IT’S AN UNHOLY MESS — BUT HERE’S WHY I’M VOTING TO STAY IN THE EU

As the EU debate intensifies, two Mail heavyweights give fiercely opposing views

An email reached me last week from a man who explained that although he owns most of my books, he was busily burning them because he has read that i shall vote Remain on June 23.

One likewise hears of country suppers rent by near-fisticuffs between Stayers and Goers.

Suez in 1956 seems the most recent precedent for the intensity of bitterness unleashed among Conservatives by the referendum campaign.

This is wildly unreasonable, because there are heavyweight arguments on both sides.

First, any honest europhile should acknowledge that since 1980 many of the charges made by eurosceptics have proved well-founded.

The eU has lost its way, thanks to fanatics who have sought to transform it from a free trade area into a political and economic union.

Extremism

The eurozone promises Southern europe only perpetual austerity and consequent political extremism.

Brussels seems incapable of forging a viable response to mass migration, the greatest threat to the Continent’s stability and social cohesion since 1945.

many people are angry with David Cameron, because he promised a renegotiation with Brussels that never seemed plausible, then insulted voters by flourishing a fig leaf in place of a credible deal, which almost made me a leaver.

in the end, however, i shall vote Remain for reasons that are not all rooted in an instinct to ‘always keep a-hold of nurse’, as the poet Hilaire Belloc explained, ‘for fear of finding something worse’.

On June 23, we are not being offered a choice between good and evil, Satan’s emissaries and the angels. We shall be asked to make a marginal judgment call, which is what most of grown-up life is about.

The single market has well served Britain, especially the vital financial services industry.

Some leavers seem to believe that if we can only ‘liberate’ ourselves from the eU, a bright dawn beckons, wherein all the nation’s problems will vanish.

Yet the most serious of these — unsustainability of the nHS, a failing education system, poor productivity, flagging manufacturing, a frightful balance of payments deficit — have nothing to do with Brussels.

as for migration, i will hazard a wild guess that leaving would enable us to cut immigration by perhaps 15 per cent, no more.

We may regain power to keep out Polish plumbers and Romanian car-washers, but a large proportion of the migrants we least want will continue to land at Heathrow and overstay visas, exploit relationships with people already domiciled and enter illegally.

The migration nightmare — and it is a nightmare — seems fundamentally a manifestation of globalism. even if the will exists to control it, the practical difficulties are immense.

Since a majority of those determined to leave will vote that way because they yearn to seal our borders, if they prevail i suspect they will experience disappointment and frustration.

even if we fortify Britain with wire and minefields — which would rather spoil the attraction of life here for residents as well as newcomers — this huge problem will remain subject only to mitigation, not solution, best achieved by multilateral action.

Both sides bandy speculative and fanciful economic figures, but the Remainers’ numbers seem slightly more credible.

Departure will cost us all money, and discourage inward investment. at a time when the economic and political environments are already unstable, the fallout is incalculable.

leavers welcome the cleansing prospect of an eU break-up. again, i might join them if we seemed likely to achieve a return to a free trade area, together with the demolition of Brussels’ obese bureaucracy and futile democratic machinery. Chaos seems more likely, however.

mervyn King, then governor of the Bank of england, offered me some private forecasts five years ago, when Cameron first promised a referendum on eU membership. lord King thought the eurozone ultimately doomed, but believed a crunch could be postponed well beyond 2017.

He suggested the Prime minister was rash to commit to a deadline which made it unlikely that we should see clearly what sort of europe we were voting for or against, as so much is in flux.

He also argued that if Britain takes the lead in breaking up the party, other european governments will do all in their considerable power to punish us.

His prophesies still look feasible: the odious Jean-Claude Juncker, european Commission president, last week explicitly threatened vengeance on quitters.

Finally, although this campaign is supposed to be about issues, it has evolved into a presidential contest between David Cameron and Boris Johnson.

Politically, if the Brexiteers triumph, Cameron will become a dead man walking, with Johnson his most likely successor.

Mistaken

Comparisons with Donald Trump, the other ‘blond bombshell’, seem misplaced, because the ex-london mayor is far more intelligent. He shares with Trump, however, an absolute lack of equilibrium or stability — terrifying in a prime minister.

Though his comparison of the eU’s objectives with those of Hitler roused outrage abroad, it has prompted surprisingly little inside Britain, save lord Heseltine’s understandably contemptuous comments.

Foes and supporters have sighed and said: ‘Typical Boris.’ Such indulgence seems mistaken.

This is a man whose relationship with truth and political coherence is little more impressive than that of Jeffrey archer.

any one of 20 indiscretions in Johnson’s career would have sunk a less dazzling master of the pier-end turn, and indeed U-turn. Having known Boris for years, i cannot bring myself to cast a vote which could trigger his advance to Downing Street.

The Hitler line should properly be the end of him, save as a journalist and star of TV reality shows. Only in a potty new world of celebrity, populist politicians can a real prospect persist of his governing this country.

it seems quite mistaken to suppose that, whichever way the vote goes on June 23, the european debate will achieve a closure. The migration crisis will worsen, probably intensified by terrorist atrocities.

i cannot believe the eU, and even more the eurozone, will or should survive in their present form through another decade.

Salvages

if we remain members, we shall have a voice in seeking an outcome that salvages its best elements, above all the single market, from today’s admitted unholy mess. if we leave, we become impotent and bear the odium for the ensuing pile-up.

a few years ago, i heard a speech by one of Germany’s foremost industrialists, where he expressed hopes that Britain would remain in the eU, then concluded: ‘With the utmost courtesy i would suggest to our British friends that should you leave, you may find it cold out there.’

Partly because i often visit the U.S., and know how little influence we command in its high places except as a partner in europe, i believe that German was right. as a citizen, i am willing to give the British Government, and its support for the eU, just one more chance.

i suspect that enough others will do likewise to secure a Remain vote next month.

David Cameron should show statesmanship enough to treat such a victory as a beginning, not an end. it has become both important and symbolic to escape from the bondage of the hopelessly outdated european Convention on Human Rights, even though that is nothing to do with Brussels.

and if the eU itself does not change profoundly, or if the eurozone defies gravity by pursuing a mad march towards political unity, there will surely be another British referendum within a decade. in such an event, the leavers would likely win . . . and deserve to.