Long pièce by @anandmenon.bsky.socialin thé FT, which is well worth your time.
Firstly this: Brexit has failed to deliver (that doesn't mean it's dead) ; and the European relative position is much improved.
(who would have though Europe would respond so brilliantly to this crisis?)
A 🧵
Firstly this: Brexit has failed to deliver (that doesn't mean it's dead) ; and the European relative position is much improved.
(who would have though Europe would respond so brilliantly to this crisis?)
A 🧵
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Comments
Despite the talk of renegotiation, or CH-style multiple treaties, Europe vision is set.
The atmosphere was also more cotidal,(albeit with Brexity language still)
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The issue is you can't replace the world's only free trade - that between, 🇪🇺 nations - with the unfree-but-slightly-lesa-unfree-trade of FTAs and WTO. Not without a cost.
Britons were not willing to pay that cost.
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On defence Anand is guilty of exceptionalism.
We must plan without the US.
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Starmer in now cementing Brexit. No more. Not a roadmap to join,
UKG is going to try and get what it can, ducking amd diving à la Del Boy.
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Compare with Iceland, which saw the risks of isolation, decided to look at joining and first thing was for parliament to examine what joining the euro would mean.
The UK is a distance from that.
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In fact this is where I lament having blocked many nationalists and having left Twitter.
I genuinely want to read ANYONE attempting to refute this intellectually.
I've been saying this for a long time. Even well before last year's election. Starmer and Lab are complicit, and that makes them a pro-Brexit party.
I simply take credit for calling them "complicit" well before others.
But Europhobia is widely spread in the UK, including inside the remaining side, which wanted to take advantage of EU structures without fully participating.
Politicians only reflect (or play with) the voters’ opinions or emotions.
I think we'll be the judges of that, thank you very much!
At some point a conscious decision has to be made
How can we be sure that the Americans will not prevent the British from acting in the EU’s own interest ?
That’s why, I guess, the EU is so careful with the procurement deal …
Instead one could say that the direction had been _increasingly_ obvious with America's pivot to Asia & Russia's wars in Donbass & Syria.
Britain has taken back control, sort of.
It’s a no win situation and it’s all down to the UK’s sense of entitlement.
We genuinely thought we were special and as of now, nothing has proved this.
I'm wary, however, of the framing around EU's compromises on security, which may be misunderstood as being a trade off on EU decision-making and autonomy.
It's still will need generals and boots on the ground.
And forget about few tOpos, they happen! 😅
About @anandmenon.bsky.social what he writes is always interesting, I noticed, however, that he thinks the fact UK has not yet fully implemented the FTA+WA+WF is negligible.
I think it's important, innit?