To Stay or not to Stay, continued....

by Glenn N. Holliman

The responses to Terry Field's opening paragraphs have been robust but very polite  (unlike many USA controversies, i.e. the current presidential primary contests).  Terry now continues Part 2 of his 'Why the U.K. should remain in the E.U.'  He is laying the base of his argument, and there is more to come after this.  His tour of the last forty years in history is insightful and gives one much on which to ponder.

As he says, pull up a chair, get another cup of coffee and have a read, allowing time for reflection (and a photograph of Steph's olive tree in Adelaide). -GNH

To Stay in the E.U. continued, Part 2.... 
by Terry Field

All this sets the scene for British accession to the then 'Common Market'. (1970s)

The final accession, much manipulated by the two major parties so as to maximally promote and minimally discuss the idea of accession, was done in the context of a country that was entirely convinced that it could not succeed in any other way.

Britain was 'the sick man of Europe; described by Dean Acheson as having 'lost an empire and not yet found a role'.

The Europe that Britain joined was one utterly dominated by the French. Germany was paying in all respects for its actions, and said nothing. It financed all, contributed all, agreed to all, was invisible.

Its pain and discomfort was reflected by its political impotence. The 'EEC' that developed from the 'common market' was composed of western European nations; Germany was split in two and occupied in the east. The Soviet Union was the alternative power to the United States, and attracted the emotional loyalty of much of the European and British left. Much of government policy in all European states, and Britain, reflected this, and accommodated socialist values.

The economies of France and Britain were highly distorted by 'directed' government action. The 'market' was super-controlled, regulated, suppressed. Social equality, massive infrastructure projects,  and politicised engineering decisions were the order of the day.  Plans, ' five year plans', 'town-planning' etc, all accounted for the majority of activity. 

In Britain most manufacture was either nationalised or controlled as to investment and activity, by the state. This was, at an emotional level, both expected and accepted by a population conditioned by the environment of total war from 1914-18 and 1939-45 with economic depression in between.

This was a benign  environment for the European Economic Community to operate within. Common income levels across the market nations ( more or less), acceptance of directing government and an autocratic power in the East to concentrate minds.

This was a period of recovery from violent autocracy and war, with an American superpower to show the pleasures of high levels of personal consumption that all Europeans hungered for.

There were certainties.

Life was less personal, and more 'group' based. There was the protecting hand of the state, the sense of safe passage from birth to death, and the comfortable assurance that the Welfare State would guarantee the life and the rights of the citizen. To be a consumer in a market economy was all but meaningless for British and French people.

Then the Soviet Union collapsed.

Completely unanticipated, the alternative reality in the East was no longer there. In its place, the United States offered safe, unchallenged super-prosperity. The life of the American, experiencing what we were told was the 'American Dream' could be ours. How? By accepting the replacement of the 'directed' economy with the 'market' economy. Free trade. work, personal responsibility, guaranteed success- the True Liberty of Choice.

How far did this new liberty ( at least new for British and Europeans) go?

All the way. On a visit to New York during a particularly unpleasant winter, during the late 1980s, I listened as Americans discussed the liberty of tramps to fail economically and die on the streets of exposure.

Liberty without restrictions. No top; no bottom.

This rewriting of the place of the citizen in the mind of American society was as novel and disconnected from its past as it was in Britain. Or was it? No, not really. 

The 'kid-in-a-candystore' experience of the American as he or she ripped the abundant resources from a capacious continent was bound to produce a more cavalier attitude to group  behaviour.

How did the European societies react to this radically changed landscape?

The British enthusiastically accepted the 'freedoms' the market offered. The restraints that controlled aspiration and governed social relationships between people were cast aside. Old state-controlled industries, now hollowed-out shells, empty of capital were allowed to fail. Petro-currency prosperity both accelerated de-industrialisation and facilitated importation of goods from the East for trivial payments. Winners won big; losers skulked away, said nothing, disappeared.

The sun was out, the beach went on for ever. Joy unconfined.

The late 1980s became a time of consumer pleasure burying the idea of the value of the citizen in Britain. It now mattered much more to be well employed in a major - or profitable minor - corporation - than it did to be a 'citizen'.

The de-industrialisation was so extreme in Britain that the German head of BMW at the time, Herr Bernd Pischetsrieder, commented ' we are observing your deindustrialisation in Britain; you will permit us not to join you?'

This was mirrored in the United States, with similar euphoric results.

The American Dream could now be achieved with no real work requirement at all. Selling was what mattered. Making was for dummies.

Nobody cared that the power of manufacture resided elsewhere; nobody remembered that Chemical Bank got rich from the deposits of the chemical industry. That industry made wealth, made banks, made the future.

