How the British people were 'sold out' to the EU.

[JR8]

When Britain voted in a 1973 referendum to join the European Economic Community (EEC) it was portrayed as simply a free trade club. On that basis alone it made sense, and had popular support. What wasn't explained was that it was just another inexorable step on a 'pre-ordained' plan written in the 1950s towards ultimately relinquishing sovereignty, and democracy, to unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats based in Brussels.

And so here we are today, with UK MPs still feigning that they're the ones really in charge, whereas in reality there is zero point voting in UK elections any more. If there were another referendum today it is probable that a majority would vote to leave what was the EEC, now the EU: Therefore there never will be one. As they now tell us: 'There is no reverse gear'.

I wonder if ASEAN will go the same way.


http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=82601

[PNGMK]

Club of Rome etc....

ASEAN will take a few decades or more to get there and there's always China / India to upset things.

[JR8]

As China and India open up and mature politically, ASEAN will get greater 'vital' centralised power in order to act as a 'regional counter-weight'.

Same way the EU was initiated (back in the 50s) as a geo-political counter-weight vs the USA.

There's an old saying, 'The EU is a French jockey riding on a German donkey'. I.e. the French dictate the direction and speed, and the Germans do the work.

I wonder who within ASEAN would be the donkey and jockey

[Primrose Hill]

I wonder in today's economy will Britain survive on its own?
The EU really it is the good the bad and the ugly. All the sisters in place

[JR8]

I wonder in today's economy will Britain survive on its own?
The EU really it is the good the bad and the ugly. All the sisters in place

Staying out hasn't harmed Norway and Switzerland. Indeed they're two of the wealthiest and most respected countries in the world.

[Primrose Hill]

True, true true. However, the big question is, can the UK follow in their footsteps or are we now too entrenched in the EU free market, freedom of movement etc etc

[JR8]

True, true true. However, the big question is, can the UK follow in their footsteps or are we now too entrenched in the EU free market, freedom of movement etc etc

'There is no reverse gear', aka, well it's too late now!

Or in the words of the EU's 'founding father' Jean Monnet ...

'Continue, continue, there is no future for the people of Europe other than in union.'
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean_Monnet

'To quote Jean Monnet: “People will only accept changes under the pressure of necessity.” In other words, crises are part of the method. Out of the mouths of politicians, it sounds like this: “There is no alternative“

Monnet was against a full transfer of sovereignty to the European level which a major project or a constitution would have entailed. He favored a policy of small steps. National competences should be transferred to Brussels in small concrete steps. For him, the United States of Europe was the culmination point in a multi-leveled, long-term process. The deliberate choice of steps led to the popular schedules in the policy of the EC and later the EU.

Wessels [a Political scientist]: “What sets off as ‘small’ will advance towards a clearly defined goal following an internal, endogenous logic.” Wessels speaks of a “developmental dynamics conceived as compulsory.” [...] “It is not the overall institutional design that is important, but individual steps that will gradually lead up to a federation.”

Wessels admits: “A common economic base increasingly undermines the political core of sovereignty of nation states in favor of a development towards inter- and transnational politics”

At this point, the owner of the Jean Monnet Chair at the University of Cologne [Wessels] includes some criticism: “The consensual elite decisions are not citizen-oriented. National parliaments and citizens are left out. Referendums do not belong to the Monnet method.”

For the Monnet method the Franco-German agreement is indispensable. It serves as a “whip” for all states unwilling to integrate. Notions such as “core Europe”, “centre of gravity”, “pioneer group”, “two-speed Europe” and the like are derived from there.

Today we find the Monnet method in statements and speeches by politicians almost every day. Chancellor Merkel and French President Sarkozy permanently set the agenda: “More Europe is the way.” They whip it into the population on a daily basis, by saying that we would have to transfer more national competences especially in the fiscal area to Brussels (which inevitably leads to a political union).

The current president of the Jean Monnet Foundation, Jose Maria Gil-Robles, former President of the European Parliament, recently said in an interview: “Jean Monnet, one of the constructors of the European Union has developed a simple method that is still useful today: it establishes concrete implementations that create de facto solidarity.[...] The Greek crisis stirred the Europeans and made them take unprecedented solidarity measures in a common interest.[...] It is important to place the real decision power where it can be exercised most effectively [JR8 comments: I.e. Berlin and Paris].”

http://www.currentconcerns.ch/index.php?id=1486

Or to sum it up ... '‘Europe’s nations should be guided towards the super-state without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps each disguised as having an economic purpose, but which will eventually and irreversibly lead to federation.’'
http://eurealist.co.uk/?p=676

[Aragorn2000]

I remember a recent article from the Economist saying that because of too many low-skilled migrants from EU countries freely entered the UK, they have to clamp down the number of high skilled workers from non-EU countries, esp India...
Doesn't sound good for the British empire at all.

