Project Fear has completely collapsed - "In the run-up to the 2016 EU referendum, the Remain campaign’s Project Fear went into overdrive. A vote for Brexit would lead to catastrophe for the UK, it claimed. We were told it might even unleash supergonorrhea or a third world war. After Leave won, the scaremongering intensified even further. Anti-democrats screeched that Brexit was an obvious disaster and it had to be stopped. But Britain has now left the EU and these disasters have not materialised. Here are four of the most striking Remainer myths.
Brexit will cause economic collapse
Even despite a harsh Covid lockdown, the UK economy is expected to outperform the economies of many EU member states in the next 15 years. Analysis by the Centre for Economics and Business Research predicted in December that UK GDP will be 23 per cent larger than French GDP by 2035. So much for Brexit Britain becoming an economic backwater.
Brexit will force Nissan to close its Sunderland plant
Nissan has now embarassed Remoaners by confirming the long-term future of the plant, promising to bring more jobs to Sunderland and even saying Brexit is a ‘positive’ for the company.
Russia rigged the EU referendum in favour of Brexit
One of the most absurd Remainer myths was the claim that a Russian conspiracy lay behind Brexit. Cambridge Analytica, an English data firm supposedly linked to Russia, was said to have determined the result of the Referendum by manipulating social-media users with pro-Brexit ads. Prominent Leave figures such as Arron Banks were accused of being Kremlin stooges. Desperate to delegitimise a democratic vote, the likes of Carole Cadwalladr tried to rebrand Brexit as the end of democracy – and won journalism prizes for doing so. But it has all fallen apart.
Opting out of the EU vaccine programme will be a disaster"
Why shouldn’t HGV drivers get a decent wage? - "The UK has been overly dependent on low-cost foreign labour from the EU, which has depressed the wages of HGV drivers, and led to fewer Brits wanting those jobs. For Pro-Remain commentators to blame Brexit for this is absurd. In fact, it was EU membership itself that allowed companies to exploit foreign workers on such a large scale. This has been combined with a corporate reluctance to pay domestic workers a decent wage for roles which are both mentally and physically challenging. Brexit is not the problem here. In fact, it is part of the solution. It should be used as a catalyst to reduce our national overdependence on low-paid workers and invest in our domestic workforce – through training and higher wages in vital professions and trades."
We are simultaneously told that immigration doesn't reduce wages and that cutting immigration will send costs soaring. Odd
Why won’t Brits pick vegetables for £30 an hour? - "with the pandemic preventing people entering the UK, David Simmons realised he would have to find local people to work on his farm near Hayle, west Cornwall. He went on local TV, appealed on social media and paid for adverts, and was happy with the result: more than 250 people applied for a role. But after ringing every single applicant, only 37 turned up for the induction and, after seven weeks of picking, just one worker was left. This is surprising when you consider the pay: if you work hard enough, you can get up to £30 an hour picking vegetables on Simmons’ farm, which works out to more than £62,000 a year pro-rata. Across the UK, vegetables are rotting in the fields, yet supermarket shelves are bare... A few decades ago, all the manual workers on Simmons’ farm were locals, so the current reluctance of Brits to do the work is, he admits, a frustration. He says that even a generous salary couldn’t motivate the 37 British staff who worked for him last summer. “People didn’t like working outside in the heat because it was summer, they couldn’t get to the fields [on time], and it was hard going on their backs,” he says... last year, his British workers were consistently the slowest, and were thus the lowest paid... The shortage of British manual workers could be down to a long-term trend of increasing education levels... He sees three ways out of this limbo. Firstly, visa rules could change to allow more “lower-skilled” migrants to take seasonal work on farms. Secondly, food prices could increase to cover the cost of paying British workers even more to attract them. Or, finally, many British farms could shut, costing thousands of jobs and leading to increased food imports instead."
