EU Referendum – Page 44 – Semi-Partisan Politics

The Daily Smackdown: Europhiles Cry About The “Brexit Bullies”

November 13, 2015November 13, 2015Samuel HooperLeave a comment

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It is laughable for Britain Stronger in Europe to claim that the Prime Minister and the Confederation of British Industry were “threatened” by two teenage hecklers

The Britain Stronger in Europe campaign group sent this victimhood-wallowing missive to their supporters today:

We always knew UKIP and the Leave campaigns would try and pull the wool over people’s eyes – we didn’t know they’d try and threaten them.

But this week the Head of Vote Leave tweeted: “You think this is nasty you ain’t seen nuthin yet (sic).” Classy, hey?

It’s clear what type of campaign they’re going to run, Samuel – they can’t win the argument so they’re going to try to silence anyone who disagrees with them. We can’t let them win.

Sounds like something serious happened, right? Wrong.

The “threat” that so upset BSE was a couple of young Vote Leave activists who stood up in the middle of a speech the Prime Minister was giving to the CBI and started shouting “CBI, voice of Brussels!” over and over again.

While it’s a documented fact that the CBI grossly misrepresented a survey of their membership to falsely claim that a majority of British firms back staying in the EU, these two first-time hecklers were hardly political heavies sent to intimidate the opposition. In fact, they were pretty poor even by modern dumbed-down heckling standards – the prime minister came off looking simultaneously wittier and more serious by the time the Vote Leave duo were escorted from the hall.

Watch this video of the encounter, and judge for yourself who comes across as calmer and more intelligent:

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Hilariously, BSE are now parading the incident to their supporters as evidence of some dastardly eurosceptic plot to threaten all those sweet, innocent europhiles.

And now failed Labour leadership candidate Chuka Umunna is getting in on the act too, writing in the Telegraph:

Rather than seeking to promote debate, however, the leave campaigns are now desperately trying to shut it down and muzzle those who take a different view. They are behaving like gangsters, trying to close down the debate with behaviour that has no place in public life.

In their repeated attacks on the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), trying to force the organisation’s hand and sit out of this debate, Vote Leave’s is making a concerted attempt to stifle the views of some of the country’s largest businesses. Protests outside the CBI conference, disrupting speeches, aggressive letters – these bully boy tactics are a sign they are losing the argument rather than embracing it.

Well excuse me, but I can’t find a violin small enough to play in mournful solidarity with the mighty CBI, let alone the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom – who has the bully pulpit of his high office and the entire machinery of government with which to campaign against Brexit. It is frankly ludicrous to suggest that eurosceptics possess the official, financial or physical muscle to drown out the europhile message in the way that BSE pretend.

But what we lack in a bully pulpit, we eurosceptics more than compensate for by the simple virtue of being right. Right on the facts, and on the right side of history, too.

The pro-EU campaigns will inevitably get away with a lot of lies and distortions during this referendum campaign, simply because it will not be possible for us Brexiteers to refute each and every single one of them. But one thing that BSE and other europhile campaigns absolutely must not be allowed to get away with is successfully portraying themselves as the plucky underdog, fighting an uphill struggle against the mighty forces of euroscepticism.

I don’t think that there is currently a great chance of that happening, but we should take care to slap down any attempts to portray the pro-EU juggernaut as some kind of rough-and-ready insurgency. Nothing could be further from the truth.

But I do hope that someone remembers Chuka Umunna’s impassioned defence of the CBI – and how he came out swinging in support of downtrodden multinational corporations in their battle to be heard over the little guy – the next time he runs for the Labour leadership.

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The Daily Toast: To Win, Eurosceptics Must Show That The EU Is Outdated

November 12, 2015November 12, 2015Samuel Hooper1 Comment

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Another new initiative for Semi-Partisan Politics – counterpart to The Daily Smackdown (same basic idea, but reversed). Will focus on a different praiseworthy or perspective-changing article, argument or action each day

Allister Heath has a good piece in the Telegraph, where he observes that the europhiles may end up wrong-footing themselves in the coming referendum by buying into the lazy, two-dimensional caricature of eurosceptics as ornery traditionalists who are stuck in the past and afraid of the future.

