Today, Bill Cash published a pamphlet, Stop the EU, I want to get off, where he stresses that it is up to the Conservative Party to deliver the change in our relationship with the EU that will ensure Britain’s future in the world. According to Bill Cash the European Questions cover four key areas: the Democratic, the Economic, the Political, and the Global Questions.
The Democratic Question:
Little by little, the EU has stripped away the power and sovereignty of national parliaments in favour of unelected bureaucrats. The European Parliament’s claim to be the democratic voice of Europe is farcical; voter turnout in European elections has been in terminal decline since 1979, reaching an all-time low of just 43% in 2014.
Can it really be right to abandon the democratic principle that lies at the heart of Western prosperity? The loss of legitimacy that has resulted from federalist ambitions has fanned the flames of the popular anger at the economic misery that is suffocating the continent. Left unchecked, the only beneficiary of this will be the far left and right. We are already seeing the ugly rise of extremism. Unless we act now, we are doomed to repeat the tragic history of the continent.
The time has come to return power to the source of power – the people of the different nation states of Europe. Urgent action against an out-of-touch elite is needed not only the UK, but across the EU. The Eurocrats must bow to popular demand, and abandon their anti-democratic, unworkable ideologies in the name of the common good.
Britain must lead the way by example. In December 2014, I introduced a Bill into the House of Commons which would return sovereignty to the British Parliament, and control back to the British people. The government must now enact legislation to enshrine the sovereignty of Parliament, and end the decades-long supremacy of EU law. While we in the United Kingdom are uniquely fortunate in the ease with which this can be achieved, because we have an unwritten, flexible constitution, we should lead the way so, that by our example other nations will do likewise.
The Economic Question:
There are few now who would advocate joining the Euro. The Single Currency has been an unmitigated disaster for Europe, first eviscerating the economies of its weaker members, and then preventing them taking the measures they desperately need to get back on their feet. A German-imposed programme of austerity suppressing domestic demand and a strong Euro damaging Mediterranean exports will combine to beat down any fragile recovery, condemning the Eurozone to decades of unemployment and stagnation, until popular anger bursts through the flood banks that EU institutions have spent so long trying to erect against national democracy.
In the meantime, overregulation and Eurozone jealousy will hamstring the countries who had the sense to resist joining. The non-Eurozone nations will find themselves relegated ever more to a second tier, trapped in a system where they are bound by regulations in which they had no say, dreamt up under the Enhanced Cooperation Procedure. Aggressive attacks on the competitiveness of the UK’s financial services are already a regular feature of Eurozone politics – further integration in the Eurozone will only worsen this trend, as cities such as Paris and Frankfurt attempt to steal business from London.
Pressure from interest groups, from unions to green lobbies, will stifle competitiveness and prevent recovery. Unworkable one-size-fits-all policies strangle growth across the continent, hamper our energy industry, destroy our countryside and empty our oceans, not to mention bankrupting our governments. The Common Agricultural Policy cost €57.5 billion in 2013, over 40% of the total EU budget – a wildly expensive life-support system for inefficient and outdated farming industries. The Common Fisheries Policy has resulted in the waste of thousands of tons of fish and the depopulation of our seas. Green energy projects have done incalculable damage to European ecosystems. The EU is not only draining all hope of a bright future from millions of humans, it is the worst enemy of the natural world it claims to be so desperate to protect.
Europe must realise it cannot solve every issue by legislation. Only growth can deliver the prosperity the continent needs to survive, and growth can only come from liberalisation on an unprecedented scale. The Euro must be disbanded to allow the struggling economies, particularly in Southern Europe, the space to recover. Germany must relax its fiscal policy to boost domestic demand and end the trade imbalance that is throttling Europe. In the long run, it will not just be Mediterranean economies that are dragged down if this economic asphyxiation is not swiftly reversed.
The Political Question:
This might just as well be termed the German Question. How is Europe to cope with an over-powerful united Germany? Thomas Mann said in 1953 that it was necessary to have not “a German Europe, but a European Germany”, and the EU has often – not least by the Germans themselves – been seen as a way of containing German dominance. A united Germany has been recognised as a threat to European stability for centuries, and those who believed integration would reduce German influence have been proved cruelly wrong. Germany is now unquestionably dominant, if through gold rather than steel. German money holds the Eurozone together, German policies shape its future. Germany may perhaps be a reluctant imperialist these days, but it has bought itself an empire which arms could not win it.
German dominance is not only politically toxic, it is economically ruinous. The German insistence on fiscal discipline is, as Wolfgang Münchau has argued, an ideological response to the crisis of the 1930s that has depressingly little to do with logic. If the crisis persists, this rigidity will damage even Germany; it is disastrous for the rest of Europe. The resolve with which the Germans tackled the crisis is admirable, but it is vital for the future of Europe that the need for demand-boosting policies is now recognised. Many Eurozone economies are inefficient, and in desperate need of serious reform, but austerity on this massive scale denies them the space they need to achieve this.
