Author: johnredwood

The Better Stay in Europe enthusiasts are working the Ouija boards hard to tell us how famous celebrities now dead would want to vote in our referendum. We on the leave side prefer to concentrate on the living who have votes and voices so their views are easier to hear and more telling on the day.

Rumour has it that recent attempts at BSE séances have had mixed responses. It is perhaps inevitable that Julius Caesar and Napoleon would both favour us staying in the EU, but BSE are a bit shy about revealing that. More worrying for them would be Elizabeth 1’s stubborn support for leave on the basis that she could never herself countenance the Spanish government having some role in the government of England. Nor did they get very far with Pitt the Elder or the Younger who both thought the UK capable of running its own affairs successfully.

It appears that contacting past celebrities has its dangers. For my part I stick to my view that it is a meaningless question to ask. They were great in their day, but they cannot be brought back to life to express an opinion on modern political controversies.

According to supporters of the EU if I pooled my decision making with my neighbours I will be more powerful. Let me show you what nonsense this is.

Let us suppose I joined with 27 of my neighbours to be more powerful. It is true that by combining we would have considerably more income and spending power than I have on my own. If we agreed what we wanted to buy we might qualify for a better discount. The problem is to get the benefit of combined buying I would no longer have a veto on what we bought. I might lose the vote to buy beef for dinner and have to accept the common view of pork. I might want a UK made Honda but have to accept a German made VW to get the benefits of bulk buying.

It would also not be long before the neighbours had a vote on sharing. Anyone with a larger income could be outvoted by those on lower incomes, leading to the few richer neighbours having to pay more in but getting less back. It would be in my interest to earn less than the average to improve my take from the club.

My neighbours might want to extend this to voting. In a low turnout local election 28 votes might matter and would clearly have much more impact than my one vote. To use the power I would have to accept going along with the majority view of 28 and all casting our votes for the same party, even if it was one I did not like.

If a big local planning issue came up 28 people saying the same thing might have more influence than just 1. Again the problem is my view on the plans might be the minority one which got suppressed by the rules of the neighbours club.

Far from being more powerful my neighbours club would soon become a huge nuisance, getting in the way of me spending my money, using my vote and expressing my view as I see fit.

It must be a new low for the stay in campaign when they turn to the dead to support them.

May Margaret Thatcher rest in peace. She was in her political prime 30 years ago, before the treaties of Nice, Amsterdam and Lisbon transformed a relationship based on trade and business into much more of a common government. I was her chief policy adviser in her middle years and would not presume to attribute views to her about current political issues. She never expressed a view as PM without thorough briefing and study of the issue.We do know that she did object very strongly to economic and monetary union before she left office and showed no appetite then for the high degree of integration we now experience under common EU laws, powers and policies.

I find it disappointing that Lord Powell should presume to be able to communicate with the dead and tell us what they are thinking. It’s not the first time pro EU people have tried this, as they often assert Churchill wanted us to be part of the united Europe he talked about when most of his references to that made clear he also wanted the UK to be part of a separate Union of the English Speaking peoples and not part of the United Europe. That of course was why he wrote a History of The English Speaking peoples rather than a history of Europe, as that set of books makes clear.

In recent debates with those who want us to stay in the EU I have been impressed by their pessimism and amazed at their fears. The most recent pro EU MP I heard told us that the Euro was a bad idea and the Schengen common borders was not working, but we needed to stay on the EU boat as it hit the rocks so we could show solidarity with the others and not be isolated. Yes, that was his image! I myself prefer to get off a boat going to the rocks. We then can rescue ourselves and be in a stronger position to help the others if indeed their boat sinks. By his own image the better European approach for the UK to follow would be to get off to be able to help after any disaster.

Others I have witnessed also agree with me that the Euro is not working well, the common frontiers are in disarray, yet still they want the UK to stay shackled to the EU’s tight legal grip. If this is the best they can do, surely many voters will want to head for the exit? Why don’t the stay in people believe in all the main aspects of the EU, which is now based around the Euro and free movement? Germany thinks the UK should in due course join the Euro. Why don’t the stay in people believe that too? After all some of them used to recommend we did join.

The pro EU lobby try to spread the fear we would be on our own if we leave. That is absurd. The UK will still be much courted by many countries in the world, including EU countries, when they want us to help them, when they want to spend our money, to solicit our assistance in some diplomatic or military activity, of persuade us to back some new treaty or international agreement. With our own voice and our own place at the table, instead of the through the EU, we will have more friends and be in a stronger position to influence others.

