From where I stand you sure sound delusional.
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A Second Brexit Vote?
- Thread starter Sunstone
- Start date
Had never heard of him before. I file that speech under "weird", but how relevant can it be? It looks like he had a momentary brain fart or something. It does not even fit the rest of that very speech.
Empires are something that, essentially, can't exist anymore. No matter how much the eyes of the likes of Putin and Trump may gleam.
He was the Belgian President.
He has been appointed to the Committee on Constitutional Affairs of the E.U.
"On 1 July 2009 Verhofstadt was elected President of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe group in the European Parliament.[20] In this capacity, he was also a member of the Conference of Presidents of the European Parliament until July 2019."
"Verhofstadt was put forward as the possible candidate for replacing José Manuel Barroso as the president of the European Commission by a coalition of greens, socialists and liberals.[21] On 15 September 2010, he supported the new Spinelli Group, which was founded to reinvigorate the drive for federalisation of the European Union.[22]"
-Wiki.
So he's hardly no-one.
Yeah, I jumped the gun. I edited my post since.
Well maybe look it up.
Maybe your standing in the wrong place then,maybe being outside your missing more than you think you see,it certainly looks like you know little of the British or brexit.
Brexit Britain's economy has outpaced Germany since the EU referendum
With the 0.3pc expansion reported on Monday, Britain has now had 13 quarters of economic growth since the Brexit referendum. The evidence is irrefutable: the UK economy has grown faster than Germany, France and the eurozone as a whole for most of the last two years. It is has outgrown several west European states even since the vote.
Yeah, just more scare stories. Our economy is fine.
With the 0.3pc expansion reported on Monday, Britain has now had 13 quarters of economic growth since the Brexit referendum. The evidence is irrefutable: the UK economy has grown faster than Germany, France and the eurozone as a whole for most of the last two years. It is has outgrown several west European states even since the vote.
Yeah, just more scare stories. Our economy is fine.
Remain: Brexiteers are harking back to the days of global power and empire
Also Remain: Britain will have less clout on the world stage after Brexit, we need to be part of a European 'empire' to be able to shape the world in our image.
We'll see. Britain (without Scotland perhaps) will always be great. (Brexit chant)
Had. I don't expect we will be actually growing in influence if we do leave.
I don't see what wrong with showing pride in one's nationWe'll see. Britain (without Scotland perhaps) will always be great. (Brexit chant)
I don't see what wrong with showing pride in one's nation
Nowt wrong with it. It just depends upon the degree and how it affects how one sees others, for example. As in xenophobia all too often.
Funny thing is, the same can be said of nearly half of the British people. Maybe more.
Basically everything...I don't see what wrong with showing pride in one's nation
No more or less I would say,we had little influence in the EU really,like macrons doing now using a veto,the EU needs massive reforms which it will not do,I have no ill will for them,just don't like the direction they are going.
Oh they know well enough it's just losing they can't deal with.
We'll see. Britain (without Scotland perhaps) will always be great. (Brexit chant)
If Scotland have a referendum which at this time is doubtful and go for independence there's a big hole in their financial maths,the EU don't need or want poor countries either so imo they are better off in the union but that's for them to decide.
I'm not sure the desire for independence is driven by rationality.
Augustus
…
And this certainly isn't your only questionable judgement on the issue either.
So, in the words of the chief EU Brexit coordinator, Guy Verhofstadt, a Euro Federalist who wants an EU army capable of projecting its power around the world and a "United States of Europe":
‘The world of tomorrow is not a world order based on nation states or countries. It is a world order that is based on empires. China, is not a nation, it’s a civilisation. India… is not a nation… The US is also an empire, more than a nation… And then finally the Russian federation.
The world of tomorrow is a world of empires in which we Europeans, and you British, can only defend your interests, your way of life, by doing it together, in a European framework and in the European Union.’
Watch: Guy Verhofstadt on the world’s ‘empires’ | Coffee House
Also: The rise of China, the decline of the US under Trump & the danger posed by authoritarians like Putin mean the EU needs to be both a power project & a peace project. We will only have that power if we can agree to ambitiously reform our institutions & challenge the status quo.' [i.e. create a federal Europe]
If you want some scholarly sources:
while the existing literature on the normative power discourse treats the EU as a sui generis entity unknown in history, this paper treats the EU as a modern type of empire, sharing many common characteristics with its predecessors. Of course, the EU does not resemble the nineteenth century Britain or Russia. The Union neither has a clearly defined centre of authority nor sizable military forces. That said, the EU represents a vast territorial unit with the ability to influence (if not manipulate) the international agenda and shape the notion of legitimacy (if not normality) in various parts of the world, and especially in its neighborhood. These are all key characteristics of empires. The EU does what all historical empires have always done, namely it exercises control over diverse peripheral actors through formal annexations or various forms of informal domination.
https://www.dahrendorf-forum.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/DSP_Zielonka_The_Ideology_of_Empire.pdf
A whole book here:
Empire in Denial: The Politics of State-Building
DAVID CHANDLER
Empire in Denial: The Politics of State-Building on JSTOR
More general source? Another from the New Statesman, hardly a bastion of right wing populism:
This kind of thinking underlies many of the absurdities of politics at the present time, on left and right. When the European Parliament’s Brexit co-ordinator Guy Verhofstadt praised the EU as an emerging empire at the Liberal Democrat conference last month, the assembled delegates could hardly restrain their enthusiasm. The dream of a future European empire supplies an alternative patriotism for progressives who despise the nation-state. In practice the European project has itself become a variety of nationalism, though it celebrates a nation that does not exist. The reality throughout the continent is the onward march of nationalists of a more familiar kind. Like much of the rest of Europe, Verhofstadt’s native Belgium is rotten with far-right movements, which his hyper-federal project would only further empower. Preferring not to face these realities, the liberals who cheered him are possessed by a grand idea.
The closing of the conservative mind: Politics and the art of war
Or another:
The European Union is a liberal empire, and it is about to fall, warns Wolfgang Streeck (Max Planck Institut). The position of imperial hegemon belongs to Germany, which is finding it increasingly difficult to fulfil that role. When the UK decided to leave the EU, nobody considered invading the British Isles to keep them in “Europe”. Yet, from a German perspective, an amicable British departure might have undermined imperial discipline, as other countries unsatisfied with the imperial regime might have considered leaving as well. So the choice for Britain had to be between remaining without concessions and leaving at a very high cost to itself.
What is the European Union? The closest concept I can come up with is that of a liberal empire. An empire is a hierarchically structured block of states held together by a gradient of power from a centre to a periphery. At the centre of the EU is Germany, trying more or less successfully to hide inside a “Core Europe” (Kerneuropa) formed together with France. Germany doesn’t want to be seen as what the British used to call a Continental Unifier, even if in fact this is what it is. That it likes to hide behind France is a source of power for France vis-a-vis Germany.
Long read | The European Union is a liberal empire, and it is about to fall