Commentators on British affairs spend much of their time dwelling on
Brexit these
days; and while acknowledging the passion and verve of the Out camp,
their consensus appears to be that the British are too pragmatic a
people to tear down the European status quo. Here’s why the pundits are
wrong, and why Britain will vote to leave the European Union in the
forthcoming referendum called by Prime Minister
David Cameron.
1. British history is different
Britain has not been invaded or occupied, or lost sovereignty to any foreign power, in centuries. When people like
Alexander Stubb,
Finland’s finance minister, tell the BBC that the EU has brought
“peace, prosperity and security and there’s no price tag on that,” such
soaring rhetoric may play well in countries that once were taken over by
the Nazis or Soviets, but it sounds much too far-fetched and
continental for the average Brit.
2. No-growth eurozone
Britain was pro-European from the 1950s to the 1980s when continental Europe had
growth rates
double or triple those of the U.K. Since the launch of the euro,
however, the EU has been the slow coach of the global
economy, comfortable but out-performed by North America and the
BRICs,
with all the exciting economic energy coming from Silicon Valley,
Singapore, Apple, Samsung, and anything made-in-China. U.S. universities
add economic value. European universities give us cause for
philosophical introspection.
3. Britain’s off-shore media owners
Britain is unique in allowing its major newspapers to
be owned
by men who pay no tax in Britain and who dislike the EU. That’s their
right, but as a result, the news coverage of Europe over 25 years has
been skewed to crude misreporting and propaganda. Even the Guardian
regularly runs pro-Brexit columns from its stars like
Simon Jenkins or
Owen Jones, the rising young-left writer. The BBC has turned
Nigel Farage into a national hero by giving him unimpeded access to all major political discussion programs.
4. Tony Blair
The former Labour prime minister was pro-European, but he dodged all difficult European decisions. He offered a referendum on
joining the euro, which meant the pound would never fold into the single currency. He offered a referendum on the EU
constitutional treaty,
which forced Jacques Chirac to do the same, and thus, with the help of a
divided French Socialist Party, brought European integration to a full
stop in
2005.
Cameron has copied Blair by offering a referendum on Brexit. At least
Blair was smarter. He bought time with referendum pledges but never
actually held one.
5. The Tory party
From Churchill’s United States of Europe
speech in
1946 through Edward Heath’s joining Europe in 1973 to Margaret Thatcher
adopting majority voting and thus sharing sovereignty in the European
Single Act of 1985 — initiatives all opposed by Labour — the
Conservatives were the European party in Britain. Today, all top Tories
proclaim themselves Euroskeptic. It has been impossible to be selected
to be a Tory MP without swearing an oath of Euroskepticism to party
militants.
6. Pro-EU campaign muddles
A dismissive Napoleon said England was a nation of shopkeepers, so the U.K. has found one:
Stuart Rose.
He began selling underwear in Marks and Spencer and rose to become
Britain’s Number One shopkeeper and thus was seen as a natural choice to
head the anti-Brexit campaign. But a few months before he featured as a
star in the pro-Brexit “
Business for Britain” organization, so the double-messaging is confusing.
7. Money
The
Vote Leave campaign
is drowning in cash, with £20 million raised already. Rich City types,
Mayfair hedgies, online betting billionaires, and others sitting on cash
piles who like access to top political personalities have funded
endless Euroskeptic campaigns since the 1990s, ranging from Sir James
Goldsmith’s Referendum Party to Lord Rodney Leach’s
Open Europe
think tank. By contrast the Remain or In campaigners are badly
underfunded. Under the law on political donations, FTSE 100 firms that
oppose Brexit cannot give money to political campaigns without a special
shareholders’ meeting which CEOs do not want to call for fear of
infiltration by UKIP and other anti-EU fanatics.
8. Brussels and Strasbourg
It’s not their fault, but the bigwigs of Brussels and orators of
Strasbourg cut no ice in Britain. They are seen as over-bossy,
over-greedy, and over there. Nigel Farage
boasted on
TV in 2009 that he had collected £2 million in expenses as an MEP, and
ever since, MEPs have been seen as being on a rolling gravy train. At
every meeting on Brexit someone asks why the U.K. should belong to an
organization that cannot even audit its books properly. Most top EU
leaders speak fluent “EU-nglish.” It is perfectly understandable. But in
a nation that is taught by Shakespeare to mock foreign accents, being
told to love Europe by non-natives doesn’t work.
9. Brits can have two votes
The most seductive line from the Out campaigners is that nothing much will change. The ambitious mayor of London,
Boris Johnson,
constantly tells
anyone who will listen that the U.K. will “flourish” outside the EU.
Others say that a Brexit vote will have a catalytic impact on a
sclerotic EU that will finally accept British demands for reforms which
return Europe to its earlier condition of sovereign nation-states. And
then when Britain is offered a Europe it likes, a second referendum can
take it back in.
10. Business
Employer outfits like the
Confederation of British Industry, the
British Chambers of Commerce, or the
Institute of Directors
have produced report after report in recent years criticizing the EU
for red tape and supporting dialogue with trade unions. Business has
told the prime minister he must get concessions from Brussels to weaken
social Europe or special protectionist measures for the City. The sound
of the CBI, BCC or IOD on Europe this century has been one long moan.
Now they are panicking as they realize that their non-stop complaints
about what Cameron calls the “bossy and bureaucratic” EU have been
absorbed by their members, who may decide to vote down an outfit that
British business has been so hostile to.
11. The liberal Left
It’s not just classic little Englander xenophobes who find fault with Europe. The Labour Party in Scotland last weekend
voted to oppose TTIP,
and for many of the leftish intelligentsia Europe is a wicked
conspiracy to promote globalized capitalism with all power flowing to
multinationals at the expense of workers. The Guardian recently gave a
page to a leading TV economics reporter, Paul Mason,
to denounce the treatment of Greece by Europe. Another totemic veteran of British leftism,
Tariq Ali,
gravely informed his readers that he would vote Out in Cameron’s
plebiscite to show solidarity with the Greeks and their Syriza
government. He did not seem to know that in the July referendum and
September election, the Greeks voted Yes to Europe and then Yes to
staying in the euro — so for British lefties to vote the U.K. out of
Europe is solipsistic self-indulgence even by British leftie standards.
12. Europeans
The Brits, over the years, have been shaped by foreigners arriving
from persecution or poverty — Protestants from France, Jews from Tsarist
Russia and Nazi Germany, Poles and Hungarians from Communist
tyranny, peasant laborers from Ireland and black, Muslim and Hindu
citizens from the Commonwealth. But the enlargement of the EU to poor
east and south-east European nations has seen a massive influx of
3 million
new inhabitants in little more than a decade. They work hard, pay
taxes, pay rent and fill churches. But for the average Brit, too many
have arrived too fast, and so the cry to “regain control of our
frontiers” resonates.
Denis MacShane is a former minister of Europe in Tony Blair’s
Labour Government. He is the author of “Brexit: How Britain Will Leave
Europe” (IB Tauris, 2015) and works as an adviser on European politics
and policy in London and Brussels.
Read more: 12 reasons why Cameron will lose on Brexit – POLITICO