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak Announces 10,000 Extra Seasonal Farm Worker Visas - Bloomberg
Seasonal farm/agricultural workers are a thing in many countries after all
Covid has made us a nation of hysterics. It's time to get a grip - "The Road Haulage Association wants to restore free movement of drivers so that it can recruit cheap labour from the EU again rather than employ at home. (The fact that 52% of us explicitly voted against this notion seems not to bother it one jot.) It now stands accused of massively exaggerating the lorry driver shortage to further its end, thereby triggering the panic. The RHA “owes an apology to the British people”, says a government source. We might never know the full truth of that. But you don’t have to look far to see the repulsive glee with which the normal Remainer suspects have leapt on the panic to feed their fixation. This is a crisis manufactured by a “Brexit government”, says the EU-obsessed Lord Adonis. We didn’t have these problems when we were in the EU, says Anna Soubry, conveniently forgetting that we did in 2000, 2005 and 2007. The end of free movement is behind the UK’s fuel crisis, says Olaf Scholz, the likely next German Chancellor, in a pronouncement spectacularly lacking in diplomatic acumen while ignoring Germany’s own chronic driver shortage. Britain’s EU fanatics, who’d blame a bad bee sting on Brexit, know full well that their attempt to overturn the 2016 referendum has failed. And how they hate it. So much so that they’re only too willing to fan the flames of panic, and help prolong the suffering, just for the pleasure of a cheap “Ha! We told you so.” How very sad."
From 2021
Ridley Road: a Remainer fantasy - "It’s almost funny. Many bourgeois Remainers really do think of themselves as indomitable anti-fascists. They really do think their five-year struggle against Brexit was against the far right, and not, er, democracy. For that is what Brexit was to them – the re-emergence of the darkest political impulses of the 20th century... In this political parable, the fight against fascism is permanent. Hence none of the main characters speaks naturally. Each speaks out of time and place, as if addressing the audience directly about the fascism that still lurks today. But this is a rewriting of recent history. Since the Second World War fascism has been politically insignificant in the UK... Tellingly, these neo-Nazis don’t speak the language of racial purity or totalitarianism. They speak like Brexiteers... Remainers may have lost the political battle, but they continue to dominate the culture war."
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Rees-Mogg defends civil service cuts plan - "'What has been then the economic benefit of Brexit?'
'Well, the economic benefit of Brexit is coming through the whole time, that actually the big economic benefit was that we were able to open our economy up faster than other people because we got the vaccine going. And that was really important, and I know you'll say to me that we could have done it independently as a member of the EU, but I would point out to you that nobody did, and I think that's quite a relevant factor in that... last year, when we were having an issue with a lack of HGV drivers, Grant Shapps was able to take I think 35 ameliatory measures, of which over half he was able to take because we were no longer in the EU... the shortage of drivers was actually bigger in Germany. So the EU wasn't the fundamental point. The amelioration was the fundamental point, because we were able to make it easier for drivers to train and to extend some of the capabilities of licenses... the procurement bill will take 350 EU laws down to 1 UK law. We'll make it much easier for SMEs to bid for government contracts'"
Best of Today: Thursday's business with Dominic O'Connell (11 Feb 2021)
‘All comes down to regulation, of course, and whether or not London is equivalent. Now, when we're all in the EU together, we were all equivalent in terms of regulation. And now the EU says that we're not’...
‘And Mr. Bailey was actually a little bit sarcastic wasn't he? He said that Canada, Brazil, the United States had all been deemed equivalent by the European Union. But apparently the UK, even though it had been good enough just a few months ago was no longer good enough.’
‘Well, again, part of this perhaps is a reflection of the rocky start to this relationship that we've had in the UK with with the EU, because some of it is just from the EU's point of view, sound financial business, they want some of that lucrative business’
Why all the panic over international students? - "In Britain this year, wannabe students keen to secure a university place have found themselves in competition with a record number of international applicants. British universities are reported to be taking up to 40 per cent more overseas students than five years ago, with some universities offering close to half of all places to foreign students. Elite Russell Group universities have awarded roughly a fifth of places to international students, while 54 per cent of those studying at the London School of Economics come from outside of the UK. These figures must have come as a terrible shock to our universities. After all, just a few years ago, following Britain’s vote to leave the EU, academics, administrators and higher-education journalists alike were all busy predicting a huge decline in the numbers of international students wanting to come to the UK – with inevitably disastrous consequences for university finances, campus diversity and academic standards. In short, a ‘Brexodus’ was coming. Dire predictions of empty British campuses were commonplace. A survey carried out in August 2016, just months after the EU referendum, suggested that almost a third of international students would be less likely to come to the UK, with six per cent declaring they would definitely not come to study in Britain as a result of the vote for Brexit. This ‘research’, conducted by a little-known student recruitment consultancy, was based on a survey of just 1,014 students. Yet it was covered by newspapers around the world. ‘After Brexit, foreign students flee UK universities for US, Canada and Australia’ gloated USA Today... Not only did all commentators agree that a steep decline in international students was inevitable – they were also unanimous in their reasoning. Apparently, Brexit Britain had suddenly become ‘less welcoming’ to foreigners. The Guardian ran a whole host of alarmist stories about rising levels of ‘hate crime’ on campus. One student, for instance, was reportedly told not to speak her native language when venturing off campus ‘because it might provoke British people’... the exact opposite has occurred... This increase in international students has occurred at all levels of higher education... Sadly, while we fret over international students – whether there are too few or too many – we are paying far too little attention to the quality of education that is now on offer. Universities have been severely degraded in recent years, as free academic inquiry has come to be replaced with woke indoctrination. The humanities are under assault from both philistines in government who view arts degrees as useless to the labour market, and from academia itself, which seeks to expunge the syllabus of ‘dead white males’."
