Very good speech by Dr Alice Weidel to the Bundestag regarding Brexit

Subtitled speech by Dr Alice Weidel. Not the only good speech that she has made to the Bundestag.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63IcW4eo4uM

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When I speak to my French friends they all agree that the EU needs reforming.
How refreshing to hear such common sense from a politician.

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Indeed an excellent speech. If only Brussels had been open to making some reasonable reforms of the EU, then Brexit would not be necessary.

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To be fair the AfD is not exactly a pro-EU party.

No, but so many of her remarks hit the mark.

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Rabble-rousing nonsense IMO, with a sour taste of xenophobia re Papua New Guinea and Paraguayan humanity, a sneer at Southern Europe, and a yearning for fortress Europe and maybe even a Trumpian wall.

Ugly fascistic stuff, delivered in a hectoring tone reminiscent of the Third Reich.

The UK has not been driven out of the EU, it chose to leave, but wanted to retain the many benefits of membership. What a shame to throw away the mighty weight of its anglo-saxon constituency in the Aryan/Wagnerian struggle against threatening gallic dominance! Utter bullshit.

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Yes perfect response Peter! I have also just responded to this on another thread. Let us call this out for what it is!

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Do you not consider if reforms had been made that the vote might have gone the other way?

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Forgive me for responding to this as you were asking Peter. Cameron did negotiate some concessions but as these were primarily to appease the UKIP faction of the Tory party this was never going to be enough. The EU response filtered through the right-wing anti EU press in the UK fanned the flames of anti EU sentiment in the Uk. In other words I don’t think it got a fair hearing. I also think it should have been stressed that it was UK policy in immigration that caused problems in the UK (Thinking back to the large influx under Blair and Brown). EU controls were not applied with resulting problems.

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Or if we hadn’t had 40 years of anti-EU tripe drip-fed via the Murdoch press.

Or if people understood that the EU was not the root cause of austerity in the UK

Or if Cameron had come back and said that he would fully utilise the available EU legislation to make sure all those who came to the UK seeking work registered, and either demonstrated that they were not a drain on British society or left if unable to find work.

Or if the Leave campaign hadn’t promised it would be as easy as falling off a log to get the EU to break its own rules to give us privileged access to the SM

Or,…

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Do you not think that the waste within the EU needs to be addressed? Keeping a Parliament building in Strasbourg used for 25% of the time or less is a tremendous waste of our money.

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Oh, for sure that needs to be addressed, but IIRC the French keep vetoing any change (or just threatening to, so it’s never voted upon).

It is quite true that if Davd Cameron came back with a slightly more positive response from the EU all this appalling mess could have been avoided.
It was not at all hectoring and I think your remarks are appalling, especially linking it to the Third Reich.
You should be ashamed of yourself and f you had made those remarks in Germany
you would have found yourself in jail.

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Jane please see this link about the AFD. They are far right and anti EU. Also please see Paul Flinders response above about David Cameron’s EU demands. That sums it up nicely.

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quote=“Jane_Williamson, post:13, topic:25220, full:true” I think your remarks are appalling, especially linking it to the Third Reich.
You should be ashamed of yourself and f you had made those remarks in Germany
you would have found yourself in jail.
[/quote]

I have a lot of time for your lusty opinions on many things, Jane. But occasionally your milk boils over and it smells of scalded milk. This is regrettably one of those times. I’ve been to Germany and talked to Germans too, so your assessment of mainstream intelligent German opinion, in my own opinion, is tripe.:grinning:

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Yes I know that they are far right.
But you cannot deny and other MEP’s from other parties are making the same point that the EU should have listened to David Cameron and it could have been the start of much needed reform for the EU.

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I am in agreement with your analysis, Paul, another masterly concise summary. The EU was systematically scape-goated for the miseries inflicted on the people by the Conservative government, in the same way that the Labour party was blamed for the financial crash of 2008.

Propaganda. Gefälschte Nachrichten. Ungeeigentlichformierte Bananen.:banana::banana:

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Cameron went to negotiate on the behalf of the UKIP wing of his party. The clue is in the name- no reform would ever have been enough for them. He promised them a referendum and look where we are. In my view trying to appease ukip voters is never going to end well. Their stance is ideological. You would have more success talking womens rights with the Taliban.

The AFD are no doubt on a par with UKIP. Dr Weidel may have dressed it up in less inflammatory terms, but a closer listen reveals a different truth.

Ps I am in favour of reform of the EU but it needs to come from parties with its best interests at heart.

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You don’t have to agree with a persons Politics to agree with a statement that they make.

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Amen to that!

Reform is necessary but it will inevitably take time, patience and commitment to ever-growing union.

Like a marriage or any other analogous long-term partnership, its terms will need endless negotiation and renegotiation, an endless endeavour picked up by each succeeding generation.

As Professor Case and many others have advised, the game is played for its own sake, not for the winning of it which is merely the occasion of its continuance, and it’s infinite joy. The secret is in the title of Friedrich Schiller’s “Ode to Joy”, the EU anthem.

If there is an extension and we vote in the impending EU elections, I shall do my best as a Labour Party member to work for the election of socialist candidates to membership.

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