Theresa May makes Sturgeon look petty and foolish

There is developing an extraordinary difference between Theresa May and Nicola Sturgeon. It is impossible to imagine Nicola Sturgeon going to Washington and charming everyone she meets. While May has dignity, character, politeness and obvious intellect, Sturgeon simply doesn’t. May puts her points with force, but not with anger. She is subtle while Sturgeon has the subtlety of a Glasgow handshake. I can’t recall hearing Theresa May make an overt threat. I can’t recall hearing Nicola Sturgeon have a conversation that doesn’t involve a threat. I can’t remember Theresa May ever saying something that could be described as a grievance. She suggests the motto “Never complain, never explain”. The force is in what she doesn’t say. I can’t remember Sturgeon saying anything that didn’t involve a grievance. It’s always someone else’s fault (this is why she is mocked as Elsie).  She is incapable of taking responsibility for anything.

It must be tough for Sturgeon to see how Theresa May is doing so well. I don’t remember particularly rating May prior to her becoming Prime Minister. She was just another Tory minister who had not achieved particularly much as Home Secretary. She set out to limit immigration to the tens of thousands and then didn’t campaign for the only method which she knew would achieve that goal. I found her decision to back Remain, but then hardly campaign for it to be lacking in conviction. I would have chosen someone else to be Prime Minister.

But May has done much better than expected. Her speech when she became Prime Minister set the tone. Her defence of the UK was most welcome. Her answer to Nicola Sturgeon that the question of Scottish independence has been settled was perfect. She didn’t get angry with Sturgeon. She went up to Edinburgh and didn’t complain when she was made to sit in front of two Scottish flags. It was a matter of indifference to May, something trivial, while the fact that it was so obviously crucial to Sturgeon showed that the SNP leader was trivial, concerned more with appearance than substance.

During the EU referendum the Tory party was at war with itself, but May brought peace in a way that perhaps no-one else could have. The Brexiteers were given high ranking positions, the Cameroons were driven into the wilderness and Remain supporters like Philip Hammond and indeed May herself worked hard to make Brexit a reality.

While some Remain supporters fought a rear-guard battle to prevent us leaving the EU, May didn’t throw a tantrum à la Sturgeon. Instead she gradually made it happen. Now the rear-guard looks like noise, the sort of thing that is forgotten by history. There was a Supreme Court judgement the other week, but it no longer mattered.

Theresa May has turned out to be a lucky Prime Minister. Who could have guessed in June that Winston Churchill’s bust would be back in the Oval office? Who could have guessed that the President of the United States would actually like Britain and would offer us a trade deal? It looks very much as if Theresa May is able to do business with Trump. Her quiet manner works. She doesn’t set out to offend him. Rather she quietly fulfils her diplomatic mission.

Trump thought NATO was obsolete, but after a short conversation with Mrs May he is 100% in favour once more. Some European leaders ought to be grateful that a British Prime Minister has been so helpful with their security concerns. It may be that the UK can take on the role of go-between.

Could Nicola Sturgeon have achieved so much? Obviously not. What May has demonstrated is that the UK is respected in the world. We have allies. We have a role. Scottish nationalists naturally will be fuming about this. They universally hate the UK or at the very least dislike it. Why would you want to destroy something that you like?

What they forget is that our allies in the rest of the world would very much prefer that the UK continued. People in the whole of the UK must realise that our place in the world depends on our remaining united. There will be no “special relationship” if the UK ceases to exist. At present we punch above our weight because we have been doing so for centuries. Who would listen to a country that couldn’t even keep itself together? With our armed forces split and no place to moor our nuclear submarines why would we continue to merit a place on the UN Security Council? What would the UK even be called if Scotland left? It could hardly be called United.

English nationalists who owing to Sturgeon’s threats and petulance have become indifferent to the fate of the UK should think again. Scotland’s departure would damage you as well. No sensible country looks on the loss of a third of its territory as something to be welcomed. The Spanish don’t think like that, nor indeed do the Americans. It’s not serious.

