European Union

What Conservative Government? – Part 6, EU Referendum Legacy: A Tory Party Hated By Left And Right Alike

Samuel Hooper4 Comments

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By waging such a disingenuous, fear-based campaign for Britain to remain in the European Union, David Cameron and George Osborne are sowing the seeds of their own political destruction

The excellent Archbishop Cranmer blog gives it to David Cameron and George Osborne with both barrels for the grubby, underhanded way in which they have gone about fighting the Remain case in this EU referendum campaign.

The devastating conclusion:

Frankly, both George Osborne and David Cameron have disgraced their offices of state in this referendum campaign, with their lies, hyperbole, disinformation and deceit. Whether or not the UK takes the first step toward leaving the EU on 23rd June; whether or not it becomes our Independence Day or is confirmed as the day we resigned to plod inexorably toward becoming an offshore regional council of a United States of Europe, David Cameron and George Osborne will go down in history as Tory charlatans, cheats and political frauds. They have successfully re-toxified the Conservative brand and made it impossible for many to support a party led by either. You cannot call a referendum on something as crucial as fundamental identity or the determination of national destiny, and then collude with corporates and conspire with other elites to feed the electorate a diet of blight, pestilence and woe. It’s enough to make a man never trust a Tory again.

Amen. And the curious thing is that both Cameron and Osborne seem utterly oblivious to the medium and long term damage they are wreaking on their party. Wanting their side to win the referendum is understandable – both men’s authority and political careers ride on the public voting remain. But the desperate and underhanded means to which they are going to win the referendum – the national propaganda leaflet, the Treasury statistics mysteriously missing an analysis of the Brexit to EFTA/EEA scenario – are storing up serious problems for the future.

In this blog’s opinion, both Cameron and Osborne are overrated as master political and strategic minds. Cameron actually failed to win the 2010 general election, and prevailed in 2015 only against a phenomenally weak Labour leader. Osborne, meanwhile, is much more of a tactician than a strategist, often quick to exploit opportunities to win a particular argument, but with little sense of the knock-on impact on other matters.

This is exactly what is happening now. Cameron and Osborne look at the polls, which generally show a steady lead for Remain, and mistakenly assume that this is the same as approval of themselves. But this is not so. Strip away the vast majority of Labour and non-aligned voters siding with Remain out of fear or ignorance, and over half of the Conservative Party may well oppose the prime minister. Had David Cameron conducted his campaign with a shred of decency or respect for the opposing side, this might not be a problem, and eurosceptic Conservatives might well have kissed and made up after being defeated on 23 June. But the sheer barrage of misleading statistics, analyses and inappropriate interventions from global figures organised by Cameron means that no rapprochement will be possible.

The bitter truth is that far from detoxifying the Conservative Party, David Cameron has retoxified it – to a supercharged degree. The prime minister may not be to blame for the Left’s hysterical reaction to any and every limited attempt at fiscal restraint by this government – with Labour shrieking that attempts to curb growth in public spending amount to a holocaust of the sick and disabled, the Left are to blame for much of the toxicity in our politics today. But Cameron is very much responsible for alienating vast swathes of his own side.

After the referendum is done, there will be a large number of small-c conservative voters who would sooner die than lift a finger to support a Conservative Party led by David Cameron or any of his cabinet allies from the Remain camp. This blog is among them. The Conservative Party is now as toxic among many conservatives as it is among the British Left. How then to fight a general election once the Labour Party finally gets itself organised?

This is David Cameron’s true legacy – a Tory Party hated by the Left despite being so boringly, forgettably centrist as to be indistinguishable from New Labour, and equally hated by many on the Right for having betrayed innumerable conservative principles through a policy of government by appeasement rather than the bold pursuit of conservative goals. Hated by the Left for having risked Britain’s place in the European Union by holding the referendum in the first place, and equally hated by the Right for having shamefully come down on the side of supranational, antidemocratic rule from Brussels.

Dave and George are probably not looking that far ahead right now – they are probably too busy lining up the next NGO head to go public about how apocalyptic Brexit would apparently be. But you could not pay me enough money to change places with either of them when it comes time for the first meeting of the Conservative Parliamentary Party after the referendum.

