The smoke and mirrors referendum............

Now could be a good time for making some investments with Joe Coral or Mr. Ladbroke on the result of the Great Referendum. The odds on the Leavers must be shortening quickly after the publication of the leaders of the two teams.

 

The rogues gallery behind the ‘Stayers’ front-bench are Blair, Mandelson, Danny Alexander, and John Major, but they are not the team as such. For the ‘stayers’, first up is Jeremy Corbyn. He should be good for a few million votes – for the Leavers.

 

Then there’s Wee Eck himself. Well, we know his game. He reckons that if England votes for ’out’ and the mendicant member of the UK, Scotland, votes for ‘in’, independence will be virtually a forgone conclusion.

 

Next is Ken Clarke. Yes, he’s still alive.

 

Then Damien Green (who he?).

 

And finally there is Stuart Rose, the ex-head honcho at Marks & Sparks. And he was first to set out the stall for the ‘in’ crowd.     We now know that their main thrust will be the ’fear factor’; leaving will be a leap into the unknown. Like 1975, then. He says that Brexit would risk our prosperity, threaten our safety and reduce our influence in the world.

 

Really? Those countries that are not in the EU trade pretty successfully with it; non-members Switzerland and Norway are the two most prosperous countries in Europe, sixth and ninth in the World GDP PPP league table. Yet Britain has run a balance of trade deficit with the EU since day one; outside the EU the UK will be able to negotiate its own trade pacts with both Europe and the rest of the world, which it can’t do as a member. It will also be £10 billion per year better-off when we no longer have to pay our dues to Brussels – which have doubled in the last 7 years, never mind the additional transfer payments that will rocket when the semi-third world Balkans countries join the party.

 

In any case, the EU is now a low- or no-growth economy. It once accounted for 30% of world GDP. Not anymore. The share has now fallen to17%; the action is now in China, Asia, South America, and the Commonwealth.

 

As for security he’s ‘avin a larf! Only Britain and France have credible forces, and in any case security is not a matter for Brussels (yet). This is down to NATO. The defence spending by the UK is the highest of any EU member as a percentage of GDP, twice that of every country except France.

 

The ‘diminished world influence’ ploy has no legs. Outside the EU, Britain could join the WTO as a full member; have its own seat at the table on such international issues as climate change and pursue UK interests internationally without having to follow the Brussels line,

 

What His Lordship does not explain is whither ‘ever closer union’ is headed. If Hollande is to be taken at his word during his lively discussion with Farage it is towards a completely federal Europe (and, of course, the end of the nation-state; does he sincerely believe that the Eastern Europeans, having only recently thrown off the shackles of Moscow, will allow Brussels  to put them back on? ).

 

On immigration, he is on the record as wanting more Eastern Europeans to come here to work long hours for minimum wages.

 

The choice facing voters is not between the status quo and a leap in the dark, although the Stayers will insist that it is, using the  ‘fear factor’ to persuade them play safe. In reality, it is a choice between Britain being once more a self-governing nation-state and a satrap of a European federal superstate.

 

 

In the opposite corner we have –inevitably – Nigel Farage. He is accompanied by Nigel Lawson, the former Channel 4 boss Luke Johnson, and the admirable Kate Hoey, one of the few remaining members of the Commons who is a principled conviction politician of integrity.

 

 

But whichever side comes out on top, we can be certain that over the next few months we shall have to endure a cacophony of misinformation, doublespeak, prevarication, propaganda and porkies.

 

 

All smoke and mirrors!