Those of us properly trained in economics well understood the future that was unavoidable - the transfer of wealth arising from manufacture in China and elsewhere to western banks to be re-invested in the west at almost no cost by a sophisticated banking system that was used to doing exactly that with the revenues of foreign petroleum-producing states.

What we had not reckoned with was President Clinton - or Gordon Brown.

The 'liberation' of the banking system, at a stroke, allowed the banks to merge high street banking with risk lending, but more importantly massively increase - by a factor of x 40 -  the size of the depositor and lender base, relative to the capital invested.

Thus the banks generated gigantic paper profits, buoyed the economy by free lending against illiquid as well as liquid assets, and filled the treasuries of the Anglo Saxon nations with gigantic receipts that fuelled a consumption binge and the construction of unproductive real estate. 

The banks balance sheets become as large or larger than the economies where they were registered; the guarantors of their liabilities - never really their assets - were the nation states that now played Russian roulette with paper money.

The collapse was inevitable; I say this with the confidence of one who sold every asset just prior to the 2007 crash (yes 2007, NOT 2008, that was merely the market reaction). 

Europe crowed it was an Anglo Saxon problem; they had, after all, had to listen at their dismal 'summits' to the humourless Brown grandstanding that the financialised economy was the way to go, the British success that they should have the courage to copy.

The puffed up leaders of Europe sniffed and sneered. They would be fine; all was controlled there, was it not?

NO. It was not. Their banking system had done precisely what all others had done; the economic illiterates in the chancelleries of Europe just did not know that it had all been done quietly.

The recapitalisation of the Banks in Britain and the United States, and the model of de-corporatisation of 'non-performing loans' by transferring them to national 'balance sheets' propelled debt levels to percentages of GDP not seen since the end of general war, and in some cases, particularly the United States, ever.

The European states did not recapitalise their banks; they operate out of government guarantee of balance sheets, and issued equity has withered on the vine more severely than in either Britain or the USA.

The results of this approach, (in my view a Bernanke-inspired over-reaction to the history of the Great Depression, and a gigantic failure of both analysis and appropriate decision-making) - now means the West will grow at a snail's pace for quite some decades; that interest rates must remain at very low levels for national budgets to be able to be written at all; and the technology driven and market-generated extreme social inequality that this economic management has generated since Clinton is now apparently intractable.

MY SUMMARY OF BRITAIN'S RECENT PAST THAT INFORMS THE PRESENT DEBATE IS NOW COMPLETED. 

You can all breathe now, get a cup of coffee and a biscuit ( or indeed two, preferably chocolate digestives) and relax.

Now, with the 'table set', Terry in his next post writes about why he reluctantly supports the U.K. remaining in the E.U.  Stay tuned.  

Thanks for your comments (articles!) to date.  

From Australia and her Olive Tree....

Dear Glenn

Aaaagh, I’ve now swayed back on to the other side, to David of Normandy. He knows it won’t be easy to break away and go it alone, but to have again control of one’s own borders and the accountability of one’s own politicians, are two key points. He puts it beautifully when he says: We shall not solve everything by leaving the EU for the safety, security and prosperity of our people. By leaving, our debts will remain, but security will be a little easier when we can control our bordersproperly. Prosperity will be up to us taking advantage of new found freedoms to trade and why should we fear reprisals as it is not in the interests of exporters on the continent to cut off their noses to spite their faces. 

The one huge advantage that we shall gain is that our politicians will be fully exposed and their decisions theirs and theirs alone. No longer will they be able to hide behind the unaccountable bureaucrats in Brussels.

I also didn’t know that David Cameron had not received the full concessions the UK needed so desperately if it were to stay in the EU. This is a VITAL point.

From Steph who uncharacteristically teeters on the fence over this ants nest.

From David in the Midlands of England responding to President Obama's pro E.U. Statements....

But it's not interference - it's good advice given by one friend to another!

I would hope that, were New York State to contemplate seceding from the USA, most New Yorkers would be happy to have almost anyone tell them -

"Don't  do it - such a course of action would be madness" - and

"You'd never be able to negotiate a trade-deal with the EU: well, you might, but you'd have to wait at the back of a long queue, because the EU is far more concerned with arranging such deals with big trading blocs like the USA."

From a noted Barrister in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania....

Glenn, some thoughts ---

Dean Acheson got it right.....Britain lost an empire and is still searching for a role.....of course, the English Channel will do that do an island nation. 

Acheson, of course, was referring to the role of Britain in world affairs in the late 1940's after World War II and after India became independent.  That search for a role continued for Britain into the 1950's as Britain withdrew "east of Suez" after the catastrophe with the Franco-British-Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956 and into the 1960's as the "winds of change"  blew across Britain's colonies in Africa. Having spent a semester in London in the fall of 1964, I remember well the arguments leading up to the election in October 1964 concerning the role of Britain in the world, especially the role inside or outside of Europe.  Taking the long view, I think the role of England in western Europe (especially in France and the Low Countries) has been of concern of kings and policy makers in London for over 600 years.  

