Brexit: here's another nice mess, Dave.........

It was a snow-job from the outset.

 

Cameron would have us believe that he agreed to hold a referendum with the greatest reluctance and misgivings in order to respond to public demand. It was the will of the people!

 

It was nothing of the sort. He calculated on the basis of previous experience of referenda in Europe that he would win by a landslide, and public demand had nothing to do with it. It was about the  long-standing schism in the Tory party itself, and the expectation that this would be laid to rest at long last and permanently. History shows that referenda are almost always won by the rulers because they have a crushing grip on the propaganda machinery. Adolf Hitler was a prime example. The omens are already there indicating that the Establishment  will throw its enormous weight behind ‘In’, and that the first casualty will be truth.

 

The ‘In’ campaign reminds one of Dickens’ Fat Boy in Pickwick Papers. ‘I wants to make your flesh creep’. So far the bulk of the ‘In’ campaign has been the fear factor.

 

The ‘In’s trumpet that 36% of FTSE 100 companies have signed a letter (drafted no doubt in Number 10) supporting ‘stay’. That is not going to play particularly well with a Scunthorpe steel worker who has lost his job because Brussels failed to prevent dumping of Chinese steel at below production cost. And disregards the fact that the other 64% of companies did not sign!

 

According to them, Brexit spells doom. ‘Nearly 50%’ of UK exports go to the EU’; not mentioned is that a significant proportion is goods in transit through Rotterdam, Antwerp etc. to non-EU destinations. Or that the EU economy overall is in decline in comparison with the rest of the world; its share of CDP has fallen from 30% to 24%.Britain’s top 5 export markets are the US, Germany, Switzerland, China and France. Only 8 of the 28 EU members has trade with the UK of any real significance. Ireland is the only EU country with which the UK shows a trade surplus.

 

EU exports themselves are falling as a percentage of world trade, from 54% to 44%. The overall trade deficit has risen from £11 billion to £62 billion.

 

We have General Armchair writing to the press (another letter drafted in No. 10?) saying that Brexit would endanger our national security. Eh? Despite the boasts that the EU has kept the peace in Europe for half-a-century, the key has been NATO, principally the US and UK (France was absent most of this time, having a Gaullist sulk). As it happens, the only two EU members capable of defending themselves are the UK and France, the other members preferring to cower profitably behind the NATO shield by spending only around half of the minimum required defence budgets.

 

It is correct to say that the EU is crucial in terms of national security, but not in the way the ‘In’ lobby present it.

 

The truth is that the EU, far from being a bulwark, is in itself the greatest threat to our national security this Century when taken in the context of international terrorism.

 

Because we are unable to control our own borders and decide for ourselves whom to admit or keep out, we are vulnerable to penetration. The bloodshed in France has shown that ‘free movement’ includes the free movement of jihadists. The chaotic response to the refugee crisis has certainly flooded Europe with undesirables, but it is a reasonable certainty that a worrying number of them are likely to be terrorists. As if this were not problem enough, we have meddling European courts that prevent us from getting rid of foreign criminals, whose ‘human rights’ appear to be more important than  ours.

 

The EU’s track record when it has indulged in foreign entanglements has been woeful. It failed totally in the Balkans (although it is preparing to welcome those semi-criminal states into the fold). As for the Ukraine, it is now widely accepted that this crisis was triggered by Brussels’ clumsy attempts to draw Ukraine into club membership and by implication into NATO. Unsurprisingly this immediately spooked the Russians, and so here we are!

 

Most of all, we have the immigration crisis; this was perfectly capable of orderly management, but Brussels proceeded to prove that, to use the old cliché, ‘they couldn’t organise a booze-up in a brewery’.

 

Then there is the ruckus over Cabinet papers. The Cabinet Secretary says Brexit Ministers can’t have them because their purpose is to reflect and express Government policy, which these Ministers don’t support. What policy might that be?

 

The one reasonable certainty is that the campaign will be demeaning. The In crowd are already focusing in three areas.

 

The first is cupidity. The emphasis will be on imminent economic collapse, loss of jobs and business, with a fine disregard for the evidence, as has been seen already. And expats will have to leave their Spanish villas and return to the privations of a British climate. We will have to pay more for most things as Europe will hit us with swingeing customs duties.

 

The second is the innate conservatism of the British people. They will vote for the status quo unless there is a clear, attractive and better option.

 

The third is risk-aversion; ‘Always keep hold of nurse for fear of getting something worse’. The In crowd will play heavily on seeding insecurity and fear of the unknown.

But we should not expect much emphasis on the most important issue. Sovereignty. The millions of people who fought (and often died in a centuries-old struggle for Parliamentary democracy  did not do in order to turn a profit. Their struggle was to achieve what our political masters have lost and thrown away; the supremacy of Parliament; the end of tyranny by  autocrats; the election of our law givers and the ability to toss them out if a majority of people so decide; a judicial and legal system in which final decisions were made by our own courts.

In Europe, our Parliament is subject to dictation by foreigners whom the British did not elect; laws are subject to interference from another country; we are conditioned by an unelected bureaucracy far away; court decisions may be overruled by foreign courts of dubious integrity and competence. Our ‘Supreme Court’ is anything but.

Is this what we want for ourselves and future generations?

‘Look upon my works, O ye mighty, and despair’.