Success in business requires focus and determination. Set out your ultimate goal and then put together a plan of how to get there.
Politics is the same. And when your Primary objective is NOT economic prosperity for all, then don’t be surprised if the people rise up against you. In the words of Bill Clinton, “It’s the economy stupid”
So why have the people risen up against the EU? Well it’s simple really, their primary objective is a federal union. Prosperity, freedom and liberty are well down the pecking order.
The EU makes bad decisions, including about economic matters, because its institutions are focused on the goal of creating a federal union, not on the goal of increasing prosperity.
Policies which are already of EU competence such as Agriculture, Fisheries and migration don’t work very well at all because the decision makers are not directly accountable to an electorate.
That’s how you get to a place where you’re throwing dead fish back in the sea. That’s how you get to a place where you put African farmers out of business by selling Africans subsidised food and simultaneously spend billions in aid buying food in Africa. That’s how you get to a place where big business Euros whallop the small business start up with nonsensical regulations to stifle competition and ultimately growth.
The EU is not pursuing an economic goal of greater prosperity, it is pursuing a political project, namely the establishment of a federal state. In the process, it is pushing policies of harmonisation and integration and it engages in excessive regulation instead of encouraging competition in regulation. The euro is the worst of the EU’s blunders — so far. But as bad as the Euro is, it is not the source of the problem, it is but a symptom of a system that is obsessed by federalisation, that cuts out the democratic legitimacy of directly elected politicians, and replaces it with unelected career politicians who desire the increasing power and status that would come from a United States of Europe, without any of the checks and balances of a normal functioning democracy.
And you can be sure that there will be more.
Nowhere else are countries pursuing anything like the EU’s mad agenda — no single markets, no monetary unions and no federal super-states. Unlike so many members of our elite, other countries’ leaders in other trade associations have noticed that the EU doesn’t work.
Take any large federal union like the USA, China, India or Brazil and you will find that power is far removed from the people and corruption is rife. Take smaller democratic countries like Switzerland, Canada, Norway, New Zealand and South Korea and you will find less corruption, fairer societies and higher incomes.
Canada does not want to join the USA any time soon. New Zealand is not looking to join Australia. South Korea is not trying to merge with Japan, Singapore, Malaysia or Taiwan.
So why are so many clever and decent people among our leaders apparently still keen that Britain should stay in the EU? There are two reasons. First, many of them simply don’t know the facts about economic performance and don’t understand economics anyway.
They are quite simply unable to accept the success of Thatcher’s reforms in the 1980s in transforming our economy into a modern services economy, a world leader in IT, Pharmaceuticals and Financial Services. This economic fact flies in the face of their own economic theory of high levels of regulations, tax and spend. So instead they over attribute UK economic success to membership of the European Union. That is why the thought of leaving sends them bat s@&t crazy.
It is often said by Remainers, why would the UK impose a recession on ourselves? Well it’s worth remembering that in our history there has only been one time (that I know of, happy to be corrected) that we have imposed a recession on ourselves. And it was the attempt by the “Wets” to join monetary union in the early 90s. The result was interest rates at 15% and a massive economic shock to this country, all in the name of a federal European goal. My own father, a business man at the time, almost went bust. I still meet people today in my office who have never recovered from the financial loss of that recession.
Remainers place a lot of importance on the Gravity Model of trade theory which tries suggest we will be worse off outside the EU because trade matters more when it’s with your close neighbours. As Jordan Peterson would say it is a “Univaried Analysis”. They’re missing the big picture. Governments take decisions every single week that affect business. Do we want those decisions to be focused on growth. Or do we want them to be based on creating a federal union?
Accountability matters!
Representation matters!
Independence Matters!
Will we ever be free again?