Might the same analysis be made of France?....the losses at Dien Bien Phu and in Algeria in the 1950's still reverberate across French society.  Having been to Montreal twice, I can testify to the sentiments of many French Canadians (who feel that they lost the ability to have an empire in North America) as they reflect on the outcome of the Battle on the Plains of Abraham in 1759

Might the same analysis be made of Russia?....it lost an empire in 1991 and is still searching for a role.  Certainly the Crimea, the Ukraine and maybe the Baltic states come to mind.

Might a somewhat similar analysis be made of the United States?   Although American did not have a geo-political empire to lose, it has after the disastrous invasion of Iraq (with all its repercussions) lost its willingness to project military and political power in various parts of the world unless its vital national interests are at stake. 

Is Afghanistan or Libya or the Crimea or the Ukraine or Yemen or Somalia or the South China Sea an area involving vital American national interests?  Are any of those areas worth the loss of life and treasure that would be involved if American projected its military power in those areas?  Maybe yes, maybe no.  

I hope that gradually the American public is coming to realize that John Quincy Adams, a great Secretary of State, got it right---American should "not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy." 

Having been since 1991 the world's only super power and having slowly recognized since 2003 the limits of its military power and its ability to project its military power, American is still searching for its role in the world. 

NUF SED on a beautiful Sunday in April     

To Stay or not to Stay, a Vexing Question

by Glenn N. Holliman

To Stay or Not to Stay?

Since posting Part 1 of Terry Field's essay on Brexit, a number of you have commented favorably on my spring garden and Steph's autumn visitors to her paradise in Australia. Thank you!

Our scholar, David, in the Midlands of England, in addition to remarking on the garden, has sent along a nuanced statement (see below). Terry's verbal sparring partner and very good friend, David Lott, a founder of UKIP,  has responded also, again, with thought and reason to this vexing issue. - GNH

From David in the Midlands

Love your garden in Spring.

Forget the history; forget the economics; forget the rational arguments - I, for one shall vote from the heart (or gut, if you prefer), with my mind closed. For all its faults, I believe in Winston Churchill's vision of a United Europe, and although, we probably won't ever get there, in the face of British (or at any rate, English) Nationalism, the European Union is the nearest approach to it.

Go it alone? What next? An independent Northumberland? An independent Cornwall? Don't be silly.

We've heard expressed a great deal of resentment at President Obama's being in favour of Britain remaining in the EU, usually accusing him of hypocrisy, because, 'they' say, he would never dream of America's sharing 'sovereignty' with other nations. This is to miss the point, because a more accurate analogy would be not the USA's joining with other nations, but for one of its states to vote to leave the USA. 

Hawaii often holds a referendum like our current one, but I can't believe that there will ever be a realistic chance of 'Hawexit'. Hawaiians would not be so naive as to believe that they could 'go it alone'. I wish I could be so confident about the outcome of our referendum.

Before our next opinion, enjoy Steph's Australian sunflowers! 

From David in Normandy, France  

Dear Glenn, 

 Many thanks for sending me the ongoing discussion upon the Brexit question. What follows is my view upon the situation which is not really a response to Terry's latest effort other than a reflection upon how he has changed his view in the past.

In the run up to the UK General election last year Terry Field and I did a great deal of sparring over the question of, for whom he would vote. Terry had voted Conservative over recent years and I tried to persuade him that his party was no longer conservative but more a social democratic party. 

His problem was not that he was enthusiastic about any party but the Conservatives were the least bad option and voting for anyone else would let in the socialists. I deployed the argument that none of the mainstream parties would change anything to any great degree to which he agreed as all successive governments do is fiddle at the edge and, always with an eye on the next election not daring to embark on fundamental reform.

At last he agreed that it could only be by voting for a non mainstream party with radical policies, that included leaving the EU, could real change be achieved. He voted for the UK Independence Party in the event. He seems now to have reverted to his original stance.

We are now a couple of weeks into the campaign and the big guns have been out and firing what may turn out to be blanks as many of these guns are foreign made and the British do not take that well. We have Christine Legarde of the IMF giving dire warning that a Brexit will have a profound negative effect upon the economies of the whole world! Perhaps at last little isolationist Britain would be influential again. 

Many commentators opposing our bid for independence do argue that leaving will be a disaster of the greatest magnitude whilst also saying that the EU will exact vengeance upon us, in terms of trade, for having the temerity to reject our membership. In other words it would be their actions that might cause a disaster and not that of the newly independent UK.

Barak Obama has today entered the fray, even travelling to the UK for the maximum impact. He cites how we must remain in order that we use our influence from within but by doing so betrays a naivety that is breathtaking in its ignorance. Did he not see how Mr Cameron toured the EU begging for significant changes only to come back with a few pathetic scraps? 

