There has been endless complaint since the UK voted
to leave the EU a little over a year ago. Not from voters mind you. The vast
majority of Remain voters have simply got on with their lives and accepted that
they lost the argument. Owing to the fact that the Remain prediction of
immediate catastrophe for the UK simply did not occur, many former Remain
voters have come to the conclusion that they were duped. But this has not
stopped the rearguard action from some politicians and some influential people
in the papers. There are still attempts to stop Brexit or to so water it down
that it would amount to staying in the EU. Even if the doom and gloom about
Britain’s immediate future has been shown by events to be ludicrously
pessimistic, we are still supposed to believe these pessimists. It’s as if a
weather forecaster kept telling us there would be a hurricane and when day
after day it kept failing to appear he kept on expecting us to believe that he
could predict the speed of wind. It’s time to realise that that the
establishment of political experts in Britain are wrong. What’s more they have
been wrong about everything for the past fifty years. It is for this reason
that some of the newer EU members such as the Poles are beginning to question
whether the whole thing is worth it. The reason is simple. They can watch and
they can think.
The whole EU project is based on deception. If only
it all happens gradually we can create a United States of Europe without anyone
noticing. I don’t think in the end that forming a new nation state called
Europe is a good idea. I can though respect those who disagree with me. If it
were modelled on the United States of America, with just as much freedom and
democracy and with similar rights for the constituent parts, then there could
be advantages. But the EU is not remotely like the USA. The people of the USA
elect their president and their upper and lower houses of parliament. The
powerful people in the EU are appointed. The most important decisions are made
behind closed doors. The democratic will of member states (Greece, Republic of
Ireland, France, the Netherlands) has recently been overturned. There has been
a concerted effort to do the same with the UK. But it looks like it will
fail. There is likewise at the moment an
attempt to make Poland bend to the will of its EU masters. Hopefully that will
fail too.
If you want to be part of something called the
United States of Europe, then it indeed makes sense to support Remain. But few
indeed are the Brits who do. This is where the whole project becomes dishonest.
I don’t think many French or Italian people want France or Italy to be merely a
region of Europe. But after sixty years of EU propaganda and mission creep
there is a tendency to think that there is no alternative. A tiny proportion of
Remain supporters really believed in European federalism yet that is what they
voted for. There is a sort of self-deception that the EU won’t ever quite reach
the point of being a United States of Europe. But watch how it has gradually
moved more and more towards its goal. There is a single currency. There is
border free travel such that in parts of the EU you barely even notice
international borders. There is a president. Soon there will be an army. If you
don’t think European federalism is happening you frankly are not paying
attention.
Brexit may involve some tough choices and it may
even involve some hard times. But if we don’t want to be part of a federal
nation state called the EU, and the vast majority of us don’t, then leaving is
the only option. You either get this, or you don’t. I don’t think you need to
be ruled by someone else in order to trade freely with them. But here’s the
deal. I would prefer not to trade with them at all than be forced to do bend to
the will of the EU. I don’t think Brexit will be nearly as tough economically
as some people predict, it may even be such that we barely notice. But again
even if it were going to be tough, it would be eminently worth it. Unless you
are one of the tiny band of EU federalists you have to agree with me. If you
don’t want the UK to be the equivalent of Vermont, then you have to think that
it’s better to leave the EU now rather than continue towards the federalist EU
destiny.
It is this point that has recently become clear to
Poland. Most of us pay little attention to Polish politics. All those consonant
clusters can make it difficult to follow. But something important is happening
and it is worth paying attention. There
is a now a fundamental dispute between Poland and the EU. The Poles elected a
party called Prawo i Sprawiedliwość [Law and Justice]. This party has some fairly traditional Polish
Catholic views, but for all that it is currently the largest party in the
Polish Parliament. The dispute with the EU may in part be because of this
traditional Polish Catholicism, which means that the Polish Government sins in
a variety of ways against EU Orthodoxy. But it is in two ways in particular
that the EU most disagrees with Poland. The first is that the Polish Government
wanted to appoint judges to its Supreme Court. There have been some protests
about this in Poland. Fair enough. In every country there are political
disagreements. But the EU has told Poland that it may not appoint its judges in
this way. Why ever not? The USA appoints judges to its Supreme Court by means
of a political process. The EU doesn’t complain about this. Why should it complain
about how Poland decides to do these things? What has it to do with the EU? At
any rate some rather important people in the EU are appointed and a large
number of decisions are made in a less than transparent way. Why threaten to
remove Poland’s voting rights in the EU over something as arcane as how they
appoint their judges?
