Bizarre that the U.K. hosted the meeting of 46 leaders of European countries at Blenheim. That great British victory against France and Bavaria was an important part of a war against Franco Spanish attempts to dominate Europe. Stressing the associations with the Churchill family made everyone think of the U.K. ‘s role in thwarting a later German plan to dominate Europe. These are unhappy memories of Europe’s centralising thuggish tendencies and of the great loss of life resisting them entailed. Far from showing the U.K. as a friend and partner it reminds of times when the U.K. stood for self determination of people’s and states against those who wanted to create a European tyranny.
Today most of the Europeans assembled wanted to believe they are more united. They were willing to give the time of day to the U.K. offer of closer friendship without making any positive moves of their own. It was a mistake to think this was an occasion to reboot the U.K./ EU relationship when there were 18 non EU members there as well and when Commission President Von der Leyen was absent seeking votes from the European Parliament to keep her job.
The EU / U.K. relationship is set out in ghastly legal detail with the EU wanting to enforce it in ways that suit them. It is not normally a way to a happy marriage for the bigger partner to make the smaller sign a pre nuptial agreement they do not like, nor does it help the marriage if either partner wants to renegotiate. If the government does want to change the costly and unsatisfactory Treaty it will find changes come at a price which will not be worth offering.
The government would be wrong to enter a defence treaty with the EU. Let us stick to NATO and collaborate through that. They would be wrong to join Horizon and other EU programmes, It is cheaper and better to run our own. They are quite wrong to think being closer to the EU will boost our growth rate.The EU is mired in slow growth and no growth. The single market is no free market. It is a rule bound customs Union that is hostile to innovation and small business. By all means have a growth strategy. The more you divert from the EU model the faster you can grow.
July 19, 2024
Good morning.
Or alternatively, we should follow Churchill’s advice when in one of his speeches on Europe he said;
“We see nothing but good and hope in a richer, freer, more contented European commonality. But we have our own dream and our own task. We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked but not compromised. We are interested and associated but not absorbed.”
This should be UK foreign policy regarding the EU. We wish to trade. We wish to be friends. But above all, we wish to be FREE !!!
July 19, 2024
+1
July 19, 2024
So people like the BBC Chris Packham think the 4 &5 year sentenses for Just Stop Oil people are excessive does he? Some sums the people delayed and imprisoned in their care was for about 320 people years. The cost to them and their businesses circa £200 million. Anyway they will end up serving more like 1 year each if that.
If I had my way I would prosecute people like Ed Miliband, May, Sunak, the CforCC and the BBC for the propaganda that creates these deluded zealots.
July 19, 2024
Why oh why have they prosecuted only the ‘useful idiots’ when it is clear where the ‘paymasters’ are ?
July 20, 2024
Indeed. All the people hugely delayed inconvenienced 100,000 + should surely be able to sue in a collective action for circa £20 million £200 each at least.
July 19, 2024
JR, OT,
Very refreshing to hear Trump bargain with countries to have their citizens back, no aid unless they have their citizens back. Also no trade.
Instead of Little Usuper and Starmegeddon giving never ending cash to Africa, £3.5 billion of our taxes and another £84 million, not knowing how or what the money is spent on, why not send back the crap of the world entering our country through France!
July 19, 2024
Definitely, Mark B.
July 19, 2024
Mark B
Totally agree and Churchill was so right! We can work with the EU, but we don’t need to be married to it!
Especially with their communistic undertones!
July 19, 2024
It’s not ‘communistic’,it’s fascist;many of the hard left parties in Europe are Eurosceptic.The liberal left is fascism re-branded.The UK establishment has long been fascist-inclined although will adopt the clothing of any -ism that will enable it to survive.
July 19, 2024
+1. We can’t not recognise and point out the fascism, else we give them a free pass. Indeed they have had a free pass for far too long, that’s why they came so close to destroying the world!
July 19, 2024
Quite So.
July 19, 2024
Good morning SJR
Absolutely.
What we saw outside Blenheim was an insult but more importantly it was designed to insult.
Blenheim, almost the purest expression of Englishness being used as a political tool for deceit to take the UK back into the EU, for this is Starmer’s ultimate aim, even if some attendees were not EU members.
Again we have a Labour PM rubbing the English our nose in ‘it’.
As an aside. Was yesterday’s gathering organised some months ago? If not, then how do you get so many leaders together at such short notice? I thought it took around 6 months or so to organise such events. I smell something rotten here.
Reply The civil service were organising it months ago.They told Ministers and briefed the then Labour Opposition in their talks planning for possible government. Labour was happy with the plan.
July 19, 2024
plan not plant!
July 19, 2024
It is has been in the pipeline for months, it must have been organised by the then (notionally) Tory government.
July 19, 2024
Mike, the One Nation tories are ardent europhiles and are in lockstep with Keith and his gang.
The EU is as important to them as the WEF, UN, WHO and all the other international organisations.
Keith said he preferred the WEF as they got things done.
Britain last as usual.
July 19, 2024
Sunak and Starmer are essentially the same. Other than Sunak had a touch on the brakes for the net zero lunacy (but still heading over the cliff edge), they both backed the totally counterproductive abolition on Non Dom status, they both attacked/robbed landlords and car users, they both tax to everything to death… the only real difference was VAT on school fees but Starmer will prob. soften than as soon as he realises that it will raise less than it costs and will do massive damage both to education and to the economy. Plus it will overload the state school sector.
July 19, 2024
@Mike Wilson – correction the UniParty, changing the leader is all that has happened, still big spenders, that is compensated by high taxation and borrowing. With no one interested in controlling expenditure, getting vale for money or creating a way to earn to fund a future.
Today the OBR – Ooops!.. we got it wrong the taxpayer needs to fund an extra £2.9bn of borrowing because the UniParty government refused to manage
July 19, 2024
Sir J R
“The civil service were organising it months ago.They told Ministers and briefed the then Labour Opposition in their talks planning for possible government. Labour was happy with the plan.”
So the civil service organised it, but were they instructed to, and by whom? Your reply suggests the civil service organised it off their own bat?
July 19, 2024
Having an ex senior civil servant with a landslide majority in charge of parliament must be the ideal civil service coup. They can carry on with their global agendas without having to worry about a PM doing his own sums and realising that it’s going to be a disaster.