The anger and vitriol will be immense, and may well consume our arrogant prime minister and his chancellor soon after their moment of ill-begotten triumph.

And who will mourn their loss? If David Cameron and George Osborne are the best that the Conservative Party can offer, we may as well have a Labour government anyway.

 

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‘Tory Brexit’ Hysteria: Leftist Remainers Double Down Against Democracy

Samuel Hooper8 Comments

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“Maybe Brexit one day, but not under a Tory government” – the Left’s stunning disregard for democracy makes a mockery of Jeremy Corbyn’s New Politics

The refrain is already familiar to us: But if we leave the EU, the current Conservative government might do the kind of things that they pledge in their manifestos! The only way to stop the democratically elected Conservative government from actually governing conservatively is to stay in the European Union, where it doesn’t matter which party holds power in Westminster!

One assumes that the Remain campaign have done some focus group testing on this sentiment and found it to be effective, but to many people this will sound like a chilling and cavalier disregard for democracy rather than an expression of the supposed best traditions and instincts of the Left.

And yet leftist Remainers are doubling down on this line of attack, trying to paint Brexit not simply as a matter of whether or not to leave the European Union, but as a purely Tory initiative, no doubt part of the Evil Tory government’s heartless, genocidal campaign against the sick and disabled.

This attempt to sully the Brexiteers’ campaign to reclaim democracy as a purely partisan Conservative Party initiative is summed up in a new phrase being trialled by Labour’s John McDonnell: “Tory Brexit”.

Stephen Bush reports in the New Statesman:

John McDonnell has a new catchphrase: “Tory Brexit”.

It may sound uncomfortably close to the name of a new character in Star Wars but it’s what McDonnell and his team believe is the best route to turn Labour voters out for a Remain vote in the coming referendum.

Shadow ministers and Labour MPs are increasingly worried that Labour voters don’t know what the party’s stance on the referendum is – and even more troublingly, they don’t much care. That much of the media has covered the contest largely through the prism of the Conservative succession has only made matters worse. The government’s message about the dangers of Brexit, too, are calibrated towards the concerns of Tory voters: house prices, security, and the economy.

Tony Benn must be turning in his grave. For Benn was a Labour politician of principle and patriotism, one who realised that the gnawing short-term fear that the opposing party might get to implement some of their own policies when in government is not sufficient reason to neuter Westminster altogether by making it subordinate to supranational EU institutions.

By contrast, the leading lights in today’s Labour Party – including the Corbynites, who in many cases have been so sanctimonious about how the are the sole custodians of political principle, unlike those sellout New Labour types – couldn’t give a damn about democracy. They really couldn’t. And like John McDonnell, they openly boast about a Remain vote being key to thwarting the supposed actions of a democratically elected British government.

Bush continues:

It also has the added bonus of keeping open the idea that Brexit under a leftwing government mightn’t always be the worst thing in the world, which, depending on your perspective, either defangs the minority of Labour politicians who are pro-Brexit, or allows McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn  to keep the party united while not closing the door on supporting a Leave vote at a later date. Either way, it’s canny politics.

Stephen Bush might call it canny politics. Anybody who really cares about democracy would call it appalling, craven political posturing bordering on constitutional vandalism – being willing to “switch sides” on an existential question like Britain’s future in the EU based purely on which party is currently enjoying a five year term in government.

It is also base scaremongering of the worst sort. In the event of a Brexit vote, the Conservative government which enters into secession negotiations with the EU will – regardless of who leads it – be comprised of many Remainers, if not a majority. And in order to get the terms of that renegotiation through Parliament, the deal must also attract a sufficient number of Remainers, including some in the Labour Party for the figures to add up. Immediately this means that all of the most apocalyptic Brexit scenarios being bandied about the media by disingenuous Remainers are out the window. And what remain will be a much more easily negotiated “off the shelf” interim solution which maintains political and economic stability – in other words, exit to EFTA in order to continue access to the EEA, also known as the Norway Option.