The reason perhaps is that Poland has sinned in a
more fundamental way. When Angela Merkel responded to the refugee crisis in
2015 by in effect saying all of them were welcome in Germany, what she really
meant was that all of them were welcome in the EU. She might have been generous
unilaterally, but she expected the consequence of her decision to be shared
multilaterally. Poland has refused its share. This is the root of the dispute
about judges.
Poland along with other members of the Visegrád
Group (Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia) has shown great reluctance to accept
any of the people Mrs Merkel let into the EU. Why ever should these countries
be so reluctant? After all aren’t we continually told how beneficial
immigration has been to Britain, France, Germany, Sweden etc.? Why would anyone
want to avoid something that was so clearly of benefit to them?
This is the crux of the matter. The Poles et al have
benefited from the EU. They are net recipients and get a large amount of money
from the richer EU states. Not only this, but they have also benefited from
free movement of people. Many Polish people have been able to live and work in
Western Europe. But this has also given them an experience of life in the West.
What they have seen is how the Pro EU establishment has managed things for the
past decades.
Take Britain where
the majority of Polish people have come to live. The UK is wealthier than
Poland in part because we didn’t have to live under communism for fifty years.
But communism also isolated Poland from much of what has happened to a country
like Britain since the 1950s. I think the Poles who have been living in places
like Britain have seen where Western values and the EU establishment Orthodoxy
lead. They don’t like what they see.
I recently went to
a Polish Church service in a cathedral. It was packed with people of all ages
who quite obviously were sincere and believed with enthusiasm. My guess is that
the equivalent English language service would have been sparsely attended with
a few elderly ladies who probably were not quite sure what they ought or ought
not to believe. This is the difference. The UK has gone through a revolution
since the 1950s. Belief in Christianity has collapsed. Traditional ideas about
morality are no longer believed and we have little idea about what we believe
about anything. We know what we must not say at least in public. But what is it
to be British in Britain today? Few of us have a clue. What values do we have
except those vague values that are shared by everyone in the West in general?
But then these are not our values. They are the values of everybody. This
really means we don’t have our own values.
The Poles have been
happy to live and work here. We too have benefited from them coming here. But
my guess is that when some have them have returned to Poland they have come
with a message. Be careful. If you follow the path of Britain you will turn
Poland into the same thing. You see the Poles know exactly what it means for
someone to be a Pole and they are absolutely clear about what their values are.
What they believe is what they have always believed. They like believing these
things and want to maintain their country more or less as it is.
The British
political establishment from the 1950s onward has made one hell of a mess. We
have debts that we can’t pay, but which instead we must attempt to gradually
inflate away. We have destroyed the foundation of our morality (Christianity)
without having been able to put something else in its place. This means that
large numbers of our citizens do exactly what they please so long as it is
within the law or they can avoid getting caught. We have strange combination of
“anything goes” while at the same time we peer through the lace curtains to
make sure no-one sins against the latest diktat of political correctness. We
have completely lost control of our borders and have absolutely no idea of what
to do about it. Meanwhile many of our cities have been changed beyond all
recognition, such that pictures from the 1940s look as if they are pictures of
another country. They are.
It was this that we
rebelled against when we voted to leave the EU. We were saying to the British
political establishment that we rejected them and everything that they stood
for. It is for this reason too that the establishment and its supporters
reacted with such fury. It is for this reason too that they have been fighting
such a bitter rearguard action.
We should support
the Poles. We went to war to defend Poland in 1939, but in the end failed to do
so. We probably couldn’t have done otherwise. We lacked the will, perhaps the
strength to fight the Soviet Union in 1945. Nevertheless our failure to defend
Eastern Europe in those days led to decades of tyranny. We must not allow Poland to be bullied
because it wishes to protect its sovereignty and way of life. We must allow
them to learn the lesson of the past decades.
Western cities are
now under continual threat. We are told that we must live with this and that
nothing can be done. This is no doubt true. But it is not true about Warsaw,
Budapest, Prague or Bratislava. Let these cities at least avoid having to say
that this fear is normal. We need a new way of thinking, because the old ways
have led to what Poland and its neighbours are desperate to avoid. Brexit may
be a step in the right direction. If Poland leaves too then we should offer
them friendship, help and free trade. Poles have been through tough times to defend their freedom and sovereignty. No doubt they will consider it to be worth it. Perhaps their example may encourage others. The EU
and the Western political establishment that created it is part of the problem.
We are seeing the consequences of the decisions that were made for the past
decades every day throughout Western Europe. It is for this reason that the
Poles reject these decisions. They can see where they lead. They are right to
reject them.
If there is hope,’
wrote Winston, ‘it lies in the Poles.’