The power that we have internationally, which itself gives us the influence which will enable us to trade freely, depends on our unity. This is the lesson from the three hundred and more years in which the United Kingdom has existed. You’d throw all that away because you are annoyed at having to listen to Sturgeon? That’s what she wants by the way? We stuck by Northern Ireland when it was threatened by those who hated Britain. We didn’t give up on Northern Ireland because we became sick of listening to Gerry Adams and friends. The same British grit is needed now. Sturgeon does not speak for Scotland. She speaks for her supporters and they are a minority. The majority of Scots just like the majority of people from Northern Ireland wish to remain British. We need the support of all British people. So please never do Nicola Strugeon’s job for her.

Theresa May has shown that we have a bright future together. It is obvious that Brexit is going to work. If dreadful things were going to happen to the economy they would already have happened. They didn’t.

We will need to adjust to find our new role in the world. We will need a leader to guide us on that path. Luckily we have found one. It would have seemed impossible a year ago, but Theresa May has a chance to reach greatness. If she can successfully negotiate a beneficial exit from the EU, if she can keep our country united and if she can establish us as a free trade society that is open to the world, her place in history will be assured. If we unite behind her she will succeed and so indeed will we all.

How Donald Trump could limit migration more fairly

Most people in modern Britain have little or no experience of visas. Either we don’t need a visa or else it’s straightforward to obtain one by spending a few minutes on a computer.  Most people don’t want to go to the places, like Russia or China, which require visas you have to send away for, but with a little trouble, expense and form filling it’s not that difficult to go to Moscow, Beijing or even Minsk. There are some places that are genuinely tough to visit. Bhutan in the Himalayas makes you pay a $250 tax per day just to go there. They have only relatively recently opened their country to the world at all. They don’t want to be overwhelmed by the modern world and its people. Still with a few exceptions if we have enough money we can visit almost any country in the world. Money opens doors.

What we frequently forget in Britain is that huge numbers of people in the world cannot travel where they please for the simple reason that they don’t have enough money to do so. It’s difficult if not impossible for all but the wealthiest Russians to come to the UK. In order to obtain a tourist visa to visit the UK you have to demonstrate that you have enough money to take care of yourself and stay in hotels for the duration of your stay. You have to show that you have a job and property in Russia and that it is likely that you will return. It is easier if you have a UK resident who can sponsor your trip, but the process of obtaining a visa is still expensive, time consuming and far from guaranteed. For the most part it is practically speaking impossible for the average Russian citizen to come to live and work in the UK unless they marry a Brit.

Are we then discriminating against Russians? Yes we are. Someone who was born in a part of the Soviet Union that is now Latvia has the right to live and work in the UK by virtue of Latvia being in the EU. Another person who was born a Soviet citizen doesn’t have that right. This might seem unfair, but this is the nature of the world. We don’t allow everyone from the world even to visit the UK because we think that if we did a proportion would overstay or in some other way abuse their visas  

We make a distinction between people from some countries who find it easy to visit Britain and people from other countries who find it hard or even impossible to visit. On what basis do we do this? Well generally we favour people from friendly nations and allies. We also favour people from countries with standards of living which are similar to ours. Few Japanese people would want to work illegally in the UK, but lots of Russians would. This is because the standard of living in Japan is similar to the UK, while in Russia it is much lower. The likelihood of someone abusing the visa granted to them is a key part of the calculation of whether the visa is granted or not.

We are then already discriminating against the vast majority of citizens in the world. Every Western country does the same. Unless you favour a world without borders, which is very noble of you, but not very practical, then it is necessary to accept that we have to limit the right of most people in the world to travel to the UK.  

The Conservative Party for some years has wished to limit immigration to the tens of thousands per year. One of the reasons why the British people voted to leave the EU is that it became obvious that the only way to limit immigration was to leave. You might disagree with attempts to limit immigration, but this in effect is to get rid of borders. Campaign for that if you will, but you will find that the majority disagree with you, not least because our health and welfare systems would collapse.

It is practically speaking much easier for someone from the First World to visit countries like the UK, Canada and the USA. Every First World country discriminates against people from other parts of the world. We also have for many years made it more difficult for people from some countries that are considered to be dangerous to come to here. It may be difficult for a Russian to gain a visa to travel to the UK, but it is still more difficult for someone from Afghanistan. We discriminate against the citizens of certain countries still more than we discriminate against others. There comes a point when practically speaking it is almost impossible for the average citizen of some countries to come here legally.