He cites the US WW1 and WW2 dead as a reason for the UK to remain in the EU in order to ensure peace, prosperity and security within this construct. We have already failed to do that from within the EU. The streets of EU cities are becoming less safe, particularly for women, in the wake of the tide of mass migration as a result of US/NATO/EU interference in the Middle East and the Ukraine, with Macedonia next on the menu. 

While Chancellor Merkel does her own thing but manages to add an EU label to her actions. Italy is now cracking under the strain just as has Greece. Prosperity, Mr President? Just ask the youth of Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy whether they are prosperous? 

No Sir, we cannot influence this undemocratic entity from within so we must instead look after ourselves and put our own citizens first. To do that we must leave the EU.

If we remain in the EU we do not face continuing with the status quo. Things are moving fast. The organisation is frantically gaining new powers to ensure the creation of a single state. Yesterday we heard of Holland and Germany combining their forces into a single entity, the start of an EU army. This is the same Holland that 10 days ago voted in a referendum to prevent the go ahead to allow all Ukrainians free access to the EU! Is anyone listening to the people? The answer in Brussels is an emphatic NO.

Within the Commonwealth and the US our laws are based upon the same precept but with corpus juris we are gradually having the Napoleonic law imposed upon us. We are soon to have EU wide taxes (they already take a proportion of Sales taxes) imposed upon us. Then there is the whole question of Turkey becoming a member with visa free travel for 75 million Turks in two months time.

The EU certainly is not standing still but increasing its powers at an  alarming rate.

We shall not solve everything by leaving the EU for the safety, security and prosperity of our people. By leaving, our debts will remain, but security will be a little easier when we can control our borders properly. Prosperity will be up to us taking advantage of new found freedoms to trade and why should we fear reprisals as it is not in the interests of exporters on the continent to cut off their noses to spite their faces. 

The one huge advantage that we shall gain is that our politicians will be fully exposed and their decisions theirs and theirs alone. No longer will they be able to hide behind the unaccountable bureaucrats in Brussels. They will be directly answerable to us the people who can over time hold the government of the day's nose to the grindstone and if they do not perform will be replaced by a new type of politician. 

Then, just perhaps, we can drive forward into the decades ahead towards a truly prosperous, safe and secure future. 

First though we have to recover our sovereignty and with it our confidence on June 23rd 2016. How appropriate in our Sovereign's 90th year. 

And yes Mr President of the free and sovereign USA that will be our Independence Day.

Cheers

David.     

My thanks to all, and in next posting, will resume Terry's argument that the U.K. must stay in the E.U. 

No doubt our readers are gaining a balanced and reflective view of a major decision facing the United Kingdom

Comments welcome and enjoy flowers from Down Under.

A Comment Received - 

To Stay or Not to Stay (in the E.U.) asks Britain

by Glenn N. Holliman

The comments from the last post continue.  My friend, Nancy, from Ontario, Canada posted a link suggesting if the United Kingdom exits the European Union, Canadians and USA citizens may need visas to visit Europe, an extra hindrance to free movement across the North Atlantic.

Steph in Australia asked for a conversation between David Lott of the United Kingdom Independent Party and Terry, his English neighbor and good friend in Normandy, France, who reluctantly favors continued union.  Steph sent some lovely photographs of birds in her garden, now autumn 'down under'.

 As the forthcoming tome is heavy on economics and history , it seems to me her pictures are an excellent bit of natural delight to begin our text.  Thanks Steph for asking for a dialogue and the beauty shared!

Terry replies in this post with a magnificent 'tour of the horizon' of the United Kingdom and today's global economy.  His tome is so massive that I have broken it into bits, some now and more later, allowing the reader to have one's coffee and intellectual stimulation over several mornings.  Here is Terry's first part of a piece that belongs in the Atlantic, Harpers or in a book that I keep encouraging him to publish. - GNH

MORE ON BREXIT by Terrance Field 

One of the readers of this 'blog' has asked that David and I engage in a conversation about the issue of British exit from Europe. I am a little reticent since I greatly value my friendship with David, and have taken a long time to consider this matter, having recently decided my position given all that I know of the arguments, both publicly stated, and those which I own myself.

I would firstly say that there can be no 'right ' or 'wrong' answer in this matter. All is opinion, highly subjective, and most professed outcomes are both incapable of proof and verification in advance, and are subject to forces not yet experienced or really comprehended.

I have been relatively agnostic on the matter. I am no longer.

My clear position now is that Britain should remain in the European Union. I am not happy about it, but there it is. All alternatives are worse.

I will endeavour to explain why but before I do so I think it very important to 'set the scene' as I see it, and thus I would make related but oblique observations (which require the indulgence of the reader) concerning the condition of the United Kingdom, and its recent history since the commencement of the First World War.

