Brexit. Why do Brits want Out of the EU?

Yes, you are gloomy. You've been arguing right here that the EU needs to take a hard look at itself rather than bash the Brits for exiting. The moment Germany and France agree to do just that, you cry that they will OF COURSE mess up again...

The EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier has pencilled in 19 June for the first formal day of talks with Britain about its withdrawal from the European Union, in what are being billed as the most important negotiations in the country’s history.

That highly symbolic morning, Barnier will face British Brexit secretary, David Davis, for the first day of an arduous 15 months of negotiations to hammer out the terms of the UK’s exit.

It is understood that the European commission’s Brexit taskforce, led by Barnier, shared the proposed date with key figures in Brussels last week.

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Germany takes their fate into their own hands... Whose hands has it been in?

Seems, she now got real experiences with the new president.

Reuters quote by Merkel:

"I have experienced this in the last few days," she said. "And that is why I can only say that we Europeans must really take our fate into our own hands - of course in friendship with the United States of America, in friendship with Great Britain and as good neighbors wherever that is possible also with other countries, even with Russia."

I still wonder whose hands Germany's fate has been in if not Germany's own. Odd statement.

Angela Merkel – or “leader of the free world” as she is now to be known – did not wait long to see the back of Donald Trump before she made it clear that things have changed. She told a rally of 2,500 people in Munich where she kicked off her campaign to be re-elected that the EU must now be prepared to look after itself, it could no longer depend on the UK or America. “The times in which we could completely depend on others are, to a certain extent, over … I’ve experienced that in the last few days . We Europeans have to take fate into our own hands.”

This is a truly dramatic statement from a leader who doesn’t do drama. She is not going to be holding Trump’s hand any time soon. He may be relieved to hear that, but then the underestimation of Merkel as a dowdy physicist has often allowed her to run rings around egotistical male leaders.
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Of course not everyone likes her. The Irish, the Portuguese , the Greeks ,the Spanish and the Italians have felt the force of her pushing through stark austerity measures as the price of EU membership. At one point Greek protestors portrayed with a Hitler moustache. Her expansionary politics , whereby every other country should seek to be as wealthy as Germany, have come at a huge price to countries she sees as fiscally irresponsible. Critics in Germany says she achieved a kind “paralysed consent”. They complain about the number of opinion polls she has commissioned and her methodical, scientific way of dealing with politics.
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And look where she is now, unlike our prime minister, able to oppose Trump directly and to say his America is not a friend of Europe.

What an extraordinary woman. There are no problems, she says, only “tasks” to be solved, as she sits rapidly texting in meetings. Refusing to see herself as a female leader, she prefers to think of herself as part of a class of political heavyweights. Increasingly she is in a class of her own and watching her, one thought comes to mind: This is what strong and stable actually looks like.