I hope Eurosceptics are watching Kiev with embarrassment.
There’s a brilliantly ironic piece in today’s Mail by columnist Dominic Lawson, who has decided that this could be the moment when ‘the tide of history turned against the EU’.
By ‘this’ he means a fringe meeting of Eurosceptics he attended in Sicily last week. But nevermind that. As Lawson puts it:
“It is indeed a long shot and there is nothing more powerful in politics than the status quo; but I left the San Domenico Palace with a sense that it might once again have been the place where history is made,” Lawson writes.
What’s brilliant about the piece is that it should come out on a day when history is actually being made, but perhaps not quite in the way Lawson hoped. For in writing about the ‘tide of history turning against the EU’, he has clearly missed what’s happening in Ukraine, where up to 350,000 people are today protesting in favour of formulating closer ties with the European Union.
That’s right: there is a massive pro-EU demonstration of almost half a million people taking place right now.
The tide of history indeed.
The protesters are marching through Kiev in protest at President Viktor Yanukovych’s refusal to sign an EU trade deal after coming under pressure from Russian. In response, hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets and chants of ‘revolution’ have rung out across a sea of Ukrainian and EU flags.
And yet at the Daily Mail’s offices on Kensington High Street it appears to be business as usual:
Meanwhile in Ukraine…
I hope Eurosceptics are watching Kiev with embarrassment.
17 Responses to “Mail writer goes on anti-EU rant. Meanwhile in Ukraine…”
tangentreality
Slightly different situation, though. Ukraine should be free to pursue closer ties with the EU, if it wants to. However, Russia is effectively stopping it from doing so by threatening economic action if it does. Which is wrong.
UK opposition to the EU is for precisely the same reason. We should be free to form closer ties with countries OUTSIDE the EU, if we want to. But our membership prohibits us from doing so. We should be free to decide our own laws, and apply them as we see fit to our country. But qualified majority voting within the EU means that laws designed by France and Germany are applied to the UK, even if we disagree.
Many Eurosceptics don’t have a problem with EU membership. We just fail to see why such unwarranted intrusion on our sovereignty has to come with it.
Leon J Williams
People like this always put their agenda and own personal views ahead of facts and the reality. Of course the general sentiment in the UK and that of Europeans in general does tend to differ.
Jake Armistead
We trade with plenty of countries outside of the EU, we have done deals with Canada and Japan invests heavily into the UK car industry and despite ignoring human rights abuses were doing deals with China.
tangentreality
I didn’t say ‘trade with’. I said, ‘form closer ties with’. We can’t sign free trade deals with Canada and Japan.
Jake Armistead
I don’t see how being allowed to trade with other countries (and were not talking pennies here) and being secure in the EU is a bad thing but whatever guess once we do leave out of ignorance and we do see our economy shrink as a result we can all enjoy the pain of another recession together. How joyful…