I mean the UK had significant power within the formal institutions of the EU; I think you’re perhaps misreading his post. He was saying Britain should have worked more forcefully within the EU to work to correct its defects, and that it had more tools at its disposal to push for change in Brussels.
In the negotiations about the UK’s relationship with the EU after it exits the union, the UK does not have “formal powers”, it has a bargaining position. When talking about its membership in the EU historically and things done or not done, the UK had a lot of formal powers within the structure of the EU, which do weight a number of decision making processes more heavily to the larger countries (with Britain being one of the larger EU countries.)
It’s not just that the UK doesn’t have the leverage it thought it did; it’s that the EU has every incentive to actually be more intransigent in negotiations than a pure calculus of the EU-UK trading relationship would dictate. Any sense of weakness in this will make the EU look weak and will encourage other member states to threaten to take their toys and go home if they don’t get whatever their desired changes are. The EU benefits from the UK getting screwed.
All this was incredibly predictable. This isn’t Deep Blue chess, it’s tic-tac-toe.
Johnson has said “I’d rather be dead in a ditch than ask the EU for an extension”. That may well be a stupid position, but it is at least a position, and one that will appeal to a substantial amount of the electorate. Corbyn is presumably still trying to find out what “having a position” actually is.
You know when people though no-one could lose to Trump? Corbyn is doing a good impression of Hilary here.
The question I was responding to was “But do you really think that a complete revocation of the article 50 [snip] would see the E.U. and the UK’s position in it carry on exactly as before?”
Presumably, if Article 50 is revoked, it means that the people responsible for the bad faith and the ill will are no longer in power and a more Europhillic government is in place.
I think there are folks in some countries in Europe who have some sympathy for British (Europhile) opinions on the future of Europe. We are not talking Farage & Cummings here. We’re not even talking conservative-pm-held-hostage-to-euroskeptics. There are Europhiles who fervently believe the the EU is a force for good but recognize that unrestricted migration and immigration and over-regulation and all the rest are damaging to the public’s support for the European project.
And not just in Britain.
Other countries like the Netherlands and Denmark have always been more sympathetic to the British point of view and France, Germany and Italy all have movements that are pushing back on Ever Closer Union. They might welcome a little bit of populist reform that they can blame on the British. No marching orders required.
Wow! Sounds almost like what’s happening in the US right now: rich people are trying to break the system so they can then try and take complete control and re-form it how they want, without all these pesky regulations and laws and rules and traditions and things.
Legally, yes, the UK carries on exactly as before, a member of the EU on exactly the terms it has now, including the opt-outs, the rebate, the veto rights - everything. The UK will have the same powers of unilateral action, and unilateral blocking of the actions of others, that it has had all along.
Over the last three years the UK has squandered an enormous amount of diplomatic capital, political credibility, goodwill and reputation. Regardless of where we go from here, that is not going to be quickly recovered. This impairs its ability to take collective or co-operative action.
So, although the UK’s rights and entitlements in the EU will be unchanged, its influence will be greatly diminished. It will have to work hard to rebuild that, and it will take time, but it can be done, and it can certainly be more easily done if the UK remains a member than if it leaves, because remaining a member (a) indicates a deicsion to repudiate the disastrous course of recent years, and (b) gives it a position (votes in the Council) that it can leverage, by working co-operatively with other Member States and so reconstructing a reputation as a country capable of doing so. This will require a new generation of political leaders in the UK but, obviously, they need that anyway.
With everything carry on exactly as before? No, but it was never going to; that’s not how history unfolds. Events, actions and decisions have consequences, and thereafter the world will always be different from how it was before those events happened, those actions were taken, those decisions were made. But the UK shouldn’t be asking itself “how can we make things as they were before?” (That’s what got them into delusional Brexit in the first place.) They should be asking “Given where we are now, where should we go from here?”
Pretty much. This is the most infuriating thing about this issue - none of this was rocket science. It was obvious from the word go that Brexit would be harmful for the UK’s economy. It was obvious from the word go that the UK didn’t have the long end of the stick on negotiating a deal with the entire EU. And yet, somehow a large number of people couldn’t grasp these obvious facts. In fact, the only surprising part is how incredibly forthcoming the EU has been in the face of what is very obviously bad faith.
That makes somewhat more sense, and unfortunately the latest EU election kind of bears this out? Which is unfortunate, because one would hope that one of the lessons of Brexit is just how much of this anti-EU sentiment is blatantly bullshit.
Watching the meltdown of Johnson’s government is a schadenfreudefest.
I know the issues are really serious, but it’s still highly entertaining to watch.
His speech at the Wakefield police academy was simply cringeworthy, a public speaker’s nightmare:
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Thankyou for posting this. For obvious reasons, I tend to avoid TV news of Bojo’s latest antics, so this was the first time I had seen it.
Given the forum I had best temper my reaction. Cringeworthy doesn’t come close to doing it justice. An entire audience openly sniggering at him, and he carries on digging. From about 15 seconds in I was (literally) watching it through my fingers. Wow.
Which is unfortunate, because one would hope that one of the lessons of Brexit is just how much of this anti-EU sentiment is blatantly bullshit.