The principle of preventing people from one or more country travelling is not new. There are a number of countries that have travel bans against citizens of other countries. People from parts of West Africa were banned from travelling during the Ebola epidemic. Israeli citizens are banned from going to many countries.

In times of war it has sometimes been felt necessary to arrest citizens of other countries and intern them. No doubt this was unjust to many innocent people. But the fear of allowing a few spies to live at large meant that both the innocent and the guilty were punished.

We must accept then that the process of allowing people to visit our country involves discrimination. Why then has the action of the United States President caused such uproar? The reason is that Trump implemented his policy in the worst possible way.  

It was unjust to detain visa holders and people with Green cards. If you apply for such a visa and it has been granted then you should be allowed to proceed about your business unless there is a good reason to prevent you doing so.

There was no need whatsoever for Donald Trump to provide a blanket ban on travel for people from certain countries. All he needed to do was to advise the embassies in these countries that they should make it more difficult for people to obtain visas. We already accept the principle that it is more difficult for citizens of some countries to travel to the UK or the USA than certain other countries. The reason for this discrimination is based on the policies of the Government of each country. They don’t have to justify their reasons.

At various points in the past decades a US President has made it difficult if not impossible for citizens of Iran and Iraq to obtain visas to go the USA. The problem then with Trump is that we went about his attempt to limit the travel rights of people from various countries in a way that was arbitrary, unjust and contrary to the normal rules by which Western countries act.

The problem with Donald Trump is that he wants to shout from the roof tops something that would be far better to be implemented quietly and without fuss. He could have made it practically much more difficult for the vast majority of the citizens of the countries he wished to exclude simply by setting conditions for their visa applications that they would be unlikely to be able to fulfil. The United Kingdom already does this with regard to citizens of Russia and many other countries. The United States clearly would have the same right to do likewise. We are allowed to discriminate on the grounds of wealth. If this were not the case we could not even ask a visa applicant if they had enough money for their trip. All President Trump then needed to do was to set the financial requirement for obtaining a visa high enough that it would achieve the limitation he was looking for. This need not only have applied to countries from one region of the world, such as the Middle East but could have applied to a number of others. In this way there would be no question of discrimination apart from financial discrimination.

Trump’s blanket ban was foolish also because it did not take into account other circumstances. There ought to have been exceptions for people who were highly skilled and had job offers or university places. People with family members in the United States ought also to have been given preferential treatment.

It is not wrong to wish to limit immigration. It is also not wrong to wish to limit immigration from certain countries. If this were not the case it would be wrong for us to have visas at all. We are after all limiting the rights of Russians to come to Britain, while not limiting the rights of people from the Republic of Ireland. We accepted that it was right to limit the freedom of Germans in the UK in 1939, because we could not tell who was dangerous and who was not. For the same reason it is not unreasonable to limit the rights to travel of people who come from countries which at present are full of violence and terrorism. We cannot tell who is innocent and who is guilty.

But in trying to protect ourselves we ought not to behave in a way that is arbitrary and unjust. We should be open and we should also welcome people from all countries, cultures and faiths. But we do have the right to limit who can come. By setting the requirement for obtaining a visa high enough such that we favour those who can invest in the UK, have family members here, or are highly skilled we will be not be discriminating against anyone. The reason someone cannot obtain a visa will be objective. It will be because they do not meet the conditions we have chosen to set. In this way we will succeed in limiting immigration, while minimising the risks of allowing people to arrive here who may pose a threat to our security.

Donald Trump has a right to do what he thinks is necessary to protect the United States. We have the same right here in the UK. But the way in which this is done must not be perceived to be grounded in prejudice. A heightened level of security can be obtained without causing resentment and anger simply by quietly changing the rules by which visas are granted. Trump could have achieved exactly the same result without any demonstrations if he had just acted in a way that was more subtle and if he had thought through his actions more carefully. This unfortunately is not his nature.

It would be wrong to discriminate against people who follow the Russian Orthodox faith, but in practice we do make it very difficult for them to visit the UK. We do this because the UK doesn’t have very friendly relations with Russia and because Russians are poor. If a large number of Russian citizens came to Britain and poisoned our tea with polonium or carried out other terrorist acts we might make it still harder for Russians to travel here. We would be doing so however not because they were Orthodox, but because a proportion of Russian citizens were dangerous and we couldn’t tell who was innocent and who was guilty. There would be nothing unjust about making it much more difficult for Russians to obtain visas. Indeed it would be prudent.

