Vocal Voices

One of my major gripes about the UK press and, especially, the Labour propaganda machine, is that they never give the UK their place in the world. Take This article for instance.

President Obama and six of the world's most powerful leaders will descend on Krün Germany Sunday for the G7 Summit.

World leaders including Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and British Prime Minister David Cameron

So there you have it.

Six of the worlds most powerful leaders
World Leaders

Followed by David Cameron's name.

Because that IS the place of the UK in the world. You cannot lead the #4 nuclear power in the world and the #6 economy in the world and NOT be a world leader and a "most powerful" leader.

Time our press "got the word"...

But if they "got the word" it would run contrary to the "we can't survive on our own any more" narrative.

Yes, wouldn't it just. Lying B@stards all of them....

Which annoys me more than somewhat.

In terms of world influence and real world power, the UK is massively ahead of Germany and well ahead of France. Not what you would think from the intra EU BS we see on a daily basis.

Aha! The "Out" campaign goes early, as Nigel called for yesterday.

Today 50 MPs, and possibly up to 100, are forming a group to put pressure on the PM saying they will campaign and vote to leave the EU unless Cameron secures far-reaching changes.

Going too early risks running out of steam, especially if the referendum is not brought forward.

Going too early risks the Tory party, literally, coming apart at the seams as the recriminations about "oath breaking" on getting reforms resound.

After all, he doesn't need to do it now, he could do it after 2017 and the French/German elections. When he would be far more likely to get his reforms than before the elections....

Once again the people will get a choice of no choice because the promises and negotiations which were supposed to have been done would not have been. The EU needs a full chance to tell us to sod off before we vote on whether to give them the finger or not.... It looks like that is not going to happen which means the ability to confuse the voters and fudge the results is much greater.

Confused people are much more likely to vote for the status quo than for a, supposedly, risky change.

Politics 101.

Cameron is in a bit of a pickle...

He cannot go after 2017 as he has "promised" a referendum "before" the end of 2017; and having already said that he will not serve a third term as PM he will be a lame-duck long before the next election.

He has not spelled out what reforms he wants from the EU. We do not know which ones are 'red lines', which are 'negotiable', and which can be booted into the long grass.

Everything he is doing, and will do, about this project is piecemeal - a hand shake here, a dig in the ribs there, a nod and a wink somewhere else. He is not going to get the other 27 leaders to sit round a table and discuss "his" demands, threats or appeals, and he knows it.

The Eurosceptic wing in the Tory party also knows these things and its members do not seem to have much of an appetite for fudge, even if it does mean the party falling apart. They will look at the disarray within the opposition parties and feel that they can still win the next election.

Reality 101.

Workingman wrote:The Eurosceptic wing in the Tory party also knows these things and its members do not seem to have much of an appetite for fudge, even if it does mean the party falling apart. They will look at the disarray within the opposition parties and feel that they can still win the next election.

Reality 101.

Perhaps, perhaps not. 5 years is a long time in politics and what may be disarray today can become coherence in only 1 or 2 years. Witness Blair...

I can understand why Cameron will not set out an agenda for reform. All it does is give your opponents an opportunity to scupper you in the EU. Witness Tsipras today.

However, for the sake of a clean debate, in the UK, he should have. But that would have scuppered him from day1 as he would have received nothing from the EU and not been in a position to make allies or ambush anyone.

In the end I don't expect this process to yield an exit from the EU and that, I believe, will be the end of the UK as an international identity and, with that, the end to any real influence in the EU....

Not what I would want for my country.

If Cameron truly wants reform in the EU and the UK in it he should follow the tried and tested EU formula.

Stage 1

1. Go to the EU with an absolutely ridiculous shopping list of changes
2. Set red lines for treaty reform which cannot viably be done in the time
3. Force the EU to tell us to go play with ourselves.
4. Have a referendum and put the full weight of the government behind OUT.

Stage 2.

Once he has an OUT vote. In the 2 year separation window, go to the EU leaders and tell them that if they don't do exactly what he wanted before, then the UK will exit. Force the EU to do the treaty changes and all his other "red lines", then hold a second referendum supporting IN, based on his successful negotiation of his UK exclusions.

Simple. Fully tried and tested EU negotiation technique. Negotiate from a position of strength. Nobody ever gets anything in the EU with a begging bow....

I am someone, one of a few, who believes that we would not be in this position had we embraced Europe and been at the centre of things, but let's put that aside...

We are in this position and I cannot disagree with your evaluation, Suff.

The only way Cameron is going to get anything meaningful is if we play hard-ball and refuse to back off.

As UK referendums are not binding on the UK government weight can be thrown behind an OUT vote, and if it is achieved he can then go back and 'negotiate' from a position of strength.

Whether he sees things that way is another matter.

Workingman wrote:He has not spelled out what reforms he wants from the EU. We do not know which ones are 'red lines', which are 'negotiable', and which can be booted into the long grass.

There is a body of thought which goes thus; Cameron never expected to have to have a referendum because he thought that after the general election he would be governing in a coalition again, if in fact he was governing at all!

It's all too depressing. The "renegotiations" ploy is exactly the same one pulled by Harold Wilson back in 1975. Some unspecified improvements which will make everything beter, hip hip hooray and vote to stay in. A con, and a con which has already been used once.

I respect your position on the EU, WM. Unfortunately British politicians and the British media have never been honest with the public about the EU and they aren't about to start now. So we are just in for more lies, half truths, evasions and deliberate omissions in the next couple of years. What a bloody awful, depressing prospect.

cromwell wrote:Unfortunately British politicians and the British media have never been honest with the public about the EU and they aren't about to start now. So we are just in for more lies, half truths, evasions and deliberate omissions in the next couple of years. What a bloody awful, depressing prospect.

And that is exactly how those of us who are for the EU feel, Cromwell. It is why we need an open and free debate on the issue. I will not be holding my breath.