“This is a burning building you are never meant to leave. What is more, you are barricaded in.” William Hague December 2016
Trust…always been a bit of a problem with politicians…and journalists…nothing new about the ‘post-fact’ age except the fancy new name….’post-fact’ being a lie in itself ironically.
Wiliam Hague…a man who made a career out of Euroscepticism, who then jumped ship and announced he was voting to Remain has now just discovered, once again, that the EU is a failed experiment. on the verge of collapse..
The euro has trapped poor countries like Italy in a failed experiment. It must give them an exit – or collapse
It is, of course, bad news for the eurozone and the Italian banking system that Matteo Renzi has been heavily defeated in his attempt to change Italy’s constitution by referendum. The referendum was about creating stronger government in Italy, without the gridlock and delays produced by a powerful Senate.
It provided a test of the willingness of voters to back major political reforms, and of their patience with an economic performance that has been truly dismal ever since the euro was invented. The answer is clear: they are not willing and their patience is just about exhausted.
But the really bad news is that, even had he won, it is extremely unlikely that Renzi could have done enough to revive the Italian economy and avert the eventual break-up of the euro.
So this is a man who not so long ago urged us to chain ourselves to this failed experiment that was busy imploding…..
Leaving the European Union risks the “fragmentation of the western world”, the former foreign secretary William Hague has said.
Before a speech on Wednesday entitled: “Why a Eurosceptic should vote to remain,” Lord Hague admitted he saw the European Union as “the lesser of evils” compared with the damage to the economy and to international instability a leave vote would deliver.
Challenged by the Today presenter Nick Robinson over the numerous criticisms he had made of the EU over his political career, Hague said he had been persuaded that both the national and international landscape had changed so significantly in the past two decades that staying in was the safer choice.
Hague will say in the speech later on Wednesday that those who want to leave the EU are indulging in fantasy economics, according to the Times.
Just how many countries does Hague think should leave? Italy? Portugal? Spain? Greece? Ireland? etc etc. Maybe even the downbeaten France?
Sheer hypocrisy from Hague. One moment the EU is the saviour of us all, then next he admits that’s a bit ‘post-factual’ and the EU is dragging us to disaster.
Nick Robinson ‘challenged’ Hague over his Euroscepticism, will he now be ‘challenging’ Hague over his short-lived romance with Europhilia now he has converted back to scepticism? Somehow doubt Robinson will be challenging Hague as to why he wanted to vote Remain but will now hit him hard for doing another about-face.
Hague and all those Remainers have been lying through their teeth about the state of the EU and the ‘security’ it provides us economically. Even the BBC’s old favourite, Joseph Stiglitz, thinks the EU is on the verge due to the Euro….the BBC of course having quickly reported his thoughts don’t like to remind us of them anymore…..
Europe is heading towards a “cataclysmic event” that could lead to the collapse of the euro and the end of the European project as we know it, according to Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.
“I think the most likely thing is something along the lines of a political cataclysmic event like Brexit. In other words, the eurozone’s member countries are democracies and one sees increasing hostility to the euro, which is unfortunately spilling over to a broader hostility to the broader European project and liberal values,” Stiglitz told BI from his office in New York.
Stiglitz continued: “That’s going to be the end. What’s going to happen is that there will be a definite consensus that Europe is not working. The diagnosis will be to shed the currency and keep the rest, or that Europe is not working and a broader rejection — like in the UK.
The Euro was never going to work without political and economic union, but it will never work with such a union as it will entail Germany, and the UK should we be in the EU still, paying out billions to prop up these countries that don’t have the ability to sort out their own economy due to the Euro severely restricting what they can do…..and no German or Brit is ever going to want to pay possibly hundreds of billions to these countries on a never ending welfare scheme…and so the Euro will again implode. Whichever way you look the Euro will fail. But the Remain camp and the BBC continue in lala land with their heads buried in the sand telling us we must remain shackled to this failed experiment, this ‘burning building’.
“Matteo Renzi has been heavily defeated in his attempt to change Italy’s constitution by referendum”…
Inconvenient things those referenda….
Must do something about that.
boohanna
Inconvenient things those referenda….
Must do something about that.
Yes.