A new Act of Union

Every now and again someone in Scottish politics pops up and mentions the word federalism. This has become even more frequent since the EU referendum. Apparently the fact that Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to Remain in the EU, while England and Wales voted to Leave has caused a problem that is so enormous that we need to have a new Act of Union, still more powers for Scotland and the other parts of the UK and we need to call this new arrangement federalism.

Various models of federalism have been proposed. Some imagine that England ends up with its own parliament others that England is divided into various regions. It strikes me that if England can be split up into regions, then so too could Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.  While Scotland has received a great deal of devolution from the UK in the past decades it has also seen a great deal of centralisation within Scotland. I would much prefer to be ruled by a local assembly based somewhere in Aberdeenshire. If it is correct to devolve power to Scotland, why not devolve it to the town level within Scotland?  

But it is entirely unclear to me how any of this addresses the issue of the EU. The threat to the UK comes from the SNP. As Scotland voted differently to the UK as a whole, the SNP think this justifies them threatening to leave. Would federalism alleviate this threat?

Ever since we began the process of devolution in Scotland we have been promised that giving more power to Scotland will eliminate Scottish nationalism. In fact quite the opposite has occurred. Scottish independence has gained in popularity the more power has been devolved to Scotland. A generation ago we had a constitutional convention that Labour and the Lib Dems promised would solve the problem. It didn’t solve the problem, but rather created it and then made it worse. Next Gordon Brown in response to higher than expected support for Scottish independence vowed to give the Scottish parliament still more powers. He no doubt expected that this too would see off Scottish nationalism. Now Kezia Dugdale promises a new constitutional convention giving Scotland still more powers. This too she, no doubt, hopes will diminish SNP support in Scotland and transfer it to her.

It really is time for a period of reflection by Labour. They have frankly done enough damage as it is. They were the first to play the nationalist card when the continually complained about England voting for Thatcher while Scotland voted for Labour. It was this and this alone that gave rise to the modern SNP and the loss of nearly every Labour MP in Scotland. It would be well if Dugdale, Brown and Co. first apologised for the damage that they have done before attempting to do more.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the idea of federalism. It works well in a number of countries. But it doesn’t really address the issue. Scotland already has a similar amount of power to a state in the United States. Would giving Scotland still more power satisfy Nicola Sturgeon? Scottish nationalists greedily gobble up ever little concession of power from Mr Brown etc., but do they ever make a concession in return? They would react in exactly the same way to federalism as they reacted to devolution and “the Vow”. They would take it, bank it, complain that they hadn’t in fact been given anything and then ask for more.

Devolution and indeed federalism depends on the idea that some issues are devolved while others are decided centrally. Some people seem to forget that while each state in the United States has a great deal of state power and local devolution within each state down to the town level, there is also a strong central government. There are things that each state decides for itself and things that are decided in Washington.  

Even if the UK were a federal state, there would be times when Scotland would be outvoted. This is not a problem with devolution. It is a feature of devolution. Perhaps Miss Dugdale thinks federalism would give Scotland a veto over leaving the EU or the arrangement that results from leaving. But then should London have a veto, or Yorkshire? Why should one grouping of five million people be more equal than others? Perhaps Miss Dugdale or Miss Sturgeon think that a Labour or SNP majority in Scotland should be able to rule over the whole of the UK. But all this shows is that they both have tendencies in the direction of Scottish nationalism.

It is crucial to realise that talk of federalism is to miss the point for even if the UK were a federal state matters to do with foreign relations would still be controlled by Central Government. So how would this arrangement help the present situation? Federalism just makes one more concession to the SNP without changing the fundamentals in any way whatsoever. Scotland and Northern Ireland would still have been outvoted even in a federal UK, because international issues would not and could be devolved. It is Washington that makes trade deals, peace treaties or war. Bismarck North Dakota may find itself outvoted.