July 19, 2024
@DOM +1
July 19, 2024
Sir John,
I think it shows who is really running the country and that a seamless transition from one government to the next is not a mark of a civilised democracy but rather that there is no major difference today between the government and the opposition. Both are supporters of re-joining the EU, high tax and spend and reducing us to a third world state through mass immigration and Net Zero.
July 19, 2024
Thank God it is becoming pellucidly clear that the EU is ‘isolated’, alone in the world without so much as a pop gun between them, their German Warmoungering ‘President’ and Starmer think they can fight Russia for ‘as long as it takes’ – well they can – they can fight for 2 weeks because that is how long it will take for Russia to beat them into a cocked hat. 55,000 Ukrainian deaths last week. Even Zelensky is unable to hide the facts anymore. Spin can only get you so far.
Do we need another ‘Parade of the Defeated’ through Moscow before we comprehend that we have no business demanding the break up of an independent sovereign nuclear power? Indeed any independent sovereign state.
Trump/Vance have made it clear that they are anti-globalist. That is why we are getting the last tantrums, stamping and crying, of the criminals who wanted to enslave the people of the world.
Forget the EU. They are finished and not a moment too soon.
Thank God for Putin, the man who prepared his country for decades so that they could stand against and defeat the Globalists. Thank God for the 5 mph wind and Trump moving his head – the usurper and demented Biden will be a thing to marvel at when we escape his clutches – literally the hand of death.
Good for Blenheim – good for Waterloo Station, let’s NEVER forget what our eternal enemies did to us and planned to do to us.
July 19, 2024
Yes.
Thank God.
A cheering post.
July 19, 2024
+1 LA, to the sentiments expressed.
I’m concerned though that the EU can still damage itself (and therefore its satraps, like us the UK).
Germany in particular (also Poland to a lesser degree) is becoming extremely authoritarian, using government agencies and reinterpreting legislation aggressively to target democratic opponents and freedom of expression.
This domestic repression spreads like a virus into EU-wide regulation (eg. Internet censorship, then willing accomplices in the UK seek to do the same here.
July 19, 2024
Look for the Polish MEP on YouTube, speaking when Van der Leyen was re-appointed. ‘From one mother to another’ – wow, she did not hold back. Obviously Poland is not properly represented by Tusk who was not elected in our terms, he was the default that nobody wanted under their idiot PR system.
Poland has closed it border with Ukraine! 🤣
Schultz says no direct engagement with Russia (frit) and cutting his Defence expenditure. These Germans should try speaking to each other.
Only Starmer is parroting the old mantra not having noticed that it has been abandoned: ‘for as long as it takes’ – they were just forgetting all that then he pops up and reminds us all. 😏boy do they love him! They would not have Starmer in the EU if he begged them.
The EU under these women is becoming ‘isolated’ even from its own members! The fools want to strip Hungary of its voting rights! They cut Italy out of the divvying up of jobs 🤭.
Just stand back and enjoy.
July 19, 2024
Saw that! She really was WOW!
May she continue.
July 19, 2024
@Lynn Atkinson +1
July 19, 2024
Indeed but Starmer is totally misguided as was Rishi, Windsor Accord, Sunak.
So finally some sensible deterrent sentences for some Eco fanatics.
THE co-founder of Extinction Rebellion has been given a record five-year prison sentence after a judge said he had “crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic”.
It seems to me that any MPs who voted for the Climate Change Act or supported Mays moronic Net Zero is a fanatic too Ed Miliband surely is. Doubtless it will be reduced or reversed by some soft sympathetic judge so as to encourage even more road blocking and vandalism.
July 19, 2024
So the circa £200million Covid Inquiry has provided an interim report. They are as was expected getting almost everything wrong. They criticise the slow lockdowns. But the lockdowns, as it is very clear, did net harm. Please can they explain how lockdowns which may delay (delay only by a few weeks) a few serious infections but at the same time also delayed circa one thousand time more natural vaccinations in non vulnerable people could do net good even had it been done even earlier? Surely even an Oxford lawyer should be able grasp this? The “group think”, government “experts” got almost everything wrong, this sick joke £ millions inquiry is doing likewise. Not even any mention of the vast net harm “vaccines” or the fact that the funding for the MHRA nearly all comes from Big Pharma which perhaps explains the decision to give/coerce vaccines into people who never needed them, even had they been safe and effective “vaccines” – young people, children, people who had already had Covid.
July 19, 2024
Robert Jenrick MP has just given the clearest evidence you could ask for of groupthink, LL. He was not long ago in a ministerial meeting on what to do about illegal migration. He was the only one to speak out saying the Rwanda plan wouldn’t work. He felt that everyone else agreed with him, but had decided to keep quiet. That is how bad policy is made, but we see it all the time. Groupthink means not even thinking the same way, but going along with a certain policy direction because the others in the group are all doing so. It doesn’t matter what you really think.
July 19, 2024
Indeed it is a huge evil asking 200 members of the public chosen at random perhaps after an iq test would give far better results. Would would have wanted HS2, lockdowns, millenium dome, Blair’s, conterproductive wars, car and boiler bans, net zero…
July 19, 2024
5 years is pretty draconian though…when one compares and contrasts…
And most odd when the cops even took the protestors cups of tea.
(If true I suppose)
They don’t appear to mind mayhem in central London.
Are there similar sentences?
Maybe the main aim is to do away with peaceful protest…of all persuasions?
July 19, 2024
Peaceful protest? Stopping motorways or other roads for hours causing tens of thousands of lost hours to the people. Missed dentist, hospital, employment, travel appointments, funerals – even people distressed about refuelling, toilet etc.
Serving half of 5 years is way too light! Any assets should be taken to be set against police costs.
July 19, 2024
Well…let’s see what sentences the Leeds rioters get then shall we?
I do not favour Stop Oil etc in any way shape or form.
But one has to be careful what one wishes for.
You are surely aware of the way things are going.
.
July 20, 2024
MT, And how much do you advise for the Crowdstrike boffins who stopped the world yesterday, with a cost of some billions?
July 19, 2024
+1
July 19, 2024
Life logic
The opening statement says it all.
“We planned for the wrong Pandemic”
Perhaps they could tell us how to plan for the next “unknown” Pandemic and what it may consist of !
Hindsight is fantastic, and it is so easy to criticise every one and everything when facts are only known at a later stage, at the time we did not know the make up of the infection, let alone test for it, best treatment for it etc etc.
Other than the Chinese (who it is alleged may have made it) the whole World suffered with exactly the same problems we had.
