Corbyn is right: Cameron’s EU talks really are a missed opportunity
Once again, Jeremy Corbyn is right and David Cameron is wrong.
Cameron’s EU ‘renegotiation’ has been a farce from day one, distracting voters from the real issues regarding the benefits and drawbacks of our membership of the continent-spanning trade bloc.
This is a matter that affects all of us in many different ways – but the debate has focused on the obsessions of David Cameron and the Eurosceptics in his own party who he wants to appease.
For example, did you know three million British jobs are linked to the UK’s trade with Europe?
Half of our exports go to the EU; last year’s trade with the other EU countries was worth £227 billion.
What about workers’ rights? Did you know that many workers’ rights, including the right to holiday pay, come from EU membership?
The EU has also given us paid maternity and paternity leave, anti-discrimination laws and protection for agency workers.
But you don’t hear about that because Cameron is whining on and on about immigration and the benefits that other EU citizens get when they come to the UK.
There are better deals to be had, but Dim Dave isn’t making them.
The EU needs to be reset back as a trading partnership rather than a political organisation.
The issue of immigration can be handled with a rule change so free movement across borders is allowed if a country’s economy has reached approximate parity with the average (because people are less likely to emigrate for economic reasons if jobs and conditions are little different from their own home – “better the devil you know” and all that).
And the benefit issue was always a dud. Why not just legislate so that state benefits paid to EU migrants are limited to what they would receive in their own country?
This would make the UK less attractive, but it would also encourage other EU nations to improve their own offer to citizens.
So you simply can’t trust what David Cameron tells you about the EU.
Like all Tories, he is doing his best to leave you short-changed.
David Cameron should have focused his EU renegotiations on boosting workers’ rights and ending austerity, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has said.
Mr Corbyn told a meeting of the Party of European Socialists in Brussels the talks were a “theatrical sideshow”.
He said: “David Cameron’s negotiations are a missed opportunity to make the case for the real reforms the EU needs: democratisation, stronger workers’ rights, an end to austerity, and a halt to the enforced privatisation of public services.”
Speaking after the PES meeting, Mr Corbyn said Mr Cameron had “brought an internal Conservative Party dispute to international proportions”.
He said Labour had made its backing for EU membership “very, very clear” saying this was supported by the “vast majority” of its membership.
His desired reforms, he said, were “rather different” to Mr Cameron’s.
“It has to be based on the rights of people all across Europe,” he said.
“I don’t think David Cameron has that on his agenda.”
Source: Jeremy Corbyn: EU talks a ‘missed opportunity’ – BBC News
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Sadly true. When does Cameron’s stupidity and self interest come to an end? I cringe every time his bombastic self appears on my TV screen. How do other European leaders view him? You would think he was Cecil Rhodes re-incarnated.
Cecil Rhodes re-incarnated! Do you seriously believe that Rhodes would have allowed unrestricted mass immigration into Britain to destroy the very existence of the British people,Cecil Rhodes was a BRITISH PATRIOT. He loved Britain,unlike the people who have been running it for the last few decades. Rhodes stated that to be born British was to win first prize in life lottery.He didn’t stumble around apologising for being alive and he didn’t pretend that everyone is equal,he knew damn well that the whole of Africa was useless without European people to run it,preferably BRITISH people! And ,unlike Cameron ,Rhodes used his own money to further his own beliefs not other peoples.
The UK does not allow unrestricted mass immigration. Please don’t make up stories.
Oh, and your remark about Africa is racist. Apologise.
I lived & worked in Africa for 5 years, as well a number of other countries across 3 other continents over another 20. Experiencing the outcomes of previous British, French, German and Portuguese administrations in Africa, I, and many others living under todays systems, would agree that the British version did leave a better legacy than the others, but, as with all bureaucracies, nothing is perfect.
One thing that not even the Brits managed was to leave their previous colonies in a way that eased the local Africans into place, with help and training, that maximised the possibility of maintaining a semblance of democracy, in spite of the overriding African culture of tribalism… which now seems to be the political norm in the UK.
Not Africa, India or the Middle East were helped by the Brits reliance on straight edged rulers when dividing up their territories , especially after WW1.
And from whence cometh the idea that Rhodes “used his own money to further his own beliefs” needs a serious explanation. What was known as Rhodesia was his fiefdom, like the Maffia, from which he extracted the considerable mineral wealth he used “to pay for both military muscle and to bribe local tribal chieftains.” As “British colonies”, that wealth should have been for the nation, not one man.
BTW, the vast majority of the “British people” who exist are descended from a wide range of “mass immigration” incidents.
They started in the the latter part of Pleistocene Epoch, or the latest Ice Age, typically defined as the period that began about 1.8 million years ago and lasted until about 11,700 years ago… when the ice caps started to retreat and Britain was still linked to the European mainland by a land bridge… Proto-Indo-Europeans, you could say.
And then there were the Picts, Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Normans, Huguenots, etc., etc., etc. Got the picture?
Indeed, my surname indicates a Double Celt background, with ‘MacIntyre’ being Scottish and ‘Read’ Irish. Now there, you really have a problem!
We are all paying for the selfish, self-centred, internal squabble among the senior nasty Tories.
I saw somewhere reputable – the Guardian I think – that there are actually only 13,000 claims for child benefit being sent out of the UK. The headline figure they throw around are for all claims for in-work benefits where one adult in the household is non-UK born. These include many who have actually been raised here, and are basically as British as you & I, but obviously includes couples where their families all living in the UK. For example Boris Johnson, who was born in the USA, would be counted as a “household” where a non-UK citizen lived.
As the talks wear on, it is obvious that Cameron is a stupid aristo frat boy out his depth with the professional politicians in the EU, and is bringing the UK people into serious disrepute across our largest trading area. What if this makes EU residents to start refusing UK goods?