The ECJ's credibility is in tatters | The Spectator - "Is the European Court of Justice (ECJ) a properly independent court? The damning verdict of two respected EU law academics on an episode involving the ECJ suggests it is not... The sorry saga dates back to the aftermath of the Brexit vote, when one of the ECJ's 11 advocates general, Eleanor Sharpston, was sacked. Sharpston had every legal right to carry on. After all, ‘she’ didn’t Brexit, the UK did; she also has EU citizenship and is an outstanding EU lawyer. Unsurprisingly she took legal action to prevent her summary dismissal and to stop the appointment of a new advocate general. On 4 September 2020, an independent judge recognised Sharpston's dismissal was possibly wrong. A timetable was set out with an exchange of evidence set for 11 September to determine whether that was so. But none of it ever happened: instead, without telling Sharpston (which any fair process would surely require), the ECJ held a different hearing, a day before, on 10 September. At that hearing, the ECJ struck out Sharpstone’s case. To add insult to injury, the ceremony to appoint Sharpston’s successor took place on the same day. All this without telling Sharpston what was happening. In doing so, the ECJ did not merely breach the Rule of Law, it tore it up and set fire to the remains. And yet, in the months since, the ECJ has chosen to double down rather than come clean... The law inside the EU now appears to be this: the EU government does not need to follow law – any law. And the ECJ will just nod along. Yet that surely is the opposite of the Rule of Law."
Britain was right to take back control over vaccines - "‘Tell me one single benefit of Brexit and going it alone?!’, whinge media Remainers, ad nauseam, often after you’ve already listed several. Well, now we can add another."
From 2020
Brexit threatens not only thousands of resort jobs, but the future of British ski holidays - "Now the UK is outside the EU single market and those jobs are largely closed off to UK citizens, due to some formidable barriers. Take France for example: if a UK travel company wants to employ a British citizen to work in a ski chalet they must go through the same process as if they wanted to employ a Nepalese or Moroccan citizen. First, they need to prove that no French person is available to do the job, by advertising for three weeks in an unemployment office; second, the company needs to offer a conditional role to the UK applicant; third, the company needs to apply and pay for a French work permit; and finally, the member of staff needs to apply and pay for a French working visa. The process to obtain all these documents is likely to take around four months and at any point the prospective UK member of staff can be rejected and therefore unable to work the winter season. How does this impact holidaymakers? Simple – this could leave the UK company unable to deliver the holidays that they have sold. As a result, many UK travel companies are not even accepting applications from British citizens, unless they have a dual passport or a right to reside in an EU country – a devastating decision for the thousands of young Britons who have hopes of working a ski season, as well as those skiers who enjoy their familiar hosting skills when on holiday. In the wake of a pandemic, it may seem reasonable for UK travel companies to look to a domestic workforce first: French or Italian for instance. Yet many of these jobs are seasonal, covering peak periods of holiday travel only. They are also often in remote locations and require a move for the season away from home – something the many domestic workers are unwilling to do. Employers in many countries are already reporting labour shortages ahead of next winter... Fortunately, there is a potential solution. SBIT is calling on the EU and the UK Government to work together on an extension of the existing Tier 5 Youth Mobility Scheme and to do so without delay. We need to give young people across the EU and in the UK the chance to gain work experience and life experiences in our closest trading partners and use this to rebuild our economies."
