To The Independent
In the run-up to a referendum on British membership of the EU who will tell the truth about the EU – and will anyone listen if they do?
As a result of lies and half-truths fed to them over decades, huge numbers of the public believe that British ministers have no say in what “Brussels” decides, that the Commission is an over-inflated bureaucracy staffed by incompetent and lazy time-servers, and that the chief aim is to remove the sovereignty of member states and make them all identical. They think that health and safety rules all come from “Europe” and that the EU is responsible for policing human rights.
They know nothing about the Commission’s work on reducing and simplifying legislation. They have no clue that harmonisation is designed to facilitate global trade and that, in many cases, the US and China voluntarily adopt European norms for this reason. They also do not know that countries like Norway and Switzerland, which are not members, still have to comply with most EU legislation in order to trade with the Union.
Dave Skinner, Tervuren, Belgium
There are a number of reasons for supporting, and staying in, the EU if you are British, and Mr. Skinner has mentioned just a few of the useful jobs done by the EU. But from an Epicurean point of view maybe the most important reason is peace. Since time immemorial Europe has been almost continually at war with itself, until in the 20th Century, a toxic mixture of nationalism and sophisticated killing technology gave us two devastating wars. Never again. Please!
British entry into the EU in 1975 was driven by the negative feeling of economic failure: the three-day week, the oil crisis, a 25% inflation rate and growing unemployment. We got off to a bad start and have never developed a positive feeling towards the EU as a result.
Two big issues loom for the EU as a result of Russian disruption: security and defense, both areas where the British presence at the table is crucial. But the EU is actually working. It could work better and no doubt will do so over time. The British know how to operate the system, how to bargain and to protect their most important interests.
But there is a perception that the EU is now too big, unwieldy and intrusive; that it is not democratic and descends to ridiculous detail in its regulations and details. Some of this is the inertia caused by the accession of so many new countries. Many want to see the EU return to being less a super-state and more the liberal free trade area. Others want to leave with no Plan B. Mostly, they are working class people who lost their jobs owing to globalization – no way the fault of the EU.
Opposition to the EU is negative, ill thought-out and concentrates on the superficialities of EU symbols and regulation. Regrettably, U.S political interests, most notably (but by no means exclusively) the Murdoch media, have campaigned effectively for a backward-looking anti-EU policy which splits the Union and keeps it divided, all in the interests of American hegemony. Hoist with our own petard, the British have succumbed to “divide and rule”, and without even seeming to realize it. There is no future in leaving the EU and doing a deal with the US. America is interested in the Far East, not some isolated island off the coast of Europe. Nor would Canada, Australia or New Zealand be interested.
I believe the British Conservative party has lost sight of the country’s real national interests. The emerging powers are China, India and Brazil, and Britain should be leading the charge to establish good relations with all three, but also to build up the EU’s economic and military power so that it can speak to them from a position of strength. But through the EU, not alone.