First your arguments are either Strawmen (the Racism thing, which is not in my original post and is but an element of a far broader Far Right point I was making) or Appeal To Absurd fallacies (they don’t have a “monopoly on Racism” hence it’s ok, an argument so absurd that Russia would qualify for EU membership by that logic, and “others too act in their own self interest” hence Britain is ok, again an absurd point which means any country no matter how bad their behavior in the EU is fine because other countries also act in their own self interest, so for example Hungary is just fine in the EU).

By artificially flattening the universe to only to states, totally black or totally white, in that “argumentative” structure of yours, you’ve reduced it all to “nobody is perfect hence Britain is fine in the EU”, which as I said is such a ridiculous reductio ad absurdum that your “argument” would justify bloody North Korea or Nazi Germany in the EU since, “everybody is a bit Racist and every nation acts in their own self interest”.

The problem with Britain is not one of “not being perfect” (no nation is, hence why that “argument” of yours is seriously ridiculous), it’s one of “given the imperfections that everybody has, how bad are they by comparison?”

Having seen the Leave campaign up close and personal and the arguments of Brexiters before and after the vote, they have a very large fraction of their population (over 1/3, more that the far right vote in all the countries you mentioned earlier) who positively relished the idea of damaging the EU. I don’t just mean, they wanted to merely leave, they actually wanted the rest to suffer. That’s a reflection of a broader malaise of that country, namely extreme nationalism with huge delusions of grandeur to the point of hate for the other (and this was back a decade ago already), which has been fed over the years by maybe the most disfunctional Press in Europe and by a Political class which is very much to the Right of most of Europe, none of which has changed since the Referendum.

Leave Referendum Britain, with the massive numbers of people who detest the rest of the EU, with such an extremely selfish take on the EU that when they left they had much more exceptions than everybody else and who look to America rather than to their European partners as inspiration, is still there alive and kicking, it’s just that in the meanwhile a proportion of the Leavers have pragmatically concluded it’s more beneficial for them personally that Britain is an EU member - not a change of heart but a revaluation of the “business argument” for Britain in the EU.

Absolutely, the EU itself isn’t perfect and the countries in it are all imperfect in many ways (nothing is perfect), yet when one of the most selfish, ultra-neoliberal (very much US-style) and borderline Fascist countries chooses to leave, that’s a win for the rest of the EU (as for Britain then, so it would be for Hungary now) because the leaving of one of the least cooperative and more far right members makes the group as a whole better, and for them return should only happen when they would make the group better, not worse - for Britain that’s when they’ve sufficiently evolved socially and politically beyond the stage they’re in now that them as an EU member is a net positive for the EU as a whole, not just good for Britain themselves.

Until then, it’s fine if we all cooperate, what we can’t have is present day Britain on the inside having votes and vetos on things that impact the lives of the other 470 million people in the EU and blackmailing the rest with threats of having a tantrum all over again, to obtain special conditions for themselves which nobody else has just like they were doing before and which ultimately ended in the Referendum and them leaving.

In Britain those casual racists were in power for the last 12 years (and have been replaced by a supposedly left-of-center mainstream party that’s so much to the Right they’re repeating the same anti-immigration bullshit as the other party).

Whilst living there I’ve had multiple non-white friends (from quite the range of origins and ancestries) being victims of racism and I myself was a victim of racism (whilst I’m supposedly “white”, I’m from Southern Europe, so a lot of Brits have massive prejudices against the likes of me).

In The Netherlands I had non-white friends and I never once heard any of them complain of “casual racism”. That said, it was more than a decade ago before the Theo van Gogh murder and I hear anti-Islamist really took off after that.

Bringing Britain back into the EU now would be like bringing Hungary in now if they were out.

And this is just one reason why Britain for now is not a good match for the EU we want to have (which has its own increasing racism problems, especially against people from the middle-east, and doesn’t really need to bring in even more Far-Right nutters), not going into other things such as how when in the EU they would often act in the service of American interests and were prone to blackmailing the rest with the veto to extract concessions for themselves alone (hence all the exceptions Britain had).

