It’s Groundhog Day. We’re back to the rhetoric of a dozen years ago, and the debate on joining the euro. If we’re not inside, we won’t be able to influence decisions. We’ll be isolated and marginalised. We’ll be pushed to the margins of Europe. It will cost us trade and jobs.
We’ve heard all this before. They told us this would happen unless we joined the euro. They were wrong. Now they tell us it will happen if we leave the EU. They’re wrong again.
But Nick goes further. He has characterised eurosceptic Conservative MPs as “traitors”. Go for it, Nick. If you’re going to tell porkies, make them really big porkies.
Goebbels would be proud of you. The truth is, Nick, that we’re isolated and marginalised in the EU. Locked into an inward-looking, self-referential would-be superstate, obsessed with its internal functions rather than the external world, where we are cordially distrusted by our “partners”. We’re in an economic space which is recognised, even by its supporters, as in long-term economic decline. In an organisation with chronically inflexible labour markets which everyday, almost, imposes new costs and new barriers to competitiveness and economic recovery. We’re members of a club where the annual fees (including regulatory costs) exceed £100 billion a year. Far from being marginalised, we should, on leaving the EU, be breaking free. Far from isolated, we could rejoin the rest of the world, where there is some hope of economic growth. It is sheer madness that we link ourselves primarily or preferentially to an economic bloc which is failing and profoundly dysfunctional. We could resume our role as a great trading nation, looking outward to the world, not inwards to the navel of Brussels. Instead of remaining an offshore province in a country called Europe, we can be a free, democratic, self-governing nation once again. It is time, once more, for us to save ourselves by our exertions, and to save Europe by our example.
Well said indeed, but how likely is it that the PM will accord with these reasons, and what may be stopping him?
I think maybe old Nick is somewhat out of touch with the vast majority of the electorate – for us poor simple beings, a government intent on eliminating parliamentary debate about an issue of concern, and that continues to shift power to an unelected and unwanted bunch of liberal minded loony bureaucrats are the real traitors here.
I was pleased to see support on Con Home for the MPs that rebelled in the EU referendum vote and many commentators applauding the concept of “country first, party second” – this is what we need right now, not the posturing of Cameron, Clegg, Balls and Miliband
As Alex Singleton says in his blog today :
“We want to return to being global players – not little Europeans.”
http://bit.ly/tfSv58
Please can we have a button to click on which writes “Hear,hear” Roger gets to the nub of matters and others add my pennyworth. I shall have to get up earlier in the morning.
The gap between the “Elite” and the people just grows bigger every day. When are they going to wake up to reality? Probably never.
Exactly, I agree most with your final point. We are the only thing that legitimises EUrope, just imagine if we were not a part of it, how it would look to the world.
Britain’s gravitas on such issues an governance and financial legitimacy is respected the world over, if we pull out we would retain that crown, I just hope we beat the Greeks to it!
Well said. I don’t think Nick Clegg realises just how much damage he and Vince Cable are doing to the Lib Dems as well as the Coalition. Or do they? Maybe they have a greater plan which they have yet to make clear to the rest of us. If we could bottle all the hot air they spout between them, think of all the Green Energy that would generate and the savings made towards my gas bill.
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Clegg is not only out of touch with the vast majority of the population, he is deeply mistrusted amongst his own. Indeed it may be said he is being Marginalised by his own party. Blinkered by his own refusal to see the truth staring at him he can only spout the EU propaganda that was drummed into him when he was a MEP. He brings nothing to the table of any interest and will possibly loose his seat in the next election (we can only hope).
with all the hot air coming from the Lib-dem conference may be we should tap into this renewable source of energy, it seems to endless.
just read your latest straight talking newsletter! What self serving, arogant, sad views you have!
Alex Green…..are you trying to escape from freedom? It appears democratic viewpoint is not your world!