Am I the only one who thinks that until fairly recently we heard a lot more from the Leave campaign in the reporting of the coming EU? Has anyone heard from Alan Johnson lately? Wasn't he supposed to be leading the Remain campaign? And what have we heard from the Leave campaign? To my mind its been a non-stop comic display of jingoistic wishful thinking and childish naivety. The plan seems to be that we will leave an alliance of 28 nations, comprising over 500 million people and generating nearly a quarter of global income and go and do better for ourselves on our own. We will do this by wrapping ourselves in the Union Jack and going to other countries like the USA and China and negotiating treaties that are on terms that will be entirely the ones we demand. And why will these countries give us exactly what we want? Well, because we are the fifth biggest economy in the world, have the fourth biggest military, countries will lose out if we close our markets to them and, and, and, 'Well, by Timothy we are British for goodness sake!'
Such run-away self-confidence was dealt a bit of a blow last week when President Obama put us in our place. He had to point out the bleeding obvious. We are not as important as we think we are. If we leave the EU we will not be at the front of the queue to sign a trade deal with the US. It may take 5 to 10 years for the US to get around to seeing us. Oh dear. But look on the bright side. Maybe President Trump or President Clinton II will call us in from the waiting room a bit sooner. Or maybe not. Obama's reward for calling us up from planet earth was to predictably reap a storm of protest and abuse from the Leavers. Boris Johnson suggested that the President was simply prejudiced against us because his Kenyan father had been opposed to British colonial rule. Although Johnson has been criticised by his own side for his intemperate remarks, I thought that he was putting the weakness of the Leave case very well. I am not suggesting that Obama is anti-British, but when you are negotiating you should assume that your opposite number is not on your side, favours their interest above yours and, yes, may dislike you.
It is thought by some that in 1945 at the end of WWII when the Liberation of France had only been possible because of the support and sacrifice of the Allies, General Charles de Gaulle said to Churchill, 'We will stun the world with our ingratitude'. Whether he said it or not, few would say he ever displayed any. What's more, he went on to veto the UK's application to join the EU, or the EEC as it was then called, not once, but twice (in 1963 and again in 1965). Clearly, he wasn't impressed by any of the UK's arguments for joining. He may not even have cared that UK membership would have improved French prosperity. He may have just been content with the situation where the EEC was a club run by West Germany and France for their benefit and seen British membership as a threat to this position. Better to be one of 2 equal partners in a club that was doing alright than 1 of three bosses in a club that was more prosperous overall, but where you ran the risk of the other two ganging up against you. I am not sure whether this attitude could rightly be described as prejudice but it certainly provides a cautionary tale against those who feel that they can get others to see their point of view and consequently act in their interest, even if they believe they have interests in common. I think you'll find its a bit more complicated than that.
Roger Scruton wrote a book entitled, 'The Uses of Pessimism and the Danger of False Hope'. In it, he cautions us to be on our guard against those who encourage us to reject an imperfect and irritating reality and embrace instead a far better theoretical alternative. We should resist those who tell us that, if only we could summon up the courage to breakaway from the constraints of our own making, then we would be free to run to the sunny uplands of a brighter, better future. The Leave campaigners obviously haven't read this book. I think I even heard one of them talk on the radio about the 'sunny uplands'. The Leavers are so intoxicated with this idea of being 'Free At Last! Free At Last!', that any attempt to point out the downside of leaving is met with the the charge of 'scaremongering!'
My biggest fear if we leave the EU is that the EU will still exist. What's more, it will not remain set in aspic. What will it be like in 5, 10, 20 years time? When it comes to the future we only 'see through a glass darkly'. It is possible that in my lifetime (I am 50) the EU could open its doors to membership for Ukraine (population 45 million), Turkey (population 79 million), Belarus (population 10 million) and perhaps even Russia (population 144 million). What would such a huge expansion and geo-political shift mean for the EU's world view and priorities? How would such a vastly changed alliance view the UK and its interests? What's more the issues that I think have generated such dissatisfaction with the way things are of which the desire to leave the EU amongst some is a symptom, will not go away if we Brexit. Falling living standards for the majority of working people, increased debt, mass economic migration driven by war and poverty, globalisation, terrorism and religious fundamentalism, all will be unchanged the day after we leave. Brexit will not isolate us from mainland Europe and insulate us against our problems. On the contrary, I think it will expose our weaknesses. For example, the reason we export so little to non-EU countries (and EU countries for that matter) is not because of Brussels bureaucrats. It is because we have such a small manufacturing industry. This is due to decisions that successive UK governments have made which have led us to build our economy on financial services, shopping, property and private debt rather than making products that people want to buy. British people may fear that illegal immigration is getting out of hand, but you only need to have driven through the port of Calais regularly over the last few years to see the enormous resources that the French have invested to try and stop them getting through. They may have done an imperfect job in fulfilling their treaty obligations to a fellow EU member, but it is hard to believe that they would do a better job of protecting the borders of a non-EU member just because we told them to and said that we would be very cross if they did not.
So, thank you President Obama for giving us a much needed dose of reality. Let us stick with our EU partners present and future. Let us remain within an imperfect organisation that has lost its way for the moment on economic policy and is struggling to work together to deal with the fall-out from foreign conflicts. We should work together to make things better for all European citizens and not turn our back on our duty to do so in favour of a short-sighted petulant leap in the dark that risks our children's future.
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