Lately I’ve frequently found myself disagreeing with
people I both like and respect. As the EU referendum campaign gets going I find
myself more and more drawn to one side of the argument. I wanted to remain more
or less neutral for much longer. I wanted to explore the merits of both sides
of the argument. But it was as if I was forced to pick the side I would debate
and within days I found myself trying to counter the Pro EU arguments while at
the same time trying to put forward the best Brexit arguments. The debate has
quickly become black and white, while in reality it is much more nuanced. There are some good arguments on both sides.
I don’t think I’m alone in this. I’m quite sure
William Hague and David Cameron could come up with some very good anti-EU
arguments if they wanted to. We all know that Boris Johnson left his decision
to campaign for Brexit very late. He might have gone the other way. It’s
perfectly possible to imagine him making pro EU arguments in just the same
style as he campaigns against. There are Eurosceptics who can see no merit in
the EU and there are Europhiles who can see no fault in it, but that’s not how
most of us are. Most of us see some merit in staying and some in remaining.
Whatever happens, Britain will be a sort of half-way house, not quite in and
not quite out. Few indeed are the Brits who want to be in the Euro and in
Schengen and who are in favour of "ever closer union". The most
ardent Brexiteer accepts that we want to have full access to the single market
and that doing so means accepting at least some of the rules that we do at
present. In reality the difference between these two positions is not that
great.
I’m a rather strange sort of Eurosceptic in that I
share the ideal of the European Union. If I thought that the EU would soon
become a United States of Europe and that it would be fully democratic, I would
want the UK to be a member. The reason for this is that I look across the
Atlantic and see the United States and see something that is close to my ideal, at least in theory if not always in practice.
The US has a huge internal market. It has local and state levels of democracy
that work well. Power is devolved to the extent that the smallest communities
can change things they dislike and kick out politicians, judges and sheriffs
who they no longer want. At the same time there is a powerful, fully democratic
tripartite national government, with excellent checks and balances so that no
part can become too powerful. Americans have both a strong state and national
identity and they take part in free and fair elections where everyone chooses
between the same two main parties. There is one American people, even though their
ancestors came from all over the world. There is one identity. There is one
Supreme Court that is appointed democratically. There are therefore the three
things that we need for prosperity: Democracy, free markets and the rule of
law. If the EU were offering me something similar I would grab it in a second.
What matters to me is that I am part of a democracy.
It doesn’t matter one little bit that I might be outvoted. For this reason if
the UK were part of a United States of Europe, it wouldn’t matter to me at all
that we voted Labour while the rest of the EU voted Conservative. To suppose
that it does matter is to say that the whole of the USA has to agree with Rhode
Island and if it doesn’t, Rhode Island is justified in leaving the USA. But
this really is to demand that whatever way Rhode Island chooses the whole of
the USA must follow. Taken further whichever way I choose everyone else must
follow. This is not democracy, but rather tyranny. I have therefore never been
convinced by the Scottish nationalist argument that secession is justified by
the fact that Scots vote differently to the UK as a whole. It is a
fundamentally anti-democratic argument.
My problem with the EU is therefore not the ideal,
but rather the way that it is being implemented. It matters not one little bit
to me that the UK might be outvoted in the EU, but it matters fundamentally
that the decisions in the EU are made democratically. If the same level of
democracy as we have in the UK were present in the EU, I would vote to remain.
But they are not. The majority of decisions are taken by unelected bureaucrats
in the European Commission, or by an unelected European President, or still
more disturbingly of late they are being taken by Angela Merkel.
The EU has long been dominated by France and
Germany. This at least provided a sort of counterbalance. But even this has
become less important as Germany has become the overwhelmingly dominant
economic force in the Eurozone. The decisions that have so affected countries
like the Republic of Ireland, Portugal and Greece have been taken by the
paymasters in Germany. National governments have been overruled. Political and
economic decisions have been made without the consent of the people. I am in no
way blaming Germany for this. It is a consequence of monetary union, which
implies some form of shared decision making. But the quasi political union that
has been imposed on so many countries in the EU is fundamentally
anti-democratic. It has got to the stage where at times it matters not one bit
which party Greeks or Irish, or Italians vote for. Whoever they vote for they
are told what to do by unelected European officials.
Last year when faced with migrants entering the EU
from Syria and Iraq, Mrs Merkel decided that she wanted to offer any and all
of them who made it to Germany political asylum. But soon after, she demanded
that everyone in the European Union should accept their share of those who she
had invited. If she had been an elected European Union president, this might
have been reasonable. But only Germans elected Mrs Merkel. Why should Poles, or
Czechs or Brits have to give into her demands, or take responsibility for her unilateral decisions that she later regrets?
