Thinking About Europe....

I’m just a musician.

I’ve never really tried to understand politics as, to be frank, I think the world goes on just the same no matter what they do (more or less). I have rarely asked for any help from the State but when I have it has helped me just fine. I believe that we should look after the poor not only here but everywhere if we can, and I think most politicians are pretty fair minded and have broader perspectives on things than I do.

In the same vein, I rarely take notice of what ‘ordinary’ people think about the songs I write (I do value the opinions of other musicians however) and don’t get involved in the politics of music. I write songs, judging by the success I’ve had I must be ok at it – so I just carry on.

For the same reason I leave those with a taste for it to get on with politics.

But my industry has changed. X-Factor has made folk without any training and, in most cases ability, believe they can be pop stars (almost universally they can’t) so it occurred to me that the reason I find politics more compelling than I once did must be because that’s become a broader church too.

In older times politicians were drawn from the working classes and the professions; now it seems to be a career (not one of our main party leaders has ever had a proper job) which must mean that the old standard that said you need to have lived a little before you open your mouth and talk about politics has gone out of the window.

So if that’s the case I decided that maybe I needed to do a bit of reading and understand stuff a bit better. So I did……..

And the first big thing I decided I needed to understand was the EU in or out debate.

I am a Europhile. I’ve lived in France, Spain and Italy in my time and loved them all. I’ve also spent a lot of my career living and working in the USA and I love that too. But there is a stark difference between the two.

Europe is ostensibly a socialist group of nations; they believe in equality and use statute to create it. The USA sticks to its maxim of being the land of the free, fears socialism as “back door communism” and tries to stay out of people’s lives as much as it can.

As somebody who tried (and failed) to start businesses in France and Spain and tried (and succeeded) to start a business in the USA, I can tell you that the way the state deals with entrepreneurs on either side of the pond is very different.

It seems to me that the UK sits somewhere in the middle. We like some of the ideals of socialism (the NHS is the shining example) but loath the bureaucracy.  And then there’s our history to contend with……

Before the Normans arrived Briton was an exceptionally well respected trading nation, known for its artisan goods and its rare metals. Then William arrived and for the next 400 years we stopped looking anywhere except across the channel at Big Brother. The Hundred Years War stopped all that and for a period of 500 years we stood on our own two feet and, for large parts of that, dominated the world; at the very least we punched above our weight.

When we joined the Common Market things began to change on the ground and, after Maastricht it would completely swing away from us towards the federal Europe model that the member states seem to want.

Margaret Thatcher seemed to know Maastricht was a bad omen for Britain, nearly walked away and later wrote that signing the treaty was her biggest regret. She worked hard to foster the ‘special relationship’ with the USA even as it fell away. No longer could Britain negotiate trade agreements of any kind, that was a job for Brussels and they weren’t interested.

In England particularly (I can’t speak for the Welsh, Scots or Irish as I have no idea what their views are) we see the legislation coming out of Brussels as invasive, somehow against the British spirit of free trade and tough competition. Secretly I think we also look at countries that we’ve spent most of our history at war with (either fighting them or saving them from each other), and resent the fact that they can now pass laws that effect us, even if our own MEP’s oppose them.

Most of the concessions won by Thatcher were given away, first by Blair and then, at increasing pace by Gordon Brown. Almost everything in EU Law is now decided by majority voting and we are not able to sway those votes like we once could – too many poor, hardline socialist nations have now joined and they see the world very differently.

Now all of that stuff is pretty obvious and well known. But I had decided I wanted to ‘do the detail’ and that is far from easy.

All three major parties are run by people who want us to stay in Europe. Sure the Conservatives have a lot of MP’s who want out, but the party line is still ‘better in than out’. That means that the debate and the facts surrounding the debate are weighted that way. UKIP are a lone voice and whilst Nigel Farage is a sound bite driven sort of fella he simply doesn’t have the taste for the detail and, even if he did, he doesn’t get the platform to spout it.

We know that Nick Clegg would take us into the Euro and is a supported of the United States of Europe concept. David Cameron seems to want to negotiate a trade biased deal and keep out of the EU political mire. I have absolutely no idea what Ed Milliband wants and I can’t find anything he has said that indicates where the Labour Party stands.

We can dismiss Clegg. He will never get what he wants as he’ll never win an outright majority. We can also dismiss Cameron’s position as the other EU member states will never agree to it. Sure we could move from UE membership to be members of EFTA (European Free Trade Association) like Norway and Iceland but that’s really a place for those queueing to get in and has draconian conditions regarding acceptance of EU laws (without representation) which would be totally unacceptable to the British public – hence why I say Cameron is dreaming.

The Labour Party has a history of ceding power to Europe. Tony Blair (an EU fan) gave away our opt outs so that majority voting became the norm on almost everything. He also surrendered almost all of the rebate Thatcher had fought for. So, in the absence of any words from the current leadership (I think it’s too much of a hot potato) I’ll assume they think much as Blair did.

To my mind this leaves us in no mans land – to be honest I think we are there right now. The Eurozone is marching towards federalism with enthusiasm and those outside the Euro all seem to be planning to join. Except us of course.

Over here the vast majority of people (surveys suggest) have had enough and want out. The politicians, in their quiet corners, secretly say we are simply uninformed and need protecting from ourselves. But here’s the thing…

What if it’s THEY who are uninformed? What if THEY are guilty of looking through blinkers and only seeing a future in Europe? What if they are missing the point of being British, with all the baggage that involves?

So I sunk myself into statistics, forecasts, books that were pro-EU and ones that were against. I read it all and my conclusion?

I believe we are being conned by our politicians (no surprise there) but I cannot for the life of me work out why!

In all the reading I have done I could not find one solid good reason why we are in the EU. It doesn’t fit us, the rest would prefer us not to be in it (whilst they fear the consequences) and it currently makes financial and economic nonsense for the UK (or should I say England given my earlier caveat).

I know that you lot have the attention span of a gnat so I’m not going to bang on and run you through the statistics I found right now. I will do it later but for now I just wanted to say that after my research I’ll be voting in whatever fashion I have to, to get us out. After that I can return to my true voting preferences but this is way too serious a mess to be diverted by mere politics.

We need a referendum, we all know what the result of that will be, and we need it soonest, not pushed into the distance.

If the Conservatives had won the last General Election we would have had that referendum and would now be in exit mode, unraveling the legals and negotiating other trade agreements, I also think we would be out of recession as a result (the EU is contracting as a trading group and has been for the last 5 years – our required reliance on it as our partner of choice is keeping us in recession)

Did you know the office of statistics answered a question last year that was forced upon them and admitted the cost of merely managing the constantly changing EU rules and regulations costs the British tax payer £1.2billion a year – that’s just the management, it takes no account of the effects on business. Bet you didn’t know that; and there’s a whole load more numbers where that one came from.

I now know where I’ll be voting, for the rest of you……. think on.