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  • JonathanD said:

    TGOHF said:

    Ishmael_Z said:

    Come to think of it, if you can persuade yourself that Turkey was not joining the EU you might as well also pretend that the UK is not leaving it, the evidence being about equally strong in both cases. Problem solved.

    Turkey was not joining. That is also clear: see the posts by Alastair and myself.

    .

    "David Cameron has said that he still “very much supports” Turkey joining the European Union, despite his Government's inability to control numbers of EU migrants coming to the UK"
    Yes, he supports them joining. That does not mean they were joining when he said those words; there were hurdles for them to jump before they were joining.

    A Turkey that met all the EU accession criteria, ie. freedom of religion, liberal democracy, rule of law, free press, etc., would have been a triumph of the West.

    The flip side of Cameron saying he supported Turkey joining the EU was that he also supported Turkey becoming a liberal, secular pro-West state.
    Indeed that is all true. Same reason we began a process in the nineties to allow the joining of Eastern former Soviet states. Turkey was also in the formal joining process it just wasn't that far along yet but we were at the time of the referendum paying billions to smooth its ongoing joining process.

    Would someone in 2001 who had said Poland was joining the EU have been a liar? Joining is a process and the acquis negotiations are part of the process, Turkey was in that process.
    "Turkey was also in the formal joining process"

    No, it was in the negotiation process. There was no certainty of them joining.
    That's the difference between the gerund "joining" and the past particle "joined". If Vote Leave were saying that Turkey had joined the EU (the only way to have a certainty) then that would have been incorrect. Joining is different and until the merger is completed there is no certainty.
  • Ishmael_Z said:


    Ishmael_Z said:


    Sorry, but "see the posts by Alastair and myself" does not trump the unanimity of the rest of the world. Whom do we believe, out of Merkel and Erdogan quoted by the world's press behaving as if the accession talks were designed to lead to yer actual accession (e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/04/turkey-hits-back-angela-merkel-eu-axe-accession-talks), or you? This is just magical thinking at its most bonkers.

    Read about the process, and tell me where I'm wrong.

    I mean, from your link: "... after the German election frontrunners agreed that the EU should break off negotiations over future Turkish membership."

    Negotiations over future membership.

    If they were 'joining', there'd be minimal or no negotiations. They were nowhere near that stage yet.
    Your job interview analogy is preposterously loaded. Let's say there are on average 10 applicants for each job, it is baked in to the expression "job interview" that everyone expects and intends a 90% failure rate. There is no such intention or expectation in the context of EU membership applications. And on timescales, I voted (Remain, incidentally) on a 40 year timescale. It is no answer to concerns about Turkey to say Ah, but it doesn't count because it wasn't going to happen for another decade.

    fullfact.org is not a primary source and like other "mythbusting" sites (snopes, etc.) it is just one long appeal to its own authority. I will believe the "stringing along theory" exists if I see an op ed from a reputable national newspaper advancing it. And that is just a test of its existence, not of whether it is also correct.
    Here you go. It took 20 seconds googling. It's almost as if you desperately don't want to see something:

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/15/the-guardian-view-on-turkey-and-europe-separating-facts-from-fiction

    "It is now more than 50 years since Turkey was promised membership of the European club, and despite some cynical scaremongering in the UK during the EU referendum debate – with fears stoked that a country of 79 million might suddenly gain freedom of movement for its citizens across Europe – there is simply no sign that the old accession promise of 1963 will be upheld. When looking at relations between Turkey and Europe, it is important to take the long view – just as it is important to look at facts, and not let irrational passions drown out reason. Simply put: no one in Europe is ready to let Turkey in – now, or in the foreseeable future. Claiming otherwise is either ignorant, or deliberately misleading."
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,780
    Corbyn is really awful. No linkage of the issues, no construction of an argument, its like fish in a barrel even when the barrel is being scraped clean. May is embarrassing him. Thank about that for a moment.
  • Ishmael_Z said:


    Ishmael_Z said:


    Sorry, but "see the posts by Alastair and myself" does not trump the unanimity of the rest of the world. Whom do we believe, out of Merkel and Erdogan quoted by the world's press behaving as if the accession talks were designed to lead to yer actual accession (e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/04/turkey-hits-back-angela-merkel-eu-axe-accession-talks), or you? This is just magical thinking at its most bonkers.

    Read about the process, and tell me where I'm wrong.

    I mean, from your link: "... after the German election frontrunners agreed that the EU should break off negotiations over future Turkish membership."

    Negotiations over future membership.

