It's a long one..... (as the bishop said to the actress)
I had an interesting conversation at dinner last week, when someone asked me where I stood on Brexit.
I said, "Well, let me first lay out some of my principles" These were, roughly:
- trade is really important, especially free and friction-less trade, and it is vital that the UK businesses can have that;
- I'm anti-racist, so opposed to anything which panders to xenophobia or exclusionism;
- I'm very concerned about the potential domination of superpowers like Russia, China and America;
- I'm also concerned about the rise of isolationist nationalism in Europe and elsewhere;
- I think European values of cooperation, peace-making and diplomacy are important regionally and on a world stage;
- I think supporting growth, development and democracy in Eastern Europe is vital for the security and well-being of Western Europe;
- I'm in favour of political unions for people with common values and connected geographies, and have spoken out strongly in favour of Scotland staying in the union with England;
- I'm concerned about the environment and think it is really important that nations work closely together to improve the situation;
- I'm also concerned about the strong possibility of a local economic downturn.
As I said all this, my questioner smiled increasingly broadly, and finally exclaimed, "And THAT is why all sensible people agree that we all need to campaign together to revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU."
They were rather surprised when I said, "No that is why the UK needs to leave the EU as soon as possible."
Because:
- global free trade is important and I don't approve of restrictive local cartels that have no internal tariffs and high external tariffs;
- I certainly don't approve of such cartels that are centred around one primary ethnicity (such as white-European) and are particularly exclusionary (for example with agricultural tariffs) toward other ethnicities, such as 'African' or 'Asian';
- while superpowers are a concern, most countries are not part of these, and it seems immoral and unwise to try to create a new superpower to confront the others, potentially risking a confrontation between global power blocs;
- it seems that a significant focus for, and accelerator of, isolationist nationalism within Europe is a direct response to attempts to compulsorily hold the nations together in a homogeneous and centrally-managed union (as with Yugoslavia, or the USSR or the EU), and a better curb on nationalism would be to allow nations to be free, and to encourage them to engage with each other in an independent but cooperative way;
- the UK (despite some colonialist-era errors) has been a strong proponent of European-style cooperation, peace-making and diplomacy regionally and on a world stage, and to subsume that into an ineffective and incoherent EU foreign policy would reduce the overall positive impact;
- EU policies that denude Eastern European countries of their best workers, discourage the location of industries in Eastern Europe, and undermine their economies with vanity infrastructure, cheap Euros and fixed exchange rates are dangerous for east-west European stability;
- a political union can probably only be effective and enduring when it applies to a fairly small and contiguous geographical area and people who closely share linguistic and social norms, and any attempt to widen this to encompass a more diverse group has to be imposed, it seems to me, by manipulation or force, and is doomed to fail;
- environmental problems are mostly regional or global, and while solving regional ones by the imposition of rules across a regional union is an option, this cannot work globally, so in the end the environment is best protected by local action, national rules, and international cooperation;
- in the face of a local economic downturn, recovery is more likely if each nation is able to make local adjustments to their economic, fiscal and industrial circumstances, than if several diverse economies are yoked together by common rules and currencies.
"So, no, my principles cause me to conclude that the UK should be out of the EU as fast as possible."
Some of the dinner guests were very upset and we had to leave.