The trouble for Remainers is that this form of Brexit is incredibly benign. It ensures Britain’s continued unimpeded access to the Single Market, preserves freedom of movement (with a better “emergency brake” on immigration than is available to Britain as an EU member) and ensures maximum stability in every area, while removing us entirely from the antidemocratic, authoritarian political union of which most Britons want no part.

If this most likely form of Brexit was properly understood by the public (and Vote Leave shoulder the blame for failing to grasp the importance of adopting such a plan upfront), the Remainers’ case would be utterly blown apart. All of their apocalyptic doomsday scenarios would be invalidated, and they would be forced to fall back on their “real” arguments for wanting to remain in the EU – because they do not believe that Britain, the fifth largest economy and second most powerful nation on Earth, can prosper outside of a political union with our neighbours. Or because they genuinely feel more European than British, and are terrified of being torn away from what they have come to see as their true country.

But fighting a campaign purely based on hatred and pessimism about Britain and/or wanting everyone to be European citizens first and foremost would be toxic to many voters, and so is hardly a very solid path to 50%+1 of the vote in the EU referendum. Thus Remain have engaged in a constant campaign of fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) from the beginning, always assuming the most unlikely and traumatic of Brexit modes in their “analysis”, and now by trying to portray supporting Brexit as essentially voting for a turbo-charged Tory government.

These are the lies and evasions of a side which has lost the core argument on democracy and self-determination, which cannot state its real reasons for wanting to stay in the EU for fear of alienating the voters, and which has consequently decided to pummel the electorate into acquiescence by subjecting them to wall-to-wall scaremongering.

The “Tory Brexit” line may gain some traction, particularly among the credulous and those with a particularly flimsy grasp of how democracy is supposed to work. But those who claimed to represent the New Politics, the kinder and more honest way of conducting oneself in public life, will have their halos irrevocably tarnished by their participation in this grubby pro-EU campaign of fear, distortion and deceit.

 

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Vote Remain, Or London Gets It

Samuel Hooper5 Comments

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Fiona Twycross AM is an idiot

The latest piece of silly, hysterical scaremongering to emerge from the positive vision-challenged Remain campaign is the idea that London will somehow wither up and become a ghost town if we leave the European Union.

Normally such idiocy wouldn’t merit a response, but it is now being advanced by some fairly serious people, including elected London Assembly members, such as Fiona Twycross AM, writing in Left Foot Forward:

Londoners are also renowned for their openness, and it’s the welcome that visitors receive that draws so many people in.

It’s that latter point that is so important to consider when we discuss the ramifications of Brexit. If Britain choses to leave the EU next month it would effectively signal that we are pulling up the drawbridge and that London is closed for business.

Not only would this diminish our great city, it would discourage the tourists who contribute so much to our economy.

Yes. Because choosing to no longer be part of an ever-tightening political union of European countries is exactly the same thing as “pulling up the drawbridge” and turning our back on the world.

When we consider the major cities of other countries which foolishly failed to dissolve themselves into political union with their neighbours, naturally they are all complete fortresses, utterly hostile to would-be visitors. The reason that Canberra and Wellington are not top of the list of tourism cities is of course entirely because Australia and New Zealand stubbornly cling to the idea of being separate, independent countries. New York City, Toronto, Chicago and Los Angeles are all ghost towns because the governments of America and Canada failed to get together and realise that the only way to attract tourists is to form a political Union of the Americas.

But Fiona Twycross has expert testimony to back up her assertion, from the mouth of London First Tourism Director Matt Hill who says:

Cutting ourselves off from Europe is not in the interests of the tourism industry.

Any new barriers which add complexity and expense to holidaying or doing business in London will put at risk investment in the capital’s attractions, flagship stores and hospitality venues.

Because in the event of a Brexit vote, the government’s first actions will be to blockade the Channel Tunnel and blow up the runways at all of Britain’s major airports in order to most effectively sever our ties with other countries. Because that’s what Brexiteers want. Sure.

Twycross then has the nerve to say “this is not about scaremongering”. No, of course not, Fiona. You’re not trying to worry anybody. You’re just saying that if we don’t want supranational EU institutions to have primacy over our own parliament and supreme court, the world will end.

She continues:

According to the capital’s promotion agency, London and Partners, in 2014 the capital’s tourism industry saw 17.4 million visitors. Their contribution to London’s economy stood at a huge £11.8 billion.

