“The EU believe it or not is a union of reasonable people with an instinct to try to hold together:”
If you mean the 500m or so “ordinary” folk, you’re probably correct, Icky. It is the people who run it who are not, by any stretch of the imagination, “reasonable”.
I often refer to them as “Euromaniacs” because I believe they suffer from a mania to pursue their aim of a federal European nation. They have no mandate for this and the few countries that were given the opportunity to vote on the recent treaties and rejected them were simply sent away to vote again. Mr Tusk and his cronies will not “take stock” should we vote narrowly to remain. They will treat us with contempt for having the temerity to almost derail their beloved project. They are obsessed with regulation and see “unregulated” almost on par with “illegal”. They hold democracy in contempt. There is no effective democracy in the EU and its “parliament” is not worthy of the name.
Normal countries do not cede power to make legislation to foreigners; they do not cede their final arbitration of legal matters to a foreign court; they do not cede the control of their currency and interest rates to a foreign bank; they do not abandon the right to say who does and does not settle within their borders. EU member nations are not normal countries. They are in a state of transition from independent nations to simply states in an undemocratic, broken bloc. That transition cannot be thwarted by national parliaments. If you think I exaggerate, compare the EU now with the EEC of twenty-four years ago (before that nice Mr Major signed the Maastricht Treaty). Then fast forward another twenty years (or probably less) and imagine what’s to come.
If we were not members today the UK would not be clamouring to join. In fact, if the EU did not exist it is doubtful it would be formed. It is an antiquated institution which is broken and which refuses all attempts to fix itself. It is incapable of properly addressing the many crises it faces (most of them self-inflicted). Those seeking to leave it are not backward looking; quite the opposite. They are forward looking, seeking a better way of doing things in a very different world to the one the EU still thinks exists.
“If it is Remain, Cameron is not obliged to Stay. He could squeeze some extra consessions before making Stay official.”
Quite so. And I’ve heard it said that salmon live in trees and eat pencils for their lunch.
It may be a sensational term to use but a UK government that has ceded so much power to a foreign entity is, in my view, treacherous. This treachery will continue if we remain. You have been warned, you doubters out there, you have been warned!!!