I hope the EU has the guts to give us a short, sharp shock - or I fear your last hypothesis, about UK isolation, may be accurate.
Freedom to protest and demonstrate has been steadily eroded in the UK. The police have long term spies within pressure groups such as Occupy, green issues and animal well-fare.
Remember that an estimated 1 million UK citizens marched in the Stop the War anti-war protest [1]. Worldwide on Feb 15th 2003, millions more.
These protests had no effect.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_15,_2003_anti-war_prot...
It's easy to counter mass protests. Either under-report them or co-opt them. If the power structure ignores voters and protests, the only other recourses are apathy or violence, both which don't have good consequences either.
http://www.publicserviceeurope.com/editor-blog/162/just-why-...
In a separate article for this website Professor Antony
Glees wrote: "Sky News itself is having a field day with
the eurozone crisis. Of course, Murdoch never liked the
euro or the EU for that matter." Murdoch's anti-EU stance
could quite possibly stem from the desire to avoid
regulation of his media empire, from Brussels. We know for
sure that he had plans for even greater penetration and
influence in the UK media market. I mean, whether you are
a Europhile or a Eurosceptic, do we really believe that
Murdoch is interested only in defending British institutions
like the pound rather than expanding News Corporation's
portfolio in mainland Europe and beyond?
I personally feel that his media interests are a cancer in British society. The Leveson inquiry demonstrated just how poisonous his corporate interests are [1].
As I see it, potential prime ministers go visit Murdoch on his private yacht [3]. They apparently don't discuss anything that interesting, but the Murdoch media do seem to then back that horse in the next general election. Murdoch wanted the BSkyB deal done. Whether that was the deal, nobody will ever know publicly.
The BSkyB deal got canned after the phone hacking scandal and the 'powers behind the throne' took the gloves off on the Murdoch empire. The current Prime Minister David Cameron was forced to give up on his society friend, the former NoW editor Rebekah Brooks and also his former press secretary, Andy Coulson [2], who are both currently facing serious charges (and trying desperately to weasel their way out of it [4]).
They tried to 'influence' the old 'establishment' (i.e. old money and power). They did so for years. Maybe even through the use of information obtained illegally [2]. In the end, they played the game, lost and the establishment is now going to keep kicking them while they are down, until they don't get up again.
David Cameron has to watch it, knowing damn well that he had to feed them to the wolves or join them. It doesn't appear to be bothering him that much.
- [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leveson_Inquiry - [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_hacking_scandal - [3] http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/oct/24/david-cameron... - [4] http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/28/rebekah-brooks-andy... - [5] http://www.thecommentator.com/article/310/rupert_murdoch_doe...