Hib Bird

Before the Channel Tunnel opened they used to talk about people doing commutes to London from Northern France. In the end, the type of train service you'd need for that never materialised anyway.

Ken Clarke, "Politically you can't rejoin the European Union at the moment it would cause its own nightmare, divisions and crisis"

"Brexit is doing damage to our economy"

"The time has come to rejoin the Customs Union and the EU Single Market would be a huge, huge advantage to us"

My main takeaway of the whole Epstein thing is that women, on a very fundamental level, still don‘t really matter.

2017 tweet from Leave.EU thanking Putin for carpet bombing Syria which displaced 14 million & led directly to the refugee/boat crisis.

Which is what made sense all along. All these 'the EU would never' takes don't seem so on the money now.

I wonder what Musk will make of all this given his record of concern about 'pedo guys'

We know that. Many people in Britain agree.

Hungary isn't insignificant because it's an EU member, has the power of veto and can obstruct EU business, as it is routinely doing.

Anyway you don't seem very clued up so I'm going to hit mute for a bit if that's ok.

Poroshenko before Yushchenko? Wow I'm not sure you know much about Ukraine...

Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 but Germany didn't cancel Nord Stream until the full scale invasion in 2022. How much hindsight do you need?

And whilst we're on the subject, Hungary also does a lot of damage to Europe, as a rogue EU member, again suggesting that people's preoccupation with Britain being a uniquely terrible threat to Europe is rather off the mark.

Ukraine was Yushchenko, Georgia was Saakashvili, both elected in free and fair elections. The falling away that followed had a lot to do with the cold shoulder from the West. Politkovskaya was assassinated in 2006, also the year of the first Russian gas cutoff so the first clues were there.

If you're concerned about corruption you should be asking very serious questions about Gerhard Schröder's position at Gazprom and Merkel's pro Russian business policies, knowing what we do now.

A NATO MAP is the first stage, and provides concrete incentives for improvements in those areas. The US wanted to proceed but Germany told delegates very firmly at the Bucharest summit they valued their relations with Russia more than worrying about Ukraine or Georgia.

I'm not sure I disagree with you on the 2nd point, but for Europe as a whole the legacy of decades of German deference to Russia has been extremely damaging so is probably the bigger problem for the continent right now.

To address your first point, are you aware of the process for joining NATO? You are not granted membership instantly.

Before the Channel Tunnel opened they used to talk about people doing commutes to London from Northern France. In the end, the type of train service you'd need for that never materialised anyway.

Birmingham has already begun touting itself as "effectively in zone 7" once HS2 opens, because on a time basis you could plausibly rent (for much cheaper) in central Birmingham, WFH and pop to the central London office 1-2 days a week a lot quicker than *actually* trying to rent in London zones 1-4

If he does run I really hope his campaign slogan is "Chaos with Ed Miliband".

“But her emails” was just another confession disguised as an accusation, it’s so incredibly obvious now.

Poland became the largest Army in Europe and 3rd largest Army in NATO not because of Germany, but because of Putin's Russia.

So this old soviet loving turd can bounce off

And on security, the UK *could* stand by and watch if Russia invaded an EU member and probably be ok, but unless Farage gets in I am absolutely sure we wouldn't do that. And that surely flies in the face of the narrative of the UK as purely exceptionalist, untrustworthy and somehow uniquely terrible

It's weird to demonise what is essentially a lethargic but be benign UK at this point in time and encumber them forever more with the sins of the father.

I mean, I like how the EU empowers smaller nations and I think that's important, but I think it's being used as a free pass by a couple of those countries, who are routinely destructive towards Europe in their behaviour.

I always thought James Bond was just a secret service pseudonym for 007, as far as film continuity is concerned anyway. If not, it never made sense, from the late 70s onwards.

Lib Dems believe they can do the CU project quickly to give businesses some relief and then work away at the issue of joining the EU, which is much harder to get done. It does make sense.

I wonder what Musk will make of all this given his record of concern about 'pedo guys'

bsky.app/profile/hib-...

When you look at the facts, Germany has done a lot more harm to Europe in the past 2 decades than Britain has bsky.app/profile/hib-...

There was less animosity towards Germany, nine years on from WWII than there is towards the UK, nine years on from Brexit.

Negotiating Uncertainty in UK-EU Relations: Past, Present, and Future Ten key points to negotiating the UK-EU relationshipEurope has been weakened by difficult UK-EU relations at a time of international challenge. Eight years after the Brexit referendum a new UK gover

Stumbling UK-EU progress was what I predicted in a paper over a year ago, with geography and the importance of the relationship exerting a gravity that keeps things moving. And that is what we are seeing.

Plus some quiet conversations on whether the future can be different ecipe.org/publications...