Heath rightly points out that the europhiles dismiss or underestimate we Brexiteers at their peril, writing “it is always a fatal error to assume that your political opponents are evil or stupid”. I certainly hope that this rule holds true just as it did for Ed Miliband’s vacuous, virtue-signalling Labour Party at the general election.

The hopes of many a lefty were extinguished on May 7 when it emerged that the left-wing echo chamber on Twitter was in fact not representative of the country, and that people other than psychopaths and billionaires actually voted Tory in good conscience. So by all means, let them assume once again that anyone who doubts the inherent virtue of the European Union must be a grumpy retired colonel, a Mafeking stereotype from a run-down coastal town.

Heath writes, in praise of campaign group Vote Leave:

Vote Leave’s core argument is that the EU’s institutions remain stuck in the post-1945 era: an industrial and agricultural world dominated by a few rich nations and overshadowed by the Cold War. In those days, bureaucratic centralism was the fashionable answer; 60 years on, the EU’s creaking, lumbering structures cannot cope with change involving genetic engineering, cybercrime, driverless cars and digital manufacturing.

They are just as debilitated when it comes to addressing contemporary geopolitical risks, including the crisis in the Middle East, the rise of terrorist organisations such as Isil, or even negotiating bilateral trade deals with emerging economies. It is Europe that now has a protectionist mindset, pretending that its borders stop at the Mediterranean while looking on uselessly as Syria is engulfed in a humanitarian catastrophe.

Rather than advocating a retreat into splendid isolation – which is what pro-EU activists wrongly assume Eurosceptics believe – Vote Leave will be calling for increased and improved international cooperation to deal properly with the forces that are changing the world. This, it will argue persuasively, requires different institutions to those that exist today: structures that can tackle problems quickly and that allow decentralised cooperation between nations.

I have my grave doubts about Vote Leave, for reasons well summarised over at the blog Vote to Leave the EU. There are serious doubts as to whether Brexit is the true goal of that group’s leadership, or if they are simply agitating for an initial “no” vote to then strengthen Britain’s hand for a future, “serious” renegotiation with the aim of securing a slightly sweeter deal. But Heath’s broader point is a very good one.

What threadbare arguments could have been made for the European Union back in the 1950s when the world was indeed divided into distinct and competing supranational blocs have lost all of their potency in the twenty-first century multi-polar word. For too long, europhiles have been allowed to portray themselves as forward-looking and progressive. And some really do believe it to be true. But it is increasingly hard to believe that Britain’s national interest is best served when represented through the collective voice of twenty-seven other distinct countries, each with their own unique circumstances and agendas.

Heath continues:

The future will belong to shifting networks of nations, not to monolithic empires. Voters will have to be empowered and kept involved, rather than bypassed through undemocratic transnational democracies. The Inners, who for decades have claimed to represent modernity, are about to be wrong-footed by a campaign and arguments that they will find very difficult to respond to.

It is absolutely essential that this is the case, if we are to achieve the goal of Brexit. This cannot be a campaign focused on some chimerical, glorious past, and if it becomes such a campaign we will be ripped to shreds and lose our last, best hope of regaining national sovereignty.

That means we must focus on all of the things that Allister Heath talks about in his article – how an independent Britain will be free to pursue advantageous commercial and diplomatic deals in our own interest rather than holding one 28th of a say over the common European position, how Britain’s membership fee can be repurposed and reallocated to focus on our own priorities and incentives, and more. But that’s all long term.

We also need an immediate plan mapping out what British secession from the European Union actually looks like. It is imperative that the “Leave” campaign pushes such a plan, otherwise voters will (rightly) conclude that a vote to leave the EU is a leap into the unknown, and choose the stultifying status quo as the safer option.

At present, you would be forgiven for thinking that there is no such plan. Neither of the two main campaign groups spend any time talking about what Brexit might actually look like. Vote Leave certainly don’t mention one (quite probably because Brexit is not their end goal), while Leave.EU are more focussed on attacking the EU than promoting a positive vision of post-EU Britain.

