Why? Ireland isn’t in Schengen, and multiple EU countries aren’t using the euro, with no plans to adopt it (Poland, Sweden, Hungary, Czechia).
I’m British and I hope the UK and EU can have closer relations. But if the EU just wants to punish the UK for Brexit then that is going to go down badly with many Brits, so closer relations will become less likely.
I know Burnham recently said he wouldn’t hold an election in the next 12 months, but maybe the polling will persuade him otherwise. If the polling is good for Labour then surely it’s a good time to have an election. He could secure a more ambitious manifesto and keep Reform out of number 10 for at least five years.
But of course it would be a risk. In 2017, Theresa May called an election because the polling didn’t look too bad for the Tories, and then during the election campaign, the Tory vote declined while the Labour vote rose.
There’s always Ireland, they speak English and they’re still in the EU.
Not to be pedantic but I think that would be “Breenter”, just like how “reentry” has two Es
An alternative would be “Brejoin”
It’s like running with a bucket of water to a burning man and saying “I’ll douse you, but it’ll cost you 100 bucks”
I agree with you. Successful people often don’t want to recognise how much good luck they’ve had. Childhood privileges that others don’t have, job opportunities that others haven’t had, etc.
If we applied their thinking to every situation, we’d say something like “if a child in Gaza dies from an Israeli bomb, it’s the child’s fault, because they didn’t try hard enough to avoid the bomb”.
Even if a right-winger admits that children can have different circumstances, they might have an attitude of “once you hit 18, we’re all equal, and your effort is what determines your success in adult life”. But that’s not true. Some adults have a lot of privilege behind them, while others don’t. Some adults have health conditions which can be very difficult to manage in some cases, taking up time and money and effort, while other adults don’t have to worry as much about their health.
Google tells me that David Lammy said that in early 2019. Anyway, I think he was right about this bit:
Leaving the EU will not free us from the injustices of global capitalism, it will make us subordinate to Trump’s US.
Sure it would be better if America was doing more to support Ukraine. But I think it’s good news that they are at least allowing Ukraine to have these Patriots, since they are important for Ukraine.
I’m not trying to give too much credit to the US of course. Trump’s administration is terrible. I’m just saying it could have been worse, if the US refused to allow Ukraine to have any Patriots.
their Welsh leader is still in prison for taking money from the Russians. Somehow though, their popularity has not diminished as much as it should have
Reform supporters believe that the idea of Russia being a threat has been made up by the liberal media to distract everybody from immigration. I wish I was kidding.
You could argue it’s a deal that some Brits voted for, but definitely not all Brits of course.
Only 51.89% of those who voted in the Brexit referendum in 2016 voted for Brexit.
In 2019 there was a general election, and during that election campaign, Boris Johnson promised to “get Brexit done”, but only 43.6% of voters in that election voted for Johnson’s party, the Conservatives. So a majority of voters in that election voted against the Conservatives.
It would have been possible to leave the EU while staying in the single market and/or customs union, but the Conservatives chose a particularly hard version of Brexit, cutting more ties than necessary with the EU.
Some Brexiteers suggested that Brexit would be a softer affair, in the lead up to the referendum.
Tory peer Daniel Hannan (formerly an MEP) said in 2015: “absolutely nobody is talking about threatening our place in the single market”. And yet we did leave the single market, as part of the hard Brexit pursued by the Tories.
But yes I suppose other leading Brexiteers didn’t make details explicit. Perhaps, after the Brexit referendum, we should have had a second referendum to determine what shape Brexit should take. We could have remained in the single market for many industries (similar to Norway/Switzerland/Iceland) or the customs union (similar to Turkey), or both.
Brexiteers are famously supportive of “democracy” so they shouldn’t have had any objections to a second referendum.
I’m just going to leave this here.
I wonder if it will cost them more trying to defeat the tax, than if they just paid the tax.
They’d probably be okay with that anyway. They probably enjoy paying more just to watch poor people squirm.
I definitely think Europe should have strong relationships with good allies, like Canada and Japan. Hopefully they would both be reliable.
Mexico, potentially yes, they could be a reliable ally. As for India I’m not so sure, because India seems to want to be quite friendly with Russia (I think India buys a lot of military equipment from Russia), and Russia has been waging war against Europe for the last 12 years.
I’ve noticed that irony too. For example, in 2024:
And then, in 2026:
It’s funny that conservatives are all about “law and order” and then they’ll happily break the law (fleeing Brazil illegally) when it serves them
I think more Europeans need to realise that the only countries which care about the security of European countries are European countries.
Trump on 13th June 2020:
Trump on 5th October 2024:
I will not send you to fight and die in a foolish, never-ending foreign war
That second link has other examples too.
Oppressive authoritarianism? But tankies told me that China is a place of unbridled liberty. A land of milk and honey. Unlike the evil West which is always horrible and terrible.
If you’re implying that Brits are all a bunch of Europe-hating backstabbers then I don’t think that’s true. I’m British and yes, some Brits don’t like the EU. Mainly older Brits. But a lot of Brits do like the EU.
According to YouGov, a British polling company, a majority of Brits have wanted to rejoin the EU for at least the last two and a half years, perhaps longer. Of course that level of support could change depending on the terms of rejoining the EU, but still.
Personally I think it would be good if the UK and EU forge closer relations in the coming years, but I don’t think rejoining the EU will be a realistic possibility for at least a few years, because eurosceptics in the UK continue to wield political power.