For me, the worst part is:
The research agency was explicitly designed to be free from “red tape.” At Cummings’ behest, the Conservative government made the new agency exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. Last year, Democracy for Sale won a legal challenge, which found ARIA must still respond to environmental transparency requests.
My impression of the Tories and Reform is that they want the UK to forever be a lapdog of the US. Perhaps it would be better for the UK to reduce our dependence on the US and instead increase our ties with our European allies. A friendship between the UK and any European country - even Germany, the largest European economy - is more of a partnership of equals, which can obviously not be said about UK-US relations (I wouldn’t count Russia as the largest European economy because Russia is Eurasian).
Russia would not be the largest European economy, even if you counted them. They are about the size of Italy in terms of GDP I believe (not intending this as a correction, just sharing an interesting fact).
Totally agree with your main point, that the UK would be better off pursuing closer ties with Europe and the EU over US.
Good point, my mistake. Russia does have a larger population than any European country though of course, I guess I was thinking of that.
Actually I have a question if you don’t mind, since you’re from a Danish Lemmy instance. How do you view the euro? Because Denmark is the only EU country with a legal opt-out from the euro, right? I guess if I were Danish I would think it’s pretty nice to enjoy the benefits of the EU without being obliged to join the euro.
If the UK were to rejoin the EU (possible in the coming decades) then I bet the euro would be a sticky issue, because I think it has traditionally been unpopular in the UK, while the EU would probably require at least a nominal promise to adopt the euro.
Yeah, I just remembered being surprised by the (small) size of Russia’s GDP when I looked it up a while back.
Re the Euro, yep, we do have an exception, although I don’t think we’re the only EU country without the Euro (Sweden off the top of my head, maybe Poland too?). I am not really on top of all the macroeconomic implications - I would guess that the Danish krone is probably tied to the Euro at some level, and much of our financial policy is probably tied to EU policy. Could be there are some financial policy options that Denmark has more control over, when opting out of the Euro, but nothing that I am particularly aware of.
I think at a personal level, I would be fine with taking the Euro in Denmark. Easier for travel and online shopping without exchange costs. But that is an uninformed personal view :) I do not have a current detailed understanding of any other implications this would come with for the country - I am just not personally precious about our currency as some kind of national identity symbol.
I think you are right that the Euro would be a core part of any potential UK re-entry negotiations with the EU though.
I see okay, thanks for your view. Yes Sweden and Poland don’t use the euro but that’s due to a loophole, whereas Denmark has a legal exception to joining the euro. Maybe the UK could use the Sweden/Poland loophole but the EU might try to close it, I don’t know.
Anyway, I expect the UK will just slowly get closer to the EU over the coming years. Rejoining probably won’t be a possibility for at least a few years. At that point, maybe the euro will be less controversial among Brits.
