I noticed a similar thing with Reform - at one of their rallies, nearly everybody in the audience was an old white man.

Larry is apparently 19. I didn’t know cats lived to such a grand old age.

If you want to support European companies then Here is apparently majority owned by a group of German companies (Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Bosch, Continental) with 15% owned by Intel and the remaining 31% owned by Japanese companies (Mitsubishi, NTT, Pioneer).

Anyhow, Keir seems like a lame duck right?

If he can keep Labour members of parliament happy then perhaps he can stay as prime minister. But he might lose his job if Labour do badly in the May local elections. Polling shows they might indeed do badly.

Unfortunately the world doesn’t have an appetite for sensible ideas like yours. Instead they’d rather blame immigrants and brown people for everything

Yeah that’s fair enough. Maybe the UK will eventually reach a Norway-style arrangement but like you suggest, it could take some years.

You might be right, but if the UK did have to adopt the Euro like you say, I would guess that British support for rejoining would decline. If it really is a red line for the EU then it would probably lead to a lot of debate in the UK. Like I said though, for the moment the UK will probably just adopt half measures which bring the UK slightly closer to the EU.

With Trump’s recent ambitions regarding a seizure of European land, maybe more Brits will now recognise that reliance on the US isn’t a great idea

I think the UK could eventually rejoin the EU but it’s not going to happen soon. Brexiteers are probably a minority of the British population now (Brexiteers tend to be older, and some of those voters have passed away since the Brexit referendum). But the pro-Brexit camp has wealthy backers who will kick up a fuss.

Maybe what will happen is more indecision and half measures for the next 10 or 20 years, perhaps followed by another referendum that would take us back into the EU.

As for terms, it depends on what the EU would insist. Perhaps they would insist upon the UK adopting the Euro.

If I were president of Europe, I would merge the FCAS fighter jet programme undertaken by Germany, France, and Spain with the GCAP fighter jet programme being undertaken by the UK, Italy, and Japan. Then use the resulting plane instead of the F-35.

But alas, there is still too much bickering and division between non-American western allies.

True. They could be fined more for certain practices.

Yeah regulation is important. Previously you mentioned European democracy. Ideally European companies will be accountable to Europeans through a democratic European parliament. Whereas Americans could elect a government (perhaps the current one) who will tell AWS to seize private data of European governments on AWS servers.

Sure, ideally any European tech companies wouldn’t replicate the enshittification of America’s big tech companies. Still, I think it would be good if Europe had larger tech companies, who can provide what Europe’s companies and governments need. At the moment Europe relies on Microsoft Windows, Oracle, AWS, etc. If European companies could serve those needs then those companies would be accountable to European law. It could avoid a situation where Trump decides he wants to spy on European government data stored on AWS servers, for example.

I don’t want monopolies or enshittification. I think it would be good though to have a European tech sector which can meet Europe’s needs, instead of companies and governments in Europe relying on Google, Microsoft, Meta, etc. The (now more unpredictable) US government could compel those companies to give info from European government customers to US authorities, for example. I read a story about this the other day: “Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam’s clouds and go EU-native”.

Farage would probably trigger the clause and spend massive sums of taxpayers’ money to cut ties with the EU. Anything to satisfy his 19th century vision of the world.

Yes there are different languages and cultures in Europe; I don’t want to diminish those. Integration between European countries is still possible though. Look at Airbus, which is registered as a “Societas Europaea” (European company), and which has manufacturing facilities in multiple European countries. Airbus is one of the leading global companies in aviation. Maybe one day Europe will have some big tech companies with offices across Europe. Currently there are companies like Spotify and SAP but of course they’re not as big as Google, Microsoft, or Tencent in China, etc.

I guess when people talk about Europe they mainly mean the EU and countries allied with it (UK, Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, etc). Russia is Eurasian anyway: some territory traditionally considered to be within the historical borders of Europe, and lots of territory within Asia.

Maybe Europe should have more integration so it can better stand up against the US, China, and Russia, all three of whom would probably love to tear apart Europe for themselves

The de facto most important instance is surely Lemmy.world. So I guess Lemmy.ml can be mostly ignored

Thoughts on these comments from Labour MPs? Source.

One MP [said] if Burnham “acts like a team player he’d be valuable”. But they cautioned: “If he’s a grandstanding dickhead the melodrama will be a pain in the arse.”

Another MP:

the country would never forgive us for doing exactly what the Tories did in changing leaders