3 Responses to Choosing irrelevancy – Britain content to relegate itself from political top-flight »»

1. WillG
   Comment by WillG | 2012/07/12 at 10:30:04

   What self-righteous twaddle.

   The problem with your argument is the assumptions you clearly hold but don’t attempt to justify.

   Assumption 1. “The ambition of the eurosceptics [is] for the UK to become like Norway or Switzerland”. The ambition of the Eurosceptics I know is for Britain, as one of world’s largest economies, to grow as a global trading nation, with less of an introverted euro-centric view. The GDP of the Eurozone is now less than that of the Commonwealth. Less than half of our foreign trade is with the EU, and declining, not to mention our 27 year trade deficit with Europe vs our trade surplus with every other continent. It’s a big world out there, we are a big country, we don’t need to – and won’t – become a Norway, living under the shadow of EU whim.

   Assumption 2. Being part of the EU puts Britain on the “political top-flight”. Only from a little-eurolander perspective. What it actually does is remove Britain from direct relevance – we are simply a vote among many, having to kowtow to the wider EU whether it suits our interests or not. The same argument you make would have applied to Ireland a century ago – stay part of Britain or you will lose influence. I doubt they regret their choice.

   Assumption 3. Europe is going somewhere – Britain will be “living in the slipstream”. The analogy of speed here is amusing, given the stultification of the EU. Have a look at the history of China, how the efficient imposition of a single market and all-powerful bureaucracy led to economic stagnation for centuries, taking them from the world’s most powerful nation to an agricultural backwater. The GDP of the EU is shrinking rapidly as a percentage of the world’s. Britain will be happy to trade with the new powers, not rely on scraps from the old.

   Assumption 4. The EU will be stronger with Britain in it. Why? For this be the case Britain would need to want to follow the same trajectory, to more federalism. This would necessitate a federalist Britain too, but of course there is no federalist Britain, there never has been, and for one to come into existence would require dramatic changes in the world of such magnitude that the bases of our entire discussion would be irrelevant.

   I must, finally, object to your use of the term Europe as synonymous with the EU. “The Atlantic to the Urals”. Britain will still be part of Europe long after we have gone our own way from the EU.

2. Sue
   Comment by Sue | 2012/07/12 at 10:33:32

   “It is a novel concept, and one unknown in sport, that playing in the second division is an aspirational limit. Yet that appears to be what is happening to this country”

   Are you actually British? You obviously have no faith in your fellow countrymen. There was life before the EU and once the EU implodes completely, there will be life afterwards.

   “Does M. Hollande care?”

   Why should he? He has nothing to do with this country and it’s people.

   “France and Germany, in particular, have always wanted the UK to be at the top table with them”

   That’s an outright lie. What they actually want is for all the countries in Europe to be in a political union with them at the top table. All they want is our money. They’ve plundered our fishing grounds, wrecked our farming and sugar industry, devastated our businesses with redtape, filled our country with their human jetsom to sponge from our welfare system, taken advantage of our NHS, stolen British taxpayers money with their VAT and green idiocy and generally dismantled our democracy and legal system.

   This whole mess is costing us upwards of £50million a day. If that’s not insanity, I don’t know what is.

   “Of course this country is too strategically important and wealthy for us to become completely irrelevant”

   You better believe it. We will thrive without that ball and chain to hold us back. The world is our oyster for trade and friendship, why be small minded and stick with a bunch of losers called the European Union?

3. david poyser
   Comment by david poyser | 2012/07/12 at 17:29:14

   I have worked in Brussels on and off for about ten years. One of the many euromyths (did you know that the European Commission in London has to employ people who simply look out for misleading nonsense and lies in the UK press and put it on their euromyths web-site?) is that Britain is irrelevant in the EU and ‘they’ (the continentals) push things on to ‘us’. In my experience, nothing could be further from the truth. For most of the time (until we had a government that positively sought the First Division over the Premier League) we have been one of the top two or top three players in Brussels. Look at the language they speak in the EU (English if you weren’t aware)? Look at the nationality of so many Sec Gens of Brussels lobbyists? Once a euro-idea is mooted, where do Brits think that small Scandinavian countries or Eastern Europeans look for a lead for a different view? To the UK of course. As the Financial Times recently pointed out, parts of Cameron’s shopping list that caused his so-called veto in December were actually what the UK wanted anyway.
   Pro-Europeans are not calling for gratuitous regulations – they were here before the EU, and will be here after the EU. No-one is calling for a single European football club, for heavensake. UK pro-Europeans just want what seems to make eminent sense to all the other 26 EU members, and the queue of countries wanting to join. A customs union that continues to make us rich through trading. Negotiating as a bloc of 27 nations in world trade talks. Agreed rules on the environment as there’s no point in one country going it alone to look after the ecology of the planet.
   Let’s stay on the top table and safeguard the interests of the British citizens.

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