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The British have become very skeptical of the EU. This is par for the course in historical terms. The U.K. has always been against the formation of a strong, u
by skylan_q 13y ago
The British have become very skeptical of the EU.
This is par for the course in historical terms. The U.K. has always been against the formation of a strong, unified, mainland Europe.
- RivieraKid 13y agoI would say that thay rather don't want the EU tell them what to do. Which is completely understandable.
- gaius 13y agoIndeed we fought two wars in the last century to prevent it.
- aristidb 13y agoI believe preventing the need for such wars was one of the reasons why the UK joined the EU, or am I mistaken?
- seszett 13y agoPreventing it by disorganising the EU from the inside, maybe.
- ig1 13y agoNot really, we were drawn into the wars for a variety of political reasons (e.g. treaty obligations to protect neutral countries) rather than because of a philosophical objection to a unified European power.
- fidotron 13y agoNot quite. The prevailing view among pro-European Brits, which has been the dominant political force in the UK of the last 40 years or so, was to create a very large trade bloc across a wider Europe, including freedom of movement of labour, but without things like the single currency. This differs from especially the classic French view, which was to create a Franco-German superstate which would be structurally incapable of having a war with itself through almost complete unification of a relatively small group of countries. The collapse of the Berlin wall certainly played into the British vision for a while, then the Euro initially did well causing the federal contingent to be excited, but the structural weaknesses from the Eurozone members not having gone all in on unification, especially for budgetary policy, have swung it temporarily back to the large but loose collective. The split between the French and German experience of the Euro problem is going to prevent any real progress on this point at all since increasingly those two parties are going to disagree on their visions of the future.