Mrs Merkel tells us that you never get what you want if you are not in the room, meaning as a full member of the EU.
So she seems to be telling the USA, China, India and the rest that as they are not members of the EU they will never get what they want from Germany.
That’s not very diplomatic, and not a good way to make friends.
Normal countries build friendly relationships with other countries without seeking to put them under the duress of strict special legal structures.
She also seems to believe the UK has to join the Euro, as we are often not in the room on Euro financial matters.
Of course Germany wants us to stay to help her pay all the bills of this increasingly risky and expensive project.
When we leave I know she will be equally keen to keep all the very profitable trade Germany does with us . Then we will be in a new room negotiating as she seeks to retain the trade advantages Germany currently enjoys. The good news for her is the UK does not want to impose new barriers on German trade with us.
June 2, 2016
Of course you are right. I will just make an analogy , some may think it is trite , however it is in the same tone/style of Germany.
I have 2 P/T jobs I am 65yrs this June and have been discriminated against in many ways by one employer, therefore I will leave. For about 7 years I have been contributing to leaving presents, new baby presents, special birthday presents etc like we all do in a work situation. Last year a social fund was set up to formalise it and buy impersonal presents. Good idea you may think BUT I was asked if I was going to contribute this new tax year . I said no, as I was leaving. The person collecting told me that I have to be in it to win it. In other words I won’t be getting a leaving present. It is not the grief at not getting a present , but rather bad diplomacy and lack of recognition for past contributions.
Of course until I leave I will buy a gift for who I want , however not the social fund collector : you know what she can do!
June 3, 2016
JR, off topic: I would like to thank you for your hard work and dedication for the leave EU campaign. While it have disagreed with a lot of your blogs over the years we are agreed at it is best for our country to leave the EU. I am still very disappointed that so many Tory MPs put party and self interest before country. All the Tory MPs who falsely claimed to be Eurosceptic need to subject to the right to recall as he have failed e voters on a fundamental reason why ey voted for them, a fraud if you will. We should know what MPs stand for and if they deliberately act against this then the public needs to have a form of proper address. We were promised a right to recall and the shyster Cameron produced a fob instead a he did EVEL when his pledge was very clear and distinct.
June 2, 2016
Merkel has 18 months left in post, maximum, with decreasing internal power. Seriously diminished power over EU states. A failure in her own time. It was very difficult and complex to make Germany fail ongoing for decades. Only an external war could have done as much.
She gets on very well with President Putin which, does not surprise me personally one little bit.
June 4, 2016
@CH; “[Merkel] gets on very well with President Putin which, does not surprise me personally one little bit.”
So not a complete failure then, someone needs to keep the channels of communication open, seeing that much of the west has decided to test that the Cold War truly did end in the 1990s, what with talk of NATO’s influence expanding yet further East and with now some Western governments wishing to oust Assad with the probably loss of the Russian Naval base at Tartus.
June 2, 2016
She does believe that the UK and every other EU member state should join the euro, she has openly said so albeit to a French not a British newspaper:
http://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2010/05/17/angela-merkel-pour-l-allemagne-la-culture-de-stabilite-n-est-pas-negociable_1353108_3214.html
“notre objectif doit être que tous les pays deviennent un jour membres de la zone euro”.
And so the UK undoubtedly will, sooner or later, if the UK stays in the EU; and nobody should assume that we, the people, would be asked about it in a referendum.
That is the problem with having a “referendum lock” law which is riddled with loopholes so that it can be used as a “referendum block” law, and a law which is also not in any way entrenched against normal repeal.
June 2, 2016
Is it too early for a sing-a-long?
“Who do you think you are kidding Mrs……..”
I’d better not go any further,I’d hate to offend the likes of Sir Max Hastings and other hand-wringing-liberals-masquerading-as-fogeys.
You all know the words anyway!
June 2, 2016
I heard that some of the old Ossies are unhappy being part of the new united Germany and would like to return to the communism of the old East Germany.
Perhaps Angela is one of those.
June 3, 2016
Probably not ….but check out Dr Sahra Wagenknecht who is one of the leaders of the hard left,Die Linke,in the German Parliament,which may have it’s roots in the East German Communist Party.There is a wonderful (subtitled)video on Youtube of her raging against Merkel (who is present) on a variety of issues(the Euro crisis,the Ukraine civil war).A red-suited,statuesque Amazonian and a fiery orator,she’s all the things Merkel is not.Marvellous-etc ed
June 2, 2016
Brave new world was on r4 the other day. Nearly fell off my chair when I turned it on half way through. Get 1984 on radio/tv/Netflix pronto before the vote.
The young need to know about rebellion. They don’t watch bbc. Passed a phone box in town centre with advertising space on a whole wall for under £4 per day.
Can someone with knowhow put ads up 1984 v 2016. Its so obvious what’s happening.