    If they were 'joining', there'd be minimal or no negotiations. They were nowhere near that stage yet.
    Your job interview analogy is preposterously loaded. Let's say there are on average 10 applicants for each job, it is baked in to the expression "job interview" that everyone expects and intends a 90% failure rate. There is no such intention or expectation in the context of EU membership applications. And on timescales, I voted (Remain, incidentally) on a 40 year timescale. It is no answer to concerns about Turkey to say Ah, but it doesn't count because it wasn't going to happen for another decade.

    fullfact.org is not a primary source and like other "mythbusting" sites (snopes, etc.) it is just one long appeal to its own authority. I will believe the "stringing along theory" exists if I see an op ed from a reputable national newspaper advancing it. And that is just a test of its existence, not of whether it is also correct.
    Here you go. It took 20 seconds googling. It's almost as if you desperately don't want to see something:

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/15/the-guardian-view-on-turkey-and-europe-separating-facts-from-fiction

    "It is now more than 50 years since Turkey was promised membership of the European club, and despite some cynical scaremongering in the UK during the EU referendum debate – with fears stoked that a country of 79 million might suddenly gain freedom of movement for its citizens across Europe – there is simply no sign that the old accession promise of 1963 will be upheld. When looking at relations between Turkey and Europe, it is important to take the long view – just as it is important to look at facts, and not let irrational passions drown out reason. Simply put: no one in Europe is ready to let Turkey in – now, or in the foreseeable future. Claiming otherwise is either ignorant, or deliberately misleading."
    So which was our Prime Minister when he claimed otherwise in 2010 and 2014? Was ignorant or deliberately misleading?
  • calumcalum Posts: 3,046
    5 Days into Leonard's reign and Kezia set to dominate the headlines well into December

    https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/1871055/kezia-dugdale-im-a-celeb-paid-worth/
  • TGOHF said:

    Ishmael_Z said:

    Come to think of it, if you can persuade yourself that Turkey was not joining the EU you might as well also pretend that the UK is not leaving it, the evidence being about equally strong in both cases. Problem solved.

    Turkey was not joining. That is also clear: see the posts by Alastair and myself.

    .

    "David Cameron has said that he still “very much supports” Turkey joining the European Union, despite his Government's inability to control numbers of EU migrants coming to the UK"
    Yes, he supports them joining. That does not mean they were joining when he said those words; there were hurdles for them to jump before they were joining.
    They were in the process of joining already. They were an official accession member state and it was our official policy that they should join. We were paying billions to make their accession easier, why were we doing that if it wasn't going to happen?

    You are being ridiculous in your definition, that doesn't even meet the definition of the word. You are quintessentially saying its wrong to say someone is joining until they have joined already!

    By your definition someone in November 2002 saying Poland was joining the EU on the basis of the on-going accession talks would have been a "xenophobic liar" despite the fact that 18 months later they had joined.

    Accession negotiations are part of the process of joining, Turkey hadn't joined yet but was already joining.
    Negotiating to join is not joining, in the same way my having an interview for a job does not mean I am joining that company.

    "To accede to the EU, Turkey must successfully complete negotiations with the European Commission on 33 of the 35 chapters of the acquis communautaire, the total body of EU law. (Two chapters do not require negotiation.) Afterwards, the member states must unanimously agree on granting Turkey membership to the European Union."

    I'd argue that accede is synonymous with 'join' in the above, in the 'assume a position' definition.

    And I have called no-one a 'xenophobic liar'. But I might suggest you read up a little more about this topic ...
    Turkey was not just having an interview it had officially been made an accession state.

    I know you haven't called anyone a "xenophobic liar" but Mr Meeks has. Is Mr Meeks terminology accurate in your eyes and would it have been accurate regarding Poland in November 2001 less than 18 months before it was a full member?
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    IanB2 said:

    Mladic gets life imprisonment.

    His defence argument (or one of them) was interesting. His actions were apparently taken to prevent a repeat of the genocide inflicted upon the Serbs during WWII.

    Amazed* he's not a free man on that basis.

    *Not amazed, just in case there are any literalists about.
    The Steven Gerrard defence

    The Liverpool captain and England midfielder Steven Gerrard was cleared of affray today after a row over controlling the music playing in a bar.

    Liverpool crown court heard that Marcus McGee, 34, was punched in the face by the footballer in a brawl at a bar in Southport last December.

