YESTERDAY’S extract from the transcript of Professor Gwythian Prins’s Briefings for Brexit podcast corrected the fundamental historical mistake – the justifying narrative of Remainers – that the EU was a child of the Second World War. It was not. Nor was it about trading. The reason it will collapse as did the USSR is the reason it was conceived post First World War – as a political project designed to suppress nation states. In the third and fourth sections Prins turns his attention to defence. Here in Part Three he explains why Theresa May’s deeply flawed Withdrawal Agreement must be voted down. The key alliances on which we depend, which have nothing to do with the EU, would be jeopardised, as would the security of our nation.
INTERVIEWER: Defence: Theresa May in her statement to the House on her Brexit deal has talked about the security partnership with the EU continuing. You would have swift extradition procedures, there will be a sharing of data records and she said there would be a close and flexible partnership on foreign and defence policies. From your security knowledge and from the articles you’ve written for Briefings for Brexit, do you agree that can be achieved under this deal?
GWYTHIAN PRINS: No. It’s based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the facts, not a matter of opinion. So let’s take the two parts of what she said. The first part about data sharing and the arrest warrants and so on – Sir Richard Dearlove, the former Master of Pembroke and before that the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, with whom I have been writing extensively on Briefings for Brexit, and I, have published on the website, now twice, explanations as to why the EU is the wrong address to which you should direct yourself for these issues. We joined then with General Julian Thompson who led the re-conquest of the Falklands and with Admiral Lane-Nott who used to command the British deterrent force, in a letter to The Times on the 17th of October, in which we explained, the four of us, that the EU has nothing to do with defence and security and the British government should withdraw all of its papers. That means up to and including the now, I think, fatally flawed and doomed withdrawal proposal that she tabled to Cabinet. These should be withdrawn, because all relationships to do with security, defence, police matters either are the purview of NATO, or they are the purview of nation-to-nation relationships, such as we have for example with the French. But the EU itself should have no role. Why not is revealed in the fundamental misunderstanding that underlies the second of those sets of words which she used. Now, she said that she seeks ‘a close and flexible partnership’. With respect to Mrs May she and Oliver Robbins – and whoever it is who is advising her on this – either do not understand, or we suspect, and it is much darker, are deliberately failing to communicate truth to the public and possibly to the Prime Minister. If you look at the EU’s documents, and in Veterans for Britain we have done this minutely, the documents which underlie the move towards the creation of a military EU have accelerated massively since we voted to leave the European Union.
Now, as I explained in an earlier answer, the very first thing that the European projectors tried to do under Jean Monnet was to create the Pleven Plan of 1950. So this is not something that’s a flash in the pan, it’s a long time coming. Article 42 of the Lisbon Treaty sets the principles for creating a military identity for the European Union. This, as Mr Juncker said in a speech, is the Sleeping Beauty of the Lisbon Treaty, which is now being woken up. And it was woken up specifically in two documents: The European Defence Action Plan and the Defence and Security Implementation Plan of November 2016. If you look at those documents, and all of the documents which then flowed from that through five European Councils from 2016 until now, all of which British officials waved through on the understanding we would not be subject to them because we are leaving the EU, they are creating a ramified military EU identity which is in its nature inherently hostile to the United States and NATO. And don’t take my word for it, that is what Monsieur Macron explained in exactly those terms, in his speech at Verdun, during the celebrations for the remembrance of the 100th anniversary.
So when you look at the documents in detail as we have done, you see that they follow the standard EU practice, which is that everything is related to everything else. And so if you join one part of this organisation – for example, Mrs May is very keen to join the European Defence Procurement Area, because she thinks that that’s the way in which she preserves British jobs in the defence industry. Wrong – because by so doing, she automatically subjects this country to the global plan of the European External Action Programme, in other words European Union foreign policy. Everything is linked to everything else like a spider’s web. So you cannot be part of one part of this. There is nothing flexible on offer. The only thing that is on offer in this area is complete subordination to PESCO – the Permanent Structured Cooperation of which we are not a member. We would be subject to it in defence and security, but as a rule-taker in defence. Now, pause and think what that means. The enormity of that. What this Government is proposing, Mrs May’s government, is that we are going to make a surrender of British sovereignty in the national security area, more extreme than any defeat since the fall of Singapore in 1942. And I use my words carefully. Because there would be an absolute loss of control over the key levers of British defence and security and this is the result of a technical note issued by the government on 24th May which – and this is a constitutional outrage – reversed all of the stated decisions upon which British officials had waved through the permissions to create the military EU. We’d said, Mr Fallon said, we didn’t want to be a dog in the manger because we’re not going to be part of it – fair enough. Suddenly, on 24th May we have a paper from Her Majesty’s Government saying we reverse all of that and we want to be members of all of this, but in a subordinated role where we will not have any executive control.
Isn’t that an argument to remain – our defence policy? I’ve heard what you’ve said but aren’t we destined outside of Europe to become an island with nukes? That’s how some people have termed it. We can’t defend ourselves. We haven’t spent enough on defence over the years. You wrote about the Galileo Project and how you wanted the UK to break away from this satellite navigation system. But I’m just bemused as to how we would defend ourselves outside Europe, when we haven’t spent enough money on defence. We have renewed Trident, but there’s a lot of cynicism over whether that’s rusty and whether it works properly or not. But come on – we can’t defend ourselves?
Forgive me, this is Project Fear on steroids. No, we have not spent enough on defence. Yes, of course we can defend ourselves in the Anglosphere alliances which conform to global Britain. The key alliances upon which we depend – and let me be very clear about this – do not have anything to do with the European Union. They do have to do with some European countries who are members of NATO, but our primary relationships are with Anglosphere countries, English-speaking countries around the world like Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. Countries that are not English-speaking which are close allies like Japan, for example. This is the world with which we do most of our trade. This is the world of the future. This is the world to which the British economy is supremely well-attuned because we are an economy unlike the Germans who are very much a 20th Century economy that bashes metal and makes motorcars. We make ideas; we make services; we are attuned to the future, not to the past. So, yes if we do what any responsible government is morally obliged to do – which is to put our money where our mouth is – all prime ministers say the first duty of government is the defence of the realm, that is true. Therefore it follows that it is the first call on taxpayers’ money. Your money and mine. Before it’s spent on anything else: health services, education or anything else; the first thing you are obliged to spend money on are the night-watchman functions. So, of course we could do that and we should. Now, the notion – let’s revert to this and nail this one absolutely . . .
Tomorrow in the final part of this interview Professor Prins underlines the grotesque ‘declinism’ that is the backdrop to our so-called negotiations with the EU – how totally out of touch that assessment is given the reality, which is that the UK is the second-most dominant geopolitical power.