I like how the conclusion isn't that labour market protectionism is bad but that getting in on the scam is good
Joe Biden doesn’t understand Northern Ireland - "In the process of painting the British in Northern Ireland as jackbooted oppressors – an image that greatly and tragically helped the IRA’s prolific stateside fundraising efforts – the Dublin narrative also served to relegate Ulster’s unionist majority to an afterthought at best. Like many Americans, Biden seems to have little clue about the role the Unionist community once played in turning Northern Ireland into the most prosperous part of the island of Ireland or of the hurt and damage they suffered as a consequence of armed republicanism. This one-sided view has had dire consequences for his approach to Brexit and specifically the Northern Ireland Protocol. Like many Irish Catholics he loves the idea of the EU and cannot see its imperialistic and autocratic instincts. Like many in America, he is all too willing to accept the Dublin version of the facts as the whole, unbiased story. Having little knowledge of or sympathy for unionists, Biden seems to be incapable of understanding why they feel threatened by what they see as the weaponisation of the Irish border to punish Britain. Nor does he seem either willing or able to appreciate just what an outrage the Northern Ireland Protocol’s attempt to dismember the UK really is."
Hypocritical Europe is playing with fire on the Northern Ireland Protocol - "Northern Ireland is a complicated place. It is no embarrassment if you do not understand the intricacies of its history, its peace process, and its politics. After all, many of the interlocutors involved in fixing the Northern Ireland Protocol – from the EU negotiators to the Democrats in the White House – do not either. The problem before us dates back to the Brexit negotiations. With the United Kingdom declaring its intent to leave the single market and customs union, there needed to be a border separating it from the European Union. For mainland Britain this was mostly uncontentious. But in Northern Ireland, with its land border with the Republic and fragile peace between nationalists and unionists, the EU saw an opportunity to force the UK to stay in its regulatory orbit, or, in the words of one negotiator, lose the province as “the price to pay for Brexit”... This has been a story of myths, miscalculations and jaw-dropping cynicism. We are told that the Good Friday Agreement prohibits any kind of border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, when it has nothing to say on the subject. We are told that the UK had the responsibility to fix the NI border, or there would be no Brexit deal. But with no deal, a border would have been necessary anyway, and it would have been Brussels, not London, that insisted to Dublin on full North/South checks. Even now we are told that it is Britain jeopardising the peace process, when it was Ireland and the EU – through their insistence on a legal status for Northern Ireland that lacked the consent of the unionist majority – that disrespected the Good Friday Agreement. We are told that the British are the bad guys, while Irish leaders ignore their treaty obligation to respect Northern Ireland’s place in the UK, and promise, in Leo Varadkar’s words, the “reunification of our island … in my lifetime”... While the North/South border has been maintained without new infrastructure or checks, preserving the integrity of the EU single market, the protocol has failed to achieve its other objectives: it has not protected Northern Ireland’s position within the UK internal market, nor has it avoided disruption to economic life in the province. Although most goods arriving in Northern Ireland from Britain remain in the UK customs territory, they are treated as exports destined for the EU. As a result, supply chains have been disrupted, leaving customers in Northern Ireland with less choice and higher costs"
We really don’t regret voting for Brexit - "The myth of Regrexit has just taken another pounding, this time from the latest British Social Attitudes survey. As the Guardian sums it up, through gritted teeth no doubt, ‘Nine in 10 of Leave and Remain voters [say] they would vote the same way again’. There has been no big swing either way... The survey found that Britain is still ‘heavily divided on the issue of Brexit’. A significant section of the population – 46 per cent – say they identify ‘very strongly’ as either a Remainer or a Leaver. That’s pretty remarkable: nearly half of us now feel a strong bond with political identities that have only really existed for five years... at root, Leaver vs Remainer is a battle over whether we value democracy more than so-called expertise, and whether we truly trust ordinary people to determine the fate of the nation. Leavers say yes; some Remainers say no. Such a deep national split cannot be wished away. On the contrary, it should be celebrated – it clarifies the political tensions of the 21st century, and lays the ground for the important fights ahead. Let’s end by noting just how remarkable it is that Leave voters remain loyal to leaving. We have been bombarded, day in, day out, for more than five years, with hyped-up horror stories about Brexit. It’s a disaster, it’s like fascism, it will cause shortages and downturn, you will suffer. We’ve been told to feel shame over how we voted. It’s been relentless. And yet the vast majority of Leave voters have held firm, stood by their principles, and stayed committed to transforming the country in order to make it more democratically accountable to its citizens. Such resolve in the face of hysteria and threats from the elites is to be commended"
Brexit not to blame for travel chaos, says HSBC - "Brexit is unlikely to be to blame for travel chaos at airports, HSBC has said, as a shortage of aviation workers is worse in America and “at least as intense elsewhere in Europe”. Analysts at HSBC noted that while it was "intuitive" to assume stricter immigration rules post-Brexit were the key driver of staffing shortages that have wreaked havoc on millions of British holidaymakers, it added that there was evidence to the contrary elsewhere in the world."