It is vital that Scottish politicians cease helping the SNP. They all, including Ruth Davidson, think that it is a problem that Scotland voted one way while the UK voted differently. It is not a problem it is a feature of us all living in a single sovereign nation state called the UK. Devolution and federalism can give the parts of such a country a degree of power, but they cannot make a part always vote the same way as the whole. In no country in the world is there such an arrangement. On certain issues parts are always going to be outvoted.

There is no level of federalism that will satisfy California if it is determined to leave the USA because it doesn’t like President Trump. Federalism does not guarantee that there is not going to be secession. The USSR was a federal state. So was Czechoslovakia. The United States itself was threatened by secession. Its federalism did not save it.  It was instead saved by the United States Army.

The crucial point is that even if the UK were federal the parts would be subordinate to the whole. No amount of devolution will change this. But it is this that Scottish nationalists will not accept. But to grant them what they wish is to grant them independence. There is only one lesson to learn in Scottish politics, but no-one seems to be able to grasp it. You can do nothing to satisfy a Scottish nationalist, so don’t try.  Give them nothing.

Devolution or federalism only works when it does not give rise to nationalism. If the parts of the federation continually think of themselves as independent then they will continually be insubordinate. This is what is happening in Britain at the moment. We do not need to have a constitutional convention. All we need is the acceptance by everyone that devolution involves the fact that certain decisions are taken centrally. It is this after all that we voted for when we voted for a Scottish parliament. When this is not accepted then logically devolution subverts. When this happens it would make more sense to take away the source of the subversion rather than allow it still more power to continue to undermine the unity of the United Kingdom.

There is no need for yet another constitution convention. The issues are already clear. But it might indeed be well to have a new Act of Parliament, call it a new Act of Union if you will. The Act should state that the United Kingdom is permanent, that its parts are subordinate to the whole and that the UK Government will not tolerate attempts to undermine our nation state from within. No power either foreign or domestic may be allowed to do this. The Act should furthermore state that the United Kingdom’s experiment with referendums has now ceased and that all future decisions will be made by Parliament. It doesn’t require federalism to pass such an Act. It only requires a majority of MPs.

   

Should British citizens pledge loyalty to Britain?

The UK is a country with people from many places. We have no choice but to try to get on with each other. Brexit may enable the UK Government to have greater control over immigration, but lots of people are going to continue to come to Britain from Europe and elsewhere. This is a good thing. We need them. We have an aging population and our economy depends on being able to attract skilled workers from abroad. I didn’t vote for Brexit in order to prevent anyone living here, nor indeed to prevent anyone coming here. I just wanted the issue to be controlled by the UK Government and the UK electorate. But given that the UK is and will continue to be a country with many languages, faiths and identities how are we going to create the necessary sense of unity that enables us to have an identity we can all share?

We all remember the tragic story of the Glasgow Muslim shopkeeper who was murdered because he wished his friends a Happy Easter. In response to this Khalil Yousuf a spokesman for the Ahmadiyya Muslim community has suggested that “Not only should we raise the flag, but everybody in the Muslim community should have to pledge loyalty to Britain in schools. There is no conflict between being a Muslim and a Briton.” He is of course correct. Muslims in fact are statistically more patriotic than UK citizens in general. One of the great things about the UK is that everyone who is a citizen is equally British. It doesn’t matter at all where your parents came from.

But how about the idea of children pledging loyalty to the Union Flag? There are a number of problems with this idea. Clearly it would be wrong if this only applied to Muslim children. It has to apply to everyone or no-one. There is a difficulty also in what these children would be pledging loyalty to. In the United States children repeat:

"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

A variant on this no doubt could be devised for the UK. But what of the idea of our being one nation indivisible? This is something that I absolutely agree with. But lots of people who live in the UK don’t agree with me. Who are these people? Well obviously all those people who want a part of our country to become independent or to join another country. Also people like David Cameron who were in favour of giving Scotland a referendum on independence. Likewise Scottish politicians like Ruth Davidson and Kezia Dugdale, who think the SNP should be allowed to have a second independence referendum if they want it, clearly do not think that that the UK is indivisible. These people may hope that the UK is not split up, but their attitude is quite different to that of an American.

