Monday 13 June 2016

Nobody move or western political civilization gets it!

Emailed in by View From The Solent, from Reuters:

If Britons vote to leave the European Union in a June 23 referendum it could be the beginning of the end for the 28-nation bloc and for western political civilization more generally, European Council President Donald Tusk said.

In an interview with German newspaper Bild, Tusk said a so-called Brexit vote would provide a major boost to radical anti-European forces who he said would be "drinking champagne".

"Why is it so dangerous? Because no one can foresee what the long-term consequences would be," Tusk said. "As a historian I fear that Brexit could be the beginning of the destruction of not only the EU but also of western political civilization in its entirety."


Project Fear appears to have moved so far beyond satire that it I'm starting to take it seriously again.

Clearly, I'm still not particularly worried about the negative consequences of Brexit, which will be negligible unless TPTB fuck things up deliberately to teach us a lesson, I'm now starting to worry about the sanity of all these people.

6 comments:

paulc156 said...

Tusk is quite a moderate man. His fears are well founded and of course political goodwill will probably be in short supply after a brexit vote. It would simply be prudent to expect that.

Mark Wadsworth said...

PC, political goodwill? What's that? Do you genuinely believe that Western Democratic Civilisation is going to collapse? It has survived worse than Brexit.

Steven_L said...

Power makes them mad, like Thatcher and Blair, except these folk have been there longer and can't be voted out.

paulc156 said...

MW. No 'western civilisation isn't going to collapse'. Listen to yourself, pushing straw man arguments while dismissing every and any concern raised about the implications of exit from the EU. Brexit arguments are every bit as raving as anything trotted out by the remainers.
Ambrose Evans Pritchard, someone with extensive knowledge of international affairs and a Brexiter writing in yesterdays Torygraph puts it fairly and squarely even whilst arguing for Brexit, something completely and utterly absent from these pages:

"Let there be no illusion about the trauma of Brexit. Anybody who claims that Britain can lightly disengage after 43 years enmeshed in EU affairs is a ###charlatan or a dreamer###, or has little contact with the realities of global finance and geopolitics."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/06/12/brexit-vote-is-about-the-supremacy-of-parliament-and-nothing-els/

MikeW said...

Paulc156,

No 'western civilisation isn't going to collapse'. Listen to yourself, pushing straw man arguments while dismissing every and any concern raised about the implications of exit from the EU. Brexit arguments are every bit as raving as anything trotted out by the remainers.

Yes, except for the central point he makes: its a Sovereignty issue. Which is what we have argued here. I pointed out that amongst Labour voters there was a timid fear that they do not want it, as they think the party cannot defeat the Tories at the next election.Better EU protection than nothing.This is the sole reason they have chosen on remain.A wholey undemocratic fail. I argued this point with Mr Read here. I wanted to post the Paul Mason article in the Guardian which was closest to my view, but Manson argues for exit, but not just yet. I do not see the future offering Mason the battle ground of his choosing.History is not a tactical issue. Poor generalship. We take full Sovereignty now, even if it means 5 years of right wing madness Paul.

Mark Wadsworth said...

MikeW, Paul Mason made sense up to a point, that's not the interesting bit.

What interests me most is how the EU will respond if we vote Brexit (as seems increasingly likely), clearly they will rig things and rejig things and we'll get a second chance to vote Bremain in a year or so (the same as all the other times people have voted no) and maybe next time we will give in (same as all the other times people have voted no the previous time).

Getting back to Paul Mason, if we vote Bremain, it will be another forty years before we get another chance. If we vote Brexit, then there is still everything to play for.