Inquiry to last until 2027 at a cost of £ Millions, when really what use is it.
It’s taking them 3 years to find fault, it took the Government less than a year to find out what it was, to provide test kits, to form a treatment regime, an expensive test and trace system, and eventually a vaccine.
Thank goodness the Government did not take 3 years like the Inquiry.
July 19, 2024
It’s actually quite simple. Despite the SARS outbreak in 2003 and MERS outbreak in 2012 (both SARS and MERS are types of coronavirus, as is Covid), they made no plans for that sort of outbreak. They only planned for a possible flu outbreak.
July 19, 2024
Peter
If it was so simple, then why did it take so long to find a test that worked, a treatment regime, and a vaccine.
Can you imagine the outcry of spending so much money on such a provision if it had never happened., but a slightly different variant presented itself instead.
If the inquiry are so clever then they will already know the formation of the next virus, so why do they not make that information Public,
Simple they do not have a bloody clue what the next virus will look like that’s why.
Yes of course there were organisation failure and errors, and perhaps logistic ones as well, and certainly they should be addressed absolutely no question.
But with the huge benefit of Hindsight, Hindsight, Hindsight it all looks so obvious, but at the time these clever people now speaking did not have a clue and said not a word did they. !
July 20, 2024
The ‘wrong pandemic’ is a complete red herring. If you look at the government’s pandemic preparedness plans pre-2020, in common with other countries’, they were supposed to:
– Carry out diagnostic testing and disease monitoring
– Limit transmission of disease from those who are infected to those who are well
– Protect caregivers and other responders
– Accelerate vaccine and antiviral development within 3 months of the outbreak
– implement surge strategies, conserving higher levels of care for those who need it.
The authorities (government and NHS) did these things in the the context of Covid just as they would have done for a flu outbreak. Many of the measures taken were the same. The surge strategy included building the Nightingale hospitals, and the government did that. Hospitals and especially intensive care beds were not overwhelmed. Yes, the test and vaccines were different, but the PCR test was brought out in January 2020, before the Covid pandemic was declared, and a vaccine was developed within a few months of the outbreak, for later roll-out. I wouldn’t criticise the government for lack of preparedness.
July 19, 2024
BA: At the time of the Operation Cygnus in 2016, there had already been a SARS outbreak in 2003, and MERS outbreak in 2012, two cases of epidemics with very strong impact on people’s respiratory system.
It is an unfortunate fact that what the UK had kept concentrating on was a flu-like disease.
July 19, 2024
Hefner
Understand that perfectly, but where were the experts at the time to say they were wrong, ?
July 20, 2024
That’s right, Hefner. The British government was following the WHO’s 2017 ‘Pandemic influenza risk management’ guide, to ‘inform and harmonize national and international pandemic preparedness and response’. As were other countries. Note: ‘harmonize’. That’s why you get with the WHO.
July 19, 2024
Governents knew it almost certainly came from the lab leak in China and knew this very early indeed but they tried to cover it up and decieve the public. They know now that the “vaccines” did huge net harms and are now trying to cover this up.
July 19, 2024
Had a meeting with a long serving HMRC chap yesterday. He has never known HMRC debts from companies be so high PAYE, VAT, CT… Small businesses being strangled by covid loan debts, covid hang overs, over high interest rates, increased taxes, high bank margins, staff awaiting NHS treatments and unhelpful banks. Liquidators must be doing well.
Sunak kept boasting about the government rescuing businesses during the net harm lockdowns. Not the government it is the businesses who have to rescue themselves. In loan repayments and higher taxes. The better businesses also picking up all the vast unpaid covid debts as well as their own. The UK paid out about the highest % of GDP for Covid “rescues”, lockdowns, test and trace, the Nightgale PR stunt, PPE… and yet has almost the highest excess deaths. Vaccine caused excess deaths and NHS delayed treatment deaths are still continuing.
July 19, 2024
Lifelogic
Agreed many businesses on on the edge, and have been since Covid, some even before that, rising costs are driving them over the edge.
July 19, 2024
Very bizarre that a Labour leaders should want to bask in our aristocratic past acting more like monarchy than politicians. More royal than royalty itself, closing down roads ( well we’ve had a lot of practice at that!) with much security and pomp and ceremony. Never mind the locals losing trade.
( I still haven’t got over that dreadful EU “election”)
July 19, 2024
The EU parliament has just moved 25% to the right, but you will find no recognition of this in the make up of the Commission. Individual states, are allowed in the sham democracy of the EU, to be what they wish, but there it ends. The Commission rules.
It is almost certainly part of Labour’s self destruct policy to creep back into the EU. Labour do not recognise history. Blenheim was probably chosen based on size. The next event could be tent based at Waterloo or at that monument to misguided european evil ambition just south of Krakow. Why does Europe persist in their capacity for getting it dangerously wrong from one political generation to the next. In most other respects it is a delightful place to visit populated with equally attractive people.
However if Labour think that on a 35% popularity rating they have the right to continue the pretence that Brexit never happened they are sadly mistaken. Brexit is a principal of democratic self determination, not the totally dishonest shambles that your government turned it into.
I predict that five years of Labour and a largely quisling opposition will set up Reform for a resounding victory in 2029. I can hear the Westminster bubble squeeling already.
July 19, 2024
@Agricola:
“The EU parliament has just moved 25% to the right, but you will find no recognition of this in the make up of the Commission.”
You can’t say that as yet. Only Ursula, nominated by the 27 heads of government has been approved by a vote in the European Parliament. Very likely, Kaja Kallas (Estonia) nominated for foreign affairs chief (“high representative etc “) will also be approved by parliament. But no doubt the Italian government will put forward a right wing candidate commissioner and so will other right wing governments in member countries. In that sense, the future European Commission will move to the right as well.
July 19, 2024
35%?!! Lab arguably had the support of 17% of adults. This is based upon the observed 60% turnout of registered voters and an assumption that another 10% of adults aren’t on the register. Some people clearly seek to stay off it; I know several who succeed in this. Speaking of which, I think voter ID was a mistake and will further discourage people from registering as voters and participating in the process (even if only to turn up and spoil their ballot or write N.O.T.A.)
July 19, 2024
Didn’t May lay out plans for an EU wide defence union when she was PM?
Simmering away all this time?
