12 May 2016
Letters From Abroad
The US has a different angle.
by John Watson
Another week, another salvo from Remain. This time it is the turn of the US defence industry to blaze away, with a letter to The Times from a selection of distinguished secretaries of state, defence secretaries, national security advisers and directors of the CIA. After the usual rubric about the matter being for the British people, they come out firmly against Brexit. A matching article to The Telegraph from five ex-secretaries general of NATO, including Lord Carrington, says that Brexit would bring succour to the enemies of the West.
It is all orchestrated, of course, and forms part of the rolling propaganda of the Remain campaign. In any case one has to keep it in context. NATO and the Americans see the referendum debate from a narrower perspective. The countries of Western Europe are their allies and they want those allies to have as much critical mass as possible. Britain leaving the EU will mean their most reliable friend losing influence, at least in the short term, and that will weaken their position. Their worries are for the stability of the Western alliance and you can certainly understand why they have them. They do not have to balance those concerns against the restrictions on sovereignty which remaining in the EU involves.
That may explain their perspective but it does not, of course, invalidate the points they make. It is clearly the case that Britain will lose influence by coming out of Europe and that we will suffer in trading terms as well. The question for us is whether we should accept these consequences as an acceptable price to pay for walking away from an organisation which we see as inefficient and bureaucratic.
Two things complicate this choice. The first is that many of the things done at EU level do need to be dealt with by a supra-national authority. Environmental legislation for one thing – pollution knows no national boundaries. Anti-trust legislation for another –multinationals operate freely across borders. Then there are the more nitty gritty things like common legislation on patent rights, common indirect taxation and tariff-free movements of goods. Until the present immigration crisis one would have added free movement of people. These are very real advantages and underpin European prosperity. If the EU were to disappear tomorrow the first job would be to find some other transnational organisation to replace it. That is certainly something that has to be thrown into the balance.
The second complication is the uncertainty as to where Leave or Remain will actually take us. Plenty has been said about the uncertainty which would be caused by Brexit, but what happens if we vote Remain? Will the Commission regard the problem as solved, rely on our verdict to discourage rebels in the Netherlands and France and pork out on caviar and champagne (funded by us) while grabbing as much money and power as they can lay their hands on? Possibly but then probably not. We are not the only people in the EU who are unhappy with its performance and they need to reform if Europe is not going to swing to the right.
The referendum decision is not easy to make and there is little doubt as to the seriousness with which the public is approaching it. You only have to listen to the way in which it is discussed. Before a general election it is unusual to ask acquaintances how they are going to vote. If you turn out to be on the same side, well and good, but if you are on opposite sides there is a jarring element of antagonism. With this referendum it is quite different and people ask each other’s views the whole time. What is more, when they turn out to be on different sides there is no animosity but more an enquiry into how and why they have reached different conclusions. If we are lucky, we’ll find that by the time the debate reaches its crescendo some sort of overall national consensus will have emerged and, as a people, we will have a fairly clear idea of which course we think the best.
Until then we will have to look at the issues one by one and balance the arguments put forward by the rival camps. There is one thing, however, which would move the debate forward a long way. Mr Juncker has already accepted that the EU had interfered too much in National affairs. If, instead of just talking, the Commission were to come out with proposals as to how that might be avoided in future, they could remove a big area of uncertainty and reinforce the Remain case. Remain have clearly worked hard to corral the Americans who have done their best to help them. Will the Commission help them too? Watch this space as polling day approaches.
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