It’s worth remembering that the Pledge of Allegiance was written quite shortly after the United States had fought the Civil War. Children repeated every day that the war was over and secession was no longer an option.  There is a case for us in the UK doing the same. Our country was never closer to breakup than in September 2014. If the SNP had won they would have done what no one else could have done in the course of our 300 year history. No-one else could have broken the bonds that until the independence referendum campaign began, most of us had considered to be indivisible. The very act of having such a referendum was to introduce instability into our country and to imply that it faced an existential threat. It did. If the SNP had won, we would no longer be what we are now a United Kingdom. How could we even have used that name?

William Faulkner famously wrote that every Southern schoolboy got to replay the Battle of Gettysburg with the chance of winning. But he only got to replay it in his mind. He didn’t get to replay it in reality. What the Scottish nationalists want is to replay their “Lost Cause” whenever they please and until whenever they win. But how can we maintain a United Kingdom and a common identity under those circumstances?  Better by far, of course, that we settle these matters with a ballot box than with a box of bullets, but no country can live with the perpetual threat of dissolution.

The difficulty we have is this though. Imagine that a UK Government thought that it would be a great idea to have such a pledge of allegiance. I can imagine lots of children being encouraged not to repeat such an oath in certain parts of the UK. But this is our problem really. The UK is nation of people with complex and mixed identities. Most of us have family from other parts of the UK or other parts of the world. What unites us is that I can say that I am Scottish and British. Someone else can say that he is Polish and British while someone else can say he’s Jamaican and British. Our shared identity depends on the fact that we are all British. Without it we don’t even have a shared country let alone a shared loyalty.  

Everyone who becomes a UK citizen in fact does have to take an oath: “I will give my loyalty to the United Kingdom and respect its rights and freedoms. I will uphold its democratic values. I will observe its laws faithfully and fulfil my duties and obligations as a British citizen.” But why should this oath only apply to those who become UK citizens? Should it not apply to everyone who is a British citizen? It is clearly discriminatory to expect a promise from someone who comes to live in the UK that we would not expect of someone already living here.  

What do you call someone who makes a pledge to a country and then breaks it? What do you call someone who is not loyal to their country? The UK Government in requiring new citizens to pledge an oath is trying to maintain the cohesion of the UK and trying to show that such people are equally British as anyone else in the UK. It is only in this way that we can forge a common identity amongst people from many places. The problem is that these attempts are being continually undermined by those British citizens who deny that they are British and who have no loyalty whatsoever to the UK.

Anyone who pledges to give his loyalty to the UK who subsequently campaigns to break up the UK is obviously a liar. But if we think this through then this oath really applies to all of us. How can an oath be expected of one set of British citizens, who happen to come from elsewhere, that is not expected of others, who happen to have been born here? The condition for receiving a UK passport ought to be that everyone has to make this promise. Anyone who can’t pledge allegiance to the UK or who feels no loyalty to our country would of course be free to renounce their UK citizenship. If you don't feel British, then why should you expect to receive any of the rights that go along with being a British citizen? Accepting those benefits under those circumstances makes you a hypocrite. Campaigning to destroy the UK while accepting its protection is an act of perfidy that simply would not be tolerated in most countries of the world. Try threatening the existence of the United States or insulting their flag and you'll quickly find out how Americans respond to that sort of behaviour.

We live in dangerous times and our country needs unity in order to face together the challenges and the threats that we all share equally. It is right and proper that the Government requires people who arrive in the UK to be loyal to our country. It is dangerous if they are disloyal. But the problem is not so much with those who have come to Britain. Most of them do feel British. They love the UK and are just as loyal to our country as someone who can trace his ancestry back generations. But those hundreds of thousands of people who have always lived in the UK but refuse to accept that they have a dual identity ought to reflect on the sort of example they are giving to those who have just arrived. How can someone who denies that he is Scottish and British expect someone from Pakistan to say that he is Pakistani and British? How can such a Scottish nationalist expect a British citizen who has just arrived from Nigeria to respect the Union Flag when he himself doesn’t respect it?

It is in this way that the various nationalisms in the UK undermine the cohesion that we so desperately need. How can we expect new arrivals to be loyal to our country if those who have been here for centuries have no loyalty, no patriotism and in the end no honour. Whether it is a good idea to have children, or indeed the whole population, recite an oath of allegiance is another matter, but Scottish nationalists could certainly learn a lot from the Ahmadiyya Muslim community.

Brexit would be worth it.

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.