The EU referendum campaign is presenting us two competing choices. On the one hand a vision of Britain as part of a steadily-integrating EU (at whatever speed) or a vision of Britain completely outside it.For the Remain side, we are required to anticipate what may happen over the next generation which, if the last 40 years are anything to go by, will mean a gradual growth of EU power into more and more areas of competence - the ratchet towards “a country called Europe”.The vision of Britain outside generally uses a number of arguments employed over a long period: of the need to regain our sovereignty and become a self-governing democracy again; to have the flexibility to deregulate; to spend the UK’s EU contributions on something better inside the UK; to drive forward better trade deals with countries beyond the EU; and to constrain immigration.However let’s take this from a different angle and set out a third vision - a Leave proposition that rejects some of the arguments outlined above. In short, a liberal case for Leave.The rest is at the Adam Smith Institute. The article spells out the very good reasons why leaving the EU is in the UK's best interest.
My own thoughts about the EU are that we have lost so much of our power of self determination since we had the referendum in 1975. Most of us at the time were coerced into thinking that we were just ratifying the common market agreement. We were so wrong. I actually feel ashamed that we have allowed our country's right of self determination to be stealthily taken away from us.
My biggest worry now is that the younger generation accept the current status quo and think that rule by Brussels is the only way to go. What they are never told is that our own elected government has little or no power to prevent nearly seventy percent of laws devised by the european commission be forced upon us. Our parliament is effectively powerless. (In fact I'm not sure why it exists).
The UK was in the past the powerhouse of innovation and daring in the world. Oh how we have fallen. We could be Great again. The younger generation could make it so. Have they the courage that our ancestors had, or will they just allow their great country to just become a minor state in a federal europe?
It's your choice kids.
Christopher Booker, usually in the Sunday Telegraph, and Richard North at EUReferendum.com are also very sound on the real rationale for Brexit.
ReplyDeleteFor it's about controlled immigration, being governed by people we actually elect and being allowed to have our own laws and courts not overruled by Europe
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