Oh how we laughed at the Americans for electing Trump Nope, some of us didn't, because we could see why it had happened, and imo, why he will get a second term.
Iggly There's nothing 'potential' about the direction of the EU - it has been evident for a while that the acquis and ever closer union is where it is going. National competencies are being turned into EU ones; QMV is replacing the veto in many areas.
This is what is happening with Switzerland as an example:
www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/03/18/swiss-people-teaching-us-deal-eu-trade-ultimatum/
'Meanwhile, the EU’s other showdown with a democratic European state is going badly wrong. The Swiss are holding out against the hegemony of the European Court and an attempt to gut their national sovereignty.
Switzerland is facing an excruciating squeeze. Its old bilateral accords with the EU are no longer deemed acceptable. Brussels wants to shut down the idiosyncratic “Swiss model” once and for all.
The country has until the end of June to submit to the EU’s new framework agreement, or see its trading and financial access progressively cut off.
“They were given a six-month ultimatum in December,” said Pieter Cleppe from Open Europe in Brussels. “If the EU carries out its threat, Switzerland will see its market access revoked.” The Swiss must accept the sweeping jurisdiction of the ECJ and “dynamic alignment” of EU legislation over migration, social security rules, and other key areas of policy.
“This is a carbon copy of the UK transition arrangement but with the difference that for us it is permanent,” said Thomas Aeschi, the Harvard-trained chief of the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) in the national parliament.
“We end up becoming a passive member of the EU without voting rights. It would be better to join the EU than accept this.
“The other difference is that the document is just 35 pages, unlike your 580-page book.”
Mr Aeschi said cross-clauses in the text allow the ECJ to muscle into sensitive areas covering tax codes, farming, healthcare, and cantonal state-aid policies. Punishment starts with the loss of recognition for the SIX Swiss Exchange and other bourses. It then ratchets up sector by sector as old bilateral accords expire until the country is shut out of the EU’s economic system. It amounts to a sanctions regime. It is a daunting prospect for a nation surrounded on all sides by EU territory. Yet the country is resisting this pressure with remarkable sangfroid. “We shouldn’t allow ourselves to be rushed and we shouldn’t be blackmailed,” said Nicolas Hayek, the founder and chairman of Swatch.
Mr Hayek said the EU market is not the holy grail. “The US and China are also big markets and they like our products,” he said. For good measure, he told Radio SRF that the EU could learn a thing or two from Switzerland’s flexible labour markets, decentralised leadership and aversion to career politicians. Switzerland’s business elites are mostly pushing for an EU deal whatever the implications for sovereignty. So is the Swiss government. But the twin councils of parliament are proving stubborn.
The canton of Ticino says it will oppose the deal when it comes to the upper house this month. Schwyz, Zug, and Sankt Gallen are also sceptical.
The Swiss lower house may reject the deal. Four of the five biggest parties are opposed. “The Federal Council is slowly coming to the conclusion that agreement has no chance in Switzerland,” said Corrado Pardini, a leader of the Unia trade union.
Union leaders fear that EU demands will undermine worker protection rights and that cheap labour from Eastern Europe will hold down wages. What is at stake is the integrity of Switzerland’s solidarity and welfare model. This is a nice irony since Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour leadership want Britain to be locked into the EU’s neo-liberal system of worker rights, which operates largely in the interests of big business and transnational capital.
But Swiss direct democracy will have its say. There will almost certainly have to be a public consultation. Voters are likely to reject the deal in its current form. A collapse of the Swiss deal would not pose a major threat to the EU in itself – though it would hurt German firms with intimate links to the Swiss engineering and machine tool sector.
The greater issue is geostrategy. Brussels has to manage its near abroad with care. Relations with Vladimir Putin’s Russia broke down over Ukraine. Erdoğan’s Turkey is deeply alienated, dislikes its EU customs arrangement and is drifting into the Putin camp. Norway has been dragged kicking and screaming into the EU’s Third Energy Package.
It is hard to estimate how much damage has been done to future relations with Britain by the hard-nosed negotiating tactics of the Commission, which has taken full advantage of the cliff-edge pressure points of the Article 50 process. The fateful decision to weaponise the Irish border as a way to lever the UK into the customs territory – under ECJ control – will have strategic consequences.
This is risky statecraft for the Brussels. Much friendship is being sacrificed on the altar of the EU acquis.'
You might think this is acceptable Iggly and that all should fall before the acquis and EU hegemony, but I don't, which is why I voted Leave, and I understood that meant to leave the EU lock, stock and every smoking barrel.