July 19, 2024
We have been associated with the EU’s Permanent Security Cooperation (PESCO) programme since late 2022, cooperating with EU countries’ military staff and the European Defence Agency. This was at the initiative of Liz Truss, who signed the agreement in October that year. Fears were expressed at the time, rightly or wrongly, that she was helping to facilitate the creation of an EU army. I think the obsession with ‘defending Europe’ against the supposed expansionist designs of the Kremlin crosses the Brexiteer/Remainer divide.
July 19, 2024
Thank you! Yes PESCO…I’d forgotten that ( I always think it is to do with fish).
Still it definitely IS to do with reeling us in again?
EU appears to love expanding…it thrives on it!
Remember when the concept of an EU army was dismissed as a “dangerous fantasy” that “would not happen”?
July 19, 2024
The problem is, EH, that our own military have been reduced so drastically that we couldn’t realistically defend ourselves against any major aggressive nation. The last time the country was threatened with armed invasion in 1940 we had the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force to prevent that happening. Now we have a few ships, a hundred or so Typhoon fighter aircraft, no bombers and no attack helicopters, from what I read. We have just over 200 artillery pieces (we gave away quite a few to Ukraine) and an unreported number of missiles, where again many will have been given away to Ukraine. Unsurprisingly, some retired military authority was reported recently as saying that we couldn’t sustain a proper war for more than a couple of months. And that’s assuming it was somewhere else. We are completely unable to withstand any attack on our infrastructure here on the scale of what Ukraine is experiencing. So thanks to our military weakness, we have to go with collective security. That means NATO and/or a European army, and that means, if it came to a war, we’ve lost sovereign control of our independence as a nation. If the continuance of NATO in its present form depends on Trump not coming to power, that again is out of our control. So I can see why different governments have been quietly planning for an EU army.
July 19, 2024
No the Treaty of Rome did.
July 19, 2024
9th May 1950, Robert Schuman declared: ‘Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity.’
Been at it much longer than I’d realised.
European Defence Community mooted as early as 1952! T of R 1957 strengthened the whole thing.
They didn’t want us then did they?
All to stop another war!!
And EEC based on coal and steel….for goodness sake!
July 19, 2024
Average of starting age for IVF now 35. Women need to look at the stats by age if they want children 35 is usually far too late 25 is more sensible by IVF or naturally. But the real blame lies with the way governments have arranged the economy so that you need two incomes or more just to pay the mortgage or even the rent. This as you taxes are paying for so many other people’s rents and children.
July 19, 2024
LL ✔️
July 19, 2024
Having children is getting like justice in this country – only available to the rich and the poor.
July 19, 2024
+1 or those living on benefits off he backs of others!
July 19, 2024
I would classify those people as poor.
July 19, 2024
+1.
July 19, 2024
I find it difficult ro see what 46 Countries can discuss, let alone agree upon at such a large gathering.
Seems like it was talks about future talks to me.
I guess time will tell, but at what cost ?
We seem to have so many talking shops:
The UN
NATO.
EU
COP
World this , World that, The big 20, the big 7,
Individual Parliaments etc etc.
The only common factor, less democracy, more regulations, more laws, at more cost.
July 19, 2024
++ Quite so.
July 19, 2024
I’d love to see the Agenda, the breakfast menu, lunch break table plan, was there evening dinner and the seating plans!
Culminating in a Group closing photo – arise Mrs Thatcher to arrange places!
July 19, 2024
Its no wonder that they can’t do anything in the UK, as they’re busy managing the world politic
July 19, 2024
The anti european voices in England with their anti european brexit now have lost their government. The new government will slowly but surely build a better relationship with the rest of Europe.
July 19, 2024
Peter, we have your arch enemy Farage in Parliament
Reform are set gor a stonking victory at the next election and will rid us of these evil shackles.
July 19, 2024
@Ian Wrag:
Nigel farage is not my arch enemy, he even promotes proportional representation for the UK parliament! After all, when 12% of the UK population voted for UKIP in 2015 and then gave them only 1 MP, that seemed neither fair nor democratic. We have to see if he keeps the same persuation if e.g. his party were to win the elections in 5 years with, say 30% of the popular vote! This hilarious “democracy” called UK 🙂
July 19, 2024
PVL,
The EU is a supranational body, not a continent or country. No one is anti European. We are as a matter of fact part of a European continent and want to be friends and trade with other European countries. We do not want to be part of a corrupt EU organisation forced on people across Europe that benefits the individuals themselves. Was the bunga scandal ever sorted out or it’s outcome hidden under the EU carpet?
Is is becoming clear Little Usuper Sunak betrayed the nation and national vote to leave the EU. Starmer thinks as he is the only other option he will get away with it. He is wrong.
July 19, 2024
Farage is so committed to Parliament that he’s in Wisconsin. Expect much more of the same from him.
July 19, 2024
Farage is NOT Brexit or the Sovereign British Parliament.
July 19, 2024
Brexit was not “anti-european”, but anti-EU, in other words against ever-closer economic and political union. We have no problem having good relations with European countries as sovereign nations. Where the problem lies, is when those countries’ elites give up that sovereignty over their own nations in favour of the Brussels behemoth. In the past, as SJR points out, we have gone to war to oppose the designs of an all-powerful European state. Now, with Brexit, we have done things more peacefully. It remains to be seen whether that succeeds.
July 19, 2024
@clough:
Personally I can well see a more special relationship between “free” Britain and the EU developing over time. There are enough areas of common interest. I know that Europe doesn’t formally equate to EU, but Clough, if you look at the map the map, take out the EU and all the countries aspiring to become EU members, then there is not much left.
July 19, 2024
How could it be better ? Our exports to the EU are already at a record high !
July 19, 2024
Peter
Yes, back into serfdom and more taxes no doubt.
July 20, 2024
Unfortunately a load of nonsense
July 19, 2024
PVL,
Personally, I want a good relationship with all countries including those within the EU. I want good relations with China, Russia, USA and all countries. What I don’t want is to be governed by them or a colony of one of them. I want our elected government who, in general, are accountable to us, to make decisions, not a bunch of foreign untouchables in an ivory tower in Brussels, Moscow or Washington.
July 19, 2024
@Cliff.. Wokingham +1
It is the EU that hates the World when it doesn’t bow down to their unelected unaccountable doctrine. The rest of the World, the free World that is doesn’t confer ‘rights’ on their people as they were never taken away in the first place, everyone was born equal. In the free democratic world it is democratically elected Legislators(MP’s) that create, amend and repeal Laws. In the free World those empowered are challenged daily, in those under the yoke of Napoleonic rule (the EU) they have unelected unaccountable bureaucrats that are immune to challenge defining life.