But such a plan does exist. It’s called Flexcit, and if I keep banging on about it on this blog in the coming weeks and months it is only because I have come to realise that the referendum cannot be won without a clear and unambiguous plan for Brexit, and it is high time some of the “heavyweight” eurosceptics publicly adopted this plan or ventured one of their own.

Flexcit is a serious, pragmatic plan which outlines a step-by-step process for leaving the EU and rejoining the world. It doesn’t make undeliverable promises of free chocolate and rainbows for everyone, but it is comprehensive and rigorous, and does what it says on the tin. As I have already said, every serious eurosceptic and Brexit campaigner should read it and give it fair consideration.

Only then, with the referendum won and Britain taking her first steps in the world as a truly independent and sovereign nation once again, can we do as Allister Heath says and show the vanquished europhiles just how forward-looking and ambitious we Brexiteers are for our country.

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The Daily Smackdown: David Cameron’s Begging Letter To The EU

November 11, 2015November 11, 2015Samuel Hooper3 Comments

The problem with the European Union cannot be solved through a renegotiation, because the renegotiation is just another symptom of the problem

If you hadn’t already worked out that David Cameron’s EU renegotiation is a sham, a PR exercise from a PR prime minister designed to make it look as though Britain is leading real change in Europe when in fact we are merely haggling over a few cosmetic and inconsequential concessions, then your remaining doubts should now be answered.

Yesterday, the government released the wheedling, subservient letter that David Cameron has written to Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, begging his permission to reclaim a few minor and superficial aspects of British sovereignty. The fact that half of the prime minister’s demands – such as the call for the European Union to respect the principle of subsidiarity – are things which the EU has long been committed to doing on paper, but shown zero interest in following in practice – gives zero hope that whatever Cameron takes home from Brussels will be honoured.

But Britain’s fundamental problem with the European Union cannot be solved through a renegotiation, because the renegotiation itself is just another symptom of the problem. For as long as any British prime minister must flatter and beg countries like Portugal or Malta and seek their permission before acting in our own national interest, we have no true sovereignty and the European Union will remain an unwanted, antidemocratic millstone around our necks.

No possible outcome of David Cameron’s EU renegotiation will come close to touching this fundamental issue, because the EU is determined to remain a supranational political union, sitting above national governments and gradually acquiring more and more of their power. That’s just a fact, and those europhiles still in denial need to stop deluding themselves that an organisation with its own parliament, executive and judiciary is somehow just there to promote love and understanding between the peoples of Europe, with no designs on our democracy. Such a view is childishly naive.

Even if Cameron’s plea for Britain to be somehow exempted from the Treaty of Rome commitment to ever-closer union is heard, this will simply relegate us to a form of “associate membership” which would leave us – as Leave HQ put it so succinctly – “out on the edges and still on the leash”.

And so we are left with a cosmetic list of demands based not on any attempt to reflect the concerns of the British people, but based instead on what limited concessions David Cameron thinks he might be able to cajole from his European friends. He is essentially starting at his desired outcome (Britain voting to “remain” in the EU) and then working backward, rather than starting with Britain’s national interest at the forefront of his mind, and then letting the chips fall where they may when it comes to the renegotiation.

The whole exercise is a sham, and I refuse to be a part of it. I will not report the ups and downs of the coming “renegotiation” effort, with the inevitable carefully choreographed table-banging rows between Britain and France or the back-and-forth with Poland on migrant benefits access, because the whole thing is a PR exercise designed to make it look like our Conservative In Name Only government are looking out for our national interest when in reality they are only looking for a way out of an unwanted political problem.

Or as my Conservatives for Liberty colleague Ben Kelly puts it in his must-read piece:

There are no negotiations because the outcome of this act of political theatre has been decided for some time, the great deception is already in play. Osborne and Cameron will go through the ridiculous charade of demanding “associate membership” and their EU colleagues will play along and agree to their “demands”.

They will then return declaring a great victory for Britain and ask the public to endorse it in the referendum and give them a mandate to create our “new deal” in a “reformed EU”, which may very well include promises of minor concessions of reduced contributions and some leeway on the “four demands”.