Germany’s economic foundations are collapsing - "Which is the sick man of Europe? There can be no doubt that Britain is suffering significant economic difficulties at the moment. But it’s an interesting thought experiment to ponder whether you would swap them for Germany’s woes... Germany’s issues, on the other hand, are more structural. Having been masked for decades by the euro – which, compared to the traditional strength of the Deutsche Mark, made German goods more competitive abroad – hidden flaws are now bursting into the open. The question is whether the country's economic model can survive and, if not, what that might mean for the eurozone... Germany reported its first monthly trade deficit in three decades after the value of the country’s exports unexpectedly fell in May... Since reunification, Germany has fashioned itself into an open, trade-integrated, export-driven powerhouse. It sucked in Russian energy to power its factories. These churned out vehicles, machinery and equipment that were then sold to China. That strategy worked for decades; now, it’s a massive problem. Olaf Scholz’s government faces the unenviable task of dialling back Germany’s dependence on both countries and finding an alternative to globalisation... Lots of European countries are net importers of energy and their trade balances have been skewed by energy prices going through the roof. But Germany is particularly reliant on energy to power its industrial sector, which accounted for 37pc of gas consumption in 2021. In the UK, the figure was 23pc. Germany imports around 60pc of the energy it uses. Of this, half of all gas and hard coal imports and a third of all oil imports originates in Russia. In total, Germany depends on the Kremlin for about one third of its total energy consumption, according to the London School of Economics... Germany is adopting a more circumspect attitude towards its second largest export market. For decades, Berlin pursued a “change through trade” policy towards China. But Beijing’s studied ambivalence towards Russia's invasion of Ukraine, disastrous zero-Covid strategy and persecution of the Uygur people has altered the calculus. China has recently given indications that it is prepared to follow Russia’s lead in weaponising trade. Beijing recently sanctioned Lithuania after the Baltic state hosted a Taiwanese Representative Office and imposed tariffs on Australia imports after officials criticised Chinese efforts to thwart an investigation into the origins of the Covid pandemic. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year, Scholz expressed concern over China's growing power... Germany has reinvented its economy in the past and could do so again. According to a survey by the Ifo Institute, 50pc of German companies with supply chains in China are now rethinking their operations. But this process will undoubtedly take time. The trouble is, Germany is the only major eurozone country that has consistently run a current account surplus. The longer it continues to post deficits, the greater the strain on the currency, which is already approaching parity with the dollar. The UK and German economies might both be unwell. But the British malaise appears easier to cure. What’s more, the eurozone’s shared currency means Germany’s sickness could be contagious."