But perhaps most significantly, of these visitors 11.5 million (66 per cent of all tourists) originated in Europe, which shows just how important continental tourists are to London’s tourist economy.

Brexit could therefore mean a devastating loss of billions of pounds and put at risk thousands of jobs.

But why? Twycross doesn’t explain. Quite why any tourist would give a damn whether Britain remains inside a political union with 27 other countries or acts as an independent country like the United States, Canada or Australia is never explained. It is just disingenuously presented as received wisdom in the hope that nobody will notice how stupid it sounds.

If Remain supporters are going to continue claiming that leaving a political union is the same as “pulling up the drawbridge” and liable to result in billions of lost tourism revenue, then let’s see some figures to back it up. Not cooked up HM Treasury statistics which only look at apocalyptic scenarios while ignoring the most likely Brexit option (a controlled, safe exit to EFTA/EEA membership, retaining free movement of people and single market access), but a genuine, unbiased analysis.

Of course there will be none. Because Fiona Twycross, like too many others on the Remain side, is too scared to admit why she really wants Britain to stay in the European Union (because to do so would be politically toxic). And when the Remain campaign cannot be honest about why they love the EU so much, they instead resort to evasions, distractions and scaremongering to achieve their desired result without ever making the passionate case for Britain surrendering what remains of our independence and allowing ourselves to be fully dissolved into the common European state.

It’s a shame that Fiona Twycross and others in the Remain campaign lack the political courage to tell the truth about why they are so desperate for Britain to remain in the European Union. Not least because all of the fake reasons they are scrambling to come up with make them look really, really stupid.

 

Postscript: But full marks to Twycross for her sneaky, disingenous attempt to portray worrying about London’s status as the world’s top tourism destination as the “patriotic” thing, but worrying about Britain’s independence as a sovereign country as reckless and irresponsible. That takes some nerve.

 

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The Moral And Intellectual Cowardice Of The Pro-EU Left

Samuel Hooper3 Comments

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The modern Left loves the EU because having lost the public argument for socialist policies, they see in Brussels their last and best hope of imposing their left-wing ideology on an unwilling population

Tom Slater has an excellent piece in Spiked, in which he takes to task all of the big name lefties – some of whom previously toyed with supporting Brexit as they watched the EU’s antidemocratic behaviour with growing horror – who are now supporting the Remain campaign, and thus betraying democracy when it truly matters.

Slater writes:

The last few prominent Eurosceptics on the left have started to peel away. They’ve been confronted with a once-in-a-generation opportunity to smash power, to strike out for democracy and to put the future of European politics firmly in the hands of the people, rather than a faceless, byzantine bureaucracy. And they’ve bottled it.

First there’s Yanis Varoufakis, the flash stepdad of European leftism and the former finance minister of ailing Greece. This is a man who has experienced the tyranny of the Brussels set firsthand. His modest proposals for rescuing debt-laden Greece from EU-enforced austerity were ignored. ‘Elections’, he was told by German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble, ‘change nothing’. He quit government in protest as his Syriza comrade Alexis Tsipras signed an agreement that would once again shackle Greece to Troika diktat. What is the self-styled ‘erratic Marxist’ up to now? He’s touring the UK, telling Brits to say ‘Oxi’ to Brexit so that we can ‘reform the EU from within’.

Then there’s Owen Jones, the Corbyn choir boy who has followed the Labour leader’s transformation from Bennite Eurosceptic to apologetic Remainer. Last summer Jones called for the left to campaign for Brexit. After the horrors of Greece, he wrote, it’s time to ‘reclaim the Eurosceptic cause’. Now, just 10 months on, he’s joining Varoufakis on the campaign trail. His flirtation with principle over, he wants to ‘unite with people across the continent to build a democratic, workers’ Europe’. How propping up a democracy-thwarting institution puts you in line with the little guy is beyond me. Not least when said institution has effectively abolished workers’ rights in austerity-battered countries like Greece.

