We begin in praise of the most obvious achievements. The EU has: made invasion of one EU country by another almost impossible, made the rise of dictatorship in any European country unlikely, introduced a common currency that is widely trusted, strengthened distrust of incompetent and corrupt national rulers and weakened their power, challenged and moderated … More Benefits of the EU Project
It is remarkable that the EU expects member nations to be democratic yet its own institutions are not. At the time of our last referendum, 51 years ago, Tony Benn asked of the EU: to whom are you accountable and how do we get rid of you? These remain good questions, which haven’t been answered, … More Democracy
National sovereignty cannot always be exercised without harm to others so some compromise and pooling of powers is necessary to achieve peace, harmony and wealth. Although senior politicians and civil servants have long been aware of this implication of the Project, they have consistently disguised the truth, deliberately leaving the British public ill-informed about the … More Sovereignty
The “project for peace” has made union its fundamental objective but stable unions are based on consent rather than deviousness. The EU was designed in a different age for different circumstances. Even then it had major design flaws and it has failed to adapt to meet today’s challenges. It is especially unsuitable for the UK, … More Ever Closer Union
Disinformation (lies and statistics) The main goal is in plain sight and yet it is mendaciously obscured. Voters are confused: what they can plainly see is different from what they are told so they lose confidence in their ability to understand and many would rather leave the decision to better-qualified people, such as the mandarins … More Through the Looking Glass
Key British institutions have evolved to become quite different from those of most of its Continental neighbours making it difficult to fit a common mould. Yanis Varoufakis, recent Finance Minister of Greece, believes his people are persuaded to support the Project by the implicit argument of their rulers that: “If you allow this process of … More The UK is different
…and changing accordingly The current EU/EMU projects are justified by the belief that economic, political and social development can (only) be achieved from the top down. This cannot be proved since the belief is false, defying both logic and experience. The claim that the Union can deliver desirable outcomes better than individual nations is unproven. … More Learning from experience
EU/EMU haven’t been tried on anything like this scale before. History, experience, common sense tell us that this should be an experiment, with diverse sub-experiments. Complaints from citizens against EU/EMU are getting louder because, for them, the imposition is not working What we have in Europe is a massive bureaucracy, top-down control and corrections to … More A playground for squabbles and cheating
The European Union is an experiment, though not acknowledged as such, for the good reason that most people would be horrified to know that they are guinea pigs. “Power corrupts”. A feature of such corruption is that the basis of power is deliberately obscured so that it will not be challenged. This is a weak … More Ideology versus Pragmatism
Both Leave and Remain campaigns claim the backing of experts and use contentious “facts” in their arguments. ‘Britain Stronger in Europe’ claims in its mass mailshot: “Experts agree that jobs would be lost and family finances hit if we left – and our security would be put at risk.” This is disingenuous and designed to … More Experts don’t agree
This EU Won't Work 