The Eurowars

Jonathan Freedland poses a dilemma; if you had just one wish would it be to guarantee that Britain stays in the EU or that Trump does not become president. No doubt when he dreamed up this devious binary contract with the devil he imagined it would read as a masterly summation of the principle problems with which the world is grappling. But, like other so-called progressive missives to the little people, he hasn’t thought it through. Trump becoming president isn’t the end of the world and it has zero bearing on whether the UK stays subject to rule from Brussels. Like all Remain’s prognostications it offers a false choice; stay and prosper or leave and die.

But if we do leave the EU it isn’t principally the UK which will suffer, it is the whole EU project which is at stake. This is how it goes: We vote to leave. They try to punish us by imposing nominal tariffs and maybe even trade sanctions. We shrug, maybe suffer a dip in the flow of exotic goods for a while but then concessions are made because business – the German car trade for a start – will lobby to maintain its markets. As James Dyson has said, of course trade with Europe will continue and continue largely unchanged.

Others will watch and then the dominoes will begin to fall. Never entirely happy about their relationship, the Dutch will hold their own in/out referendum, closely followed by others and once nations begin to take back control of their destinies the EU will shrink back to become Germany and France propping up the poor eastern states and wondering what to do about Turkey. Greece is a lost cause, Italy is swamped by unwanted African and Middle Eastern immigration and the shutters are going up everywhere. When war comes there will not be the embryonic EU army to call on as each country will recall their own troops to defend their own borders.

There is a certain inevitability about war in Europe. As Freedland (rightly I believe) surmises, the EU has had a hand in staving it off. But only in the manner of a pressure cooker lid; the simmering resentments are still there, the old enmities only muted, not resolved. And as before, Britain’s true place is as a powerful ally, not a neutered lap dog. The longer we stay in the weaker we become until we are no use to anybody. It probably won’t be World War Three, as some in the Remain camp have tried to suggest, it will probably be more ‘Balkany’, but whether Britain is in or out the EU will be weaker still afterwards.

'Twas ever thus.

The options are not a clear cut stay for peace or leave for war; there are no such guarantees. But if and when war does come where do we want to be? On the inside, weakened as a nation, less confident and legally bound to send in troops against our own European fellow citizens? Or as a strong bystander, wielding diplomatic clout from the outside and able to choose if and when we intervene. Through history this has been our role; and history has a habit of repeating itself. Vote out, for the future of Europe.

Fighting talk

What on earth is going on? A golden rule in big business seems to be that if it’s all going wrong, reorganise. Or if it’s going okay but nobody’s noticing, reorganise. Or, what the hell, it’s two years since we last reorganised… reorganise. Maybe it’s all the jibes about parties being filled with career politicians who’ve never had a proper job? I know say Dave, Ed, Nick and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all, let’s make like a PLC and have a bit of a tidy up.

So, while the world was wondering what sort of a stance they should take towards the Ukraine and brushing up on their Crimean history, Ed Miliband, realising it had nothing whatsoever to do with him, took a break from standing in flood water looking baffled. In an effort to distance himself from the pratfalls that have marked his leadership and put the ‘special’ back into Labour he held a special conference on… now what was it? Everybody has already forgotten because of Andy Sawford’s brilliantly timed idiocy, writing to Waitrose to urge them to cease and desist handing out free coffee. (If you haven't already done so you really must watch @LeCreusetFiend's excellent Downfall spoof.) 

The Internet was alight with Costa Living Crisis jibes within moments and whatever electorate-engaging bollocks, Ed thought he was dabbling in, Sawford’s petulant missive took centre stage instead. If free coffee harms local coffee shops, then free food must hit the takings of local grocers too; so by Labour logic must they also demand the closure of their beloved food banks? It would be like the coal mining industry all over again - Labour hitting their own the hardest. Just what is it with socialists that they need to dictate how everybody should think and speak and act? And every time they do so, they demonstrate how completely unsuitable they are to hold any such power. Joined-up thinking? I wouldn’t trust ‘em with joined up colouring-in.

Under Labour we’d see quotas, tokenism, compulsion and incompetently micro-managed social engineering; they just can’t help it. What happens every time they speculatively float a policy? Shares plummet, companies threaten to leave the country, insurers refuse cover on yet another sector and wealth producers quietly take stock and calculate how soon they will be able to sell up and leave for early retirements abroad. But here’s the worst bit: if things remain as they are there is a very good chance that this clown will become the next Prime Minister, because the bulk of Labour's vote is delivered loyally and without question by tribal morons who harbour a seething hatred of the alternative.

Blind to reality all Labour has to do to guard its vote share is to tell people that Labour is good, Labour is kind and you are good and kind if you vote for them. It works; keep telling them, over and over again and watch as righteous, ill-informed mobs picket banks and factories and hospitals and crusade against cruise missiles, save whales, ban bombs and if necessary pillory people and harm their families, put them out of work and sometimes beat them up, all in the name of the loving kindness that Labour will bestow. “Labour evil is so much nicer than Tory evil, isn’t it?”

Some people actually feel good about themselves when they vote for Labour. They are bringing ‘social justice’ by condemning their own kind to perpetually rely on the state. They are ‘saving our NHS’ despite the partial privatisation of services being rife under Labour and its crippling inefficiency wasting ever more money. With unquestioning zeal the faithful accept at face value every lie they are told about the coalition. Or the simple ‘kind’ lies; that everybody is beautiful in their own way; that everybody has a talent; that ADHD explains and excuses poor behaviour. Leftism relies on having a narrative, even if it’s a warped one.

Cafe Warrior

But look, it’s so much more serious than that. Branding the Tories as ideological, Ed presided this weekend over reforms that may well give the unrepentantly Marxist unions greater power still over the party. If you want to see where communism inevitably leads, ask any citizen of the former Eastern Bloc. And here’s the kicker: if Labour DOES get in next year and if Ukraine’s civil war sparks off World War Three, we’ll be relying on Ed ‘Wallace’ Miliband to step up and be our next Churchill! Oh, yuss!