Britain has experienced a 'pivot point' in both fortune and the consequent psychological experience from 1914 onwards that I struggle to find parallels with anywhere in the advanced world.  Up to that point, Britain was a power of matchless excellence.

It was equalled in industry by Germany, and exceeded by the United States, but the experience of global imperial trade, combined with the exchange of civilisations and matchless financial power concentrated a sophistication in a small space not seen since the classical world.

The experience of almost effortless dominion, and the liberality and breadth of imagination that flowed from it was dented but largely intact until 1940.

That date changed everything. For ever.

The direct enemy would utterly destroy the British civilisation; would rip the mind from the culture, as well as sequestrate all assets and replace the British world view with the vigorous and radical German National Socialist world view.

Survival was unlikely; the consequences of collapse well considered, by a fearful but stoical people, and the United States was disinterested in action to protect and engage.

At that point, it was understood that the imperial project, long discussed in British cabinets as being a temporary phenomenon that would have to be replaced with a shared participatory 'commonwealth' (see cabinet papers from as early as the 1830s) and survival completely depended upon the United States.

If it entered the war, we would survive. If not, Britain would be occupied, and utterly ruined.

Churchill's words: 'For without victory there is no survival'.

This reality has been submerged in the mind of the British people by subsequent events, and the unconditional surrender of Germany. But not from the British ruling elites.

The post war period for Britain is, in historical terms, exceptional, in many ways.

First of all, the political dispensation has been one of universal suffrage. The political landscape has adjusted over the decades to better represent the changed power relationships between different elements of society that such a revolution in voting power has brought.

This has had an interesting effect, not experienced in the other large regional powers of the continent, since for them, bloody and truly catastrophic experiences have not allowed long political evolution and continuity.

In Britain, although the patrician classes gave way to a mixture that included the bourgeois and proletarian social groupings (I apologise for a touch of Marxist shorthand but it serves a purpose) they all continued to behave as though they were themselves patrician - as it were, one step removed from the consequences of their governmental actions.

This allowed for divestment of the Imperial mindset over a long period. And with patrician and generous allocation of policy and funding that other, more hard-nosed societies who had reconstructed themselves on the ruthless basis of logical-rational budgetary constraint without surplus resources being available could not consider for themselves.

This translates to incompetence and waste.

Britain thus perceived itself as a morally praiseworthy, large-minded, battered culture and society whose time would come again, albeit without the reach and feel of Empire.

As this continued for the first decades, post-war reconstruction continued apace, modest prosperity spread on an egalitarian basis, and the British civil service applied itself to the 'management of decline'.

Little regard was paid to the Europeans by the British for the first couple of decades. They were busy at home, and the past had to be overcome.

 The first real interest British society showed in matters European happened in the mid to late 1960s. Britain was experiencing a transition from post war reconstruction to steady state economics, and it was doing really quite poorly in making the change.

For a hundred years and more, Britain had been a maritime trading power, with trade routes guaranteed by 'Imperial Preference,' an access control that offered immense maritime and shipping advantage   to British trade. This had resulted in a superfluity of raw materials of all types being traded, processed and redistributed to imperial customers and suppliers.

One result is this luxury was the lack of sophistication in British chemical engineering, and other related skills, that had developed particularly in Germany to supply synthetic raw materials in place of the natural products habitually used by the British. This harsh discipline (amongst others), found in Germany, gave them a great advantage in competition in the post war period; The German nation had found its competitiveness.

In short, Germany, aided by Marshall Plan, and massive surviving industrial capacity, was comprehensively out-competing Britain. France seemed to prosper by the 'dirigist' state.

It showed. The German 'wirtschaftswunder' (economic miracle) delivered a sleek, rich, modern society and environment for Germans to enjoy, that was simply unavailable to the British.

France seemed glamorous.

At the same time, the strife between working people and managers of enterprises in Britain declined to trench warfare, their markets disappearing, their capital leaching away, their opportunities bleaker by the day. The social and economic construct that made for success seemed to have deserted Britain. Nobody knew how to recover the situation.

There were some successes, usually associated with technologies that the 'national consciousness' made an effort to promote. Military aircraft were adventurous in design and performance, even civil airliners were developed, but that sub-economy survived at ruinous cost, and in the end was abandoned as simply unaffordable. Henceforth, military design and manufacture would concentrate on exports; thus glamour projects died a death never to be resuscitated.

All the while, there was the painful experience of the deconstruction of Empire. As this progressed, roughly from the late 1940s to the mid 1960s, a cultural deconstruction of the past proceeded apace. The Imperial past was, in general, vilified and regretted by the Left, the then dominant force. The 'Tory' world view went into sharp decline, and the new world of egalitarian 'liberal' left wing 'progressive' politics become the unchallenged view of what it was to be British.

