By Glenn N. Holliman

Our regular writer, Terry Field of Normandy, France, passed along this article from the 'Financial Times' of London. Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom is betting his government on a June 23 referendum asking the populous if the U.K. wishes to remain in the European Union.  The vote, pro or con, will have profound ramifications for the future of Europe and the United Kingdom.  For example, many Scottish Nationalists have advocated removing Scotland from the U.K. if the U.K. leaves the E.U.  And this is just for starters!  There are always issues such as trade, police cooperation, terrorism, immigration and that tricky concept called the balance of power between Germany and France (think World Wars I and II).

Terry passed this article to his friend also living in Normandy, France, another Englishman, David Lott, one of the founders of the United Kingdom Independent Party. UKIP favors withdrawal from the E.U.  For our American readers, David's dislike of intrusive government reflects the USA's current political acrimonious debate.  - GNH


UK’s EU referendum

News, comment and analysis on the referendum to decide whether Britain will leave the EU

By Phillip Stevens of the Financial Times, February 21, 2016

David Cameron has his deal. Now it is best forgotten. The prime minister says six months of intense negotiation with Britain’s European partners delivered a triumph; the Outs say nothing much has changed. The argument is immaterial. A decision on Britain’s place in the world cannot turn on whether in-work benefits should be paid to Polish plumbers.

The referendum campaign will pit internationalism against nationalism, the political establishment against insurgent populism and the world as it is against nostalgia for a bygone age. Mr Cameron’s essential pitch is that Britain is stronger, safer and more prosperous within the EU.

His antagonists imagine plucky Britain throwing up the barricades against its neighbours and setting its own terms for its relationship with the world.

On the face of it, this is a debate that should be easily won by the pro-Europeans. Some 23 of his 29 cabinet ministers have lined up with the prime minister. So has most of the Labour party, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens. Trade unionists will stand alongside business leaders in arguing that jobs and living standards depend on Britain’s access to the single market. They are right.

The Outs call this “project fear”. It is nothing of the sort. There is nothing discreditable about pointing out that economic interdependence is one of the facts of modern life or that the other 27 EU states are unlikely to shower gifts on a departing Britain.

The Brexit camp is similarly weak on the matter of national security. A measure of the threats and risks facing Britain and the response demands close international co-operation. Membership of Nato is not enough. Britain controls its border at Calais only with the help of the French. The fight against terrorism depends on the European Arrest Warrant. Standing up to Vladimir Putin’s Russia demands EU-wide sanctions. It is no accident that Britain’s closest allies, the US foremost among them, have added their voices to the in campaign. 

The Outs struggle to paint a picture of life outside the EU. The loudest, nativist wing of the leave movement sees opposition to immigration as the answer. Nigel Farage, the leader of the United Kingdom Independence party, promises that Britain will slam the door against “the 500m people” now entitled to come to Britain. Putting aside the eccentric notion that the Germans, Italians, French and Spanish all want to come to Britain, Mr Farage has no answer to the reality that free trade and free movement of people are inextricably linked. 

The divisions run deeper. The smaller, mainly Conservative Vote Leave grouping simply refuses to discuss any of the alternatives to EU membership. To do so would expose the deep divisions between those who want to retain access to the single market and those seeking a total break — some imagine Britain as Norway, others see Singapore as the model. None can say with any certainty on what terms it would trade with its main economic partners.

The glib response to all this is that the pro-Europeans are assured of a comfortable victory. Even if Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, adds a touch of colour and magnetism to the “out” campaign, the British people, being British, will choose the status quo over a leap into the dark; uncomfortable Europe over unknown risks. 

If the normal rules of politics applied this would be true. They do not. The story of modern democracies is one of an insurgency against the elites — of a Republican party in the US flirting with Donald Trump, of the rise of Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France and a Labour party in Britain that has chosen the hard-left Jeremy Corbyn as its leader. The backing of the establishment may turn out as much a weakness as a strength for pro Europeans.

The Out campaign will rely on more than the national exceptionalism that has long seen Britain a semi-detached member of the EU. It will tap into a broader backlash against globalisation, exploit public fears about immigration, will rail against bankers and corporate “fat cats” and offer voters a chance to punish Mr Cameron for his government’s austerity programme. It will appeal to emotion over logic. A referendum about Europe, the Ins can win comfortably; not so one that turns on what voters feel about the state of the world. - philip.stephens@ft.com

David Lott responds:  

I find the article superficial and rather Establishment.

