I leave shortly for my
latest camino. And there can be only one post today – an
exhortation to British readers. Or at least to those who can vote
this week in the imminent Brexit referendum . . .
So . . .
As an
expatriate Brit, I have a large stake in the outcome of this. But I
don't have a vote. Just as I don't have a vote here in Spain, where I
pay my taxes. Surely all wrong.
But anyway, the big day
is almost upon us/you and I wanted to post this last column as it
represents my Big Picture, Top-down view - to which the (ludicrous) numbers - and immigration - are
irrelevant.
An exciting world is
waiting outside the EU: Matt Ridley, 'The Times'.
I was just too young to
vote in the 1975 referendum. I would have voted “Yes” to the
European Community and I think I would have been right to do so. It
had contributed to European peace by blurring French and German
economic sovereignty. It was a free trade area in a world of high
tariff barriers, albeit within a protectionist wall that excluded
other countries and continents. It helped to halt Britain’s
disastrous obsession with central planning.
Two decades later, the
European project stopped being about economic growth (to this day it
still has no trade deals with America, China, Japan, Brazil, India,
Canada, Australia and Indonesia) and embarked on the drive for
monetary and political union, embodied in the treaties of Maastricht,
Amsterdam and Lisbon.
The result has been
horrible. Unlike every other continent, Europe stagnated for the best
part of a decade after the crash of 2008. Monetary union in the
eurozone without fiscal union gave Germany an undervalued exchange
rate and southern European countries an overvalued one, and so
produced rocketing levels of unemployment.
Far from promoting
peace, the European Union now increasingly foments fury in many of
its member peoples. War within its borders, though still unlikely, is
no longer quite so inconceivable as we had hoped. Its ambition of
trying to make a country out of a continent without preceding
linguistic, cultural or economic equality, without even the ability
to share wealth from the richer to the poorer regions, will be a
painful one. In a world where trade is increasingly free, where
global economic and regulatory co-operation is miles better than it
was in the 1970s, I think this regional unification project is a red
herring at best and fool’s errand at worst.
America made a country
out of a continent by beginning with linguistic and cultural unity
and by building a hyper-democratic structure in which the executive
and legislative branches were both subject to frequent election.
The federal government
assumed the debts of the states (in exchange for moving the capital
south), so ensuring automatic fiscal transfer between the richer and
the poorer parts of the country.
Yet it also built in a
crucial bulwark against over-centralisation, to allow local
experimentation and diversity by giving huge power to an elected
senate representing the states. Even so, it took a civil war to forge
a united nation.
Germany became united
through Bismarck bullying a lot of undemocratic regimes that already
shared a common language and culture into a customs union, which then
became a state under a centralised and militaristic regime with the
barest veneer of democracy.
Yet it took three wars
and a revolution (in 1989) before Germany’s borders were settled
and its regime became democratic. Nation-making is a dangerous
business: France and Britain had done it centuries before with just
as much pain.
Be in no doubt that if
we vote to remain on Thursday, turning the continent into a country
is the path we are on. The Five Presidents’ Report of last year is
admirably candid in this respect. David Cameron’s renegotiation of
Britain’s membership terms made a crucial concession to get French
agreement to some of his demands: that in future the EU institutions
are at the beck and call of the eurozone in its quest for further
unification.
True, Britain and
Denmark may remain outside the euro for now (the other non-euro
countries are committed to joining it), but future European summits
will be all about making the eurozone work.
If the continent is not
to be crucified on the cross of a currency, then it must become a
country. It must have a single government that automatically
transfers tax revenue from the productive to the less productive
parts of the country.
The EU has created an
ancien régime ruled by unelected commissioners with the sole power
to initiate legislation, with a court able to overrule the elected
parliaments of member states.
A regime whose
corridors of power are swarming with lobbyists for big business,
banks and pressure groups, all intent on getting bureaucrats to
stifle innovation to protect their monopolies — and to harmonise
the hell out of regional diversity.
This flies in the face
of all that we have striven for and shed blood for over centuries,
especially in Britain: that laws cannot be passed and taxes cannot be
raised except with the consent of the people through their elected
representatives. I say again: is this worth it? What is so fearful
about the world today that we feel it necessary to be absorbed into
such a risky project?
Now that the World
Trade Organisation has brought tariffs to an all-time low, the
decline of violence has brought deaths in warfare to low levels and
the internet and budget airlines and container shipping mean that
geographical proximity has never mattered less, we can all feel
citizens of the world.
Islands that freely
trade with the world, enthusiastically elect their own governments
and willingly join alliances are thriving as never before: Japan, New
Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Mauritius (one of Africa’s
countries with the highest GDP per capita). They see no need to be
enmeshed in the top-down unification of their nearest continents.
In the 1840s at a time
when war was common and slavery and autocracy were everywhere,
Britain felt confident enough to try an ambitious bottom-up
experiment: unilateral free trade. Richard Cobden finally persuaded a
Tory prime minister to repeal the corn laws (170 years ago this
Saturday) and he would shortly persuade a Liberal one to dismantle
tariffs of all kinds.
France followed suit
and the world began a race to the top, embarking on a period of
unprecedented prosperity.
It was Bismarck’s
punitive reparations demands in the wake of the Franco-Prussian war
in the 1870s, leading to the “iron and rye” tariffs to protect
German industry from the effects of an overvalued exchange rate, that
began the 60-year race back to the bottom of protectionism,
contributing eventually to the fatal calculation of 20th-century
dictators that conquest could trump trade.
The best way to unite
the nation is for the British people to turn out on Thursday in large
numbers and express the wisdom of their crowd and for us all to
embrace that decision. I hope we choose the world, not just a
continent.
Given that I've been
against the Project since reading the revelatory book, The Great Deception, or even
before – it's hardly surprising that I favour an exit. I've always
argued that it was a wonderful dream - with the emphasis on 'dream' -
as it ignored cultural, lingusitic and economic realities. Not to mention centuries-old enmities.
And that was before
the amazingly self-congratulatory introduction of the
(havoc-wreaking) euro.
So, if this article tips
just one of you into the Brexit camp, I shall be a very happy man.
British voters . .
. Ignore the petty, numbers-based Stay argument and help to avoid
mortgaging the future of the UK to a superstate ambition of another
era which just happens to benefit most its self-interested drivers - technocrats, bureaucrats, sitting politicians and Germany - and is, anyway, doomed to collapse within 10 to 20 years.
Demonstrate again the
wisdom which has been shown so many times in our 3-400 years of
democracy! Be a visionary, not a
bloody small-minded accountant! A book-keeper, even.
But, if not, I will cease to be British.
Postscript: If the vote really is to quit and I need to protect my EU status, I'm lucky enough to be able to choose either Spanish or Irish nationality. And the latter allows me to keep my British passport. So does the Spanish option, in practice, but this would be illegal under Spanish law. As if this would worry anybody Spanish!
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