The question of the EU, Ukraine and the “return of nationalism” This week, Dan Hannan wrote a piece for the right-wing American outlet, The Washington Examiner, entitled “Ukraine has made nationalism cool again”, which is an interesting look into the current state of the Brexiter mindset. Like the ancients needed to make Earth the centre of the universe and warped any evidence to the contrary around this central conceit, so too must everything in the minds of the Leavers revolve around the luminescence of Brexit.
I notice Boris Johnson didn't manage to get around to reading your critique of Dan Hannan's article before basically using it as the basis of his basically brain-dead speech making the same point that made everybody angry last week.
There's also the fact of Johnson going around the world touting our response to the Ukraine invasion as "world leading" while having a pitifully pathetic response to the refugee crisis involved in large numbers of Ukrainians fleeing their country for safety. How can we be "world leading" when Poland and other EU countries have managed to swiftly put in place a policy of waiving the need for visa for those refugees and granting them the right to stay for 3 years in the first instance, while the UK is left pettifogging about the need for rules and sending desperate people from the Ukraine who want to come to us from pillar to post in France, and in the meantime Priti Patel is making misleading statements to the House of Commons that all those problems have been sorted out now?
I don't know whether the Ukraine visa waiver is an EU-wide swiftly agreed policy, or whether it is a result of individual EU countries deciding that the visa waiver is the way they wanted to go to deal with the crisis, and the EU institutions have not stood in the way of their doing that - but either way it gives the lie to the Brexiter argument that being out of the EU allows the UK to have a more "nimble" response in our foreign policy.
I notice Boris Johnson didn't manage to get around to reading your critique of Dan Hannan's article before basically using it as the basis of his basically brain-dead speech making the same point that made everybody angry last week.
There's also the fact of Johnson going around the world touting our response to the Ukraine invasion as "world leading" while having a pitifully pathetic response to the refugee crisis involved in large numbers of Ukrainians fleeing their country for safety. How can we be "world leading" when Poland and other EU countries have managed to swiftly put in place a policy of waiving the need for visa for those refugees and granting them the right to stay for 3 years in the first instance, while the UK is left pettifogging about the need for rules and sending desperate people from the Ukraine who want to come to us from pillar to post in France, and in the meantime Priti Patel is making misleading statements to the House of Commons that all those problems have been sorted out now?
I don't know whether the Ukraine visa waiver is an EU-wide swiftly agreed policy, or whether it is a result of individual EU countries deciding that the visa waiver is the way they wanted to go to deal with the crisis, and the EU institutions have not stood in the way of their doing that - but either way it gives the lie to the Brexiter argument that being out of the EU allows the UK to have a more "nimble" response in our foreign policy.
So no sign of the EU breaking up then in fact the Ukrainians are fighting for their country and fighting to join the EU.
We are entering a new cold war where security lies only in blocks.
That means an expanding 27 that operates as a economic security power to the new threat of Putin.
Brexit has now become irrelevant as Britain clings to America and Nato while the US ignores Britain and looks to the 27 in making decisions.
I believe an EU army is also a must to complement Nato and strengthen it.
Excellent analysis. Delusion or wilfully blind?
Hannan et al seem completely unaware that they constantly put themselves on the wrong side of history. Or is it delusion ?? Or denial ??
Hi, Nick, Brexit has already failed: https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2022/03/the-ukraine-war-has-invalidated-brexit