Appoint a Supreme Court
I realised that Ian Hague could not be trusted an inch, when he turned up to address a public meeting in Westminster, concerning the so-called “Lisbon Treaty”, which had been cobbled together expressly to give Europhile governments the opportunity to ignore the results of existing plebiscites (or, in Britain’s case, to give successive governments a fig-leaf for failing to allow the despised ordinary voter to deliver his/her despised ordinary vote).
On that occasion, Hague struck a strange note, affecting to remain anti-eu, but insisting that the proper place for such questions was in the “Houses of Parliament, over there”. Since the Conservatives in the House of Commons then were heavily outnumbered by Labour, couldn’t rely on all of their own people to vote the same way and probably had more dependable support from Ulster MPs and the very occasional Labour one, that seemed a pretty daft way of putting things and an implied insult to the voting population.
Hague was going to go back to the House and persuade absolutely no-one, who was not already convinced, to vote against the “treaty” and I don’t believe, given his subsequent behaviour, he even tried particularly hard. He can’t have had the slightest expectation that the treaty could be defeated by a Commons vote, but he pointedly refused to lend his voice to putting the decision to a popular vote, for which it cried out.
He’s in the Lords, now, and still churning out those unreadable articles. He makes a pretty penny out of his “Vicar of Bray” routine.
The Euro – the greatest symbol of unity within the EU – is now the most likely cause of its demise.
With so much political capital involved in its “success” those on the bridge of the Titanic are patently looking everywhere but straight ahead as the iceberg draws nearer.
The DT reported that the ECB bought Eu40bn of Italian bonds on Monday to fool the markets. Seemingly they can “spend” Eu80bn of funny money each month and now “own” a third? of Euro nation debt.
Which Eurozone politician, IN OFFICE, is going to stand up and say its failed and bring the house of cards down on it. Did William Hague, when Foreign Secretary sit around the EU dinner tables and tell his fellow diners the Euro is a busted flush? Perhaps DJT, who appears happier to call a spade a spade (such as with China) may verbalise what most know sometime soon!
Remember the BBC loved telling us about all those thinkers and historians voting to Remain, well Niall Ferguson has changed his mind about staying in the EU.
Waiting for the big piece of buyers-regret on the BBC, clock is ticking….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4006324/I-wrong-Brexit-Britain-s-influential-historian-Niall-Ferguson-says-mistake-backing-Remain-campaign-says-EU-deserved-result.html
Switzerland is one of the most coveted places to live in Europe if you can afford to live there, it the safest, richest, has first class infrastructure and probably the best organised. Oh and its not a full member of the EU. Their particular form of democratic government relies of referendums, sometimes two in one year. The left wing media particular the BBC rarely refer to Switzerland or their referendums, possibly because in a referendum the people have a democratic choice of deciding one way or the other and not voting for an individual politician that does not reflect all the voters views and often has an hidden agenda
I still think that the end of the euro and the fracturing of the EU will start in France. Everything is building towards chaos and a possible coup. The Gatestone Institute has a good piece this week on the French police who recently have been openly protesting about the “youths’ and the no go zones. Not that the MSM seems interested.
Following my 2 year rule it is not until two years that the real effects of a dramatic event are felt. The Batalan massacre and Nice still have a way to go.
Do we know how the French military feels ? the Foreign legion? No we do not and our media will stay silent until the end.
I go even money a coup ( it will not look exactly like one ) within 12 months.
Hague is the embodiment of politics turned to baseball hat braggadocio within our lifetimes.
Some great soundbites and well received at the likes of Hay for his book on Pitt or such.
But as we saw in his five years as Foreign Secretary-a blowhard who wants the love of Jolie as opposed to his nation.
And that soundbite above of his re the EU remains very good. But he had no intention to follow the logic and out of the door did he?
Ken Clarke said that people have been forecasting the demise of the Euro for years but it has never happened yet. What he doesn’t realise is that the only reason the Euro keeps going is because its supporters are too fanatic & self deceiving (& stupid) to acknowledge the damage & suffering that it is causing & do away with it. They will stick with it unto death. I think the Euro unfortunately will be with us until we get rid of these stupid people, probably the only way at the moment to get away from it is to leave the EU.