Stephen Pollard
voters’ wishes to leave? One of the reasons I want to leave is because the EU is already going in the wrong direction – towards disaster, I would argue.
Being on the sidelines, as Mr Hammond puts it, watching and apart, is somewhere I want us to be – rather than joined together with the lemmings as they jump off the cliff.
You see, we’ve tried reform from the inside, haven’t we? For decades we have tried to stop the rot: stop the drift to further federalism, stop the endemic corruption, stop the move to ever more corporatism and statism, stop the encroachment on our ability to govern ourselves. And much good it’s done. The best reform package we can get is the Prime Minister’s pathetic excuse for a renegotiation deal.
And that’s what they offer us when they are worried we will leave and are actually trying to persuade us to stay!
The Remain crowd talk about how the other members will hand us punishment beatings if we leave. At the weekend there was a report of tariff barriers being erected against us ( ignoring, of course, that they would be illegal under World Trade Organisation rules).
It’s the usual fear tactics from the Eurofanatics. But turn that argument on its head. If that’s how they treat us when
ACCORDING to Mr Hammond’s own words, the only thing holding the EU together is the membership of a country – the UK – whose people look like they want to leave. And if we were to go, other voters in other countries will also want to leave. So we should stay. To stop them.
Isn’t that the most perfect illustration of the contempt for democracy and for ordinary voters that lies at the heart of the whole project?
If we leave, people in other countries might realise they could too. And even though that might be their wish, they shouldn’t. So we should make sure they don’t, by staying. See what I mean about being baffled?
On the one hand, Mr Hammond was being more candid than any Eurofanatic to date. His words revealed the real mindset of those who insist we have to stay.
But on the other, I can’t imagine for a moment that the Foreign Secretary actually intended to be so clear. It looks like he is deeply confused and simply out of his depth.
No wonder – because until he became Foreign Secretary, Mr Hammond was widely regarded as a Eurosceptic. But like so many before him, when handed the trappings of office, his previous principles somehow got mislaid. And now he is campaigning for us to stay.
If it wasn’t so serious, it would be hilarious – the moment the Foreign Secretary thought he was arguing to stay, but used an argument to leave.
‘ It’s not Britain’s duty
to prop up the EU’