The pro EU lobby needs to answer exactly how they think the EU would come to our aid if needed if we stay in. They clearly have not come to assist Mr Cameron as he seeks very modest changes to our welfare system, and proper guarantees for our independence outside the Euro. If they cannot even be very helpful under pressure of the UK voting to leave, how can we expect them to be helpful when there is no such pressure?

The EU did not come to our aid when we had a bad banking crash in 2008. We had to pay our own bills to get out of that. They did not come to the UK’s aid when sterling was dropping out of their Exchange Rate Mechanism. They just watched us drop out and did nothing about the damage their economic policy had caused us. No compensation, no additional financial support.

They do not contribute to the UK financially and are unlikely to do so in future. We contribute to them.

Nor do they get behind the UK when we need diplomatic and military support. They did not back us when Argentina invaded the Falklands, claiming that Iberia’s links with Latin America prevented them from helping.

A person or a country can be more lonely in a relationship which is not working, than free of it and capable of making new friends and revisiting old alliances.

I have every confidence that outside the EU the UK will be less lonely than inside. Our relations with France and Germany will improve, as we will no longer be trying to stop or slow down the changes they want in the EU. meanwhile they will need to seek our support for wider global matters where today they can outvote us or take us for granted.

The security of the UK rests primarily on the vigilance, hard work and success of its own people. Outside the EU the UK will be freer and more prosperous, freed of the EU taxes and rules that hold us back.

Our main defence will be strong, based on the UK military and our continuing membership of NATO.

We will be able to avoid being pulled into conflicts and insecurities which the wider EU shares.

The UK’s security has been weakened by EU energy policies designed to increase interdependence in a continent which is short of energy. The EU will have to be careful about its reliance on Russian gas.

The EU’s policy towards Ukraine, fostering a bigger divide between the two parts of the country, gave opportunity to Russia to exploit western weakness and seize Crimea. The UK has been dragged into this conflict whilst the EU has shown no ability to retrieve the damage done. All the UK in the EU can do is to protest loudly about the Russian action.

The EU border policy has failed to police the external border or provide a legal and orderly framework for deciding who can come and who cannot. Whilst the UK is protected from some of this by being outside the Schengen common frontier policy, the free movement of people means that anyone accepted anywhere else in the EU is free to come to the UK whether that meets with our wishes or not.

The free movement of terrorists over EU frontiers as we saw in recent French tragedies is worrying if we stay in.

THOSE WHO WANT US TO STAY WILL TRY TO CLAIM WE ARE MORE SECURE INSIDE

There is not a shred of evidence for this proposal.

They cannot name a single way in which the EU has made us more secure. Far from doing so it has made our borders less secure, and pulled us into dangerous foreign and energy policies.

They say the European Arrest Warrant makes us safer. Outside the EU we would have similar procedures through normal extradition relations. We would continue to share intelligence as we do with some non EU countries like the USA as well.

Influence is the ability of a country to work with others to move world policy in its preferred direction, and to gain advantage from the actions of others.
Power is a country’s ability on its own to do things or to make others do things because it has authority, leads world bodies, has military power, has a large economy with plenty of financial clout and by other means.
Sovereignty means a country has the right to make all its own decisions, limited only by international law and by its own relative power in the world.

An individual can have all three. I am sovereign to make any decision I wish for my life, subject to the law, limited by my obligations to others and limited by my personal resources. I have not pooled my sovereignty with my neighbours, so I do not have to ask their permission to spend money or change job. If we clubbed together to buy things we would have more buying power, but I would have less influence over what we bought than buying my own things with my own money. That is why people do not usually pool their budget with the neighbours nor come to joint decisions about spending.

As an individual I may have influence by speaking, writing, voting, talking and working with people. I do not have power over them, as I cannot make them do things in the way the EU can make a member state do things.

Individuals also have some power. We have power to buy goods and services with our money, power to decide how to spend our time and what causes to assist, power to choose and develop our jobs. We can decide who we wish to invite into our home, and who we would like as guests in our house. The UK has lost this power by joining the free movement area of the EU.

People in favour of staying in the EU deliberately or inadvertently confuse these 3. They say we pool sovereignty to have more power, but there is no evidence we have pooled sovereignty – we have simply given it away. Nor is there any evidence we have more power, as so rarely does the EU back a UK wish. The UK is nearly always in disagreement over the direction of travel, and busily trying to opt out of the main parts of the project.We have just seen how we cannot even decide how much tax money to spend on welfare as our neighbours disagree with our decision.

