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Brexit: give me a positive effect... XII

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Sorry, that’s weapons-grade manure. For starters, there is no European superstate, 50 years later.

Another 'ism', this one denialism. You've done it before, too, the complete denial that the ultimate objective of the European project is and always has been a USE. The progressive centralisation of power has taken place treaty by treaty, crisis opportunism by crisis opportunism, ECJ directive by ECJ directive. Click, click, goes the ratchet.

You made me think of Jean-Claude Juncker, who a couple of weeks ago denied that there was any intention to create a European superstate. It was in the same interview in which he claimed that he'd never been drunk in his entire life.

Apologies for having missed this before.
Paragraph 1 is just wrong: the UK actually got more money from the Marshal Plan than any other country in Europe, bar none: more than France and more than double what Germany got.
https://historyincharts.com/breakdown-of-the-marshall-plan-aid-by-country/
Breakdown-of-the-Marshall-Plan-Aid-by-Country-1024x1024.png

The challenges overcome by Germany were monumental. The scale of real estate destruction was colossal, there were millions of refugees from the East to deal with, and a lot of the leadership was dead or in jail. France had the same decolonization issues as the UK, including two nasty wars in Vietnam and Algeria, a lot more smashed up real estate to repair, a hopelessly dysfunctional 4th Republic, etc. Italy was also in a sorry state.

I love it when you do that, you take yourself off on a tangent of indignant 'just plain wrongness' (remember the border down the Irish Sea) over something that I didn't say. In this case, I didn't say that the UK had received less Marshall Aid than Germany, not least because I was perfectly well aware that she'd received the largest share. In fact, I didn't even mention the UK's Marshall Aid funds. The important point is what was done with the funds, and in Germany's case they were intelligently recycled in loans in setting up businesses, the repayments going straight back into new loans. Her shattered infrastructure, something of a blank canvas in 1945, was completely rebuilt to the latest standards - autobahns and electrified railways. France and Italy too electrified their rail systems.

You also, probably conveniently, missed the most important point that I made about France's difficulties in extracting herself (or trying not to) from her colonies. America paid the bill.

I repeat, both Germany and France had instigated radical supply-side reforms by the early 1950s, and growth was subsequently rapid. Broke Britain's Labour (and subsequently conservative) government was still engaged in colonial pretensions, financing a vast standing army (2 million men) in both Germany and scattered far and wide across the world, attempting to underpin the Sterling area, and engaging in a massive programme of social transfer - the Wefare State. Investment in modernising industry and infrastructure was well down the list. Our last steam trains were retired in 1968!

The result of all this was that Britain's growth in the 1950s and 60s was slower than that of her European counterparts, whose process of 'catch-up' came to an end at about the same time as the UK went into the Common Market.
 
I doubt France and the UK sent money, beyond paying for occupation troops, a kinky form of foreign aid.

ISTR stories of a lot of British construction workers going to FRG after demob. I guess, it wasn't representative of any formal support by the UK to reconstruction.
 
Another 'ism', this one denialism. You've done it before, too, the complete denial that the ultimate objective of the European project is and always has been a USE. The progressive centralisation of power has taken place treaty by treaty, crisis opportunism by crisis opportunism, ECJ directive by ECJ directive. Click, click, goes the ratchet.
Show me where that is in the treaties ("ever closer union" doesn't cut it), or which EU honcho has ever flagged a superstate or a USE as a goal. Do you think Merkel, Macron, Rutte, et al. are about to let this happen? Remember the EU Council calls the shots.
I didn't say that the UK had received less Marshall Aid than Germany, not least because I was perfectly well aware that she'd received the largest share. In fact, I didn't even mention the UK's Marshall Aid funds. The important point is what was done with the funds, and in Germany's case they were intelligently recycled in loans in setting up businesses, the repayments going straight back into new loans. Her shattered infrastructure, something of a blank canvas in 1945, was completely rebuilt to the latest standards - autobahns and electrified railways. France and Italy too electrified their rail systems.
OK, I will go back later and parse what you actually wrote more carefully. So the UK received more "funds" (which funds?) than Germany, but didn't use them as wisely because it was engaged in occupation & imperialism abroad and setting up the Welfare State at home. Is that it?
You also, probably conveniently, missed the most important point that I made about France's difficulties in extracting herself (or trying not to) from her colonies. America paid the bill.
Yes, left it out as I was totally baffled by this. Please tell me more about how the US paid for France's decolonization: it sounds genuinely interesting.
I repeat, both Germany and France had instigated radical supply-side reforms by the early 1950s, and growth was subsequently rapid. Broke Britain's Labour (and subsequently conservative) government was still engaged in colonial pretensions, financing a vast standing army (2 million men) in both Germany and scattered far and wide across the world, attempting to underpin the Sterling area, and engaging in a massive programme of social transfer - the Wefare State. Investment in modernising industry and infrastructure was well down the list. Our last steam trains were retired in 1968!
Yes, I remember steam engines on mainline trains in Britain in the mid 60s. Are you suggesting continental countries (apart from Switzerland and Sweden, natch) were not broke after 5 years of war and occupation in their territories, or that the UK was the only country to set up a comprehensive welfare system after the war?

