Yet time to fight Campaign of Fear

AS I thought, we have all been subjected to the most hysterical and mendacious campaign of fear in my lifetime. We have been told to accept Theresa May’s disastrous scuttle or something akin to global war will engulf us. Many of the media, who are supposed to be sceptical of official lies, have gone along with this.

The main theme has been that we must grovel to the EU as per the May scuttle because there is nowhere else to go. As usual, the BBC has been slavish in its obedience. I once (as foreign correspondent) spent a year in East Germany. They had the same media-obedience as we do now. Hardly a single mention of the World Trading Organisation, so permit me.

The WTO is a UN agency set up years ago with British help to preside over global trade. We still have 60 per cent of our import/ export trade with the world outside the EU under WTO rules, and we have a thumping surplus. On our 40 per cent under EU rules we have an £80billion a year deficit.

Ninety per cent of world trade is done under WTO rules. It is friction-free, smooth and lucrative. We could easily switch to it. There would be about a year of dislocation and changeover costs – like moving house and all the stress that involves – but I bet most of us have moved house at least once. When it is over, you settle down and have a better life.

BUT the WTO has been demonised (if mentioned at all) as if it were run by Adolf Hitler. This whole episode in our country’s life has been the biggest mess-up since Munich in 1938 and the biggest lie since Suez in 1956. Both led to the departure of an utterly failed prime minister. Let us pray this one will. By the by, we are paying £39billion to Brussels to remain its servant; we might as well pay half that to switch systems. We could use the other half to create ultra-low-tax startup zones, suck in foreign investors, create a million new jobs and (outside the EU rule book) there is nothing anyone could do to stop us.

But, of course, we would have opponents. Not Merkel in Berlin, not Macron in Paris (and both are on the skids anyway), but the British Civil Service. There is much talk of reform of the Commons and the Lords.

The really vital reform needed is a huge reduction of the stranglehold of bureaucracy on all our lives.

That used to be the leitmotif of the Conservative Party, which was why it won elections. But that was before it lost its soul and its leadership.