Freedom v Serfdom. 1% elite v proles.
Make it short and snappy for the kidz and kidults.
There’s 99% of Us and many clever people among us. but make it quick.
June 4, 2016
1984 returns to the Playhouse Theatre from 14th June 2016 and tickets are available online, I got an email saying they are for sale at up to 60% off ie: from £19.84!
I too listened to Brave New World which is still (both episodes) available on I player, it didn’t say for how long, the repeat of the 2nd episode is tonight at 9pm.
I too was astonished while listening, as the Brave New World sounded very and exactly like now. I concluded those commissioning it at the bbc must be so brain washed they hadn’t noticed!
June 2, 2016
Skynews says 19.42 hours that Social media is “buzzing” in anticipation about Mr Cameron speaking in the EU debate. Well my Twitter feed isn’t .Two, sorry 5 tweets in the last 3 minutes . And my Twitter feed is predominantly people interested in politics.
Perhaps journalists can as usual pretend to be various Twitter characters ( Oh yes they do ) and make it look good.
19.48 Now they’re saying “it’s really coming alive”, Perhaps they have a magnifying glass and are looking at their nocturnal carpet mites.
June 2, 2016
Were we in in the room when Mad Merkel invitied 1,000,000 aliens to to invade Germany with the Brussels regime then deciding that we should all share the enrichment equally?
We need to be out of the room so that we can control our borders against people we don’t want which includes allocations of people who have travelled thousands of miles and passed through many countries and over continents to demand we give them ‘asylum’.
Let’s rejoin the real world in which product design is a matter for engineers not cretinous micromeddling members of the Brussels commissariat; that way we wont have to set our alarm clocks earlier to allow for the inordinate time that the new improved kettles will take to boil and toasters toast. Perhaps also we could save some of our industries before they are driven to the wall for emitting an essential ingredient for photosynthesis.
June 2, 2016
Can anyone explain to me why the Irelish Republic and Scotland are encouraging their nationals to vote for the UK to remain” in the EU.
Those two governments are strongly inclined towards self-rule for themselves, but want Britain to throw away the last vesitges of democracy, because if the UK remains in the EU, our Parliament will become a charade.
June 3, 2016
Money and their hatred of the Sassenach’s.
June 3, 2016
Bob, you will be pleased to know that we are not all going to vote according to Miss Sturgeon’s wishes – I will be voting to leave the EU on 23 June. Despite what she says, I doubt Miss Sturgeon wants a second referendum at this time – oil is less than half the price it was in September 2014 so it would be difficult for the SNP to make all the promises of riches that failed to work last time. Anyway, if she does want to have another referendum, we will just have to go out and vote No again- hopefully with an increased margin!
June 2, 2016
This playground banter is all rather demeaning, bit like working up to a divorce. Once a clean break has been achieved, both sides can then face the reality of a new relationship.
AM’s problem is that she will end up paying for what is left after our departure, which will ultimately bring into question her position once the German people realise that they are the sole paymasters.
June 2, 2016
Cameron must go.
June 3, 2016
Even more than that Osborne and his daft tax, borrow and piss down the drain economic policies must go.
June 2, 2016
She has lost her way and the support of the German people . Anything she says can only help the “Brexiters”cause .
June 2, 2016
We have just been listening to the PM’s audience with the nation. His central point, indeed almost his only point, was the over riding importance of the single market. He dismissed all alternatives. For instance the Canadian arrangement would take far too long. While a pure free trade policy would, under WTO rules, land us with 10 per cent tariffs. Was he plucking this figure from the air in order to frighten us or had he got it from some respectable source?
June 3, 2016
What Merkel et al are talking about is unilateral sanctions against the UK – Not going to happen.
Tariff war works in both directions so the EU would be unwise to go in that direction.
Although on a percentage basis the EU exports to the UK are less than the other direction, in real money terms the EU exports more to us and is likely to loose just as many jobs if trade were to stop.
Germany exported to the UK 89 Billion Euros of goods in 2015 (we rank third behind the USA & France) which is roughly 10-11% of Germany’s exports. Do you think they would be willing to loose that – I hardly think so.
https://www.destatis.de/EN/FactsFigures/NationalEconomyEnvironment/ForeignTrade/TradingPartners/Tables/OrderRankGermanyTradingPartners.pdf
June 3, 2016
The 10% refers, I believe, to the external EU tariff for cars; on other products it is much lower. German car makers would not welcome a reciprocal 10% tariff set by the UK on their exports to the UK. The UK is one of their most significant markets for two reasons – its volume and the richness (think high price) of the mix of products sold here. I do not have the numbers to hand, but my guess is that the UK buys a significant share of the output of German car factories.
