the tory party won the general election last year. They were in power on 22/6/16 and indeed on 14/10/16
Yeh but a bit of scaremongering good for the soul
Actually that was an argument against the idea that it is an issue at all, but if you want to mix it up: the idea that it is somehow easier to affect policy on these supra-national treaties on a national level, in a smaller group, isolated from others who have the same concerns, is junk. This has completely not worked so far; the UK has economic policy far to the right and far more damaging than anything mandated by the EC. We would be _far less_ able to influence political decisions on UK TTIP than an EC TTIP purely because of isolation from others campaigning on the same issue. In fact, if it _had_ been negotiated on a state-by-state basis, I suspect it might have gone through.
You mean like the EU is currently trying to do
The current stalling of TTIP is precisely because national Govs have had to accomodate anti-EU feeling, if it had been left to the EU itself it would still be on track.
Have you read the link I posted the EU is still pushing for TTIP, the quote from Erixon above shows exactly why the EU is the bosses best friend, he's arguing to remove any role for national governments so that the EU can impose trade agreements.
What does 'left to the EU' mean in this particular instance? The EU's power to act comes from consensus between the national governments. I think possibly Mr Tusk and Mr Erixon are rather talking up an idea that doesn't really exist - that there exists a power structure in the EU in which policy is driven onto governments by the EU's various politicians. They don't have that much power.
Erixon is some think-tank bod. Why ought we to give a shit what he is arguing or to think that this is what the EU is going to become.
So the EU didn't force austerity on Greece? There wasn't a non-elected EU supported government government in Italy?
Because he's gives a window into the views of the EU government, think-tanks aren't politically neutral.
I looked him up. He's an economist who runs a think tank. He may very well have the ear of important people, I don't know. But he has no power at all and speaks on behalf of nobody except his think tank.
What was done to Greece was done, ultimately, with the consent of several heads of governments, most notably Angela Merkel, who could have stopped it if she had so wished. And yes, the EU's financial institutions did force austerity on Greece, using the mechanism of debt, just as the IMF and other financial institutions have done. But not without the consent of the creditor governments. The eurozone and the sovereignty ceded by the member states of the eurozone to the central bank are something of a separate problem.
I simply don't think this is true. As bad as UK austerity was, the mandating of a lack of budget deficit is significantly more extreme then UK policy. And even though Osborne claimed he had planned to eliminate the deficit this is not the same as requiring national governments to pass laws outlawing unbalanced budgets, as required by the fiscal compact.
Yes, there's a great deal of difference between using the notion of 'balanced budgets' as a political tool with which to reduce and privatise the state, and actually legislating for such. The tories' constituency of the City & financialised capital wanted no such thing to actually come to pass ; their lifeblood is debt farming on a gigantic scale.
Influence is a form of power
Good job I didn't do that then it isn't it.
I don't think the ideologues behind 'Leave' necessarily regarded the super-state as a "softer" form of neoliberalism, merely an inefficient, bureaucratic, burdensome and overly prescriptive mode of effecting the neoliberal agenda.
