Scandal of leader gagged for giving his honest opinion
THROUGHOUT its miserable, destructive history the European Union has shown contempt for democracy and debate. Like the old Politburo of the USSR, the power- hungry Eurocrats loathe any dissent from their ruling orthodoxy, any challenge to the entrenched ideology.
That same authoritarian impulse can now be seen in the actions of the increasingly hysterical campaigners who want to keep Britain in the EU’s empire. Not content with peddling ever more lurid scare stories about Brexit, they aggressively seek to marginalise and silence their opponents.
No episode exemplifies that pattern more clearly than the disgraceful treatment of highly respected business leader John Longworth, who has been suspended as head of the British Chambers of Commerce ( BCC) for the purported crime of daring to express support for withdrawal from Brussels’s rule.
Speaking in a personal capacity at the BCC annual conference last Thursday, Mr Longworth gave a powerful address in which he derided David Cameron’s so- called deal, highlighted the burden of EU bureaucracy, argued that the Brussels regime is incapable of reform and warned that, contrary to all the propaganda from the Remain camp, the risks of staying in could be much greater than those of leaving. “We have the capacity and capability to create a brighter economic future outside of the EU,” he concluded.
BUT the pro- EU establishment was appalled at this act of heresy. In the climate of intolerance created by the Remain camp zealots, the BCC board sheepishly decided to suspend Mr Longworth for breaching the organisation’s policy of neutrality on the referendum, even though he had stressed he was expressing his own personal views.
Longworth suspects that the move could have been orchestrated by the Prime Minister’s Whitehall machine, which has become increasingly fanatical in its determination to do the bidding of Brussels. “John said that Downing Street were putting pressure on the BCC board and bullied them into suspending him,” one of his friends said yesterday.
Predictably Downing Street has denied the charge. Yet such an accusation is all too believable given Number 10’ s recent record of trying to manipulate the media, gag senior politicians, halt vital briefings to Brexit ministers, whip up business support for the EU and poison the debate.
Moreover, denials about pressure on the BCC are hardly convincing given the endless Prime Ministerial deceit and abuse on Europe, from his empty promise of obtaining “fundamental reform” to his notorious description of Ukip supporters as “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists”.
Whatever the truth about Downing Street’s role, this saga reveals the appalling bigotry of the Remain camp. As London mayor Boris Johnson said of Mr Longworth’s “absolutely scandalous” suspension, his voice has been “crushed by the agents of Project Fear”.
There are tremendous double standards at work here. It is absurd to pretend that there would have been any pressure to rap Mr Longworth’s knuckles if he had joined in the establishment’s squawking chorus of approval for the EU.
After all, a host of other business bodies and leaders – such as the Confederation of British Industry ( CBI) and Richard Branson – are feted by Whitehall for parroting the usual hollow pro- Brussels slogans, while some executives have even tried to intimidate their workforces into voting to Remain.
Typical was the action last week of the Rolls- Royce chief Torsten Muller- Otvos in writ- ing to his employees with a warning that Brexit could damage sales and bring job losses.
But only Mr Longworth is singled out for punishment. The terrifying implication is that anti- EU figures should be kept mute. It seems that the Remain camp wants our civic life to be like one of those increasingly fashionable “safe zones” on our university campuses, where mollycoddled, brainwashed students are protected from hearing any opinions they might find offensive.
We should be moving in the opposite direction, welcoming robust, controversial debate. Mr Longworth is precisely the sort of figure we need. A downto- earth northerner who was educated at Bolton Grammar and Salford University, he has a wealth of impressive commercial experience, including directorships of Asda, Tesco and the Co- operative, as well as setting up his own business and advising Mrs Thatcher on reductions in red tape.
UNLIKE so many of the Remain camp, who unthinkingly follow conventional wisdom, he has researched deeply the impact of the EU on British enterprise.
“I have lived and breathed this issue,” he says. One of his ground- breaking studies, published in 2010, found that British firms have to fork out an extra £ 80billion a year because of Brussels bureaucracy, just the sort of vital information that the pro- EU lobby wants to keep from us.
On the other hand the CBI has little real credibility. It has been hopelessly wrong on almost every major issue facing our country for decades. It was a keen advocate of appeasement towards Nazi Germany in the 1930s, then after the war it backed nationalisation, state planning, price controls and surrender to trade union power.
Similarly, the CBI urged Britain’s entry into the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in the late 1980s, with disastrous consequences – while unabashed by this folly it argued in the 1990s that Britain should embrace the euro.
Given this catalogue of misjudgments the CBI’s pronouncements on Europe can be regarded as worthless. John Longworth is the man of integrity who really understands our national interests. That is why the Remainiacs are so desperate to have him sidelined.