In between the Christmas cheer at last week's European Council there was, according to the loss-making Guardian, a sour note injected when François Hollande openly declared his opposition to an "a la carte" Europe in which members can choose which bits of EU law applies to them.

This basically shoots Mr Cameron's fox. Hollande is making it very clear that the prime minister's fantasy of exploiting the euro crisis to renegotiate the terms of Britain's EU membership and claw back powers from Brussels has nowhere to go.

The French president could not have been clearer, insisting that member states had to comply with the terms of EU treaties they had signed and ratified, saying: "Europe is not a Europe where you can take back competences. It is not Europe a la carte".

View full article here

I'll attempt to make this post a reasonably cogent and coherent one, you never know - Lord Leveson could be perusing the 'ether' and upon reading my piece....... might think - "stuff of nonsense - you blackguard!"

And "must be just back from the pub!"

On the other hand, who gives two ....s what Lord bloody Leveson thinks - "we be still free as birds 'ere master begging your pardin' mi lud".

Cameron, procrastinating time and again, mouthing meaningless drivel concerning 'repatriation of powers' and back from our Brussels masters. For goodness sakes, if he genuinely believes this [and I don't think for one second that he actually does believe it] then he belongs in a padded cell.


_________________________________________________________________________________

On the frog president.



What pray can he mean - has he not apprised himself of our desperate situation in Britain....let me colour the picture for him.

Lisbon.

A consti-treaty, that was knocked back by the FRENCH (and the Dutch) ELECTORATE in a ballot but was then resurrected in a cloak and dagger coup redolent of some flea bitten Central American banana republic. With a smoke and mirrors exercise. It works, in an duplicitous and undemocratic 'land grab' by stealing powers from the British people and then! And Then!! Scrawled on, by a constitutionally unelected Labour leader representing a minority government and himself from a constituency in Kirkcaldy.

Signed and ratified - my ar*e.

Finally.



Quite so.

It can be done but if you mistake Cameron for representing British interests, then you have it the wrong way around. Alack, for Dave is Brussels' representative in Westminster.......he is not going to play ball here and article 50 Lisbon treaty - Dave's never heard of it.........................................as we say around here "he's cockin' a deaf un".

I personally think we should get rid of Dave and ask for super Mario - in a EU transfer swap - after and when bunga bunga boots him out of Italia.

Edited by user 16 December 2012 19:54:35(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

No touch of reality at all: http://www.guardian.co.u...birth-date-planet-crisis

James 102 said


Farage is not very good at debating. He is not very good on Question Time when he has appeared and is a complete novice to the point of being embarrasing when talking about anything other than Europe where he is a one trick pony.

UKIP is making progress despite Farage, not because of him.

With Hollande ruling out an a la carte Europe this really does leave Dave with a major problem as he only has one choice for the referendum- in or out. There is no 'changing the relationship with Europe' because that is not on the menu. So given the choice of leaving the EU or staying in as things are, then there is a good chance that the electorate, if given referendum, would vote to leave.

I must admit to vacillation about strategy. But I think you've convinced me that the way to go is via article cinquant (?) rather than a referendum first.

The government of the day would then ask for support of entering, rather than leaving, the EU. The last referendum was supposedly on entering the EU, but we were already engulfed and stuffed.

An anti-EU membership referendum will fail. The game must be played more subtly than that.
PS I campaigned in the Heath (?) referenudmn on the ENTER side, and now acknowledge the error of my ways.
Mea Culpa :-(

I've always considered this a coward's restriction. If an EU member country, eg Britain, wants to change some (or perhaps a lot of) EU rulings that it considers have begun to affect it negatively, then the first remedy would be to inform the other EU members that this is so, & request their assistance in eliminating these difficulties. Unfortunately, with the EU as it is in practice, this almost inevitably would be rejected.

So subsequent remedies would then be necessary for the country concerned, as well as a great deal of determination. Two of these remedies are to:
a) suspend some or all payments to the EU until the issue has been amended to the plaintiff country's approval, or
b) start VETOING EVERYTHING!

I much prefer the second of the two devices, though both may become necessary if an EU surrender were to be delayed. Some EU countries would be able to play this game much more easily than others, eg Germany & France, while some countries would probably have very little clout in such a game, eg Malta & Slovenia. What about Britain? Hard to say, but if the EU played hardball, then the situation could quickly (& in my view, very conveniently) turn into an EU Article 50 one!

Watchet

Yes Richard, I remember it well - though (as far as I recall) it was only applied for a week, & ended up vetoing some measures that British civil servants (truthfully or not, who knows?) claimed to support. You are right in suggesting it as being rather an aggressive device. Most if not all the other EU members would soon feel noise-out-of-joint, to Britain's likely disadvantage. The only people it could assist (in a backhand way) would be those UK politicians & negotiators who, despite everything that is plainly negative about the EU, still hope to bend the EU to Britain's will. I would see it as a learning process for them, Cameron & Boris included. Whether the veto is widely used or not, as long as the UK's negotiators are really serving Britain (& regrettably we can't be sure of that!), Article 50 would surely soon follow.

Watchet

How he will be seen and come over to the Man and Woman in the street and how he comes over to political hobbyists is very different. That is why his speeches in Brussels gets the number of hits they do.
After Question Time he and Bob Crow went for a drink. Crow was heard to say:”Come on Nige let’s get away from these ######”
I always found Blair’s Am Dram style cringingly embarrassing:”This is no time for sound bite ---I feel the hand of history on my shoulder.”!!! A camp barrister playing to the jury. But the public and the chattering classes loved him and thought he was brilliant.