But perhaps the most glaring retreat of them all has come from Paul Mason. The former Channel 4 economics editor and ‘radical social democrat’ actually had the brass to pen an article titled ‘The left-wing case for Brexit (one day)’. One day. Those two, trembly words sum up the sentiment of these fair-weather Eurosceptics. Yes, yes, democracy – one day. Not now. Especially when, as Mason sees it, a Brexit would allow Michael Gove and Boris Johnson to ‘turn Britain into a neoliberal fantasy island’. He’s in favour of democracy, you see, just not when the pesky demos elects a government he doesn’t like. This is hypocrisy dressed up as strategic nous.

Tom Slater is absolutely correct to denounce each and every one of these reversals as a shameful failure of courage. His piece is entitled “The Progressives Afraid Of Change”, and regrettably that is exactly what we see from the supposedly ideologically pure Corbynite Left. Yet after having grown in prominence and power primarily by denouncing the compromises and betrayals of the centre-left, these virtue-signalling true believers are now selling out British democracy in exactly the same way, proving that they are no better than the Blairite New Labour government which they so despise.

This blog has also taken each of the prominent leftists identified by Tom Slater to task for their utter failure of courage and vision. My critiques of Owen Jones are here, here, here and here, Yanis Varoufakis here and Paul Mason here.

Slater continues:

In fact, it’s worse than that. It’s often said that the shift in left-wing attitudes towards the EU over the past few decades has been the result of pure political contingency. When, in the 1970s and 80s, the EU was seen as an avowedly capitalist project, Labourites and trade unionists took arms against it. Now that it’s been given a social-democratic lick of paint, replete with talk of workers’ rights and free movement, it gets the nod. But there’s something even more sickening going on here. These turncoat Remainers, these radicals for the status quo, don’t just bristle at the turn of public opinion, on economics or migration – they’re scared of it. Their Brexit-phobia is really a fear of the demos itself.

You see this in their panic-stricken talk of the furies Brexit might unleash. ‘We don’t know… how the plebeian end of the Leave campaign will react if they lose. My instinct says: badly’, writes Mason. Varoufakis, meanwhile, is even more pessimistic. Only fascists and racists, he says, will profit from the demise of the EU. A Brexit now would mean ‘anti-migrant racism, pandered to by the political establishment for decades’, writes a commentator in the New Statesman. There is constant talk of chaos. Democracy is seen not only as disagreeable, but as dangerous. The left, once intent on stirring the passions of the people, now wants to keep a lid on them at all costs.

This is why you shouldn’t take the left appeals to ‘reforming the EU from within’ seriously. Not only because Cameron’s paltry renegotiation revealed an EU incapable of making even minor concessions. Not only because the only salient proposal Varoufakis’s Democracy In Europe Movement has managed to come up with is livestreaming council meetings. But because the cowardice of the left in the face of Brexit is bred of the very same fear of an unshackled demos that forged the European Union in the first place.

Devastating, and utterly correct. For the European Union itself was deliberately designed to muffle and constraint the voices of national electorates, replacing them with the cool, cerebral and detached government of a supranational European elite, which is exactly what the pro-EU Left now want – a tool to suppress what they see as the “dangerous” authentic voices of the people.

Slater concludes:

The modern left’s detachment from the masses, its sneering distaste for our habits and desires, has fostered a profound fear of change itself. Their paranoia about where unleashed public passions might flow has led them to cling to the status quo for dear life. These are progressives terrified of change – and terrified of us. Faced with the opportunity to demolish an anti-democratic order, they are standing athwart, yelling Stop. History will not be kind to them.

But it is worse than a mere lack of vision and fear of change. Most offensive of all is the grubby desire of the pro-EU left to bypass democracy altogether, to give up on trying to persuade national electorates of the value of left wing policies and simply impose them from the EU’s unaccountable, supranational higher level of government.

As this blog recently put it:

The Left look around and see free markets accepted and delivering prosperity in nearly every country, including those who have sworn eternal opposition to capitalism. And despite the Corbynite takeover of the Labour Party in Britain, there is still no evidence of a groundswell of public longing for 1970s style statist economic policies to be brought out of mothballs. What chance, then, does the Left have to bring more of the economy under state control other than the extreme long shot of seizing control of Europe’s supranational layer of government on the back of the supposed European left-wing popular movement (DiEM25) talked up by Varoufakis and Jones?