I also discovered one very interesting fact about the German car industry the other day. It is not concentrated in just one region of Germany. A map of Germany marked with the principal manufacturing and assembly operation sites of the principal brands (VW, Mercedes, Audi, BMW) revealed that they were widely dispersed across the country; and that was before taking into account the significance of the component and systems suppliers such as ZF and Bosch. The significance of this is that the industry’s political clout must be equally widespread too. It seems to me that any German politician putting the industry’s business fortunes at risk to make political scoring points would also be putting their own political careers at risk too.
June 3, 2016
It’s all piffle, and he and Osborne must surely know that it’s all piffle because there are official reports acknowledging that it’s all piffle.
Well, I must admit that they don’t directly say “It’s all piffle”; they only say that originally it was projected that the EU Single Market would increase the collective GDP of the EU member states by about 5%, small beer, and in fact it seems to have achieved only 2%, even smaller beer.
For example, in the July 2013 “Balance of Competences” review which they told the civil service to draw up, on page 38 here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/227069/2901084_SingleMarket_acc.pdf
But that is the average across the whole of the EU; and according to this report, published in 2014 and therefore not available when that UK government report was being prepared:
https://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/fileadmin/files/BSt/Publikationen/GrauePublikationen/Policy-Brief-Binnenmarkt-en_NW_02_2014.pdf
the UK has gained less than the average, about 1% in terms of per capita GDP.
As for tariffs, on page 52 of the “Balance of Competences” review it was stated:
“… EU tariff barriers are still relatively high: the average Most Favoured Nation (MFN) tariff is 5.3%, 2.8% on a trade-weighted basis, compared to 3.5% and 2.1% for the US”.
While other authors have come up with slightly different numbers, for example Andrew Lilico a couple of weeks ago:
http://www.andrewlilico.com/2016/05/22/what-is-it-reasonable-to-believe-might-be-the-economic-impact-of-brexit/
“The average trade-weighted tariff applied by the EU is 1%. WTO tariffs average 4.4%. So if the UK imposed no tariffs on imports from the EU and imposed an extra UK-wide tax to offset tariffs imposed by the EU (yeah, yeah, WTO rules, blah-blah – forget that for now and concentrate on my thought experiment), if exports to the EU would be 10% of GDP that would cost between 0.1% and 0.44% of GDP (since 10% x 1% = 0.1% and 10% x 4.4% = 0.44%). Not 6%. 0.1-0.44%.”
“Not 6%” – as is now being predicted by the Treasury, clearly in response to Osborne’s demand for some terrifying numbers with which to bash the Leave campaign – but “0.1 – 0.44%”.
June 2, 2016
Indeed what another very silly thing for her to say.
Alastair Heath has it spot on today in the Telegraph today. He ends with:-
Voting to remain is a far greater leap into the unknown than voting to leave. It’s self-evidently normal to be independent and prosperous: just look at America, Australia, Canada or Singapore. But there are no known examples of a previously independent democracy being subsumed into a dysfunctional, economically troubled technocracy and doing well as a result. As mad gambles go, it is hard to think of anything worse.
June 2, 2016
21.55#Skynews is exploding with tales of Twitter of Tweets being in the thousands. Utter nonsense. The frightened look on Kay Burley’s face and her inactivity in Mr Cameron’s bullying nonsense is important. He must go. What an absolute tyrant.
June 2, 2016
Dr JR, the bookies are starting to rate a Trump presidency as a racing certainty, and despite the sneering from the elites, we need to think through what this implies. He’s an American nationalist and isolationist who despises nations who don’t pull their weight in NATO, he’s proud of his Scottish ancestry and he has an Atlanticist outlook. These are very positive traits for the UK. He also favours Brexit. It follows that in a very uncertain world where the US remains the sole super-power, Brexit could be a foreign policy master-stroke. What do you think, William?
June 2, 2016
Off topic after watching your leader on Sky tv I think the outers should go in for the kill with Brexit The Movie on all major TVs channels
June 3, 2016
And a Paxman investigation into the EU.
June 2, 2016
Cameron should be cast away on a boat and a sextant. You don’t get a professional journalist looking so downcast like Kay Burley, unless something very un-British has happened. He’s a Blair.
June 2, 2016
Christopher Houston ,
He could not hide his arrogance or the contempt he held for the impudent audience for daring to challenge him .
He’s been cast adrift on a boating pond for the past 6 years .
It’s absolutely a case of “come in number one , your time is up” .
Osborne and May have no future in British politics either .
A job in Brussels is surely the only lifeboat for that lot .
June 2, 2016
Dave had a bad Q&A session with the public on sky.
Suspect it’s all over for remain now.
June 2, 2016
So, the choice before us fellow Brits is Cameron and his frightening of a sky news journalist to the point where this Burley looks for the first time utterly scared and not adversarial to a Man and, the personal best friend of Cameron in the shape of Mr Gove.
One should not be judged by the behaviour of ones friends. Is Mr Gove extremely lonely?