I remember one of the arguments being made for Brexit (by PVC here?) is that it would force us to stop looking to the EU for excuses, that we would be forced to own up to the effects of our own decisions. I transcribed the list of Leave promises, and the first response is to compare with the EU. We entered a pandemic, and the government's response was to say that we wouldn't have been able to do what we did within the EU, and to compare our vaccination results with the EU. Ukraine was invaded by Russia, and our government compares our response with the EU.
Bookmarks