiers and stopping illegal immigration then that’s because it’s not really serious about doing that, it’s happy to have millions of migrants entering whether legally or illegally.
September 26, 2015
That’s awful.
You’re going to miss the Rugby!
September 26, 2015
Dave M
Sport is all part of the problem. You chaps think it’s all important.
Well you don’t deserve a nation – let alone a national team. England could win 2015.
So what ?
September 27, 2015
I’ve spent approximately 6 years of my life out of this country in desert ****holes risking life and limb for this country and its (often inept) governments. I’ve lost friends and have life-changing injuries. If you think I consider sport to be all-important you’re as wrong as you can get. I don’t deserve a country? **** you – at least I put my name on my posts.
However, while the RWC is in England I will enjoy every second of it. Christ knows there’s not a lot else to be cheerful about at the moment. You can join the party if you want, or alternatively sit in your hole being miserable and looking for conspiracy theories on the internet.
September 26, 2015
How many people who weren’t English or Welsh or women turned up?
September 26, 2015
Who on earth would want to watch (or even play) rugby? As a spectator sport, or even participant sport, it is a dreadful discontinuous game. I was forced to play it at grammar school (instead of the far superior football that almost all the pupils actually wanted to play). Perhaps I am a little biased on the issue, having had my football career tragically halted so early at 11.
I suspect this ways because amateur rugby union was, rather absurdly, considered more on an “up market” sport and rather less working class, (class that is not Clarse).
Still each to their own.
September 27, 2015
Ruby Union is the sport that is closest to perfection. If sport is about stylised warfare, then Ruby Union gets the closest to it without resorting to the battle field, for its about marshalling your forces of strength, speed, agility and tactics to create weakness and mismatches against the opposition.
September 27, 2015
Thanks for your typically judgmental comment.
Why would people want to play or watch rugby? Because it makes them happy.
That’s h-a-p-p-y. Look it up in the dictionary.
September 26, 2015
If it meant to achieve the end of England (and I don’t mean Britain)..well I think it is getting there.
September 26, 2015
2nd in line to the Thrown showed his coulors tonight, the trouble is for them it is just a game of dressing up in the clothes the Batman has hung up on the day, for the majority itis our Country that has been screwed time and time again by the Ultra Unionists since 1707.
September 26, 2015
Would love to be there and see those shaking heads and John’s unique presentation.
September 26, 2015
Mr Redwood,
I thought your presentation for ‘Better off Out’ was great, as like you they are a group who want out No ifs or buts.
Business for Britain and its associate Conservatives for Britain are uncommitted. They are not to be trusted.
They could very well when Cameron waves his promissory note recommend a stay-in vote.
When you read what is being said by Juncker and others in the EU upper echelons no treaty changes will be made before 2018 at the earliest, and Brussels will decide the terms. A satisfactory renegotiation is not possible
Our current terms of membership will not be on offer. Vote to stay in and we will end up in the Euro with greater fiscal control and higher membership fees.