Sunday, October 25, 2015

Yanis Varoufakis and Alex Sakalis — “One very simple, but radical, idea: to democratise Europe.” OpenDemocracy interview

As he prepares to launch a new, pan-European movement for change, Yanis Varoufakis sits down with Can Europe make it? to discuss democracy in Europe, Brexit, and the other part of Plan X.

Yanis Varoufakis
“One very simple, but radical, idea: to democratise Europe.” OpenDemocracy interview
Yanis Varoufakis and Alex Sakalis

3 comments:

Ralph Musgrave said...

Never read such a load of waffle. Varoufakis is a windbag. What does his amazing “democratize Europe” idea consist of? The right of the likes of Greece to vote itself piles of other peoples’ money!

I shouldn’t need to point this out, but German and other core country taxpayers just won’t stand for that.

NeilW said...

"What does his amazing “democratize Europe” idea consist of?"

Like all of them. Screwing up their eyes and believing in the concept really, really hard.

Sod the engineering and the fundamental tribal nature of human beings.

NeilW said...

I also find the 'where is the UK going to send 60% of its trade' line irritating as well. That is very simply a manipulative lie. If you can't be accurate about that then everything else you say is tainted with the same smell of propaganda.

Firstly 90% of UK trade is with the UK. So only about 6% of overall trade is with EU.

Secondly that trade would continue under WTO rules. Not under EU rules, or EEA rules but under WTO rules. Why? Because in value terms the EU ships to the UK more than the UK ships to the EU. And the EU would still be under the current rules that stop it doing anything whereas the UK would be freed from the restrictions and government can fill in any investment or spending gaps.

So even if the EU violated WTO rules, the UK would likewise stop importing stuff from EU, and the UK exporters who 'lose' would have a great time providing import substitutions. Of which there would be greater value than the exports that the UK had 'lost'.