Would life outside the European Union be a ‘leap in the dark’, condemning Britain to a precarious and precipitous future, or might Brexit be an opportunity to liberate ourselves from an undemocratic and anachronistic institution that no longer serves our interests? These are the two scenarios now being presented to the British public, should it vote to leave the EU on 23 June. Yet both prospects rest on a dubious presumption: that the EU would survive intact following Britain’s departure...
The EU is well past its sell-by date
Patrick West
columnist
Spiked
32 comments
We don’t need Brussels to stave off another World War.
Would life outside the European Union be a ‘leap in the dark’, condemning Britain to a precarious and precipitous future, or might Brexit be an opportunity to liberate ourselves from an undemocratic and anachronistic institution that no longer serves our interests? These are the two scenarios now being presented to the British public, should it vote to leave the EU on 23 June. Yet both prospects rest on a dubious presumption: that the EU would survive intact following Britain’s departure.
Prior to France’s regional elections in December, Marine Le Pen, the Front National leader, gave an interview to the Daily Telegraph. She explained her support for the UK’s secession: ‘Brexit would be marvellous – extraordinary – for all European peoples who long for freedom’, she said. ‘It will be the beginning of the end of the European Union… I compare Brussels to the Berlin Wall. If Great Britain knocks down part of the wall, it’s finished, it’s over.’
The EU existed in various forms before the UK joined, and it could of course function were it to leave, but the secession of the world’s fifth largest economy would severely compromise the EU’s integrity. It would also set a humiliating precedent: no state has ever left the EU.
Britain’s obstinacy and perseverance has already exposed cracks in a tottering union that’s throwing back up internal borders as we speak. The Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, accuses Britain of ‘opening a Pandora’s box’, and no wonder he’s fretful: a poll published on Monday showed that 53 per cent of people in the Netherlands would also like a plebiscite on EU membership. At present, 44 per cent of the Dutch population want to remain in the EU, with 43 per cent wanting out.
Elsewhere, the Czech prime minister, Bohuslav Sobotka, also warned this week that Britain leaving could prompt a ‘Czexit’ in a country now deeply hostile to the EU. Three-fifths of Czechs say they are unhappy with EU membership and 62 per cent said they would vote against it in a referendum. The French, for all their customary jibes about ‘perfidious Albion’, are now beginning to talk about ‘Franxit’. Even Serbia, that one-time pariah nation in the eyes of Western Europe, has gone cold on the union. Aleksandar Vucic, the Serbian Prime Minister, now says that EU membership is no longer the ‘big dream it was in the past’.
Of all those we should pay heed to on the EU, it’s the Serbs who are most instructive. They were the most senior partner in a rancorous, unhappy, out-dated, multi-ethnic federation – Yugoslavia – the collapse of which was preceded by one member (Slovenia) seceding unilaterally. A consequent domino effect is inevitable when one member leaves a quarrelsome, dysfunctional federation. It happened in the Eastern Bloc in 1989 and in the Soviet Union in 1991.
Whatever positive or negative outcomes Brexit may bring, the EU is past its sell-by date. It never helped to bring peace to Europe; its establishment was a symptom of a desire for peace, not the cause of it. Just as the Thirty Years War of the 17th century prompted Europe to make the collective mental decision never again to go to war with itself over religion, the carnage of the First and Second World Wars ushered in a new thinking among Europe’s great powers never again to fight over nationalism. Eighty years on and Germany no more desires to invade Poland than do French Catholics seek to massacre French Protestants – as they did a few centuries ago.
The EU was erected on an unfounded fear that Europe might descend once more into continent-wide, nationalist bloodletting. As Denis Healey, the former Labour defence secretary, once said of EU-philes: ‘Their Europeanism is nothing but imperialism with an inferiority complex.’ The EU was built on the twin pillars of pessimism and fear, which is why you still hear little else from the pro-EU camp today.
With the collapse of the EU, we will still go on trading and co-operating with each other in this digitalised, decentralised, globalised world, because historic enmities have vanished. We Europeans will certainly be happier once we’re no longer compelled to live in the same house and share a bank account. The desire for European fraternity was a noble idea and of its era, but 1945 was a different time and a different place.