July 19, 2024
@Cliff.. Wokingham:
I don’t feel “governed by Europe” or a colony to the degree that you see it. European intigration is going on very slowly and only in as much that national governments want it. For quite some years now, it are the 27 national governments that decide what the EU should do and what has to remain national. I don’t mind more integration (more EU concil decisions by quallified majority) but I except that my country has moved to a more sceptic position.
July 19, 2024
You should ask your farmers what they think of the EU’s policies. If they give up farming, what will you eat?
July 19, 2024
@Bill B: With 75% of Dutch farmer’s production being exported, there would be enough left for me to eat. The reduction targets are much much lower than this 75 %.
July 19, 2024
UK can sell them beef, lamb …any use?
July 19, 2024
@Peter+van+LEEUWEN – ‘You don’t feel governed by Europe’, correct you are ruled by those you cant elect and are not accountable as the would be in a Democracy.
July 19, 2024
You ARE governed by the EU, not by ‘Europe’ which is a continent. How you ‘feel’ is immaterial.
July 19, 2024
Again you either misunderstand Peter (or misrepresent) the views of most Brexiteers in this matter. Speaking for myself, I do not dislike Europe, nor am I “anti-European” — quite the opposite in fact. I’ve lived and worked in and visited many countries in Europe for over the past six decades and love both the countries and people that I’ve met during that time. What I do not like is the European Union and it’s ever creeping, undemocratic, large state, socialist agenda.
The UK and EU were ‘married’ for over for forty years and have just gone through a messy divorce. As far as I’m concerned our former partner has proved to be an agressive former partner, trying to use it’s size and power to continue to get it’s own way. We are well out of this abusive relationship and Mr Starmer isn’t helping to heal rifts by sucking up to this bully. We can be civil to each other but I’ve no desire to jump back into bed with you.
July 19, 2024
@IanT Quite a bit of the sometimes abusive language I’ve read on these pages over the last decade or so, comes over to me as anti-European. I don’t see the EU as a bully but as a construction that will stand for European interests. So e.g. if there is was an issue between Ireland and England, or Spain and England, of course the EU would stand at the side of Ireland or of Spain. A large state socialist agenda could only happen if the mass of the 27 governments have a socialist agenda. You may see in the coming years that the EU has moved to the right whether I personnaly like it or not, that comes with democracy. The same is true for the Netherlands, where with absolute proportional representation, an extreme rightwing party won the elections. In a sense quite worrying, because such a kind of one-member party/movement, would be fordidden in the post-war German constitution. Germany had very bad experiences with the one-Führer principle.
July 19, 2024
These are the people that rule over you, Peter: https://commissioners.ec.europa.eu/index_en
Did you vote for any of them? No. That’s because the EU is not a proper democracy. That is why I voted Leave.
July 19, 2024
@R.Grange: These are our highest civil servants, charged with iimplementing what they are told to do by the European Council or requested by the European Parliament, in line with the Commonly agreed European Treaties.
Did you vote for any of your civil servants? ? ?
All of these highest civil servants in the EU have to individually pass a grilling and a vote in the European Parliament. (Ursula van de Leyen was no exception as far as such a vote was concerned). Usually one or a few candidate commissioners fail their examination and the member country concerned must nominate a different candidate. Assuming that EU member states pass democratic standards (The Copenhagen Criteria) the mere nomination of a national candidate commissioner already is the result of a democratic process (e.g. the Blair government’s candidate was of a different persuation than the Camerong government’s candidate commissioner)
July 20, 2024
Reply to reply: The EU Commission has a much more proactive function than British civil servants. It proposes, draws up and tables laws. In a democracy such as Britain, laws are not proposed by civil servants.
July 20, 2024
@R:Grange
You do have a point that th EC is more pro-active than British civil servants. In that sense they are also more political. In the coming 5 years the European Parliament will have to fight for more power / influence (e.g. laws being initiated more directly from the EP), but currently the thrust seems more towards the intergovernmental, more power to the European Council at the expense of the European Commission.
July 19, 2024
Your PM, who was kicked out after trying to wreck the brilliant Dutch agricultural industry, has been given the job of running Nato. Perhaps he will be working on electric tanks and wreck Nato soon.
July 19, 2024
@Stred: Our previous PM blew up his coalition government over the issue of asylum seekers (family-rejoining practice) not over farming. The BBB (farmers party) is now a small party, but . . . they are part of the new, more rightwing government coalition.
July 19, 2024
Pieter you are really lost when it comes to Britain. This is ‘our’ government, we elected it and we can sack it. The recent ‘Conservative’ government was pro-EU, anti-nationist, that’s why it was sacked.
British people are becoming more confident anti-globalists (i.e anti-EU), so you are on your own, isolated from BRICS, soon to be isolated from the USA and you know that you are already isolated from the British people.
July 19, 2024
@Lynn Atkinson:
“The recent ‘Conservative’ government was pro-EU, anti-nationist, that’s why it was sacked.”
You may tell yourself this over and over to start believing it, but your government wasn’t sacked. Rishi Sunak had to call for a general election before January (?) and choose to do it for July. Was Lizz Truss sacked? NO. Was Boris Johnson sacked? NO. Was Theresa May sacked? NO. Was David Cameron sacked? NO.
None of them faced a motion of no-confidence. For that, you have to go back 9 or 10 prime ministers, to James Calahan, 1979.
Reply Your comments become even more ridiculous
July 20, 2024
Lynn
Peter understand British politics better than you think he does
July 19, 2024
Meeting with continental European leaders is no bad thing, especially when not confined to EU member states. Regarding EU growth rates, unfortunately David Lammy and Keir Starmer are more likely to listen to identikit pro EU economic commentators David Smith (if Lammy and Starmer actually read the Sunday Times) and William Keegan in the Guardian, rather than yourself. I’m sure Smith will reference Blenheim in yet more Brexit condemnation in his column next weekend.
July 19, 2024
In the clip I saw of Starmer he acknowledged the dinghy invasion (not his words of course) as now being a ‘crisis’
Well we know that, and who has helped to make it one?
I’m not saying the Rwanda policy was a good one, it possibly could have been if done properly, but Labour and associated left/liberal media, civil service, charities, quango’s and NGO’s ensured it was never given a trial, so we’ll never know.