    Gerrard admitted hitting McGee three times but denied affray, saying he had been acting in self-defence as he thought the other man was about to strike him.

    https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/football/2009/jul/24/steven-gerrard-verdict-affray
    Always helps when you are playing at home rather than in front of an away crowd...
    Why on Earth the prosecutor didn’t seek to have the case moved I have no idea. A jury in Liverpool would need a month of Sundays to have found Steven Gerrard of anything!
  • JonathanD said:

    TGOHF said:

    Ishmael_Z said:

    Come to think of it, if you can persuade yourself that Turkey was not joining the EU you might as well also pretend that the UK is not leaving it, the evidence being about equally strong in both cases. Problem solved.

    Turkey was not joining. That is also clear: see the posts by Alastair and myself.

    .

    "David Cameron has said that he still “very much supports” Turkey joining the European Union, despite his Government's inability to control numbers of EU migrants coming to the UK"
    Yes, he supports them joining. That does not mean they were joining when he said those words; there were hurdles for them to jump before they were joining.

    A Turkey that met all the EU accession criteria, ie. freedom of religion, liberal democracy, rule of law, free press, etc., would have been a triumph of the West.

    The flip side of Cameron saying he supported Turkey joining the EU was that he also supported Turkey becoming a liberal, secular pro-West state.
    Indeed that is all true. Same reason we began a process in the nineties to allow the joining of Eastern former Soviet states. Turkey was also in the formal joining process it just wasn't that far along yet but we were at the time of the referendum paying billions to smooth its ongoing joining process.

    Would someone in 2001 who had said Poland was joining the EU have been a liar? Joining is a process and the acquis negotiations are part of the process, Turkey was in that process.
    It's deeply misleading to consider the two situations to be equivalent. Turkey has been in the waiting room for decades and has made minimal progress. In 2016 - nearly 30 years after it formally applied to join - Turkey had closed only one chapter, and that was as long ago as 2006. Many chapters had not even been opened. The process was ongoing at a glacial pace and it was pretty obvious that Turkey, after enthusiasm earlier this decade, was strategically realigning itself.

    By contrast, Poland had already closed 25 of (then) the 30 necessary chapters by 2000, never mind the 2001 date you suggest, and was clearly placing EU membership at the heart of its foreign policy.

    The two positions are not remotely similar.
  • DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    DavidL said:

    Cyclefree said:
    You are of course correct which is why @AlastairMeeks approach to this is fundamentally wrong. There is an obligation on the government to implement the decision of the people, not the wish list of any particular band of loons who campaigned for it. They should do so in the most constructive way possible. The fact that May was able to carry the decision to double the money on the table in exchange for trade talks is a good sign.
    And they say that Remain supporters are undemocratic.

    The Leave campaign was won on a specific prospectus. The cynicism of some Leavers in wishing to junk what they fell in behind is breathtaking.
    Says you. The rest of us just know how and why we voted. There were many, many different reasons.
    You cannot ignore the fact that the official Vote Leave campaign fought on the basis that immigration control would be repatriated and Britain would leave the single market. If you were silly enough to vote Leave and didn't want those things, more fool you.
    As it happens I did want both of those things but trying to say that everyone who voted leave did is absurd. This was not a party with a manifesto for government. It has no duty of implementation. The elected government does and has a duty to do this in our best interests respecting the one thing we know for certain: a majority in our largest vote ever wanted to leave the EU. So get on with it.
    The referendum was fought on a prospectus. You can't just rip it up because you repent of xenophobic lies on posters.
    What xenophobic lies?
    Turkey is not joining the EU and the wicked suggestion that it was, to frighten middle England that it was going to be inundated with 76 million Muslims, was xenophobic in intent.

    You know that, I know that. How you sleep at night trying to defend it is beyond me but I guess it's your conscience.
    As I said before my conscience is absolutely clear as it is not dependent on your lies and misrepresentations
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,545

    Turkey was not just having an interview it had officially been made an accession state.

    I know you haven't called anyone a "xenophobic liar" but Mr Meeks has. Is Mr Meeks terminology accurate in your eyes and would it have been accurate regarding Poland in November 2001 less than 18 months before it was a full member?

    "Turkey was not just having an interview it had officially been made an accession state."

    How can it be an 'accession state' if they are negotiating to allow accession? They were evidently in a pre-accession state, as they had not signed a treaty of accession. Hence, they cannot be an accession state.

    https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/policy/glossary/terms/accession-negotiations_en
    and
    https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/policy/glossary/terms/treaty-accession_en

    As others have pointed out, your Polish comparison is silly.
  • JonathanJonathan Posts: 20,901
    If Clegg had been a little less eager to please and more robust in supporting the priorities of his voters he would have saved his party, not discredited centrist politics and avoided Brexit.
This discussion has been closed.