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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Really? Not looking for an argument, but as I understand the Dublin Agreement allowed UK to return migrants to first country of entry. It also gave access to the common Eurodac database. Both of which were lost with Brexit. The article doesn’t say anything else.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Excellent article, simple and straightforward. Should be compulsory reading for all political commentators and journalists .. and is an excellent crib sheet for those of us who argue that moving back to full EU membership is good for UK and good for Europe.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Bollocks to whether it will improve our economy, our security or our influence in the world. Let’s not try because the ‘numbers are soft’.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

It’s a regulatory capture play. (Even) we now understand there has to be some rules, but we understand this stuff and we are very responsible. So let us make the rules (and continue to make tons of money).

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Football can survive dodgy local businessmen pumping in cash for an ego trip, but uber-capitalist seeking an investment vehicle and nation states seeking power and prestige are different. They expect (& ultimately get) impunity.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

If Burnham were to say in his party conference speech, he accepts the ‘4 freedoms’ .. but not the Euro. He intends to open negotiations in 2027 with a referendum in 2030 (after election). I am certain as o can be that no one in EU would say no and UK could rejoin on similar terms as before in 2031.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I know me saying this achieves nothing, but oneday someone will have to question the ‘purpose’ of crypto currency and crypto platforms. At its heart it is simply a giant ponzo scheme. Taking money from the gullible and giving it to people who care nothing for ‘fairness’ who are mostly rich already.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

If I had suggested to my wife that we embark on a long and deep relationship using an ‘iterative’ process I doubt she would have been impressed. The EU will also not be impressed. Why does no one in UK understand that this sort of approach sounds inherently selfish .. not the stuff of partnership!

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Maybe he is .. but aren’t Kieron Pollard, Sunil Narine & Andre Russell already post test players? & at least India can still muster a reasonable test team.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Everyone understands that we have to get closer to Europe, for economic reasons, for influence reasons and security reasons. But let’s not muck around with stupid ‘halfway houses’ .. what UK needs is full membership as a leader of the continent, like France & Germany!

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

The point about the spreadsheet may be true, but that and other stupid justifications were a smokescreen. Cameron and Osborne wanted to ‘reduce’ the size of the state to lower taxes and regulation for their mates. They never cared about the overall good of the population. Obvious then, obvious now.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

Exactly.. it’s bollocks. Based on my (equally scientific)guess, the most popular thing Burnham / Fahnbulleh could say is that we want to get to net zero as ASAP. The nutters who oppose are putting us all in danger. But, while we still need oil it should come from the North Sea as much as possible

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

They dug up all the trees and put them in a tree museum .. you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

So why does this happen? 1, The current hyper sensitive political culture. 2, The culture of the BBC news organisation. 3, The BBC employs crap journalists. 4, All of the above and some more I accept 4 is the reasonable answer .. but I think 3 is the most important.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

I’ll take the David Davies line on this. ‘They need us more than we need them’. ..Without Spain, France, England, Germany and Italy Infantino has no World Cup.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

I used to think it was the super rich idling away their time on yachts .. but I now believe the average UK journalist is the laziest person in the world.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Then you at least have to decide which is the ‘least bad’ and do what you can to influence them for next time.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Do you prefer politicians to compromise BEFORE elections and present electors with a program they plan to implement, or to compromise AFTER elections and implement a program that no-one has explicitly voted for? If the former the optimum number is 2, if the later a higher number but still under 10.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Do they play football in Italy?

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

One day there must be a full reckoning. The lies, the shameless self interest and money making, the Russian funds and misinformation. I don’t care so much about people going to prison (. would be nice!). But the whole truth must come out so that future generations understand the scale of the crime.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

People have varying opinions on the right level of immigration and how to control it. BUT everyone hates insincerity in politics. People see through Mahmoud and her supporters. Saying things because you think they are popular is not the way forward.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

Good article, but let’s stop this obsession with splitting the difference ‘Swiss style’ or ‘Norwegian style’. The optimum situation for a large population West European state is a leading full member. ‘French style’ or ‘German Style’.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Full membership is obviously the optimal solution. Now is the time to start ‘rolling the pitch’ for rejoining (which will mean another referendum) during the next Parliament .. ie 2029-34.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

May is certainly amongst the slightly guilty and I have no brief to defend her. But I think she was a limited politician responding to an almost impossible situation. Do anything else and she’s out of a job. The really guilty ones are the ones who created the mess in the first place.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

There are a lot of ‘slightly’ guilty people. But for me just 4 people have the vast majority of the blame. Farage endlessly pointed out that a door existed, Cameron opened the door, Corbyn held it open and Johnson walked right through. None of those four should ever be forgiven.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

… and as Yuval Noah Harari has pointed out it’s all just based on stories. All the checks and balances, the US constitution, even the USA itself are just stories we choose to accept. If sufficient people stop behaving in line with the story it all just drops away.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