Before we consider the referendum it is worth looking at the stability, prosperity and solidarity of the EU as a whole. Let us ask the question, "would we join the EU as it is today if we had never joined in the first place?" because if we vote to remain that is in reality what is on offer.  

Two English friends, deep thinkers in their generation.  David, right, flew for the Royal Air Force, as did his father in the Battle of Britain.  Terry, left, articulate writer, prone to the long view of the human condition, now retired businessman.  Terry and David have shared many glasses of vino and calvodos, going back and forth on European and British politics, often disagreeing, always friends.

The EU is in a mess. Growth is stagnant, the Euro unmanageable without ever closer union but ever closer union is not only at odds with the British view but also those countries bitterly opposed to the Merkel invitation to the millions of migrants and refugees without consulting her EU colleagues. Sanctions against Russia after the Ukraine fiasco also divide EU countries as some oppose this and the weight of sanctions against the EU weighs unfairly upon certain individual countries. Terrorism is rife and violent rape stalks the continent. Not a pretty picture and just ask a Greek what he or she thinks of it. I am sure joining the EU today would be a non starter.

In response to the article I agree in a sense that it is the Establishment against the People (and by that I do not agree that this can be equated with the word populism). More deeply I feel that it is reality versus wishful thinking.

Politicians have become so remote from the lives of us ordinary folk that their remedies to problems just create more problems. How can a politician, an unelected one at that, in Brussels possibly understand what a terrible impact that the decision to allow the Chinese to dump cheap steel on the EU market has on steelworkers in Sheffield and Wales? To which is added the over the top carbon taxes piled on this industry by a different group of bureaucrats/politicians who simply do not seem to communicate with one another. The steelworker turns to his government in the UK for help but there is nothing his government can do as the laws are made in Brussels and cannot be rescinded even on a temporary basis by the helpless government in London. 

This is but one example of so many. We get some 30,000 rules, regulations and Directive a year from the EU that impinge upon our lives. Our media censors much of this information as our government dare not reveal how much authority they have given away.

So the referendum will be fought on what is relevant today in the village towns and cities of the UK. The campaign is a grass roots construct so the campaigners are in touch down to street level. We understand the fears and hopes better than those in the Remain campaign, in other words we live in a real world, not some PR dominated fictional dream. So the detail of the campaign will reflect ordinary peoples fears and hopes and by doing so we hope to shatter the Establishment and provide the opportunity to rebuild a free and independent nation at ease with the world and the role it can play in proportion to its size and importance.

The restoration of our freedom to conduct our own affairs is all we ask.

The final point I shall make concerns the rise of Germany and the tensions it is creating. Mrs. Merkel has presided over the ruination of Greece, the mass immigration flooding into all EU countries some of whom are genuine refugees but the majority, and they are the trouble makers, are single male economic migrants of whom some carry the Islamic torch. The low value of the Euro has allowed Germany to undermine manufacturing throughout EU  but in the southern states in particular, and it then fills the space with its own production. All this happened whilst Britain has been an EU member and we have been helpless to stop it. I do not know if we could restrain Germany if outside the EU but we certainly could not do worse than we have to date.

All the best

Comments anyone?!

From a science professor in the Midlands of England, just back from the Antarctica....

I'm a passionate European and don't give a fig for "National Sovereignty", whatever that could mean in our one-party state. However, it was fairly easy to apply such idealism to a relatively manageable EU of a few nations (France, Germany, Italy etc) which had some sort of parity. Now that the EU has become an huge unwieldy diverse mix of nations solvent and less so, liberal and less so, economically viable and less so, I think the ideal of a united Europe is an impossible dream. I genuinely do not know how to vote in the upcoming referendum. Is it not sad that it's going to be decided on a selfish, pragmatic, "what's in it for us?" campaign?

(I'd rather be in Antarctica again, when the realities of life were far away!)

D

From a cousin in Alabama....

Another cup? Glenn, after reading this, my coffee pot is empty! 

Mike