As a British prime minister, Harold Macmillan, said - 'we are all socialists now'.

The currency value collapsed against all other major currencies, nationalised industries 'packed' labour, soviet-style, personal taxation stood at 83% on earned and 98% on 'unearned' (i.e. investment yielding dividend) income, competitiveness collapsed, productivity fell as massive overtime grew in factories starved of capital and competent management dominated the union - management conversation.

At one point, Henry Ford Jnr visited the British prime minister discussing whether or not Britain could be governed. 

I attended a GM senior managers meeting in the US where there was total mirth and hilarity at the thought of investing in plant in the UK.

Through all this, there was social deference between the major 'classes'. This replicated the life of India with the caste system, and was a sort of emotional camouflage, to hide the real collapse in the condition and prospects for the economy.

In 1976, the IMF began to manage the British budget directly.

All this sets the scene for British accession to the then 'Common Market'....to be continued in the next post.

Comments welcome as always....

The U.K, - To Stay or Leave the European Union?

by Glenn N. Holliman

Here in the United States, we are engaged in our prolong effort to elect the next U.S. President.  Due to the personalities running this cycle, it is all too easy to focus only on the politics of our North American continent.  However, a profound and long lasting decision is about to be made by the voters of the United Kingdom this June that must command our attention.

Will the United Kingdom, long term and very important international partner of the United States, remove itself by referendum from the European Union?  Composed of many nations and over 400,000,000 peoples, this federation, born out of two horrible World Wars, has sought to encourage trade, remove border barriers and establish commonly held law and civil rights.  

Will the United Kingdom, separated by the Channel, proud of its history and troubled by bureaucrats in Brussels dictating regulations, succumb to nationalist pride and detach itself after forty-plus years from the Union?  Our friend in Normany, France, Terry Field, a patriotic Englishman, chimes in with these thoughts.  They are worthy of a quiet read.

"When I was a kid we had a boy's magazine called  'The Eagle'. There, a hero called Dan Dare fought a hellish looking guy with a tiny body and a massive green head that lived in a glass bubble carried by slaves. The head's name was the 'mekon' (g missing for legal reasons!).  And he scared the hell out of us five year olds.

With this fearsome character in mind, I am depressed beyond words about the 'brexit' referendum. It really is on a knife edge now, and I fear that the momentum is with the British Exit brigade. Some English are excited and really strident about it all. Any objection to an 'exit' is 'scaremongering', 'lying' or 'corrupt'. 

Below at an outpost of European Civilization, the Metropolitan Museum in New York City - Terry, Barbara Holliman and Josephine Field.

I have not seen society so ripped apart but that is happening in America as well. The English dreamscape of the 19th century, together with isolationism and hatred of the continent and its social order that goes back centuries in the popular mind is finding vituperative expression.

Here is my prediction if the country exits the European Union.

The economic crisis so long deferred in Britain will strike unremittingly and very hard indeed. The country is de-industrialised to a frightening degree, has the largest 'trade' deficit' in the 'developed' world, is possessed of little that can be profitably exported, whatever the value of the currency, and its only primary generator of wealth - the 'City' and the financial institutions, will rapidly move to other jurisdictions - Frankfurt, Dublin, Paris, Holland.

The old ruling Tory elites dream of recovering their control. An illusion, but they will spill much economic and social blood in the trying.

I confidently expect a sterling value crisis, forced rises in interest rates and/or massive consumption taxes, with gigantic debt thus the all-but inability then to write a budget, and a shock effect on the grossly over inflated local real estate market. Which is probably the principal store of economic value in Britain now.

This is held in check by the perceived geopolitical position of the UK. 'Brexit' will replace that in the centres of global thinking with a perception of a romantically unstable, isolated, small, mean-minded absurdity. There will be vengeance from the Europeans, and there will be failure to partner and trade with the 'Old Commonwealth' as it is called - the 'white' parts of the old empire.

The reduction of the country has been deferred by political and socio-economic postures that the ruling elite understood required to be undertaken. 

The referendum shatters that - the mass of the population, who know nothing, and are chaff to the media, now drive the policy.

I have never seen this. It will, I fear, end in catastrophe.

I have good friends who argue for exit from the E.U.  However, I hear in these arguments echos of the nationalisms that have repeatedly smashed societies across this continent. 

Blood soaked soils; shattered dreams.  

But so much easier to rabble rouse than to slog on with the daily grind of making things less bad than they would otherwise have been. 

Extreme socialist, statist anti-democratic autocracy in Europe has played a powerful part in the generation of this crisis, and the EU is on a knife edge of survival, but collapse of the political construct will condemn Europe to comparative, and probably absolute economic failure.

As Voltaire advised I 'cultivate my garden'. I service the outlying remotely controlled machine guns on the borders of the estate, just in case. (No doubt Homeland Security are tuning in at this point.)

