O/T:- ⚠️Impressed with the leadership [The UK Party Politics Thread]

[forwardmagpie]

I think it is a canard to suggest they are different things. The alignment of rules that the common market can need is not a bright line but a continuum, and the vast majority of things covered by the political union were precisely to make the market more common. Brexit (and especially NI) really made it stark what that trade-off looked like - and it amazed me how many Brexity talking heads still don't understand that, talking about things like "regulatory equivalence" as if that would be in any way attractive to the EU.

There's never been a question of the EU actually becoming a superstate - some did want it, but far from enough for it to have ever been viable. So political union becomes a participatory exercise of the countries within, rather than a layer of its own bureaucracy disconnected from that (even if the Commission sometimes push the boundaries).

If you think the current EU is not akin to a political union but is an unfounded rumour we will have to disagree.

[OchPie]

If you think the current EU is not akin to a political union but is an unfounded rumour we will have to disagree.

No, I do think it's a political union, just not a superstate. As I said, I see it as a participatory exercise of the countries within. In other words it's a union of countries with a supporting bureaucracy, rather than a federal union (like the US, or for that matter Germany).

[Med Pie]

No, I do think it's a political union, just not a superstate. As I said, I see it as a participatory exercise of the countries within. In other words it's a union of countries with a supporting bureaucracy, rather than a federal union (like the US, or for that matter Germany).

It could never be a 'superstate' and certainly never a true 'political union', too many dissenting voices, political interests and cultural priorities.

The mention of forming an EU army was probably the nearest we ever got to the suggestion of a superstate but again, so many countries with varying attitudes on almost everything, would see an EU army, overrun before a defensive perimiter had been set, never mind a shot fired.

Whilst the initial aim of the Common market was to reduce bureaucracy, the EU has made a great many things, more cumbersome.