EDITORIALLY INDEPENDENT. EST. 2010 Monday 20th June 2016 tw: @theheythroplion
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Lion
THE LION DEBATES: THE EU With less than a week to go until Britain votes to define, or re-define, its relationship with the European Union, The Lion will be running a series of articles, written by Heythrop students, as a contribution to that great debate. More is better: If you’re for Leave, Remain or have yet to make up your mind, we want to hear what you have to say. (And we offer a free drink to any and all contributors.) Get in touch with a member of the Lion team, or find us on Facebook, for more information. First up: Daniel ‘Psycho’ Fair on why he’s voting Leave.
THE EMPERO R HAS NO CLOTHES DANIEL JAMES FAIR T hird Y e a r Und er g r a d u at e
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am probably going to vote leave. It is my belief that the European Union is a failing regime borne of quixotic token gestures and the desire to busy the leaders of Europe with so much bureaucracy that they won’t have enough time to start another European war. There are a number of arguments being tossed around for both sides; but if we’re being honest, the most substantive arguments come from leave. Most of the pro-EU arguments extol the incidental features of membership — agricultural subsidies and a ban on roaming charges, for example; but the remain side offers no ways in which the EU positively changes our country in a fundamental way. This is a
problem for two reasons. First, since the EU is a living organisation, its incidental features are subject to change, so it should be judged by its potential, not its actuality: the extraordinary amount of power that the Union has given itself should lead us to be weary of what the EU could do given the wrong intentions; its present positive qualities are outweighed by its potential problems. Second, the remain side gives us no reason to choose the Union over other solutions: treaties that benefit all parties could still be signed post-Brexit; if this seems overly-idealistic, remember that two bilateral military agreements, the Lancaster House Treaties, were signed in 2010 between France and the UK without any involvement
from the EU; and that Chancellor Merkel has guaranteed Britain a fair post-Brexit deal in spite of the vindictive comments from French and European leaders. None of this is to say that the leave side has all my confidence; but consider the forthcoming nature of its arguments. British sovereignty, for example, is something that matters to almost everyone (anarchists, sub-British nationalists, and European federalists notwithstanding), and far from arguing about data plans and environmental regulations, the leave side are trying to preserve it. Maybe immigration matters to you, maybe it doesn’t; we can at least agree that the free movement of people
is a fundamental part of the EU — one that determines the nature of our country; this is a far cry from quibbling over agricultural subsidies and the tuppence we get back from membership fees. Whether one appreciates the arguments or not, it cannot be denied that, much more than remain, leave are playing with live ammunition. Another titbit one might hear from the remain side is the statistic 44% of Britain’s trade with the outside world comes from the EU. While this is certainly true (FullFact.org), I’m not convinced that this statistic truly represents the importance of the EU as much as it does its prominence. Consider the proximity of Europe to the UK: shipping
needs only cross the Strait of Dover before it reaches the continent; the rest of the world is much further away. Next, consider the strength of European economies: six of the top ten world economies are in the EEA (IMF, 2015). Finally, consider that economies are highly susceptible to feedback loops: given that freeing trade makes trade easier, it is unsurprising that a large part of our trade comes from within our trade bloc; once that trade is established, it becomes easier and easier to develop the internal economy. So given the proximity of continental Europe, the strength of her economies, and the access we have to them thanks to the EEA, it should not surprise anyone that 44% of our exports go there; but given the causes, does this really mean anything? Imagine a heroin addict: yes, the heroin satisfies his cravings, but his cravings are a symptom of an underlying problem; if you tried to make him go cold-turkey, you’d cause withdrawal symptoms — maybe even cardiac arrest. This is what the EU has done to our economy: we are now so reliant on Europe for trade that merely discussing Brexit sends the Pound tumbling; the European Union has taken the dynamism out of our economy and injected itself like concrete cancer into our foundations; the EU is the structural weakness in our politico-economic institutions. But this 44% is not unchanging: the share of UK exports going
to the EU is down from 56% in 2006 (FullFact.org). Furthermore, the EU’s share of global GDP has been dropping (ONS): between 1993 and 2013, the EU’s share slipped from 30% to 24%. This is due to the rapidly expanding BRIC economies: as global GDP grows, more and more of each new trillion is going to economies outside of Europe. These statistics point to one thing: the future of the world economy is in areas where populations are high and labour is cheap. Despite this, the EU is more interested in trading with itself than it is seeking stronger economic ties with countries outside our tiny continent. There is a reason for this: dignitaries in Europe are legislating with the goal of creating a United States of Europe, so to speak. In fact, ever since its conception during World War II, this has been the goal of European unity: the first President of the High Commision of the ECSC said, “There will be no peace in Europe, if the states are reconstituted on the basis of national sovereignty [...] The European states must constitute themselves into a federation.” (Jean Monnet at the NLC, August 5, 1943) The institution that would become the EU was forged in the aftermath of nationalist zeal, and it reflects this: its purpose is to sustain peace on the continent; but it requires us to sacrifice too much to a promise it cannot keep. The fact of the matter is that the EU cannot guarantee peace: if political union prevented war,
then there would be no civil or revolutionary wars (note the Troubles that were neither prevented nor ended by the EU); the Catholic Church attempted to unify Europe for over a thousand years, but it never succeeded in sustaining any lasting peace. We are being asked to give into perpetually closer political union on the basis of a European pipedream; the remain side are using scare tactics and outlandish statements about a third world war and a greater threat from IS to justify our subjugation to a political entity that can prevent neither. In reality, the existence of the EU is substantiated by a complete contempt of all nationalism in continental Europe. There exist in Europe many nations who, while forged in the same history, come from different traditions, languages and systems of law; though we work together, it is clear that the French people and the British people are not the same — neither is ‘better’ than the other, but there do exist differences between us. There is nothing wrong with this view — affirming the existence of nations and the preference for peaceful co-operation between them over their unity; but the EU owes its existence to the fear of extreme nationalism, so it throws the baby out with the bathwater. There is a good to nationalism until it goes too far; it is responsible for devolution in the UK, the right of Gibraltar to decide its identity for itself, and the peaceful co-operation of many
former-Empire countries in the Commonwealth. We deserve to be a nation, retaining our sovereignty while working with other European nations and the rest of the world; we deserve not to be swallowed whole by a European Empire — a multinational state dedicated to homogenising our continent and removing our sovereign powers to its own portfolio. Daniel Hannan MEP said it best:
“We are the fifth largest
economy in the world; we are the fourth military power on the planet; we’re one of the Group of Seven Industrialised Nations [the G7]; we’re one of five permanent security council members in the United Nations; our language is the most widely-spoken on Earth; we have unparalleled links with the United States, [and] the Commonwealth; we have the best universities in Europe. How much bigger do we have to be before we’re able to run our own affairs, living under our own laws, trading and collaborating with our friends and neighbours but governing ourselves?” We should get out of the political union of Europe while the opportunity is presented to us: it is bad for our economy, our sovereignty, and leaving it would only allow us to forge stronger ties to the rest of the world while keeping our close friendships in Europe; Emperor Ever-Closer-Union has no clothes, and it is high time we pointed it out.