Qualified Majority Voting has eroded the ability of nation states to defend their vital interests. Stripped of the national veto, Europe has become dominated by its largest members to the detriment of the rest. Since the introduction of new voting rules on 1st November 2014, France, Germany and two other smaller states can form a blocking minority on the Council, holding EU decision making to ransom unless they get their own way.
We need to return to an association of free, sovereign nation states. A federal Europe is not the answer to the German question: Germany must trust itself to engage with Europe on equal, not dominant, terms through diplomacy. The alternative – to subsume Europe’s sovereign nations – will inevitably lead to a German dominated superstate, dysfunctional, unpopular, and undemocratic. Much has been made of the EU’s role in ensuring peace in Europe, but true and lasting peace will only be the result of the free association of democratic, sovereign nation states. We must do more to engage in serious debate on the future of Europe, rather than simply assuming the EU is the best option. The national media – especially the BBC [ESC report when published] – must ask themselves hard questions about their unconscious biases. A peaceful and prosperous Europe can arise only from serious, considered debate, not blindly adhering to the status quo.
The Global Question:
The European Union’s share of global GDP declined from 31% in 1980 down to just 19% in 2012 – putting it behind the USA at 19.5%. Europe’s economic clout is in decline. The Eurozone stagnates, while developing economies bloom. By 2050, the ration of working age people to pensioners in the EU will be 2:1. Europe’s share of global population has declined to only 7%, yet it provides around 50% of the world’s social spending. The USA enjoys an energy revolution, EU regulation threatens the same in Britain. The balance of power is shifting in the world to the East, and Europe risks being left behind. Progress on the TTIP is commendable, but we must go further. Time and again the EU has shown itself unacceptably sluggish, dragged down by vested interests. It is vital for the future prosperity of the European peoples that we recognise the changing nature of the global economy, the role of free trade in economic success, the need for liberalisation to boost growth.
It is not, however, only in economic matters that the EU seems trapped in a parallel universe. The great Euro-whimsy that is the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) has been a peculiar combination of inconsequential and disastrous. The Lisbon Treaty introduced a new EU diplomatic corps – the European External Action Service (EEAS) – and an EU High Representative in part as a response to the previous failures of EU foreign policy, notable over Bosnia and Kosovo. Yet the paralysis over Libya and Syria, and the rise of IS in the Middle East, have demonstrated the inadequacy of the EU system – and the comparative effectiveness of nation states acting in cooperation, such as the US-led coalition fighting IS. In November 2014, the EU mission to the Balkans was mired in claims of corruption. The EEAS costs over £420 million a year, but there seems precious little to show for its efforts.
All this pales, of course, in comparison to the devastation EU policy has wreaked on its Eastern borders. It is absolutely right that every nation be free to choose its future and its associations in an increasingly multipolar world. The European policy in Eastern Europe has, however, been needlessly antagonistic to Russia. It was naïve to assume that a nation still insecure over the loss of hegemony would meekly acquiesce to Western meddling on its borders. Europe has a moral duty to engage freely with those nations that wish to adopt its principles of free trade and democratic governance, but this could be achieved without attempting to enrol countries such as Ukraine in the Western superstructures – NATO, the EU – which Russia believes still to be hostile to it. Rather than attempting to challenge Russian regional influence, we should be trying to work in harmony with it. Russian discontent over the 2008 Bucharest NATO Summit, where President Bush pushed for the entry of Georgia and Ukraine into the alliance, has not been sufficiently recognised.
All this would be far easier if the EU was less eager to build a superstate within its own borders, and more willing to engage with sovereign nations on an individual basis. Rather than attempting to draw Ukraine into the European order, we should have recognised its unique identity, balanced between East and West. Ukraine could have been a bridge between Russia and Europe, a chance for the West and the East to work towards mutual understanding and cooperation. Instead it has become a potent symbol of global division.
Europe’s centralising tendencies are flying in the face of global progress. Success as a nation – sovereign, independent and free – has never been easier to achieve than in our globalised world. We undoubtedly face enormous challenges in the years ahead, but these challenges must be met by cooperation, not integration. When it comes to the EU, the sum of the parts is an order of magnitude greater than the integrated whole. Europe can still lead the world, but only as an alliance of sovereign nations.
Conclusion:
It is obvious that Europe is desperately in need of reform. There will always be those ideologically opposed to any criticism of the European dream, but in the three decades I have fought for Britain’s cause, the argument has shifted dramatically. Even the Europhiles now admit it would have been a mistake to join the Euro, that Europe is in desperate need of fundamental reform. Slowly but surely, we are winning the argument. What is needed now is not shrill hysteria from an EU under pressure, but a measured debate on the future of Europe. Britain’s path is clear, and it is up to the Conservative Party to deliver the change in our relationship that will ensure Britain’s future in the world.
Britain must lead the way by example. Europe must change, and will change. That change can be achieved peacefully and with the consent of the European Union, or it can be achieved in turmoil with the inevitable collapse of an unreformed Union, as I predicted in 1993 in Visions of Europe. Britain can demonstrate to Europe and the world that a third way is possible, that Europe can be reformed. The Prime Minister has been given a unique opportunity to change the EU for the good of all its members. It would be a catastrophe to squander this. Please read the pamphlet here: Stop the EU, I want to get off.