As Varoufakis admits, “the retreat to the nation state is never going to benefit the Left”. The Left can only advance their cause by sidestepping nation states altogether, which means taking control of the EU, where national legislatures are bypassed and unpopular and even hated policies can be imposed on the peoples of Europe with very limited opportunity for effective resistance (see Greece). This may seem laughably unrealistic – and it is. But it is the Left’s only remaining hope, and so they cling stubbornly to their delusion even if it means betraying democracy and supporting the EU in its current form (and with its current policies) until the time comes for their popular revolution.

And that, to my mind at least, is the most disappointing thing of all. Even pugnacious, articulate left-wingers like Owen Jones and Paul Mason are unwilling to achieve their desired ends by first winning the public debate and then winning a national election. Their commitment to democracy is so feeble that they would rather see their preferred policies foisted on an unwilling British people from above by the European Union rather than do the hard work of winning support for those policies among the British electorate.

Of course, they don’t explain it this way themselves. Talk to Owen Jones and Paul Mason and you’ll get an earful about their deep concern for workers’ rights or some other emotive issue. But when push comes to shove, they would rather live in a country where their minority opinions were forced on the majority by Brussels than do the hard work of convincing voters of the necessity for left-wing policies.

And the Left are perfectly entitled to that opinion. They are entitled to advocate for Britain to remain in the European Union because they do not trust the British electorate to support what they see as essential policies at the ballot box. They can do all that. But they cannot any longer call themselves supporters of democracy.

 

Postscript: Look at the image at the top of this article, showing a quote by filmmaker Ken Loach, in which he openly boasts that the chief advantage of the European Union is that it thwarts the will of democratically elected national governments. This is the toxic, antidemocratic position which left wing favourites like Owen Jones and Paul Mason have decided to embrace. Shame on them.

 

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Rowan Williams: Thinking Naively, Rigidly And Uncreatively About Europe

Samuel Hooper10 Comments

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Et tu, Archiepiscopus?

Another day brings more disingenuous, pseudo-Christian piffle over at Reimagining Europe, this time from the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams (and his ghost/speechwriter Philip Waters).

Waters/Williams write, in a transcribed lecture humorously entitled “Thinking Creatively About Europe”:

Europe also has its Muslim and Jewish legacies. Christianity, Islam and Judaism are a family quarrel rather than a clash of civilisations. We need to remember that Medieval Catholic theology was crucially informed by influx from the Muslim and Jewish peripheries.

The mix of legacies means that Europe has had a history of at best conversation and at worst confrontation about authority: who should we listen to, who should we obey? In debate over the rights of state and church the insight persists that there are two schemes of reference, the political and the spiritual: they overlap but they are not the same. It is not necessary to go into detail about the differences between Eastern and Western Europe, or between Catholic and Protestant: the  above generalisations hold equally for all of them. To take one example, John Calvin’s ideas on the  relationship between realms of power are more like those of Thomas Aquinas than they are like those of Martin Luther.

One of the problems we face today is the idea of the clash of civilisations, and the suggestion that one of those civilisations is Western democracy. This idea forgets the ineractions throughout history which have created that very Western democracy. Without an understanding of history, the idea of the superiority of Western democracy seems to be self-evident.

‘Over There’ dwell peoples who do not know the self-evident benefits of democracy; and the reason usually given is that they are religious. One of the effects of modernity is strangely enough to drive people to radicalism. ISIS is an example of how the introduction of Western values in the form of confrontation leads to simplification of a heritage, in this case Islamic. There is no place for approaching any modern problems from a standpoint of triumphalism. What we can say is that a series of providential insights have been given within Europe which are to be shared with other parts of the world.

Wait for it…

All this is relevant for a consideration of Britain and Europe. There is no way we can talk about British values which are opposed to European or indeed wider values. My fear is that if Britain steps back from Europe it will be stepping back from its own heritage. In Britain we have not done too badly in sharing with and learning from others. In talking in isolationist terms we run the risk of nailing our colours to a myth.

In other words: religion, religion, religion, religion…political union!, with absolutely no attempt to draw any link of necessity between the two.