On the surface, this two tier structure will seem enticing, in reality not only will we retain all the major disadvantages we currently suffer – from our trade policy being an ‘exclusive policy of the EU’, to the union’s redundancy in a globalised world, to its essentially anti-democratic nature – but once the eurozone integrates further we will be truly isolated within the union as a second class member.

What matters most now is not whatever choreographed stunt George Osborne or David Cameron cook up every day to make it look like they are going to battle for Britain. What matters most is honing our arguments in favour of Brexit to reach out to the undecided middle. And this means coalescing around a viable plan for a phased British exit from the EU, one which reassures wavering voters that stepping away from the EU is a prudent move, and not a leap into the unknown.

That plan is called Flexcit – I have seen no others that come close to Flexcit’s level of detail and rigour. All eurosceptics, Brexiteers and “Leave” campaigners now have a duty to read it, improve it where possible and then either champion it or propose a better plan of their own.

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The “Remain” Campaign: Wrong On Economics, Cavalier With Democracy

November 2, 2015November 3, 2015Samuel Hooper3 Comments

The pro-EU lobby is wrong on the economic argument. But their lack of concern for democracy is far worse

Over the past week, a lot of scaremongering warnings and cautionary tales have been flung around by the “Remain” campaign, talking down Britain and painting the risible picture of the UK as a small, insignificant country that would be overwhelmed and destroyed if we tried to follow the examples of Norway, Switzerland, Singapore or any other country (all less powerful and consequential than ourselves) and re-engage with the world as an independent power.

We have seen the Prime Minister travel to Iceland and lie about the Norwegian option, misrepresenting facts and figures to make it seem as though Norway has to pay almost as much per capita for access to the Single Market as Britain, while having no influence over the rules. Both of these claims, of course, are false. Much of Norway’s contribution is voluntary and goes directly to the recent accession countries in eastern Europe, and are in no way a prerequisite for trading with the EU. And Norway has far more of a say over global rules because unlike EU member states, they retain their own, voting seat at the World Trade Organisation and other key global standard-setting forums.

We have seen Michael Froman, the US trade representative, seek to bully the British electorate with equally laughable claims that the United States would not be interested in pursuing a free trade deal with its strongest and closest ally in the event of Brexit. Again, this is pure nonsense – the US may prefer negotiating trade deals with large blocs, but so crucial is UK-US trade to both parties that a free trade agreement could be hammered out in minutes, were it absolutely necessary. Besides which, we need to learn to distinguish between what the US would like us to do and what is actually best for Britain.

And we have seen the CBI continue to misrepresent British business in general and its own membership, claiming that majority want the UK to stay in the EU based on highly selective and manipulative sampling methods.

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It Is Not Britain’s Job To Save The EU From Its Own Worst Instincts

October 29, 2015October 30, 2015Samuel Hooper4 Comments

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They’ve bribed us with cheap international calls, and threatened us with bogus figures about fictitious job losses. Now, the “Remain” campaigners want us to vote to stay in the EU to save Brussels from itself

What to do when the two best weapons at your disposal – bribery and coercion – are not achieving the desired effect?

Well, if you are the “Remain” campaign and you are desperately trying to come up with plausible new arguments to convince the British people to stay shackled to a failed, anti-democratic political union, then it is eventually going to come down to begging, pure and simple.

Cue Mark Field’s latest piece in CapX, which is dedicated not to any of the things that the European Union can offer Britain, but rather to all the reasons why the EU needs Britain to stick around – namely, to save the Brussels machine from its own worst instincts.

Field recounts conversations with some Swedish legislators, who are apparently “terrified” at the prospect of Brexit:

It took some Swedish counterparts to remind me recently just how crucial Britain’s role in the EU is to fellow members who believe in the Anglo-Saxon values of free trade and competition, and share our desire to resist “ever closer union”. The notion of Brexit is terrifying to Northern European allies who look to the UK as an essential bridge between the EU and the English-speaking world, a critical counterweight to the Franco-German axis and the asker of awkward but essential questions over reform. They see an EU which Britain has been instrumental in shaping, citing the expansion eastwards into pro-western countries like Poland, the promotion of the single market, open competition for goods and services, new trade deals and English as the dominant language.

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