The ins-and-outs of 'In or Out'......

At this time everything is going their way for the ‘We want our country back’ persuasion. Suddenly there is a new agenda as the EU begins to implode.

 

Until very recently ‘immigration’ was not a word to be uttered in smart circles, worse than  breaking wind.

 

Now the polls tell us that it is by far the issue of greatest concern to voters.

 

This happily coincides with the complete and utter chaos, disorganisation, and directionless ‘leadership’ from Brussels in relation to the immigration crisis. At the same time the Eurocrats are telling us that no, we will not be allowed to decide who comes to the UK and who cannot; that although we are fortunately a non-member of the Schengen pantomime nevertheless the ‘free movement of peoples’ (.e. benefits spongers) is Holy Writ and can never be changed.

 

 

Neither can we decide whether, when and to whom we can pay welfare money. (Of course, there has been no progress on the free movement of services, another EU shibboleth; this would be of benefit to Britain but not to the cosy cartels in Germany where services are closed-shops rather like the Guilds of old).

 

It is abundantly plain that this is all unsustainable and irretrievably doomed by ‘events’ dear boy, events!’.

 

But the EU panjandrums can’t give way without the whole rickety structure beginning to collapse.

 

And the economic arguments for staying, as peddled by the consortium of vested interests represented by the big boys’ club, the CBI, has more holes than a tramp’s vest.

 

The plain truth is that the Eurozone economy is a drag. The growth of GDP in the UK in the last five years has been more than double that of the EU. Incomes have risen at a faster rate than consumer spending. The current account deficit has fallen by nearly half. Productivity has risen at a record rate.

 

Across Europe economic performance has ranged from dire to disastrous. And yet when faced with an economic problem the nomenklatura could not even solve a crisis in the tiny economy of Greece; their interventions turned a crisis into a catastrophe.

 

Then there is the propaganda put about by the CBI that exit would mean the loss of the Eurozone market.

 

Pull the other one.

 

Britain has run a balance of trade deficit ever since 1975, and a large proportion of those so-called exports to the EU are in fact registered as EU imports when in fact they are simply using Rotterdam and Antwerp as entrepot for other destinations. Lately, there has been encouraging growth from net trade surplus, no thanks to Europe.

 

And are we seriously being led to believe that the Europeans would give up all that valuable trade with Britain out of pique?

 

But the EU would ensure peace in our time, would it not? That was the prime motivation, to so entwine Germany and France that they would no longer have a major war twice every century.

 

Well, that didn’t work. When they stuck their noses into the Ukraine, they provoked a Russian reaction that is now flowing over the Middle East and elsewhere. There is no telling as to where it will all end, but it is certain to be in tears.

 

 

Our leaders seem to be at a loss about what Putin is up to. The explanation is simple. His foray into Syria is designed to push up the price of oil as a counter to the EU’s economic warfare against his regime through sanctions aided and abetted by  Russia’s oil-producing rivals such as Saudi Arabia.

 

So if the EU cannot offer Britain security, border control and economic benefits what is left, besides such meddling as voting rights of convicts and suppression of e-cigarettes?

 

Brussels will have to get used to the inescapable fact that it is ‘my way or the highway’; unless the EU reverts to what was sold to the Brits in 1975 , a common market, it will last an even shorter time than that other totalitarian monster, the Soviet Union.

 

‘And what became of it at last? Quoth Little Peterkin.

‘Why, that I cannot tell’ said he,

But ‘twas a famous victory!’

 

For Brexit?