Poland’s battle against the EU’s imperial court reveals Europe’s fundamental flaws - "In a parallel universe, the UK would never have left the EU and would instead have adopted the strategy now being tried by Poland. A couple of weeks ago, Warsaw cemented its position as Brussels’ top whipping boy when its highest court declared that the Polish constitution has supremacy over EU law... It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Poland, after centuries of domination and dismemberment by foreign states, is deeply resistant to the project of “ever closer union” pursued by Euro-enthusiasts. This was, indeed, one of the main reasons why the UK strongly supported Poland’s accession to the bloc in 2004. Fearing perpetual control by the Franco-German axis, British diplomats calculated that the best way to stop the EU deepening its union too much would be to widen it. Breadth and depth together would become impossible – and so it is proving. Unfortunately, the result is a bloc unable to take critical strategic decisions... The judgment, Mr Morawiecki stated in Strasbourg, is about pushing back against the constant expansion of legal meddling by EU courts in defiance of democratic consent, a phenomenon with which Britain is sadly familiar. Nor is Poland’s tribunal the first European court to reach such a conclusion. Most notably, Germany’s constitutional court has always reserved the right to nullify EU activities if it doesn’t like them and has done so repeatedly, most recently last year when it stated that the European Central Bank’s quantitative easing programme is illegal. The main difference is that Berlin has always opted not to act on its domestic court’s judgments. So Poland can justifiably complain that it is being singled out for unfair treatment. Since the court ruling, EU leaders have lined up to condemn Warsaw. There is not a lot they can do except harangue its government, because suspending Poland’s EU political rights requires unanimity among member states, something Viktor Orban’s Hungary would never support. But the creation of an €800 billion (£677 billion) EU Covid rescue package has given Brussels a stock of goodies it can withhold on the basis that Poland is not respecting EU values such as the rule of law. There are two reasons why this row is far more venomous than the legal facts alone justify. The first is that Poland’s ruling party, Law and Justice (“PiS” in Polish), has conducted a much broader assault on democratic norms since winning power in 2015... The second aggravating factor is that Warsaw is consciously taking aim at one of the EU’s most sensitive subjects: its obsession with the supremacy of its own law over everything. The EU has pursued this issue to extreme lengths even by its own standards. In 2014, for example, the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) ruled that the EU’s agreement to accede to the European Court of Human Rights was invalid because it gave a rival court jurisdiction over an area not covered by EU law. In other words, the EU could not possibly subject itself to international judgment on human rights, because this might limit the power of EU law."
Poland is learning, as Britain did, that the EU will never let its members be sovereign - "Poland’s leaders are discovering what David Cameron discovered in 2015 when he tried to shore up the legal supremacy of Parliament, namely that Eurocrats are adept at doublethink. On the one hand, they deride sovereignty as a risible nineteenth-century hang-up, an empty husk, a myth invoked by nationalist demagogues. On the other hand, they care very deeply about their own sovereignty – specifically, about the primacy of EU law over the legal systems of the member states... Why, you might ask, did the member countries agree to this surrender? The answer is that they didn’t – at least, not until very recently. The primacy of EU law is not to be found anywhere in the Treaty of Rome. It was invented, rather, by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in a series of controversial rulings which even committed federalists now admit amounted to a power-grab. In particular, two landmark cases in the 1960s – Van Gend en Loos and Costa vs ENEL – established that EU rulings were directly binding upon individuals and businesses within the member states, knocking aside any national legal acts that might contradict them. For a long time, this blatant judicial activism went unacknowledged in the treaties. It was only in 2009, in a declaration attached to the Lisbon Treaty, that the member governments retroactively acknowledged the supremacy of EU law “in accordance with well settled case law of the ECJ”... people who voted Leave are getting fed up with having their motives explained to them by people who voted Remain. History is not always written by the winners. Europhile commentators have spent five years trying to show that the referendum was really about economic insecurity or anti-government feeling or racism or something-or-other-and-mimblewimble – anything, indeed, except the restoration of sovereignty summed up in the slogan “take back control”... the EU’s intransigence is revealing. It might have tried to keep its second greatest financial contributor on board without setting too great a precedent. It might, for example, have allowed that, as the only country without a written constitution, the UK needed unique safeguards for its parliament, such as the right to pass national legislation before regulations took effect. Had it done so, it would have won over most of the leading figures in Vote Leave and the referendum would have become a formality. But the EU was readier to lose its second largest member than to allow any deviation from federal unification. If that was its attitude toward the UK, we may be sure that Brussels will seek to crush Poland, a substantial net beneficiary from the budget and a country whose government and population favour continued membership. Poles will learn, as we did, that the choice is between membership of a new polity, a state-in-the-making, and secession. There is no middle way, no Europe of nations option. We spent half a century trying to find one, and failed. That, in the end, is why we left."
The EU is treating Poland like a colony - "Polish people may be keen pro-Europeans. But if the large cash transfers they currently get from the EU seem to evaporate whenever Brussels doesn’t approve of the government they vote in, their keenness for the EU will likely evaporate, too. The last thing the EU needs at this stage is an ill-tempered Polexit to complicate matters even further. And if Brussels doesn’t provide financial help to Poland, there are other powers who are likely to be more accommodating. China, with its Belt and Road Initiative, is already sniffing around Eastern Europe with a view to buying influence there. If you go to Budapest, for instance, you will see a spanking new €1.5 billion campus built by the Fudan University of Shanghai"