The UK and other European members have Zero obligation under NATO treaties to support the US and Isreal in Iran. The explicit purpose of NATO is mutual defence of members territory. Did Europe help in Vietnam? For that matter did US help in the Falklands? A polite but firm no is the only answer.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

We have now arrived at a point where words have literally no meaning. Trump talks obvious bollocks .. Leavitt ‘explains’ with ‘hyper-bollocks’, and then it’s out there and achieves a kind of truth. Not sure how we come back from this.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

This is so so important. The real threat to progressive politics is not Reform. It is segmentation and factionalism.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

In the UK and across Europe the same thing keeps happening time and again. The far right vote ceilings at 30 - 35%. If ‘Progressives’ of all stripes can put aside their differences they can win easily. If the Greens and Labour fight each other they will lose.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 22/02/2026

“We have crushed the British to the ground. They are on their knees, and they will not rise for a very long time.” Russian ambassador Alexander Yakovenko to another diplomat following the Brexit referendum.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

You are right to stand by every word .. and six years on there are still no answers. And how good it is to read a well written and researched piece by someone who has a deep understanding of the subject (like Carney’s speech last week). Perhaps we haven’t had enough of experts after all.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

Or put it the other way round. The current leaders of both the Conservative and Labour parties appear to be so stupid that they don’t even realise that to win under ‘FPTP’ you have to unite all of your wing of the political spectrum.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

You are usually on the money Lewis, but I think you are wrong on this one. Starmer would let Burnham run if he truly wanted Labour to be a broad centre left party capable of winning multiple elections (like Wilson). He has shown he simply wants to lead a faction. Labour will therefore lose in 2029.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

Huge and stupid mistake. Any pretence that this is about working together for public good is gone. This is pure factionalism.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

To paraphrase Kennedy ‘ ‘Ask not what Europe can do for you, ask what you can do for Europe’.’

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

The Europe discussion in UK is still ‘transactional’. Are we better off in or out? That misses the point of the EU. Despite everything UK is a very significant European country. We should be at the heart of defining a political, economic and security course for the continent as a full active member.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

Let’s make sure the conversation is about rejoin as a full member. Not some half arsed compromise that is suboptimal for the country and panders to the people who caused all of this in the first place.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

Of course I despise the narcissism, the triumph of stupidity and the end of real multilateralism. But what really pisses me off on a daily basis is the exhausting saturation of ‘news’ with meaningless babble. It sucks all the space and energy from anything positive.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

Nothing works properly, no one takes responsibility for anything. And the ‘in-crowd’ continue to rake in the money without a care in the world. A perfect metaphor.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

The central fallacy of the ‘Switzerland’ model is that it somehow represents ‘the best of both worlds’. It’s nonsense, the best position for the UK is the ‘France’ or ‘Germany’ model. A major player actively engaged in setting the rules and agenda for a dynamic and democratic continent.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

Two obvious questions. 1, Why should the EU be interested in such an arrangement? 2, In what sense is it better than full membership where UK is part of the ‘rule setting process’? … and don’t say ‘politically’ because Farageism would anyway have to be defeated to get to this situation.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

Let’s make sure it really is rejoin as a leading member. Not some half arsed compromise that tries to keep everyone happy but satisfies no-one (& yes for me that means Schengen and the Euro!)

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

Don’t really agree. Maybe ‘super greats’ like Warne don’t need coaches, but good coaches improve good players (who want to learn!). The main take away is that McCullum isn’t a coach. He didn’t know why he was good so can’t improve others. He has to go & the distain for county cricket has to change.

himself.so

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 27/12/2025

We need more than the single market. We need the UK to be an active leading member of the EU, working with other countries to build a dynamic continental economy that works for citizen, for business and for the planet. That’s how Britain becomes great again!

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

Can’t help thinking we are about to go all 2018 again. ‘Being close to the EU but not in the EU’ has never made any sense. It is demonstrably better economically, politically and strategically for the UK to be a full member. We need to make the case .. not accept half arsed compromises

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 13/12/2025

It’s a problem because no one in Britain has made a sustained and coherent economic and strategic case for Britain being a full and active member of the EU. Until that changes we will continue to have stupid discussions about half arsed, clearly sub optimal solutions.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

Is it also not possible that, despite all the confident bluster, defensiveness and fear lay behind a lot of the decision making? Why did Pope / Duckett / Smith etc not play in Canberra? Maybe because if they had failed and a Lions player scored they would be out of the club (& much poorer).

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

Don’t you think even the phrase ‘UK / EU relationship’ suggests we are a bit ‘special’? We don’t talk about the UK / UN relationship. The UK is not an ‘equal’ to the EU. The UK is ‘equal’ to France or Germany. The EU is a political and economic union of peers. A concept never really grasped in UK.

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Dave Bentley @davebentley58.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

A lot of it also come down to UK politicians and journalists not understanding (& not being arsed to find out) what things like ‘Single Market’ or ‘Customs Union’ actually mean.

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