Why is Britain running away from Europe? Some pros and cons for doing so
 "Great Britain used to play a key role in leading Europe, and the benefits have been substantial. But now, the UK is turning its back on the EU and has chosen to focus on peripheral issues. It is the wrong move."
So says Will Straw, who like his father Jack, is a British Labour Party luminary, and not surprisingly a dedicated socialist, who laments the Brexit vote to remove Britain from the European Union, rather than continue its integration into the continental socialist world.
"Britain should re-think its approach to the EU," says Mr Straw in article in Germany's top news magazine, Der Spiegel.
Mr Straw recalls that in the aftermath of World
War II, Winston Churchill called for the creation of a "United States of Europe" to bind France and Germany together. But Churchill also made it clear that while Britain would be a supportive, it would be independent of any such entity. As he famously said: "We are with Europe but not of it."
This attitude Mr Straw continues to regret if not condemn throughout his extensive article, because like most socialists, he sees socialism as the inevitable course, the only choice being how fast it comes and how well one adapts to it. The notion of rejecting it in toto is beyond consideration.
Said Mr Straw: "Britain was always a bit late to the party. But once it found its way to Belgium, Britain had an uncanny knack of winning the big strategic battles. It is therefore a puzzle that the current British government has diverted its attention from winning the next round of key policy debates in Brussels and, instead, focused on a pointless exercise of seeking treaty change to repatriate powers. Britain should stop wasting its time with this futile endeavour and concentrate on aligning the EU's institutions with an agenda of growth and democracy."
What Mr Straw finds difficult to grasp, or even acknowledge, as an operational philosophy is the total rejection of being included in the machinations of the European project as opposed to supporting it within Churchillian limits - of keeping France and Germany from each other's throats, and not becoming one state of 28 in a United States of Europe.
One notes Mr Straw's wish that Britain "concentrate on aligning the EU's institutions with an agenda of growth and democracy."
Democracy, or its lack, and it is always lacking wherever democrats gather, is to their minds an endless process rather than a firm result or even a specific objective. That's because calls for democracy rather that democracy itself, is a useful change agent in social engineering under the guise of fostering freedom and equality. One forgets that the freedom and equality, though often assumed to be nearly synonymous or at least greatly allied, are nothing of the sort. They are quite opposed. If one is free, one need not be confined by equality and if one is equal one is not free to be rise above or fall below the stated norm. So what is left is the quest for socialism, where the majority, that is the poorer half plus one is free to appropriate the resources of the smaller richer half minus one.
While much of continental Europe has absorbed the socialist meme into the fabric of its being, Britain, or more specifically England, has not. It was the richer England rather than the poorer Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland that voted for Brexit.
What we see in the United Kingdom of Great Britain - that's England, Wales and Scotland - and Northern Ireland, is a mirror of what we see in the UK's relations with Europe.
Just as those in search of opportunity and advancement move from Scotland, Wales and Ireland to England, migrants move to England from the world over.
Thus, Britain as a whole wants to be out of Europe as a whole, especially as the socialist hordes have abandoned their old complaint that "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" because it has not been true for decades, and instead cry out for income equality or against income inequality. This is clearly a threat to Britain, as it looks the likely to become the victim of such an arrangement. Given the EU's socialist meme, such policies are bound to reduce UK's wealth for be benefit of those, like the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy Greece and Spain) whose majorities feel that fiscal probity has nothing to do with them as long as there is someone richer to pay for their "decent standard of living".
So rather continue on this road to ruin that Mr Straw advocates, the UK instead is opting for the Churchillian option - to be supportive, but no way responsible for the follies of Europe, and certainly not being under its thumb to pay the bills of its irresponsible behaviour.
Mr Straw makes much of Britain's success in "shaping its institutions to British strategic goals", though others would see such "successes" as avoiding horrific outcomes other Europeans have devised. "First," says Mr Straw giving an example, "the UK succeeded in 'broadening' rather than 'deepening' the EU over the last two decades. From 12 member states in 1973, the EU expanded to 15 in 1995, 25 in 2004 and has since accepted its 28th member with the accession of Croatia."
One suspects that avoiding "deepening", that is enduring more control over Britain's internal affairs by the EU and instead preferring to broaden EU power elsewhere was the object here. Whatever the EU was doing by "broadening", it was doing it to someone else and would have less impact than "deepening". So as a British victory that so impressed Mr Straw it was more a Dunkirk than a Waterloo.
"Given these successes, " Mr Straw continues in Der Spiegel, "Britain might have been expected to play [read "pay for"] a constructive role in helping the EU deal with the two most fundamental challenges of the current crisis: growth and democracy. Instead the EU has been forced to undertake painful cuts to public spending in combination with tax increases in an attempt to bring their deficits under control. As a result, the euro zone as a whole fell into a double dip recession".
So much for the sorrow and the pity. Soon come the threats. This is Mr Straw's response to a parliamentary group of sceptics forming a group called Fresh Start, which called for the repatriation of British powers from Europe.
"If their ideas became formal British policy, there is little to suggest that EU member states would be willing to negotiate with the UK on a new relationship," said Mr Straw pointing out that the European Commission has said there are no supporters on the continent for a British repatriation of powers. "Goodwill towards the UK is rapidly running out in Europe," said one MEP, according to Mr Straw.
Continuing, he says: "Over the period that British energy in relation to the EU has focused on repatriating powers, the UK has seen its leadership role in Brussels diminish. Figures collected by the Vote Watch website indicate that Britain is losing more votes in the European Council than at any point in recent history.
"Instead of losing votes in the Council, proposing unrealistic treaty changes, and creating bad will, Britain should be working at the heart of Europe to enhance prosperity and democracy," he said.
But for many, the problem with democracy is that it is an enemy of individual liberty. It is really the right of the people to interfere with other people. Four men in a lifeboat are being perfectly democratic when they vote to eat the fifth. Individual rights are at war with democracy and democratic endeavours.
And that is what Britain is most interested in when talking about repairing the European Union with its Fresh Start proposals. It wants to secure liberties it surrendered to Brussels.
What Mr Straw laments is Britain's lack of interest in interfering with the liberties of others, perhaps in Poland, perhaps in Greece - and helping to pay for the inevitable policy failures, which the British fully anticipate, but EU enthusiasts never do, so bent are they to live and have others live their lives in a Coke commercial where they "teach the world to sing in perfect harmony". To the British, it is merely taking to another road to hell paved with good intentions, with more money thrown at insoluble problems because no one as the courage to lower the boom on spendthrifts when they said a boom would be lowered. The UK does not want to fix the unfixable. From this way of life, Britain wants out. |
