“I am concerned about the way the European Union is increasingly operating like a free market across Europe” – Jeremy Corbyn, August, 2015
I swear to you, I’m not making that quote up; the current leader of the Labour Party actually said that at a hustings during the contest to be Ed’s successor as Grand Poobah of the movement. Bless, right? Someone should have had a whisper in his ear to let him know that having a free market across Europe was sort of the whole point of the project in the first place. At least it gives us an insight into what life must be like inside Jeremy Corbyn’s brain – not pretty. Imagine going to your local Tesco and having to think to yourself, “This place operates almost as if it were a chain of stores running the length of the country, selling food stuffs to those who wish to purchase them! Hardly like a communist cabal at all!” Like I say, must be tricky.
Jeremy is currently in Brussels to present his “vision of an alternate future for the European Union” to….well, that’s not really clear. I think its Francois Hollande. If so, that will have its ups and downs. On the plus side, Hollande is a socialist, but on the other hand Corbyn’s mates in Stop the War were pretty adamant that Paris had the whole innocent people being gunned down by maniacs thing coming to them. What I’m saying is there could be a few niceties to get out of the way first. What’s Jeremy’s French like? Whatever, I’m sure he’ll handle it with his usual tact.
While we’re on the subject, what is Jeremy’s vision for an alternative future for the EU anyway? Obviously different from Dave’s immigrant bashing-lite fare, but beyond that what do we know? I wonder if its anything like Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin’s plans for Europe. For those of you not familiar with the man, he’s a Putin adviser who thinks that all of continental Europe should be under Russian control, with Lisbon acting as the western outpost of a newly configured Russian Empire. If comparing Corbyn to Dugin seems harsh, I would point out that both men’s views on what’s been happening in the Ukraine over the last few years are remarkably similar.
Okay, Corbynistas, relax, I don’t really think Jeremy is a Dugin enthusiast (at least, I really, really hope he isn’t). But it is hard to understand what Jeremy’s vision of a new EU direction would look like given the bloke is kind of a Eurosceptic. And I’m using the “kind of” there out of politeness. Fine, as a pro-European I genuinely appreciate the fact that the party he leads will be openly campaigning for Britain to remain in the EU, but isn’t pretending to be prime minister and doing his own tortuous renegotiation a little much? Or at least, as a preface to that, couldn’t he let us all in on why he’s now seen the light on the whole Brexit thing? Is it now not operating like a free market across Europe?
Your quote of Corbyn is actually amazing. On this basis does he object to free trade between Warwickshire and Cornwall or is it the fundamental problem that he doesn’t like privately owned enterprise as an economic concept