Her statement to the Bundestag showed she misread the role mass migration had in the UK referendum

[barryqwalsh]

EDITORIALS

Merkel’s unreal expectations

The Australian12:00AM June 30, 2016




Angela Merkel is being unrealistic by insisting that Britain, post-Brexit, should be allowed to join the European single market only if it commits to maintaining open borders and freedom of movement of people. Her statement to the Bundestag showed she misread the central role mass migration had in the Leave campaign’s victory in the UK referendum. After allowing more than a million Syrians and others to overwhelm Europe last year, and the ensuing crises in many countries, including hers, she should be wiser.

British Prime Minister David Cameron’s failure to fulfil his promise to cut the rate of migrants arriving in the UK from 330,000 a year to less than 100,000 was a key factor for Britons determined to see their country reassert its sovereignty and border control. So were fears that if Turkey joined the EU doors would be open to 79 million Turks. Yet Ms Merkel, the dominant leader among 27 remaining EU members, is demanding Britain pledge to retain open borders in return for a trade deal. Nothing could be more shortsighted for Britain and the EU.

Despite their impending divorce, both would benefit from a close economic relationship. The UK is the world’s fifth largest economy and Germany its fourth. Britain is Germany’s most profitable export market, bigger than France and 25 per cent larger than China. Ms Merkel should be working to cement close ties with the UK after Brexit, not throwing up early roadblocks. Norway’s position outside the EU but within the European Economic Area, allowing it membership of the single market, as well as Switzerland’s membership of the European Free Trade Association are possible formulas. But unwillingness to compromise over borders would hamper progress.

Much depends on who Britain’s Conservative party elects to succeed Mr Cameron on September 2. But whether it is Brexit campaign leader Boris Johnson, Home Secretary Theresa May, who backed Remain but would implement the Brexit decision, or another candidate, the new prime minister will take a firm line on sovereign borders and migration.


Comments

Nocookies

 

[Tresha91203]

They just cannot fathom that anyone would reject their worldview despite its obvious shortcomings. They really believe anyone who disagrees just doesn't understand. It is outside the realm of possibility that any knowledgeable person could have a different view. The arrogance is astonishing.

Diversity does not apply to opinions, apparently, just culture, race, sexual orientation, religion and gender identity. Personal truths are celebrated unless those personal truths differ from the elites'.

 

[HenryBHough]

Merkel, trying on her Obama mask, tosses off the same sort of threat that nudge BREXIT into a reality. Fella with a funny mustache did that once. He didn't get a second chance.

Though, in fairness, America was a reliable ally back then.

 

[Billy_Kinetta]

EDITORIALS

Merkel’s unreal expectations

The Australian12:00AM June 30, 2016




Angela Merkel is being unrealistic by insisting that Britain, post-Brexit, should be allowed to join the European single market only if it commits to maintaining open borders and freedom of movement of people. Her statement to the Bundestag showed she misread the central role mass migration had in the Leave campaign’s victory in the UK referendum. After allowing more than a million Syrians and others to overwhelm Europe last year, and the ensuing crises in many countries, including hers, she should be wiser.

British Prime Minister David Cameron’s failure to fulfil his promise to cut the rate of migrants arriving in the UK from 330,000 a year to less than 100,000 was a key factor for Britons determined to see their country reassert its sovereignty and border control. So were fears that if Turkey joined the EU doors would be open to 79 million Turks. Yet Ms Merkel, the dominant leader among 27 remaining EU members, is demanding Britain pledge to retain open borders in return for a trade deal. Nothing could be more shortsighted for Britain and the EU.

Despite their impending divorce, both would benefit from a close economic relationship. The UK is the world’s fifth largest economy and Germany its fourth. Britain is Germany’s most profitable export market, bigger than France and 25 per cent larger than China. Ms Merkel should be working to cement close ties with the UK after Brexit, not throwing up early roadblocks. Norway’s position outside the EU but within the European Economic Area, allowing it membership of the single market, as well as Switzerland’s membership of the European Free Trade Association are possible formulas. But unwillingness to compromise over borders would hamper progress.

Much depends on who Britain’s Conservative party elects to succeed Mr Cameron on September 2. But whether it is Brexit campaign leader Boris Johnson, Home Secretary Theresa May, who backed Remain but would implement the Brexit decision, or another candidate, the new prime minister will take a firm line on sovereign borders and migration.


Comments

Nocookies

She didn't miss it. She just doesn't care what the people think.

 

[Drummond]

Perhaps the underlying message is to other EU States ... to tell them that the EU will not accommodate their concerns, should any be raised ... a form of 'get in line, do as we say, we will not ever compromise' threat.

She surely cannot be so ill-informed as to NOT understand that uncontrolled immigration was a major, even pivotal, concern of UK citizens. So in not being prepared to compromise, or rethink at all, she's showing that all she cares about is seeing that other Member States continue on under a regime that has them obeying diktats from Brussels - a 'take it or leave it' message.

Sheer arrogance ...

 

[barryqwalsh]

If the EU is unwilling to reform the freedom of movement section of the single market, more countries will vote to leave the European Union.

 

[Drummond]

If the EU is unwilling to reform the freedom of movement section of the single market, more countries will vote to leave the European Union.

Frankly, I think that they're too power-crazed to consider any change. It's all about getting people to conform to THEM, not the other way around.

.... Stupid ....

 

[Phoenall]

If the EU is unwilling to reform the freedom of movement section of the single market, more countries will vote to leave the European Union.