Whoever said anything about “step[ping] back from Europe”, as Williams disingenuously attempts to characterise the anti-EU stance? On the contrary, Brexit is an opportunity for Britain to re-engage with a world which has moved on since the post-war days of giant regional blocs facing off against one another, as any thinking Brexiteer will tell you. And yet the former Archbishop of Canterbury seems intent on defeating a straw man argument, that of the stereotypical isolationist little Englander who wants to pull up the drawbridge, cease all cooperation with our neighbours and turn the clock back to 1955.

This says a lot about Rowan Williams, but nothing good. It shows that on this most existential of questions he is fundamentally intellectually uncurious. Rather than seeking to understand why so many of his countrymen want to leave a dysfunctional and failing political union, he retreats into the comfort zone occupied by so many of his brethren in the centre-left, middle class clerisy, in which pro-EU types are enlightened and progressive while eurosceptics are somehow backward and reactionary.

We see it again when Williams claims that “we have not done too badly in sharing with and learning from others”. Well, who in blazes ever suggested otherwise? Our quarrel with the European Union is not that it encourages sharing and learning. Our quarrel is that the EU is a One Size Doesn’t Fit All embryonic supra-national government of Europe, unreplicated in any other corner of the globe, which seeks to gradually usurp the traditional powers and competencies of its member states in order to form an ever-closer union whose ultimate destination can only be a United States of Europe.

I don’t like to speak of a former Archbishop of Canterbury in uncharitable terms, but at this point it is genuinely difficult to tell whether he is being ignorant or deliberately deceptive – whether he genuinely doesn’t understand that the EU is not just about friendship and biscuits and apple pie, or whether he knows full well but is pretending that the EU is just “sharing and learning” in order to hoodwink others.

It is particularly concerning that Rowan Williams – an accomplished man with a fine mind – succumbs to the same woolly misconception as many of his peers. The misconception is not only that the explicitly political, integrationist construct known as the EU is a humble and unambitious organisation set up merely to foster “sharing and learning”, but that sharing, learning and close neighbourly cooperation are somehow impossible outside the auspices of an ever-tightening political union. Never mind that countries outside of Europe cooperate closely on all manner of issues every single day without feeling the need to dissolve themselves into a single political entity – Rowan Williams, like so many of his peers, is absolutely determined to project his false, naive vision of the humble old EU onto an organisation with altogether more far-reaching ambitions.

Yet when it comes to the history and future trajectory of the EU, there is no excuse for ignorance, especially not from one as well-connected to the establishment as a former Archbishop of Canterbury. Assuming he is operating through ignorance rather than malevolence, Rowan Williams has still had every opportunity to learn and comprehend the history of the movement for political union in Europe which has led to the contemporary EU. Magdalene College Oxford, where Williams now serves as Master, probably has quite a decent library. He might consider checking out a few books on the subject if the facts still elude him.

With less than a month to go, it is truly concerning that so many prominent Christian leaders are openly agitating for a Remain vote in the EU referendum when there is yet to be produced a clear, intellectually grounded Christian case for Remain – in other words, anything based on something more than warm leftist feelings and fuzzy ecumenism.

With recent high-profile interventions on austerity and social policy, the church has a record of unapologetic political activism – rather too naive and left-wing for this blog’s taste, but generally coming from a place of good intentions. Even when it has been wrong, the church has been able to plausibly claim to have the best interests of the poor and the voiceless in mind. Not so now, not with the EU question.

By failing to take a stand against remote and unwanted supranational government, the bishops – whether they declare it openly or not – are coming down firmly on the side of Europe’s elites, and not the people. They are complicit in supporting the continued imposition, largely by stealth, of a 1950s model of unaccountable, supranational government leading inexorably to ever-closer political union – a model which has already brought untold economic suffering to southern Europe and a migration crisis across the entire continent, and which promises only further unrest as the decisions taken by unelected European leaders diverge ever more widely from the interests of ordinary people.

The pro-EU bishops are certainly entitled to their position. But it is a very strange choice, coming down so fervently against the side of democracy. And a choice which many of them may struggle to explain in the near future.

 

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