I have a feeling the proportion of those we would take from Rwanda would creep up and up until we were bringing in as many, if not more, than we were sending out.
Had it stopped the boat crossings, like as not we would have continued taking in from Rwanda.
Rumour has it from many sources that 70% of those here illegally will be given asylum and I have every confidence Labour will bring in all their families too, especially those ‘lone children’ who have no one but will suddenly find they do, such as those that paid for their fare with the traffickers!! Call me cynical.
So the ‘crisis’ has just been given an almighty boost to become a full scale catastrophe for us.
July 19, 2024
John, you are right as usual.
But I suspect that the OBR forecasting model will have a number of positive assumptions about EU single market and freedom of movement.
July 19, 2024
Peter you have little understanding of Brexit. It was no anti european, or anti europeans in the slightest. It was anti an inward looking anti democratic EU. We value our democracy and absolute sovereignty in the UK. A mindset and quality that has baled Europe out of its ill chosen directions over the past two hundred years, at great expense to british, american and commonwealth lives. And still you cannot accept a truely democratic format for the europe you appear to want.
Our new government was elected on a 35% of the electorate vote. They are on thin ice.
July 19, 2024
@agicola:
There is still some democratic deficit in the Hybrid construction of the EU, in which for some years now, the heads of 27 democratic governments have almost all the power. Europe wasn’t of interest to the average European citizen. But these things are changing rather fast due to global and cross border issues (migration, corona, war in Ukraine, geopolitcal strive). Every time the collective European Council ask the commission to work on an issue (collective purchasing defence equipment no exception) a little more integration takes place. I believe though that during my lifetime the hybrid nature of the EU will continue to exist.
July 19, 2024
Farage said Brexit was a ‘failure’
Why isn’t he telling us what Reform will do to make it a ‘success’?! Especially now he’s in Parliament (actually he’s cruising around USA at moment over Trump)
He’s all waffle – no substance (same for Boris – the other main influential Brexit leader)
And now Labour are in power and want to take us back closer to Europe, perhaps one-day rejoin, because of the lack of leadership and planning amongst Brexiters as well as the country not being rich enough to pay for Brexit because of things like an inability on part of Tories to help the budding Elon Musks (High Tech entrepreneurs) of the UK.
July 19, 2024
@Ed M – planning for Brexit wasn’t and isn’t possible while Parliament blocks it happening. Our Legislators, that’s our MP’s are not able/permitted/or want to amend or repeal Laws that have not been created in the UK. Fishing in UK territorial waters is ruled by the EU, the EU Fishermen can have bigger boats (the UK size is limited by Law) so bigger catches and land bigger quoters than is permitted for the UK’s indigenous/historical fishermen. Its an endless list of what we can’t do – because our Parliament our Governments do not work for those that empower and pay them. As the EU negotiators stated(on camera) at the signing of the withdrawal agreement the UK is our(the EU’s) Colony now.
July 19, 2024
But then don’t try and implement Brexit unless you think you can. Brexiters should have thought of all this before Brexit.
I think Brexit is more than a GREAT idea. But Great ideas have to be framed in reality otherwise you’re just heading for ‘failure’ (as Farage now describes Brexit).
You can have a great idea in business (or in a military campaign), but if all the elements aren’t there to make it work, then you wait and work on your plan until you’re ready.
July 19, 2024
@Ed M – The Government, Parliament have fought the people on this issue they are the ones that thwarted Brexit. The people of this Country are more than capable of causing and creating a free Sovereign State, Parliament fights that. The Conservative Government just walked away to be another faction of the UNiParty.
What the people voting for Brexit didn’t expect was we had in Parliament diehard committed Europeans, that take orders from the unelected unaccountable and fight every shade of democracy peeping through. So our MP’s instead of working to the wishes of those that empower and pay them, choose to fight them. There is nothing wrong in wanting a democracy
It wasn’t the UK fishermen that gave away their livelihoods it was the UK Parliament, we are a one party State, a locked into the EU Colony.
July 19, 2024
we did think we could implement — we now know the depth of deceitful, fifth columnists in many established areas of State that ignored the will of the people.
In times gone by heads would have rolled, literally.
July 19, 2024
Neither Farage or Boris are ‘influential,Brexit leaders’. For heavens sake listen to the speeches of Powell, Shore, Castle, Ridley, Redwood, McWhirter, etc etc etc.
The two named are not even good parrots having had the arguments defined for them.
What Farage meant to say is ‘the implementation of Brexit is a failure’ -but he is not very bright.
July 19, 2024
I’m NOT here to challenge people like such Sir John Redwood. Even though I don’t disagree with him about everything, I respect him for his political thinking overall and success in politics, and that he has some brains and experience in business as well as the ability to debate political issues.
But I am here to challenge Farage (and Boris Johnson) as he is like the Pied Piper and helping to lead the Tory Party to ruin whilst helping to let Labour into power and ruin our country twice as fast as any Tory government would.
Although, back to Sir John Redwood, I wish he would write more – and challenge more – about how we can help entrepreneurs and in particular this in the High Tech Industry (to help create the Apples, IBMS, Elon Musks and so on of the future, here in the UK). Things like that.
July 19, 2024
Well I can tell you that IT was created in the U.K. and driven out. The ‘white-heat of technology’ is ours. The way you keep our own inventive, capable, incredible people in the U.K. is by cutting their taxes and treating them like adults. You don’t tell people who invented radar, flying boats, and almost everything else on earth that devaluation has no effect on ‘the £ in your pocket’.
Kamala is doing her best to drive them back home ‘space is exciting!’ 🤯
July 21, 2024
Listen, I’m a quasi Libertarian. I agree with a lot / most things Liberatarians say.
But a lot of Libertarians seem to think it’s just about lowering taxes and so on (which I agree with) but them just leave it at that (they’re like the Finance Director in a company and say the company must cut back on costs etc – I agree 100% except that you don’t allow your Finance Director to run the company!). No, sorry, you have to do more! You have to creatively and wisely help entrepreneurs like the Israeli government did turning Israel into a major world tech hub – same for US government helping entrepreneurs to create Silicon Valley.
This is where Libertarians get it wrong – either because they are lazy and / or lack the imagination about how to proactively help entrepreneurs and / or something else.
July 19, 2024
What has Starmer pledged behind closed doors
July 19, 2024
@glen cullen – the Country! – more UK Taxpayer funding for the French energy producers, so they can sell cheaper energy in their home market
July 19, 2024
Irrelevant, he could not deliver a pizza.
