As a British person I think you are giving us far too much credit. The whole thing has been driven by an unpleasant cocktail of ignorance, xenophobia, nostalgia for a lost empire and a sprinkle of disaster capitalism. There is no cunning masterplan.
There is a plan and you will see the results of it as soon as in the next 10-15 years. European Union is a failed experiment and the British have realised that. It acts as a union only on paper, in reality it's a complete disaster and sooner rather than later it will collapse like Yugoslavia. The British saw through that and decided to leave the sinking ship. Good for them, I wish my country never joined the EU in the first place.
UK's economy was a disaster at the end of the seventies and beginning of eighties. They come in EU poor and leave rich, it's very strange to call this a failed experiment.
Norway was also poor in the 70s and they're rich now. They refused to join the EU twice.
The richest, most advanced union of countries in the entire world, consisting of 300-400mil people couldn't help Italy with an earthquake aftermath so it had to turn a blind eye when the Russians sent help. What a shambles. This very same union couldn't deal the migrant crisis and it can't deal with the corona virus now. What a complete disaster. This is where it shows that there's no union in European Union. It only exists on paper, it doesn't act like an union and never will.
New members only serve as a free market of cheap labour and infrastructure and its eastern members have started making their own political decisions lately, some of them clashing with the EU directives. What union, you must be having a laugh!
>Norway was also poor in the 70s and they're rich now. They refused to join the EU twice.
Surely that richness wasn't because of some geopolitical move, or exquisite global trade deals, or tax optimization, leveraged by their independence from the EU - it was because Norway was lucky enough to have plenty of Natural Resources (namely oil).
With that said, you're completely right: the EU doesn't act like an Union.
EU in it's current form is just a marketplace, when it could be way more. You're right about Italy earthquake, and even the whole response to Coronavirus - which resumed was "be careful with borders closing, let's avoid that, here's some money, and vaccines will come eventually we got a good deal!"
If there's no change in the EU, it will fade away and make less and less sense.
For example, I'm from Portugal, and we've been watching China buying strategic assets from us for years because we're in a tight spot, we even issued national dept in chinese currency - yikes. Now there's even prospect of China getting into the old Lages Base in the Atlantic, which used to be leased to the USA.
I blame a lot of this on corruption, but truth be told, there wasn't much interest in the Union in these assets.
>New members only serve as a free market of cheap labour and infrastructure and its eastern members have started making their own political decisions lately, some of them clashing with the EU directives. What union, you must be having a laugh!
EU needs to be more than money, there needs to be some vertical integration with results that must be shown, else this will be just a pit for corruption where people will be fucked over and over again with bail outs and high taxes, while they remain in poverty or a low waged middle class crushed by taxes. We don't like to be a source of high qualified cheap labor, with cheap real state for summer/spring vacations or for retired UK, German, French, Dutch citizens.
