Dilbert_X wrote:
Larssen wrote:
I don't think the cost/benefit argument and the NHS 350 mil bus played such a huge part in people's thought process when they voted for Brexit. 30-40 years of lambasting the EU in the tabloids and popular newspapers while underscoring the 'huge difference' between the island Englishman and those continentals (esp. the French & Germans) gave much of the general public the impression that the UK and EU are incompatible. Much of the political class believed this to be true as well, concluding that the EU didn't or couldn't serve UK interests. Over time this manifested in the UK often halting or resisting any sort of meaningful development of the institutions in Brussels, again feeding the incompatibility narrative. Add the anti-migration / multiculturalism movement of the 2000s and the refugee crisis that started in 2015 to the mix, both of which blamed on the EU, and people consciously voted to leave.
The Germans and French had the EU wholly sewn up to serve
their interests and socialist project, of course there was no chance the EU would serve British interests as well. Why would Britain want further expansion of the self-serving Brussels bureaucracy?
The EU bailing out the stupid German banks and their Greek loans, and Merkel inviting in millions of refugees then expecting the rest of the EU to bail her out were the final straws.
The EU was a dead end for Britain and the average Brit saw it as such.
This isn't reality. With the UK on the sidelines you can clearly see the French and Germans rarely truly see eye to eye on what the future of Europe should be. On the EU level the German policy is in almost all cases guided by pragmatism, simply positioning itself wherever they can expect the most support, rarely reliant on some ideological vision. The French on the other hand have always tried to dictate an ambitious agenda for Europe. Considering that on most important decisions the EU model works by unanimous consensus I would argue that especially in the last few years Germany has been shaping EU policies much more than France has. Which also brings me to another point: the UK vote was hugely important and no truly consequential decision could or can be made without UK agreement. This idea that France and Germany dictated the EU's future is a myth. The UK was one of three dominant forces. Just one example: the entire Common Foreign and Security Policy and everything it does exists because of the UK. But I'm sure such things you've never even heard of.
The cynicism when approaching the subject of EU policy and the lack of a realisation that it was and could be shaped to serve UK interest as well is part of what drove Brexit. You can thank among others Boris Johnson's reporting when he was a Brussels correspondent for the cultivation of that culture. A barrage of selective news and outright falsehoods to create the untrue impression that there was a lack of control, that the institutions in Brussels were some runaway machine the poor Brits couldn't steer or even understand. There's another issue at the core of the problem here as well: the disconnect felt in the UK from the European community. 'Why should
we bail out the Greeks??' - not only is the argument wrong (because ultimately it was in UK interest as well), it's a prevalent sentiment in many countries felt even more strongly in the UK and emblematic of the identity politics poisoning any sort of progress. Nevermind that letting Greece fail would cause a cascade of failures throughout Europe ultimately impacting the UK much, much more than just refinancing the Greek government would. The real perceived problem is in helping a people and country that's 'not us', which was accompanied by thousands of tirades on how lazy and corrupt the Greeks supposedly are. Anything that supports the argument that the failure was not in the design of the system and the lack of insight/control the EU had over monetary policy (monetary union without monetary control = ???), but because 'the others' are the problem. A narrative created and continually fed by nationalists naïvely following the 19th century religion of 'national self determination' in a globalised 21st century.
I'll agree that Merkel's 'refugees welcome' speech was a bad idea. I however don't think that that one speech was somehow responsible for all the EUs failures, although ethnonationalists like yourself love this sort of target to fire at.
Last edited by Larssen (2019-08-04 05:58:45)