Off to the cabbage patch.

Every good wish

Terry"

COMMENTS

From our Scholar in the English Midlands - 

Apart from my horror at the prospect of our government losing the referendum, and my no longer being a citizen of the EU, my sadness is concerned with the shallow manner of debate on both sides. Their arguments are all of the 'what's in it for us?' sort. Whatever happened to idealism? Whatever became of the great European dream? Alas, on the referendum's ballot paper, there will be only two options: 'in' (with a little less Europe, because of the so-called negotiations carried out to date); 'out' (soi-disant 'Brexit') - there is no option for 'even more Europe', so that us idealists could really express our opinion.

From a retired businessman, who along with his American wife founded a world class county hotel in Devonshire, England -

I have read many of the blog comments.  Having lived in England for almost 45 years, I will definitely vote out, as will most of my close friends here in Devon.  Why?  Britain joined a trading union in the 1970s, and the EU bureaucracy developed what has become an alternative social government.

Your correspondents living in France praise the system there, good healthcare, great food, fast trains.  It can't last with a state mandated 35 hour work week.  French food is great but even 20 years ago small restaurants couldn't find staff willing to work for the wages that the 35 hour week requires for small businesses.  I love the France that I have known for the last 50 years, but it will not be as nice 50 years on.

The Euro cannot last long, maybe beyond my years, but it is not a sustainable currency.

What is democracy, when five states have half the population of the EU but the other 23 can block anything?  Why should Malta or Cyprus have an equal voice to Britain, France or Germany?

It will be complicated for Britain to leave, and the attachment deals with many of these questions.

http://www.eureferendum.com/themarketsolution.pdf

From a Cousin in Alabama interested in World Politics - 

Very informative article. Did not know that a vote was coming up so soon

From a Prominent Member of the Legal Profession in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, comparing the America election to Robert Penn Warren's classic on politics -

Thanks for the observations by your friend Terry.   I could not agree more with him.  I especially liked his last observation that it is "easier to rabble rouse than to slog on with the daily grind of making things less bad."   

Today's NYT Arts section has an article by Dwight Garner entitled "70 years on, its politics as usual: Robert Penn Warren's 'All the King's Men' is a salty, living thing."  Garner quotes the following advice given to Willie Stark by a political advisor after one of Willie's speeches flopped:

        "Just stir 'em up, it doesn't matter how or why, and they'll love you and come back for more.  Pinch 'em in the soft place.  They aren't alive, most of 'em, and haven't been alive for 20 years.  Hell, their wives have lost their teeth and their shape, and likker won't set on their stomachs, and they don't believe in God, so it's up to you to give 'em something to stir 'em up and make 'em feel alive again.  Just for half an hour. That's what they come for.  Tell 'em anything.  But for Sweet Jesus' sake, don't try to improve their minds." 

That quotation is too cynical for me.  Warren certainly was cynical about human nature.  I am not there yet, but any sense of optimism about human nature that I have is slowly disappearing as I get older and as I observe recent events......in North America and in Europe......and, hell, I haven't even mentioned the Middle East.

From a Well-Read, Well-Traveled Architect of Historical Preservation  in Florida -

 I just saw an article today on Gibraltar and what effect an exit from the EU might have on it.     I hope that this will add to the conversation.

http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/04/12/473992348/for-tiny-gibraltar-theres-a-lot-at-stake-in-the-brexit-vote 

From the Author of 'Tom Price', Australia's 1st Labour Premier - 

I’ve only just had time to read Terry’s article. Fascinating, and he has definitely persuaded me that the UK should not leave – not just his argument itself, but I respect him so much from what he’s written in the past. Tomorrow I’ll scan down and read the other arguments.

A United Methodist pastor from Tennessee - 

Particularly drawn to the cynicism of R.P.Warren today ... thanks for sharing ... I plan to do so also ...

From a founder of the United Kingdom Independent Party and a retired Royal Air Force Pilot -

Dear Glenn thanks for the email. Here is my take upon the Brexit debate in response to my friend Terry Field's gloomy assessment, perhaps you might put this out on your blog.

Last week the British Government decided it would spend a total of £16 million of taxpayers money upon the the Remain campaign in the upcoming UK referendum upon the country's membership of the European Union but that the Leave campaign would only receive £7 million. 

The Remainians (sic) quote many organisations such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Royal society charities for the protection of Animals and Birds who urge us not to leave the EU plus many many more NGOs. 

What they all have in common is EU funding which is actually part of the UK taxpayers membership fee to belong to the EU that is recycled and used to buy their loyalty. The BBC, ITV and Channel 4 news also receive EU funding. In Brussels there are 25,000 lobbyists which represent the massive corporations in the world, they are there to influence the lawmaking process which actually makes up 75% of each EU country's law.

Terry Field was right in that, in spite of this, we have the momentum and the passion which may give us victory.

