KATHY GYNGELL writes: A number of readers have expressed their dismay at our decision to close comments on some of the blogs we have posted recently. We would like to assure them that the reason is mundane, not sinister.
Comment moderation has been taking us a disproportionate and ever-increasing amount of our time as our readership goes up. It can interfere with our primary purpose to keep publishing cogent, coherent, counter-cultural argument – viewpoints that tend not to be aired elsewhere.
As a platform TCW is pro free speech, but that does not make it an opinion free-for-all and we, the editors, reserve the right to remove comments we see – we never get to read them all – that we do not like or, when our time is at a premium, simply close the comment threads altogether.
We relish the informed comment the site has generated, sometimes pithy one-liners and sometimes full exegeses, the best of which we take pride in publishing as here and now:
In response to Tim Bradshaw: Hold to your principles, you wobbling Brexiteers
PierrePendre wrote:
Let’s accept that the precarious situation of the EU as described by Evans-Pritchard is accurate. It explains why Brussels cannot allow the fundamental flaws of ‘Europe’ to be exposed by a successful Brexit. Allowing the EU’s second largest economy to leave and thrive would be to remove one of the cornerstones of the project’s credibility and might eventually prove fatal.
Evans-Pritchard explains why it is imperative that the UK be overborne and its dependence on the EU for the terms of its departure exploited to the full to ensure its subsequent weakness. The backstop is essentially the expression of Brussels’ core objective in this negotiation: You can leave but we must cripple you on the way out pour encourager les autres.
The EU’s modus operandi from the outset has been, like the shark, to be constantly in movement, harmonising the government of its member states in an ever more complex network of programmes and ventures all designed to create an interdependence that cannot be undone.
Flaws and omissions are integral to this process. The deliberate structural weakness of the euro begat the need for economic union which in turn will beget the need for political union which will beget federal government. The European Army in military terms can safely be expected to be a joke but is nonetheless an essential component of the aim of indissoluble interdependence.
If it looks like something designed by Heath Robinson, it is because that is essentially what it is; but the defects were containable behind the screen of a Kafkaesque Brussels machine until Britain’s politicians unexpectedy lost control of their electorate.
Fortunately for the EU, they did not lose control of Parliament. Hence the trap in which the UK is caught with a quisling government openly pursuing the vital interests of the EU at the expense of the British people and their freedom.
One by one, the political godfathers of Brexit have dropped away. Gove has become a pragmatist, or something. Is Boris still alive? Farage?
No deal is not an option because Parliament will never vote for it. Any second referendum would be rigged. The practical options are in effect to admit defeat and remain a full EU member or admit defeat and leave on humiliating terms that leave us permanently in thrall to a hostile EU.
I’ve loathed the idea of the EU as a utopian fantasy from day one but it’s evident which option is a no-brainer even if it means we are still aboard the Titanic when it hits the iceberg that is unavoidably waiting for it. At least we’ll have had a hand on the tiller to the end.