The EU is well past its sell-by date | spiked
The EU is well past its sell-by date
Patrick West
columnist
Spiked
32 comments
We don’t need Brussels to stave off another World War.
Would life outside the European Union be a ‘leap in the dark’, condemning Britain to a precarious and precipitous future, or might Brexit be an opportunity to liberate ourselves from an undemocratic and anachronistic institution that no longer serves our interests? These are the two scenarios now being presented to the British public, should it vote to leave the EU on 23 June. Yet both prospects rest on a dubious presumption: that the EU would survive intact following Britain’s departure.
Prior to France’s regional elections in December, Marine Le Pen, the Front National leader, gave an interview to the Daily Telegraph. She explained her support for the UK’s secession: ‘Brexit would be marvellous – extraordinary – for all European peoples who long for freedom’, she said. ‘It will be the beginning of the end of the European Union… I compare Brussels to the Berlin Wall. If Great Britain knocks down part of the wall, it’s finished, it’s over.’
The EU existed in various forms before the UK joined, and it could of course function were it to leave, but the secession of the world’s fifth largest economy would severely compromise the EU’s integrity. It would also set a humiliating precedent: no state has ever left the EU.
Britain’s obstinacy and perseverance has already exposed cracks in a tottering union that’s throwing back up internal borders as we speak. The Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, accuses Britain of ‘opening a Pandora’s box’, and no wonder he’s fretful: a poll published on Monday showed that 53 per cent of people in the Netherlands would also like a plebiscite on EU membership. At present, 44 per cent of the Dutch population want to remain in the EU, with 43 per cent wanting out.
Elsewhere, the Czech prime minister, Bohuslav Sobotka, also warned this week that Britain leaving could prompt a ‘Czexit’ in a country now deeply hostile to the EU. Three-fifths of Czechs say they are unhappy with EU membership and 62 per cent said they would vote against it in a referendum. The French, for all their customary jibes about ‘perfidious Albion’, are now beginning to talk about ‘Franxit’. Even Serbia, that one-time pariah nation in the eyes of Western Europe, has gone cold on the union. Aleksandar Vucic, the Serbian Prime Minister, now says that EU membership is no longer the ‘big dream it was in the past’.
Of all those we should pay heed to on the EU, it’s the Serbs who are most instructive. They were the most senior partner in a rancorous, unhappy, out-dated, multi-ethnic federation – Yugoslavia – the collapse of which was preceded by one member (Slovenia) seceding unilaterally. A consequent domino effect is inevitable when one member leaves a quarrelsome, dysfunctional federation. It happened in the Eastern Bloc in 1989 and in the Soviet Union in 1991.
Whatever positive or negative outcomes Brexit may bring, the EU is past its sell-by date. It never helped to bring peace to Europe; its establishment was a symptom of a desire for peace, not the cause of it. Just as the Thirty Years War of the 17th century prompted Europe to make the collective mental decision never again to go to war with itself over religion, the carnage of the First and Second World Wars ushered in a new thinking among Europe’s great powers never again to fight over nationalism. Eighty years on and Germany no more desires to invade Poland than do French Catholics seek to massacre French Protestants – as they did a few centuries ago.
The EU was erected on an unfounded fear that Europe might descend once more into continent-wide, nationalist bloodletting. As Denis Healey, the former Labour defence secretary, once said of EU-philes: ‘Their Europeanism is nothing but imperialism with an inferiority complex.’ The EU was built on the twin pillars of pessimism and fear, which is why you still hear little else from the pro-EU camp today.
With the collapse of the EU, we will still go on trading and co-operating with each other in this digitalised, decentralised, globalised world, because historic enmities have vanished. We Europeans will certainly be happier once we’re no longer compelled to live in the same house and share a bank account. The desire for European fraternity was a noble idea and of its era, but 1945 was a different time and a different place.
The EU is well past its sell-by date | spiked