Thread by @Sakura509

"Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Mr Martin said: "We need to dial down the rhetoric on both sides.""

"He added that people need to bear in mind that it is only about six weeks since the Brexit deal was agreed."

"I would say in the context of the island of Ireland and Northern Ireland and we all need to cool it down because I think that the debate around protocol got to too high a level, and tensions were rising unnecessarily."

irishnews.com/news/brexit/20…

Evolution takes time!!

...and it is generally easier to build on earlier successes, rather than creating something from scratch.

The initial outlook for UK on joining EEC in 1973:

"What will be disastrous is if Britain devotes the next two, three, or four years to introspective champing over the issue: “Who went wrong when?”"

"Among the most human and least attractive phrases in the English language is “I told you so.” There will be much scope for such a Great Recriminative Debate. The transition period will not be all Beaujolais and boules."

"Change is always painful, and although the change arising from membership of the European Community will not be as sudden or all-pervasive as either its zealots or its most fiery critics believe, there will be enough change to cause trouble if people are determined."

Has History not taught us, that lessons can be learned from the past but, that history need not be repeated?!?

"If every change in prices, costs, wages, taxation, growth, and unemployment is to be put under the microscope to separate its European from its non-European elements, the effect on British politics and possibly on Britain’s role in Europe and the world will be corrosive."

"Can we remember also that it was partly in the hope of rescuing Britain from growing political aimlessness and economic lassitude that governments of the two parties have in turn sought membership of the Community?"

"Labour is entitled, if it regains power, to seek changes, particularly with the benefit of experience. The Community is, and needs to be, an evolving institution. Even the Common Agricultural Policy may not be written on tablets of stone."

Déjà vu!

"One temptation should be avoided, however; to prepare a future Labour Government’s negotiating position by seeking, month after month, to prove that membership of the Community has created all Britain’s ills. We enter Europe with the reputation of being a nation of shopkeepers;"

"...we would be unwise to present ourselves as a nation of second-hand-car dealers. Above all we should avoid creating a new, semi-permanent rift in British society, between pro and anti Europeans..."

Alas, Brexit has forged this in stone!

"Britain has much to contribute to the new Europe’s main need – for effective democratic control of a bureaucracy that grows in power all the time."

Then as now, perhaps, according to some.

"In making that contribution we may even give our own parliamentary institutions a new injection of vigour and some relief from 👉the staleness that long unsolved problems have created at Westminster."👈

Remember, Einstein's wise words!

theguardian.com/world/2020/jan…

What a difference, populism and undue influence of wealthy elite and lobbyists can make...

theguardian.com/politics/2017/…

@threadreaderapp unroll please