European integration is happening *because* you need political cooperation to effectively manage free trade areas. There are more barriers to trade than just tarriffs and subsidies - divergent standards, divergent safety regulations, blocks on movement of labour and capital... all these things had to be harmonised to give us the economic integration we enjoy today, and it was only natural and inevitable that the successes here would lead European leaders to want to pool sovereignty in other policy areas. That's why the Common Foreign and Security Policy and Police and Judicial Cooperation pillars were built into European Union.
Because our 27 states have greater ability to shape our own future when working together than independent of each other. Because our interests are near uniformly convergent and separate to those of the Americans or the Chinese or the Indians.
There is a reason why nearly every free trade area on the planet has the goal of greater and greater cooperation [though to Europe's credit we're the only ones who have been able to put aside conflicting state-level interests long enough to reap the enormous benefits].
The European Union is Humanity's
single greatest political achievement. I'm just amused that you'd want to remove us from that success in favour of supporting a UN that has and can have no real means to provide effective utility to its membership.
Monetary policy has the same effective lag - the time it takes people to feel the increase or decrease to their disposable income [which is why flex taxation and not govt. spending would be the principle tool here].
The Tories are a party of small minded hateful petty Englanders, and I don't care to help make Toffs richer at the expense of those who actually work.