[Primrose Hill]

immigration. Now its a sore point for Dave

[Aragorn2000]

Found the article:

http://www.economist.com/news/britain/2 ... -not-treat

When Mr Cameron, in opposition, pledged to bring annual net migration below 100,000, Britain’s net immigration from EU countries, which it cannot control, was around 60,000. Because of the euro crisis, it has soared, to around 130,000 immigrants this year, forcing the Tories to squeeze non-EU immigration in a failing effort to keep their pledge.

...

Viewed generously, his recent pledge to curtail EU freedom of movement is an effort to fix this. “If we have fewer low-skilled Europeans we’ll have more high-skilled Indians,” says a Tory minister. But that is not straightforward. With other European governments primed to slam Mr Cameron’s proposals, which he promises to unveil shortly, it risks leading Britain out of the EU.

[JR8]

Found the article:
http://www.economist.com/news/britain/2 ... -not-treat

When Mr Cameron, in opposition, pledged to bring annual net migration below 100,000, Britain’s net immigration from EU countries, which it cannot control, was around 60,000. Because of the euro crisis, it has soared, to around 130,000 immigrants this year, forcing the Tories to squeeze non-EU immigration in a failing effort to keep their pledge.
...
Viewed generously, his recent pledge to curtail EU freedom of movement is an effort to fix this. “If we have fewer low-skilled Europeans we’ll have more high-skilled Indians,” says a Tory minister. But that is not straightforward. With other European governments primed to slam Mr Cameron’s proposals, which he promises to unveil shortly, it risks leading Britain out of the EU.

Here is The Iron Lady (Margaret Thatcher) on the EU...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tetk_ayO1x4
'Margaret Thatcher No No No' [1m11s - note the sound is not too great].
Love her or loath her, at least she had principles and stood up for them.

Same way when the Argentinians invaded the barren sheep-flecked colonial outpost that is the Falkland Islands, they probably weren't counting on her sending an armada of a good proportion of the entire British armed forces down there (8,000 miles) to wrest them back.

Tony Blair ushered in a culture of spin, after all lawyering was and is in his blood. So when he's asked a question you can see the cogs upstairs turning, while he considers the wider ramifications of how he answers anything. So if asked a question he would insert linguistically superfluous and redundant pause/thinking/chaff phrases that acted as a delay while he considered the question. Meaningless things like 'I simply say to you...'.

I mean can you imagine your wife asking if you're cooking dinner and you start off your reply with 'I simply say...' ...I mean really!

Example: Jeremy Paxman (a needling Rottweiler of an interviewer) interviewing Blair, on Newsnight, the daily evening 'serious polical analysis' programme):
"BLAIR:
Well, and certainly not to start speculating who my successor may be [Gordon Brown]. I have said on many occasions he is in my view one of the most brilliant people in British politics, he has done a fantastic job as Chancellor. It is not an ignoble ambition to be prime minister of this country. But as he says and I say, let's win the election.
PAXMAN:
You make him sound like the heir apparent.
BLAIR:
I don't make him sound like anything, I simply say what I've always said. [Note: that is the end of his reply. I.e. he's not replied at all]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/events/newsnight/1372220.stm

--- and re another parallel topic, here is Margaret Thatcher on credit cards
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3CWb9O-q50
'Margaret Thatcher on Credit Cards'
[She has received an application form from the Cooperative Bank, and notes that completing it will result in a donation to the Labour Party, i.e. the opposition party - so she goes for the jugular hehe... (2m26s)].


As for Cameron. He inherited an electorate inoculated against and immune to spin-doctoring. He could say 'I simply say' 100 times in a speech and no one would register it any more, nor care less. The trouble with Cameron is the deep feeling that he presented himself as one stripe of political animal in order to get elected, and is in fact quite another. 6 months prior to an election he'll be banging the Tory drum declaring himself an earnest Eurosceptic; 6 months after an election he'll be off in Brussels signing more treaties and powers away to Europe. He's done that twice now, and people see him for what he.... isn't. [x-ref why there's still respect for the tell-it-like-it-is Thatcher approach]. Hence why you see the rise of the likes like UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party). They are perceived as actually being human, and having cast iron values (like them or loath them) and standing by them.

The Tories under Cameron are a wash-out (wet and liberal). It's hard to know who to vote for. A lot of protest vote is likely to go to UKIP at the next election, plus other more fringe groups.

To the original question:
You can't 'pledge' anything from the opposition benches, only float something as an aspiration, worth precisely that.
Cameron can't alter the freedom of movement within Europe. Hahaha! he's grandstanding, as if he has influence over EU-wide policy, where he most certainly does not.
Yes it's tragic Commonwealth visa quotas are cut as a result of the tide of largely unwanted people washing in from Europe.
- 'leading Britain out of Europe' - Never going to happen. We pay in (net) so much to the EU they will never kick us out. The EU provides so many cosy tax-free sinecures and pre-retirement 2nd careers for knackered national politicians, that these same politicians will never seriously vote against it. Anti-EU chatter from them is sabre-rattling to appease the masses...