On the EU Army Nonsense.
The UK military has operated independently twice in the past 400 years with a 1-1 scoreline. The treasonous war of American so-called “independence”, and the Falklands conflict. Otherwise we always operate in an alphabet soup of foreign alliances.
The EU Military staff doesn’t directly command troops, who usually (but not always) operate under the auspices of NATO. Most military co-operation in Europe is bi-lateral such as Anglo-French missions to Mali, or multi-lateral and Ad Hoc, like EuroFor. Eurofor, which has deployed several times, isn’t an EU army but multi-lateral co-operation between Italy, France, Portugal and Spain, and has mainly operated in the francophone Africa.
The EU battlegroup training on salisbury plain recently isn’t a nascent EU army, just one of the alphabet soup of foreign co-operative organisations of which the UK military is part, one which hasn’t deployed anywhere, and is a bit like the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps of which the UK has long been the core.
The French, long suspicious of NATO and who want to make the EU a counterweight to EU power, have accepted that while the UK is a member of the EU, an EU army isn’t going to happen and rejoined NATO’s command in 2009. They pulled out in 1966 arguing (no, seriously…) that NATO (get this, right…) undermined their sovereignty. (Lol).
The EU army isn’t going to happen, because the UK has consistently vetoed the formation of an independent EU military command.
Of course were we to leave the EU, then the French would be free to get their way, leaving NATO’s command again and possibly taking the Germans with them in time. We must remain to prevent the French using the EU to undermine NATO.
Second Boer War? Maybe not our finest hour, and it needed extra time for victory, but I don't recall us having any help from allies. Indeed it didn't exactly win us many friends in Europe.
I am sure the Boer war was fought by an imperial army, not a strictly British one?
Yes, but it was Britain and her colonies/dominions. Australia and New Zealand couldn't be considered as fully independent countries then in the way that they were in 1939.
Also we employed a lot of German troops in the American War of Independence.
This is tangential to your main argument, but I think you are being a bit over-simplistic.
"The EU army isn't going to happen, because the UK has consistently vetoed the formation of an independent EU military command".
Up to a point,Lord Copper……Inconveniently, Col. Richard Kemp announces the UK 4th Brigade & 2nd Bn Yorkshire Reg become EU high Readiness Battlegroup from July, commanded by Council of EU.
If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it's a duck.
well well well
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/eu-army-plans-kept-secret-from-voters-3j3kg3zwj