The Remanians campaign is to scare us into submission. 

We in the Leave campaign are much more optimistic for the UK when we become free. Just like you with an independent confident USA, we shall still have god-almighty debts. But we shall not have to obey the 50,000 rules of the EU and the world will be our oyster especially recovering trade with the Angloshere countries with whom within the EU straight jacket we are not allowed to conduct trade negotiations.

We are an Island race and that geographical fact has saved us many time in past crises. Within the EU there is free movement but although we can check passports, we have to allow anyone with an EU passport to enter the country whether they be good, bad or indifferent. The Brussels bombers for instance had EU passports so we could not stop them coming into the UK whether we wished to or not. 

Our infrastructure is collapsing under the weight of numbers. There are queues for schools, doctors, houses and outside accident and emergency hospitals. We advocate a fair immigration system similar to the Australian points system where we select quality rather than quantity and geared to our needs. 

We cannot do this within the EU as it would be against the law to limit EU immigration.

Lastly I will mention the steel crisis in the UK. Right now we face the closure of steel making in Britain due to the dumping of cheap Chinese product. The US introduced an anti dumping tariff upon China of some 150% as your steel industry is of strategic importance to you. Here in Britain we could do no such thing as this is dealt with at EU level and we are forbidden to handle this unilaterally. Nor can we introduce subsidies as this is also forbidden. To add insult to injury our own Government has sent some of our international aid money to the Chinese steel industry!

I do not think that you in the USA would accept such limitations upon your freedom of action. All I have done is scratch the surface of the issues we face but be in no doubt we shall fight our campaign with vigour, determination and goodwill to our European neighbours. And in spite of the unfairness we face we shall win because it simply makes sense to say goodbye.    

Again from Australia, our playwright and author - 

Now I’d like to see some debate between the ‘Remainian’ Terry, and the ‘Brexit’ writer. After reading the latter I am now swaying once again somewhere in the middle.

All I can add, which I admit is distracting to the main debate, is to take one quote from each man and relate it to Oz.

Firstly, Brexit with: Our infrastructure is collapsing under the weight of numbers. There are queues for schools, doctors, houses and outside accident and emergency hospitals. We advocate a fair immigration system similar to the Australian points system where we select quality rather than quantity and geared to our needs.  In Oz we are also plagued by population overwhelming roads, hospitals, prisons, and schools. And while we are not tied to the EU and do have the freedom to select quality over quantity, we seem bludgeoned by the golden-hearted loud minority who reel with horror at the word ‘discriminatory’, a word which I believes deserves respect when used advisedly, and they advocate allowing anyone in need to be welcomed to this country regardless of how they arrived or what their beliefs may be.  

More from Brexit: Lastly I will mention the steel crisis in the UK. Right now we face the closure of steel making in Britain due to the dumping of cheap Chinese product. The US introduced an anti dumping tariff upon China of some 150% as your steel industry is of strategic importance to you. Here in Britain we could do no such thing as this is dealt with at EU level and we are forbidden to handle this unilaterally. Nor can we introduce subsidies as this is also forbidden. To add insult to injury our own Government has sent some of our international aid money to the Chinese steel industry!

And once more I blush to say that while Australia is ‘free’ to restrict the importation of cheap Chinese steel, it has not done so, and major steel industries are closing all over Oz, one here in my State which will put thousands out of work. It seems that short term profits have dulled our vision and our wits, and what with China stepping in to buy up much of our outback land and much of our fertile food bowls, we are heading to become poor tenants of our Chinese landlord. But I really do digress too much from the EU debate, and for this I apologise.

Now for Terry’s quote:  the mass of the population, who know nothing, and are chaff to the media, now drive the policy.

This is happening in Australia too, especially concerning the nuclear debate. In my State of South Australia we have the most geographically stable areas on the planet, and we export yellow cake to other countries, and yet the strident so-called ‘greens’ keep spreading fear and misinformation about the horrors of a nuclear waste ‘dump’ which is on the agenda at the moment.  

This ‘dump’, as the media mischievously insist upon calling it, will be a state-of-the-art storage facility which has proved itself in many countries such as Sweden to be completely secure and green (as opposed to the coal mines which pollute the atmosphere and which have killed more people in the world than any nuclear facility), and which will bring in to our state much needed revenue.

The stifling of the debate swells when it comes to the idea of actually building a nuclear power plant, some of the most persuasive anti-nuclearites being educated Green politicians. These people are consigning us to a world of coal-based energy, of course, because renewables such as wind and solar cannot provide enough base load for these very same strident people who want to travel by plane and car and have lights and heat and cooling. (Oh, and they want X-rays of course)

Once again, my digression is inexcusable. Are there Glenn Penalties for obfuscating his blogsite like I’ve done?

No penalties at all!  Glenn