They say we have more influence inside than out. That is a simple lie. Were we out the UK’s views on big issues would be taken much more seriously within the EU where they wished to work with us. They would no longer be able to vote us down or ignore our voice. If they wanted us on side each negotiation would be one of equals. At one stroke we would restore the UK’s veto over whatever they wanted to do, as we would no longer have to agree or do it if we did not want to.

The UK will have more power outside the EU, as we will regain our seat on many international bodies and be able to speak with its own voice to move world policy.

The membership of the EU is quite unlike NATO. In NATO we retain our veto over joining any joint NATO action. In the EU we are instructed to do things under pain of court cases and fines.

If the UK wants to restore its sovereignty it needs to leave the EU. EU TReaty law and the European court will be able to overrule us all the time we are in.
If the UK wishes to have more power to act we must leave the EU.We do not even gave the power to decide our own taxes or our own spending inside the EU.
If the UK wishes to have more influence in the world we must leave the EU. Inside it we do not even have a seat on many world bodies, so our voice is muffled or silenced.

The EU has not agreed to the UK’s request to cease paying Child Benefit to children of migrants to the UK who do not live in our country. Instead the EU proposes an amendment to Regulation 883/2004 (one of the regulations that prevent us having the welfare system we want). This would give member states an option “with regard to the exportation (sic) of Child Benefit to a member state other than where the worker resides, an option to index such benefits to the standard of living in the member state where the child resides”

This is not clear. Does it mean we would have to pay 80% of our Child Benefit to a country whose living standards were 80% of ours? Does it mean we would have to pay more child benefit than we get to Luxembourg where average earnings are higher than in the UK? Some think it means we could pay the level of Child Benefit received in the host country where the child is living. In that case we would have large savings on Child Benefit in most of the eastern members of the EU, but would be paying more for migrants from Germany or Denmark.

What is clear is we will not be allowed to simply discontinue paying Child Benefit to non UK resident children.

Nor has the EU agreed a simple ban on benefits to newly arrived migrants for the first four years after their arrival. Not only is there the elaborate process of the emergency brake, but also the requirement that over the first four years of any migrants stay we would gradually increase payments to them so that by the four year mark they are already at full benefit levels.

When it comes to protecting the UK from EU controls on the Euro and financial institutions, again there is legal complexity and lack of clarity. The government wanted an assurance that the Uk will continue to regulate and control the City, and keep away from Euro area controls and regulations. Instead the text includes the following important qualification:

“without prejudice to Union mechanisms of macro-prudential oversight for the prevention and mitigation of systemic financial risks in the Union and to the existing powers of the Union institutions to take action that is necessary to respond to threats to financial stability”.

So the main problem remains. What authority will the UK preserve over its important financial sector, and how much will the rules and controls comes from the EU?

The government is busy trying to retrofit the EU car with emergency brakes to stop it being driven in a direction the UK does not wish to go. Why not get out of the vehicle and get into our own, and drive it where we wish?

The government inherited an effective emergency brake fitted to stop us having to enter the Euro, written into the Treaty.

We also have an emergency brake applied to keep us out of Schengen, but the free movement rules work round its effectiveness.

The government originally wanted an emergency brake to limit inward EU migration. This idea seems to have been dropped.

The government is negotiating an emergency brake for benefits to EU migrants. Unfortunately the one on offer is not in our control and could be overturned by later Court judgements or Council decisions.

The government is seeking an emergency brake to stop future requirements needed by the Eurozone from applying to the UK.

The government claimed to have an emergency brake in place to keep us out of all Euro area bail outs, yet we were dragged into the short term loan for Greece last summer.

When a country needs as many special arrangements as this you need to ask if it is in the right institution.

The only emergency brake that works is one in the sole control of the UK and written into the Treaty.

None of these new proposed brakes are to be written into the Treaty, so they can easily be ignored or overridden at a later date.

If the car you are in needs six emergency brakes because the driver is going in the wrong direction for you, maybe it is time to get your own car and drive it yourself.

Well there’s a surprise! In future if a majority of EU Parliaments agree, we can stop an EU proposal we don’t like. How does that differ from being able to stop an EU Commission proposal today if we have enough votes around the Council of Ministers table? Not a lot.

The only thing that works for us is a veto – or exit from the EU. If we can veto a new law then we return power to UK voters and their Parliament. Nothing else works. What matters more is the huge number of laws already agreed and the big obligations placed on us by the current treaties. Our democracy has already been badly damaged by the legal controls placed on us.