The first line of The Treaty of Rome says that the parties are “determined to establish the foundations of an ever closer union” and politicians have continued in the said determination for decades without asking the people for their consent.
That has always been a risky business in the EU because usually when the people can have their say, they reject EU’s outlandish proposals. Such as when the Irish said ‘no’ to the Treaty of Nice, when the Swedes and the Danes said ‘no’ to the euro, or when French, the Dutch and again the Irish said ‘no’ to the beloved EU Constitution Lisbon Treaty (remember that these two treaties are identical in every regard).
Putting proposals to a referendum is thus a much feared move in Brussels. The Eurocrats prefer to proceed by a series of bureaucratic moves. Virtually all EU states have political system prone to crises in the coalition governments. That is why the press is mainly preoccupied by the local political whodunit and does not pay any close attention to the EU bureaucracy — much to the pleasure of the mandarins in the Berlaymont and much to the dismay of the people. The people will, however, express their views with a rather regular pattern when finally given the chance to do so.
German poet Bertolt Brecht once said: “Would it not be easier | In that case for the government | To dissolve the people | And elect another?” The EU does not have to worry about that. They never take ‘no’ for an answer and proceed regardless. Instead of electing a new people, they proceed sometimes by making concessions to the rebelling member state and some good bullying in the press, by renaming the treaties, by repeating the plebiscite — or any combination of those.
The United Kingdom has never benefitted from this Union. She joined it exactly at a time when the Wirtschaftswunder was over and when her natural allies and trading partners in the Anglosphere began to grow rapidly; Britain is now separated from them by the Common Customs Tariff and by an endless stream of directives regulating everything from how many cows a farmer may have, to the curvature of bananas.
After David Cameron failed to deliver on his ‘cast-iron guarantee’ of an EU referendum, the UK Independence Party has surged in the polls leading them to a gain of 26% of the vote in the last week’s county council election just one year ahead of the EU election in which they hope to win the national vote.
And now Lord Lawson has joined the calls for the British withdrawal. Although a life-long Thatcherite, he left Thatcher’s cabinet because unlike his Prime Minister, he was a strong supporter of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism back in the early 1990s.
Britain pays horrendous sums into an institution over which she has no say, which enacts 84% of her laws, which fails to get its accounts approved year by year, and which blames the financial crisis on the City of London and is currently seeking revenge.
Everybody can now see that the euro has always been destined to failure: unemployment in Spain and Greece is approaching 30%, youth unemployment in Greece sky-rocketed to 65% and the governments proved that they won’t shy away from seizing the people’s money ruthlessly.
It is often said that the UK cannot isolate herself from Europe. But this argument is factually wrong. Even after leaving the political union, Britain will still remain party to the Agreement on the European Economic Area just like Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein. Alternatively, Britain could seek a Swiss-type series of bilateral agreements.
Of course, the withdrawal is strongly opposed by Britain’s and EU’s political class. By leaving the EU with its tens of thousands of bureaucrats in Brussels alone and by joining the EFTA with only about one hundred bureaucrats in total, Britain has nothing to lose and much to gain.
David Cameron now finds himself under a severe pressure by UKIP and by his backbenchers. He can relieve a lot of this pressure by proposing a bill to the parliament that would call for a referendum.
Surely, the case for an independent Britain has never been stronger.