Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
Sadly that was never on the cards. 20 years ago Tony Blair was arguing round the cabinet table to take the UK into the Euro. Gordon Brown, in his one truly magnificent act in government, flat refused to agree to it. Furthermore, the erosion of sovereignty argument, though it had been made forcefully for a decade by that point, still seemed a bit esoteric to the mainstream. We really needed the not-a-constitution Lisbon treaty, and a few years for the reality of unchecked migration to be felt, to demonstrate just how much control we were losing over our own affairs. The Euro crisis was also helpful in that regard, as our contributions to the EU budget went up at short notice as other states became relatively less wealthy and saw theirs cut.
The Remainer arguments presented here are short termism in its purest form, in the same mould as the remainer commentariat claiming there was no migration crisis just because the entire population of Romania didn’t show up at Waterloo bus station one cold new year’s morning. There have been profound changes in the way things operate precisely because we were previously far more entangled than any sovereign state should be. Short-term problems aren’t denied by those of us who argued for Brexit; quite the contrary. For us they are further proof of the perils of the road we were on. It is ludicrous that we can’t pick soft fruit in our own fields without transporting hundreds of people halfway across the continent and business models that were predicated on that will simply have to change. The same goes for more skilled jobs like HGV driving. If an advanced economy thrives on a skilled workforce, then that is precisely the sort of thing we should be getting our own people in to, via in-house apprenticing. There are far too many job adverts out there from companies that are only interested in fully-qualified and experienced drivers - I.e. they only ever want to benefit from someone else’s effort investment in the driver’s skills. That’s a parasitic mindset but thankfully the reality of the new market conditions should now force it to change.
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I don't think anyone could have better Chris, as an aside how did all these things happen? Crops picked, deliveries made, etc. All before we joined the (then) EEC?