The result of all this was that Britain's growth in the 1950s and 60s was slower than that of her European counterparts, whose process of 'catch-up' came to an end at about the same time as the UK went into the Common Market.
I understand why you would want to separate Britain's economic performance before or after accession from having anything to do with the EEC or EU, but it doesn't follow from what you have written here.
 
Show me where that is in the treaties ("ever closer union" doesn't cut it), or which EU honcho has ever flagged a superstate or a USE as a goal. Do you think Merkel, Macron, Rutte, et al. are about to let this happen? Remember the EU Council calls the shots.
The next objectives towards a USE goal:
The EU have raised its own money with the covid fund. It will come as no surprise when this is repeated for something else.
Taxes on big corporations and green taxes have been kicked about for a while, again this is EU raising its own taxes.
An EU army has been kicked about for a while.
As Guy said the EU is failing and more EU is needed.
 
The next objectives towards a USE goal:
The EU have raised its own money with the covid fund. It will come as no surprise when this is repeated for something else.
Taxes on big corporations and green taxes have been kicked about for a while, again this is EU raising its own taxes.
An EU army has been kicked about for a while.
As Guy said the EU is failing and more EU is needed.
Will the results of this project be over the next fifty years, like Brexit benefits, or is it a century project? We deserve to know.
 
Will the results of this project be over the next fifty years, like Brexit benefits, or is it a century project? We deserve to know.
The covid EU own money has been approved, it was easy to sell because repayments do not start until 2027 and it is difficult to imagine this own money will not be repeated and extended as countries become poorer. Lots of potential for expansion on this federal trend.

Taxes on big corporations and green taxes both have potential and why not, the big corporations are seen as legally fiddling their taxes. Hard times propping up the EU should see an introduction of this own money stream within 5 years.

Progress towards an EU army is anyone guess, but with Europe broke and if the EU own money schemes work out it could be sold to member states as an EU member freeby.
 
My question was how long to a superstate. Will it happen before the sunny uplands phase of Brexit (half a century) or later?
 
Surely that's a question you should be asking, Ursula, or Guy, or even your MEP if he/she is back from lunch.
 
There is no ambition for a European superstate. And I have never been drunk in my life.™

Jean-Claude x
 
I just wanted Colin Barron's take, as he seems to have the inside track on these financial and constitutional matters.
 
And even when you had MEPs, you still wouldn't have been able to ask them, because they would have been at lunch.
 
My question was how long to a superstate. Will it happen before the sunny uplands phase of Brexit (half a century) or later?
The trend has always been to Chip away at individual countries to have a federal USE; I don't see any reason why that trend will change. Nobody knows how long the small number of positive contributors can continue to prop up the expanding EU or the likes if Italy where there does not appear to be a plan to balance the books.
The end of the dream will occur when the money runs out.
 
The trend has always been to Chip away at individual countries to have a federal USE; I don't see any reason why that trend will change. Nobody knows how long the small number of positive contributors can continue to prop up the expanding EU or the likes if Italy where there does not appear to be a plan to balance the books.
The end of the dream will occur when the money runs out.
I get all that, but how long for the chipping away to bring us to a full superstate USE?
 
Freeports will most likely end up as part of the money laundering machine.
The VIP Lane will be hooked up with indecent haste to the new dripping roasts. Chairman of The Board of Trade Truss’s schoolgirl error is just another consequence of Johnson’s back of a fag packet notions, his slogan factory, poor planning and lack of capacity in the new Ministerium of Brexit or whatever appellation it currently enjoys. The same incompetence is right at the heart of his bodged Brexit deal- the collapse in exports, the red tape and absence of customs manpower, Northern Ireland outside the U.K. Customs zone etc.
 
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