IntenseDebate - randyfmcdonald

4 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Iain Dale: We all want... · 0 replies · +1 points

'I sense you are going to be really pi**ed off when the economy doesn't tank after the New Year."

It would be surprising if it did immediately, in normal times. Below-trend growth, as noted elsewhere, was expected. The only cases where economic growth took off after separatism involved countries once locked in much more dysfunctional political entities than the EU, and even then it could take decades for growth to materialize even after the seceding entities had established much more functional economies and relationships.

4 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Iain Dale: Why have Bu... · 0 replies · +1 points

Have you bothered to see if non-Britons actually want CANZUK?

5 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Daniel Hannan: Cameron... · 0 replies · +1 points

"Had Cameron come back with any retrieval of power or, indeed, with a sovereignty amendment of the sort that Gove and Johnson had wanted, he would have won the referendum."

Britain's problems had very little to do with the European Union and more to do with its own failures of government. The large post-2004 influx of migrants from the new member-states of the European Union west to the United Kingdom, most obviously, was enabled by the decision of the British government at the time to immediately open its labour market to these people. Other member-states, including countries like Germany and Austria with much longer histories of immigration from central and northeastern Europe, chose not to do that.

Why, exactly, should the European Union change itself because of the failures of a member-state in administering policy domestically?

5 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Richard Ritchie: It is... · 0 replies · +1 points

Canada, with a very similar constitutional history to the United Kingdom, has gone in rather different directions, going so far as to create its own written constitution to articulate its basic principles.

That the United Kingdom has chosen not to have a written constitution cannot be properly blamed on the European Union. If anything, the codification of constitutional law draws from the legal models of continental Europe. Rather, blame has to be assigned to British politicians for their choices.

5 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - James Arnell: The conv... · 0 replies · +1 points

Has no one paid attention to how Trump has been threatening the United States' North American partners, of Mexico and (especially important for the UK) Canada? He has been all about short-term gains and long-term damage to smaller parties.

5 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Conservatism is better... · 1 reply · +1 points

The Union never was a free trade organization; from the very start, the proto-EEC was position as the seed of an "ever-closer union", as the Treaty of Rome clearly said in its preamble.

Is this a matter of people being intentionally blind?

5 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Henry Hill: New report... · 1 reply · +1 points

"The Scottish Government has been pushing to curb councils’ autonomy by holding down council tax and making up the shortfall with central funding which they control."

Why is this a bad thing? If local councils cannot afford to provide services, shouldn't a higher level of government step in?

5 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Alex Morton: If Brexit... · 0 replies · +1 points

No one had thought that the United Kingdom would do such a self-destructive thing that, among other things, undermined Good Friday. The United Kingdom has chosen to leave the EU, to put up a border between all its territories of those of the EU. This border will extend to Ireland as a matter of course.

5 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - Richard Kemp and Lee R... · 1 reply · +1 points

The claim that an integrated EU military--if such was to come about--would necessarily lead to a weakening of NATO needs explanation. Why is this the case? I would frankly think that, given the funding issues of individual NATO member-states in Europe, an EU military force able to hold its weight would strengthen NATO.

5 years ago @ http://www.conservativ... - WATCH: Francois says h... · 0 replies · +1 points

What foolishness.

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