July 20, 2024
but they’re delivering ‘net-zero’ in double quick time
July 19, 2024
I see today Reeves saying she welcomes trade with China and doesn’t intend to hamper it with tariffs. I assume this means she won’t follow the EU in slapping massive tariffs on Chinese EV imports to make them more expensive for consumers. The fact that she can even take this decision is yet another Brexit benefit !
July 19, 2024
@Roy Grainger – as with all Countries we should trade with China to the same rules they trade with the rest of the World.
Chinese EV’s trade has a massive benefit of State subsidies. BYD alone received €1.6 billion in State subsidies that allows them to undercut all competition World Wide – and when the competition gives up?
July 19, 2024
RG :
Nothing to do with Brexit. Both this overnment and the last have decided to save the world by net zeroing our 1% contribution to global CO2 emissions by de-industrialising. Destroying our car industry is part of the NG ESO Pathway to Net Zero.
July 19, 2024
Labour’s plan for growth is little more than a wish. I’m glad to see they’ve rowed back on their zero hours contract ban to say it will just be those that are exploitative. Otherwise they are just piling legislation onto the backs of hard-pressed employers.
If they want growth, free up employers to hire who they want, fire them when they please, on whatever salary they mutually agree. If they don’t want to employ women of child-bearing age in case they get pregnant, don’t oblige them to. Don’t force employers to maintain employment of people they don’t want any more. If they are valued employees, the employers will want to keep them.
We have a national minimum wage, but in many industries it may as well be the national maximum wage.
July 19, 2024
DA :
Growth is the last thing they want. Growth brings increased CO2 emissions and will not be wanted as the plan is to save the world by net zeroing, or even zeroing, our 1% contribution to global CO2 emissions. The NG ESO FES 2024 Pathways call for “customer engagement” and “acceptance” for “big demand reductions” in order to meet the Net Zero Strategy targets. CBDC will be used to ration food, heating and travel and of course energy bills will be reduced as promised as there will be so little availble through rolling blackouts.
July 19, 2024
Sir John
“Closer working relationship?”
In EU Bureaucrats terms that means we get to do what they say. Even the EU Members have real no say, it’s the Bureaucrats that define the Laws not democratic Legislators.
As for Trade and Cooperation with the EU it is a one-way street even now the EU Commissions tells us what we must accept and the rules we must obey. We are not trading with them they are trading with us.
UK Fishing in UK territorial waters is still controlled by the EU. EU Fishermen can use bigger boats take a bigger tonnage from UK waters than any indigenous traditional UK based fisherman is permitted – our government agreed to this rape of our resources. That is the pattern everywhere when it come to ‘cooperation’ with the EU Commission.
It has the knock-on effect in the UK being part the World, being released to trade with the World, it is all stymied, our legislators are ‘not’, they are someone’s else’s puppets.
Parliament in the last 40 years or so has only ever seen its-self as conduit to implement the laws of others, it has denied us the right of democracy, of democratic legislators that make laws we need on our terms, then amends and repeals according to democratic principles.
July 19, 2024
Repeating Starmers views on Democracy, that reveal the Man and his love affair with the EU. Or in fact anything and anywhere that will tell him what to do other than those that empowered and paid him
“Starmer has unwittingly revealed what ‘Davos Man’ is all about: he’s about escaping the irritating plane of democratic decision-making in preference for the rarefied company of the 21st century’s self-styled philosopher-kings. He’s about liberating himself from the constraints of democratic politics – especially the constraint of being answerable to the masses – in favour of chumming about with the better-educated, better-dressed better people of the World Economic Forum. It reveals his contempt for parliamentary democracy, and it reveals Davos Man’s belief that politics is better done away from us pesky plebs. ” Brendan O’Neill @Spiked
WEF is his home – not the UK never forget that
July 19, 2024
Excellent post.
July 19, 2024
Brendan O’Neill, the trots who moved within the Revolutionary Communist Party before calling himself a Marxist Libertarian. In case you didn’t realise his paragraph is a far-left critic of Starmer.
July 19, 2024
No one is in doubt of the game being played.
“Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg claimed Sir Keir Starmer was seeking to return the UK to EU jurisdiction by “stealth” as he warned against allowing Labour to unpick Brexit “through the back door”.”
Sir Keir said yesterday at a summit of the European Political Community that the UK under his leadership would not be part of the EU but would be “very much a part of Europe”.
It the reason parliament gave us BRINO and has fought independence, sovereignty and the people at every turn.
We await the urgent statement made up to look like a national emergency and we only be safe under the control of the unelected unaccountable. Starmer & Lammy in just one week, thanks to the Conservative Government sowing the seeds have moved so much closer – as too be of no consequence.
July 19, 2024
Even a Tory leadership hopeful( the only one to express his desire) has embraced Socialism, the big spending high taxation and borrowing of the left in saying the Party must become a ‘One Nation’ party and resit the centre ground of the UK People while returning the UK to be ruled by the unelected unaccountable of the EU – that will get him elected as the Conservative Party leadership..!? – I would guess so, the rump of the Parliamentary members and CCHQ are diehard remainers, seek a continuity leader. They have strengthen Starmer & Lammy
What they didn’t grasp, didn’t hear, didn’t want to hear, the country rejected that notion, they rejected the continuity of the left, the remainers of the BoJo collective – Sunak/Hunt’s UniParty – they wanted a straightforward Conservative Party but were disenfranchised. They wanted a Party that understands the economy, the need to balance the books, control expenditure able to ‘earn’ its way – just as the majority of the people of the UK have to do every day – the UK’s centre ground, the UK’s Conservatives
July 19, 2024
What is happening over the appalling WHO power grab?
July 19, 2024
And what a beautiful coincidence: yesterday, for the first time evah, our Border Force collaborated with France, picking up some dinghy people and took them – to Calais!
It was of course nothing to do with this Meeting, nothing to do with ‘making Starmer look good’, or with ‘making Ms Cooper look strong’ … And lo and behold, Macron hinted that this could happen again when ‘we’ have moved towards a closer and cosier ‘relationship’ with the EU.
Whitehall’s mask dropped – the one hiding their hard work to ‘Rejoin!’ .
July 19, 2024
@Vivian Evans – it was always clear that was behind the situation
July 19, 2024
This certainly caught the headlines. However, there was a failure it seems in stopping 317 in 6 boats yesterday 18 JUL. That makes it 1502 arrivals in 25 boats in the last 15 days 04 JUL to 18 JUL incl. Where are they now.
