{"id":12588,"date":"2011-12-15T08:49:26","date_gmt":"2011-12-15T13:49:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=12588"},"modified":"2018-01-11T16:00:33","modified_gmt":"2018-01-11T21:00:33","slug":"mick-hume-dispelling-euro-myths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/12\/15\/mick-hume-dispelling-euro-myths\/","title":{"rendered":"Mick Hume: Dispelling Euro-myths"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this post at Spiked<\/em>, Mick Hume<\/a> pours cold water on five Euro-myths:<\/p>\n

\n

Euro-myth No 1: \u2018It was a triumph for Cameron — or Sarkozy\u2019
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Depending on who you listen to, either UK prime minister David Cameron bravely stood alone for Britain by rejecting a new EU treaty, or else he was beaten by the wily French president Nicolas Sarkozy who got what he wanted by the UK\u2019s omission from the new deal around the Eurozone.<\/p>\n

In fact, what the rupture showed was that both the six-footer Cameron and the diminutive Sarkozy are, to coin a phrase, pygmies in political terms. And so are German chancellor Angela Merkel and the rest of Europe\u2019s political elite. Far from a triumph for anybody, it marked an embarrassing failure of basic diplomacy among substandard statesmen and women. There are always tensions and ructions at international summits. But in other times they would have been kept under control by careful diplomatic preparation and consultation beforehand \u2013 not left to break out in a schoolboy spat on the day, with Cameron and Sarkozy reportedly almost coming to blows. Even far more strident Eurosceptics such as Margaret Thatcher knew how to play the great power game without tripping over their own laces. Europe\u2019s destiny is now in the hands of self-regarding pygmies who think more of their next headline than the shared future of the continent.<\/p>\n

As for the notion that Cameron struck a noble blow for the British people and \u2018our\u2019 national sovereignty — come off it. Indeed, one of his main motives appears to have been to avoid giving the British people any kind of say on the matter, by dodging both the referendum that would be demanded if he accepted an amended EU treaty, and the general election that would follow if he went too far the other way and broke up his coalition with the EU-loving Liberal Democrats. The government would rather fall out with the French than risk the wrath of British voters.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this post at Spiked, Mick Hume pours cold water on five Euro-myths: Euro-myth No 1: \u2018It was a triumph for Cameron — or Sarkozy\u2019 Depending on who you listen to, either UK prime minister David Cameron bravely stood alone for Britain by rejecting a new EU treaty, or else he was beaten by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,62,1117,1118,53],"tags":[389,766,432,337],"class_list":["post-12588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-europe","category-france","category-germany","category-politics","tag-davidcameron","tag-democracy","tag-diplomacy","tag-eu"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-3h2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12588"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41674,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12588\/revisions\/41674"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}