The EU has a poor record of making decisions of
late. The decision to create the Euro has been an economic catastrophe. It
is directly responsible for record rates of unemployment and poverty in
southern Europe. The decision to remove internal European borders (Schengen)
while failing to defend Europe’s external borders means that the EU has no real
control over who enters. This affects the UK even though we are not a member of
Schengen. Eventually anyone who has leave to remain in one EU country will have
the right to live and work anywhere else. If the EU cannot defend its external
border, in effect it will have no external border and neither will the UK. We
have a duty to help people in trouble. Moreover immigration is beneficial. But
we cannot help everyone and there must be limits. Until and unless the EU
secures its external border, there is no limit to the people who may soon have
the right to live and work in the UK. The only way to secure our own UK borders
is to leave the EU.
None of us can guess what the future will bring. The
EU faces two main challenges. How to maintain or alternatively dismantle open
borders between the Schengen states? How to maintain or alternatively dismantle
the Eurozone? In order to keep these things they are going to have to move
towards a much deeper political union. They will also need a fiscal union and a transfer union, whereby money is transferred from the richer parts of the Eurozone to the poorer parts. This will turn the Eurozone/Schengen states into a sort of nation state. Alternatively they will break up. There isn't a third alternative. But while they may make progress towards becoming a nation state is there any sign of the EU becoming ever more democratic, ever more dependent on the will of the people? Judging from the past the answer must be No.
Whatever decisions the EU makes, we already know that
they won’t be made democratically. None of the important decisions of the past
twenty to thirty years were made democratically. They were all made at various
summits and behind closed doors. Most people in the EU didn’t have the chance
to choose whether they wanted the Euro or Schengen. Some of those who rejected
aspects of the EU that they disliked in referendums found that the results of
these referendums were either disregarded or overturned.
If we remain in the EU we are accepting that many
decisions that will influence our lives will be made by people no-one elected. As the EU moves further towards a closer union it is becoming less democratic, not more democratic. Even if the UK is not involved in the closer union, we will still find that decisions made undemocratically will affect us and constrain us. It's not possible to be part of an undemocratic organisation without that tainting our own democratic processes.
On the other hand if we choose to leave the EU, it will be one step on the way
to bringing decision making back to the people of the UK. There is altogether
too much emphasis at the moment on what would happen if the UK left the EU. I’m
afraid we just have to accept that there is uncertainty. But there is
uncertainty if we remain also. Who knows what decisions the EU might make? They
might decide to allow Turkey to join. They might decide that a condition for EU
membership is that all members have to help bail out the Eurozone. In the end
they might decide pretty much anything. The UK might point to pieces of paper
which are supposedly legally binding. But who decides if they really are
legally binding? In the end UK law at present is subordinate to EU law. EU
courts and bureaucrats will always be able to reinterpret any opt out we
supposedly have to mean that we in fact have to opt in. Unelected EU officials tell us what the law is and our elected Parliament has no choice but to obey. They have done this
before, they will do it again. But now we have a brief window of opportunity that may never come again. We can tell those unelected officials that the UK parliament is no longer subordinate. We can say that we are a democracy not a vassal state and we will choose those laws that suit us and reject those that don't.
I don’t believe that Brexit would damage the UK in
the long run. There are indeed great long term benefits. Even in the short term the risks have been grotesquely overstated. We would be reverting to the position we were in until the 1970s.
We would re-join the long list of sovereign nation states which are not ruled
by anyone else. The United States would not allow its laws to be subordinate to
the laws of anyone else. To subordinate
them to someone who is unelected in the end makes democracy a farce.
Brave people across the world have frequently had to fight for
democracy. When you do so you don’t count the cost. When we fought the Cold War
we didn’t think about trade with the USSR. What mattered to us was defending
our freedom. How often has Britain been willing to endure privation for a few years because of a principle that was worth fighting for? No doubt trade suffered during the First and Second World Wars because certain markets were closed to us and because of U-boats. Imagine if someone had said we should surrender because of mere trade. This is the argument of a scoundrel.
Here in the end is the only argument for leaving the
EU. Cease your rather lurid threats. I don’t care if Brexit would lead to a few years of trade difficulty. I don’t
care if markets would react unfavourably. I want to leave the EU in order to defend UK democracy and because it
would be worth it.