The major reforms are needed in the EUHRC which tells nations they cant deport violent criminals because they have a cat. Or murderers who kill their partners and children because they have a "home life". We became the dumping ground for the EU psychopaths, violent criminals and dead beat dross. Then being told to keep them as their own countries did not want them back. Being forced to take in migrants that Germany and France refused to accept was rubbing salt into already festering wounds

 

[barryqwalsh]

EU reaping what it sows? Debate with Minister Eoghan Murphy & AAA-PBP's Mick Barry

Voices of support for Brexit on these shores are few, but some on the left, including Mick Barry of AAA-PBP, welcome last week's decision by UK voters. He's in studio to debate the direction of the EU with Minister of State Eoghan Murphy of Fine Gael, Parliamentary Correspondent Michael O'Regan and today's host Pat Leahy. They also discuss Jeremy Corbyn's tenuous grip on power.

Subscribe to Inside Politics on iTunes. You can also find our podcasts atwww.irishtimes.com/podcasts or on The Irish Times app.



Inside Politics at The Irish Times

 

[barryqwalsh]

Interview: Daniel Hannan, British Conservative MEP
Tony Jones speaks with Daniel Hannan, who was a prominent member of the 'Leave' campaign in last week's Brexit, and asks him about his stance on immigration

Lateline - ABC

 

[barryqwalsh]

Let’s sack the electorate and appoint a new one: this is the demand made by MPs, lawyers and the four million people who have signed the petition calling for a second referendum. It’s a cry of pain, and therefore understandable, but it’s also bad politics and bad democracy. Reduced to its essence, it amounts to graduates telling non-graduates “we reject your democratic choice”.

Were this vote to be annulled (it won’t be), the result would be a full-scale class and culture war, riots and perhaps worse, pitching middle class progressives against those on whose behalf they’ve claimed to speak, permanently alienating people who have spent their lives feeling voiceless and powerless.

MORE
Roots in the Rubble | George Monbiot

 

[barryqwalsh]

None of those things is true. Some of the Remain campaigners said some rather extreme and alarming things during the campaign as they saw the polls moving against them. And I think the markets reacted to some of those alarmist statements. But when people see that the trading relations are gonna carry on, that we remain a country that's very much open for business, that this was a vote for a more free-trading, more international, more engaged Britain, one that will be able to deal with the bits of the world that are growing without the protectionism of European trade policies, then I think that will actually boost the attractiveness of London and indeed of the UK in general as a place to do business. And one of the things that I really hope will happen is that when we move to a more free-trading policy, that will include a fair deal on migration for our friends in Australia and New Zealand. I've always thought it was outrageous that when you look at the countries that have been our strongest friends, our closest allies, that stood by us when we were most in need twice in the last hundred years, that nationals of those countries are now chased out after two years when their visas expire, whereas EU citizens are treated as if they were British. And one of the things I hope we will do after independence is to have a more liberal migration regime with our friends and allies on your side of hemisphere.




Lateline - 30/06/2016: Interview: Daniel Hannan, British Conservative MEP

 

[yiostheoy]

If the EU is unwilling to reform the freedom of movement section of the single market, more countries will vote to leave the European Union.

France will probably be next.

Greece will probably quit too and bail out on their debt.

 

[barryqwalsh]

The Road to Brexit

In the Balance

As businesses and their employees get to grips with what Brexit might look like for them, Lizzie O Leary presents a special edition of In the Balance in conjunction with American Public Media's Marketplace programme. She hears from economists in the UK and in Ireland, as well as travelling to the North West of England to a part of the country where nearly 60 per cent of people voted to leave the European Union, even though the consequences of Brexit might cost some of their jobs.

Lizzie hears from pro-Brexit economist Andrew Lilico, Executive Director and Principal of Europe Economics, Chris Hare, an analyst at Investec, a bank and asset management company in London and Thomas Sampson, an economist at the London School of Economics and she's joined by Tony Foley, from Dublin City University.

For a deeper dive into the industries likely to be affected by Brexit, Lizzie talks to: Jeffries Briginshaw CEO, of the British American Business association, Professor David Bailey a car industry expert at Aston University in Birmingham, Gerard Grech the CEO of Tech City UK and in Berlin, Simon Schaefer, CEO and co-founder of Factory.

Audio

In the Balance - BBC World Service

 

[barryqwalsh]

The former Mayor of London says the government's inertia has led to a "contagious mourning" akin to that which followed the death of Princess Diana.

Boris Johnson: Project Fear 'hysteria' is gripping Britain

 

[barryqwalsh]

Why the UK voted to leave the European Union!

 

[barryqwalsh]

Britain and Europe past, present and future


The Irish Times World View Podcast
Episode Info: Historian Timothy Garton Ash has called Brexit the “upending of politics and middle-class assumptions in both the developed and the developing worlds". On World View Patrick Smyth and a panel discuss the significance of Brexit in historical terms, Britain's relationship with Europe, and some of the practical implications for Britian, Europe and Ireland. On the panel are Denis Staunton, Suzanne Lynch, Paul Gillespie and Ruadhán Mac Cormaic.


AUDIO
Britain and Europe past, present and future from The Irish Times World View Podcast

 

[Votto]

Damn the English! If the UK does not come back willingly, fire up the Panzers!

We can't possibly screw this up twice.

Ok, ok, three times, but who is counting?

 

[barryqwalsh]

Voters, 17.5 million of them, cast their ballot to leave, and the joy of voting in a referendum as opposed to a common or garden election is that every vote counts.

In other words, the ballot cast by someone in a deprived area in the north of England carried just as much weight as one cast by a metropolitan 'Guardian' reader from London. This meant that, for once, the elites were beaten by ordinary people and this seems to have filled them with a rage and contempt for the working class that may have been previously suspected, but had never been worn so nakedly before.

Brexit: two fingers to Europe and a revolt against the chattering classes - Independent.ie

 

[montelatici]

Jamie Dimon: Brexit could be reversed

Jamie Dimon has a message for Brexit Britain: There's nothing wrong with changing your mind.
The chief executive of JPMorgan (JPM)