July 19, 2024
I don’t wish to sound vindicated but 99% of the responders here predicted that not a single forcible illegal immigrant would be sent to Rwanda ….and we were correct
July 19, 2024
I understand the illegal migrants were taken back to Calais because they needed mdical treatment and Calais was nearer than Dover.
BTW, don’t the French have any border patrol vessels? Or the equivalent to our RNLI? Or is this our duty because it’s called the English Channel? Or is it an EU ruling?
July 19, 2024
We all know what these calls for closer cooperation with the EU will lead to, for this government is totally in love with the idea of being a subservient member of the EU.
They see the glossy EU infrastructure and vast number of highly paid presidents, and they want some of it.
The urge to surrender to the EU is not about making the UK more prosperous or our people living better lives. It is all about the ideas behind socialist dogma and the very weird Startrek-dream mentality.
Bigger is not always better, but the dream behind sinking back into the EU requires that we surrender our national identity and resources that we had have left. It is a misnomer that small countries cannot survive well, and we certainly do not need to be managed to within an inch of our lives by some all seeing undemocratic global government.
July 19, 2024
‘Brexit’ or ‘Don Quixote’ by Cervantes, starring Nigel Farage as Don Quixote and Boris Johnson as Sancho Panchez (and their failure to produce a leader and a plan and a strong economy to pay for Brexit).
July 19, 2024
The OBR once more, guiding the UK into oblivion
“The UK borrowed £14.5bn in June, well higher than the £11.6bn predicted by the Office for Budget Responsibility.”
Getting it right is not a thing they do, being Socialist apologists and political manipulators is their purpose
July 19, 2024
EU = Neo-communism, ‘a rose by any other name’?
July 19, 2024
The EU is yesterday’s vision of tomorrow. The powerhouse and financier was Germany…but it is bust. The Germans will increasingly look after their own interests, which are unlikely to include continuing to finance the expensive pretence which is the EU.
July 19, 2024
Wise words
July 19, 2024
Isn’t it great to see all of the European nation heads sitting down peacefully in friendly discussion with the King and PM Starmer and also with Ukraine leader Zelensky in attendance while not forgeting the outlier Viktor Orban – it can only mean well for the future of everyone in this part of the world – Ode to Joy
July 19, 2024
You only see what you want to see. There’s horrors under the radar, real horrors.
July 21, 2024
D, But obviously only a clairvoyant like you sees those horrors. What about limiting your intake of whatever it is you abuse? It might be better for your health.
July 20, 2024
You’re ‘avin’ a laugh.
July 19, 2024
“The government would be wrong to enter a defence treaty with the EU. Let us stick to NATO and collaborate through that.” Agreed, Sir John.
An extract from Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter.
“The next step is to consolidate Germany’s military-strategic gains over the past half-year through von der Leyen’s call for a military union, which would see German-controlled Brussels organizing the bloc’s military-industrial needs across its 27 members, thus moving them closer to de facto federalization. Upon surrendering sovereignty over military policymaking, which some of them have proudly protected up until now, every other aspect of federalization would quickly fall into place shortly afterwards.”
R
July 20, 2024
Germany’s Scholz has vowed that Germany will lead European defence. He doubled the German defence budget from 2022 to 2030 and intends that Germany will have the most powerful armed forces in Europe by 2030. On current trends its defence budget will then be a third higher than UK’s.
Germany is leading the drive in the EU to substitute QMV for unanimity in EU decision making in defence, security and foreign relations. The EU intends to become the European voice in NATO and QMV will give Germany the largest share of the EU vote so the European voice in NATO will be Germany’s.
Germany reversed its decision not to upply arms to Ukraine three days after Russia’s invasion in exchange for Zelensky signing over the future sovereignty of Ukraine to the EU. The aim is to gain control via the EU of Ukraine’s vast reserves of critical minerals of which lithium and rare earths alone are valued at up to US$13 trillion to support Green Energy and reduce dependence on China. Last year Von Der Leyen decreed that post war reonstruction of Ukraine would be directed towrds EU green energy in which Germany’s energiewende is in dire need of restoration after reverting to coal.
One thing I have noticed about Remainers is that they generally haven’t a clue about the EU.
July 20, 2024
@Peter Gardner:
You give a very interesting narrative, apart from the “Zelensky signing over the future sovereignty of Ukraine to the EU”. That is really not the way that Ukrainians nor Europeans think. I would have a problem with thinling that e.g. the Netherlands was less “sovereign” than the UK, even being very much part of the EU. You forget the interdependence of countries, also when they are not part of the EU. You may of course construct various examples to support the UK’s “sovereignty” but on balance, the outside world will agree with me that post EU-membership, the UK has lost and not gained power and significance in the world. Of course your “feeling” that you now are truly “free”, I’ll leave with you. Enjoy your “feeling”.
July 19, 2024
“Bizarre that the U.K. hosted the meeting of 46 leaders of European countries at Blenheim.”
Expect to see PM Starmer attend and host a lot more of these meetings. The HoC can be avoided and the company and the food is better.
July 19, 2024
Sir John
People should be very afraid, democracy and choice has been removed from Society by the Bureaucrats.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cnd0918lz94o.amp
The Treasury and the OBR are to be given more powers. These 2 powers that with their orthodoxy has caused the rapid decline in the UK’s fortunes. The OBR that has a track record of being wrong on everything
Chancellor Rachel Reeves will tell financiers the “budget responsibility bill” will deliver economic stability
Powers will be given to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) to make judgements on any major taxation or spending announcements in a bid to deliver “stability”, the Treasury said.
‘If the government wanted to announce significant economic measures but did not ask for an OBR forecast on the plans, a “fiscal lock would be triggered”, the Treasury said.’
It means we no longer will have a need for elections, we will no longer need a democratically elected Government. All choice for the UK’s future becomes the exclusive domain of the self-appointed unelected unaccountable Bureaucrats – we are back in the EU!
July 20, 2024
This is all a BGO. Trouble is that it would require the political elites to have faith in the great unwashed,xxxxx those without silly degrees. Too much to ask. The alternative for the elites is to seek the security of other elites to insulate themselves from accountability to people they despise. The EU’s anthem is really about the brotherhood of those who believe they know best, not as Beethoven and Schiller meant, the brotherhood of man under God.