Having lived in The Netherlands let’s just say they’re not even in the same bloody universe as Brits when it comes to thinking they’re better than everybody else (in fact as far as I can tell the Dutch in general have almost no Nationalistic delusions of grandeur) and as for their Far-Right, the Dutch Far-Right took off led by a guy who was from the start very openly gay (something that would never happen in Britain) and it never exceeded 25% of the votes, whilst in the UK it took over the Tory Party during the Leave Referendum and went on to rule for 3 consecutive governments.

The kind of anti-immigration talk being pushed from the sidelines by the Far-Right in all those other countries is what the Tories (on of the two main British parties) has been pushing for over a decade in government.

Britain is pretty much 10 - 20 years ahead of the rest of Europe when it comes to the Far-Right dominating politics.

I was living in the UK as an immigrant back during the Leave referendum and for Brexit and, frankly, I would not welcome them back until they get over their problem of widespread delusions of grandeur, xenophobia and Fascist thinking (though, unlike most, a posh mix of elements from Fascism).

They’re basically Hungary, only posher and with more money and looking to America (and we all know how those are doing nowadays, now don’t we?!) rather than Russia.

It might not seem so from the outside since that country’s elites and middle classes have a deeply entrenched culture of tightly managing appearences (something one learns to to see through when living there long enough) so the form of Far-Right that has contaminated both main parties (with a First Past The Post system, they suffer from a similar lack of Democracy as America, hence they have 2 dominant parties) over there is a lot less rough, uncut an loud than what you seen in places like Hungary and the US.

I’ve lived in a couple of countries in Europe, North, South and Western and Britain is further to the Right than any of them and their citizens still hold hard onto the delusions of being inherently superior to foreigners (from the time of the Empire, kept alive and fed over the years by the way the Press covers and spins international affairs).

Even before Leave, the UK was never in the EU with team spirit and treating it as a project for the common good, rather it always had a “what’s in it for me”, “win-lose” take on it.

In my opinion, which I believe is well informed, Britain should only be allowed back in once they grow up into a well-adjusted run-of-the-mill middle-sized nation.

I use MullvadVPN and I almost always encounter this issue.

It probably depends on which server(s) you’re using.

Parroting nationalistic myths is an occupation of Fascists, not of those in working class movements.

Nationalistic delusions of grandeurs are part of the foundation for guys like Trump ending up winning elections.

Sanders should know better.

I think the widespread political “unwavering support” for a nation committing Genocide, which is justified by the ethnicity of the people of that nation, kinda shows that some part of Fascism (the whole “people’s race is what matters the most and some races are better than others”) hasn’t at all been stamped out.

Then there’s AfD which is just taking the “if it’s good to support them because of their race, then it’s good to support us” step closer to Fascism.

Germany is far closer to a certain philosophy anchored on classifying one’s fellow human being as worthy or unworthy depending on race than one would like to believe (certainly, I liked to believe before the political reaction there to whole Gaza thing made it too obvious to deny) - the symbols were made illegal whilst the spirit lives.

It’s a tax increase which can be (and is being) mis-portrayed as something that the seller pays, when in fact it’s the buyer that pays it.

In practice what Trump did was institute the equivalent of an additional 25% sales tax for all Americans when they buy goods manufactured in Canada or Mexico, but because this tax is usually payed by companies (which do most of the importing) and most people aren’t at all familiar with how Import/Export works, he seems to be getting away with portraying it as a tax on Canada and Mexico.

(The concern of those countries is not that they pay more - which they don’t - it’s that a selective “sales tax” that only applies to products they export to the US makes their products less competitive on price when sold in the US, hence they will sell less which is bad for their companies)

I’ve seen some theories around that the purpose of this significant increase in tax is to pay for the tax cuts for the wealthy that the Republicans are passing.