Exit Strategy

The impossible may be happening.

Politicians, those fickle and feckless people, are finally starting to listen to their masters.

We want out. Most of us never wanted in, but we were not of an age to point out the futility of the EU. Our opportunity may be arriving soon. 42 years after the dreadful and treasonous European Communities Act was enacted, predicated on an outright lie, we may just get the chance to say no.

According to this article anyway.

Look:


"Tragically for Britain our ruling class has colluded in the EU’s systematic destruction of our right to self-government while ignoring the will of the public. The entire story of our official relationship with Brussels has been characterised by deceit, cowardice and national humiliation.

The tone for this saga of decline was set in the early Seventies when Tory Prime Minister Edward Heath forced through Britain’s entry into the Common Market. “There is no question of Britain losing essential sovereignty,” he claimed – a statement he knew to be a blatant lie."

We throw at least £17 billion a year down this monsters throat. Instead of a polite "Thank you" all we get are demands for more, more, more, for less, less, less. The true figure is nearer £110 billion per year.  The cost to small (and large) businesses is insane, forced, as they are, to implement hundreds of thousands of bureaucratic diktats shat out by the collective idiocy in Brussels, and just to appease the French, in Strasbourg as well. For those of you that are unaware, the whole shebang moves to Strasbourg every month, and why not? It isn't their money they are wasting: it's ours.

Last year, a total of 4,116 new pieces of legislation and their dangerous cousins, statutory instruments, were enacted in the UK. Over 80% of those individual pieces of insanity came directly from the EU. Extricating ourselves from this nonsense is long overdue. I often hear people say (when I have been on a short but vicious tirade about the EU) "Yeah, but it doesn't affect us, does it?". I could scream. I say to them, "Point out anything in this living room. Anything at all. Not one single item in here has not been regulated by the EU. Not one". The answer is usually, "Meh".

That is the nature of this particular beast. It is sneaky. It is devious. It is underhand. It is expensive. It is unnecessary. It is futile. It is populated with politicians who are on a power trip, and they will not be reasoned with. They will not hear the ugly truth: the plan has failed. You have failed. People have had enough. That "thousandth cut" may have been delivered, at last, and the meh brigade may just be waking up. It has been a long time coming.

There may be hope:

"BUT now we may finally be given a real say on our relationship with Brussels. The wall of anti- democracy, so carefully preserved by the elite for so long, is beginning to crumble. According to authoritative reports from Westminster each of the two main parties is considering plans to go into the next general election promising to hold a referendum on the Britain’s membership of the EU.

In the Tory high command the idea is increasingly favoured as a means of rebuilding popularity after the shambles of recent months. “Basically it’s a certainty,” one Tory strategist said last week. Labour, too, is drawn to the referendum idea, partly to outflank the Conservatives. This paper’s chief political commentator Patrick O’Flynn recently revealed that some senior Labour figures believe a “referendum is going to happen anyway...so we might as well pledge it first”."

The question, the only question is, do we believe them? Do we put our faith in these famous liars? We've been here before. We've had those "cast-iron guarantees". We've seen UKIP take them to court and lose, as the judge stated, "Manifesto promises are not legally binding". Is that some sort of twisted caveat emptor? Is it a warning never to believe a word politicians utter on the campaign trail?

I like Europe. I really do. I have been to many of the countries there (in fact, at stupid o'clock tomorrow morning I go to visit a new European nation) and the biggest delight for me was seeing their differences. Standardisation is anathema to me. Vive le difference, and all that. What I have hated in recent years is that bastard harmonisation. It is neither needed nor welcomed.

Some say, "Well, you don't need your passport", to which I say "Bollocks". I am even asked for my passport on domestic flights nowadays. A passport to travel from Aberdeen to London, FFS! And whether I need a passport or not is immaterial. I have to carry one, and it takes just as long to enter or leave with an EU passport. Longer, often, because everybody and their dog has one. The queues for "foreigners" are often shorter and faster moving.

After that triumphant (or devastating, depending on your politics) defeat of Labour at the last general election I was delighted but unsurprised to hear that wifey MP from Salford (I refuse to write her name as it will befoul this blog) say "You know what? We lost the election because we stopped listening".

The coalition didn't make that mistake. They didn't even start listening. They promised all sorts, reneged, and carried on regardless. They are uber-beings and therefore empowered to do as they will. The crash, when it comes, as it must come, will be painful for them. And I will smile as I watch the carnage. I will laugh as they try to blame each other. I will rejoice when they finally blame us. And they will. And that will fire up the sleeping. That will anger Joe Public, who is sick and tired of paying for their incompetence.

I have disengaged from British politics to the extent that my polling card gathers dust, and my polling station (just 65 yards from my home) goes unvisited. I am disconnected. My consent to be governed by these idiots is revoked.

All of my problems will go away if we leave the EU. Sovereignty, just a word to some, and more's the pity, will be regained. We will be whole again. We can start to rebuild this nation and be great again. Our combined talents in the UK are prodigious. Europe needs us more than we need them. No jobs will be lost. Our travels to that continent will not reduce. We will not be reviled. We will be hailed as "that brave nation that showed the rest of us the way". Our children will be proud of us.

We will be free from that nightmare. We will do what we have always done: we will decide for ourselves. As peoples must.

And we will all be richer for that.

CR.