In response to Kathy Gyngell: More irresponsible No Deal alarmism from the BBC,
FirstNationFirst wrote:
These apocalyptic warnings must be taken at face value and suitable actions taken immediately:
Sack every other civil servant today – just in case these warnings are right. Even if it turns out to be a false alarm no harm will be done as we all know these people do nothing constructive anyway.
Robert wrote:
Was it ever any different concerning our relationship with the EU? Time and again, at every major turn, the negative people – those that suck the life out of anything they touch – have come out of the woodwork to forecast economic slumps; shortages of essentials; rising unemployment; emergency budgets; soaring inflation; world war three; the end of civilisation and so on, to note some of the saner ramblings of these digital crystal ball-gazing soothsayers.
On our referendum to stay in the then Common Market, Peter Shore called them all out well:
Whilst another Labour politician, Tony Benn, got it right when observing, at the time, that what was at issue was who governs us? Who makes our laws? How do we elect them and can we boot them out if we don’t like what they are doing on our behalf? As he noted, the EU is an undemocratic organisation we would do well to leave:
Even when one considers purely trade issues it is clear that the ‘trend’, noted way back in 1975 by Peter Shore, has continued to be against the UK and in favour of other EU countries. We now have a huge trade deficit with the EU – we are, after all, their captured customer in their protectionist trade bloc – that boosts employment elsewhere in Europe. Meanwhile, our trade balance with the rest of the world is positive and growing – benefiting employment here.
Later the same doom-laden soothsayer pronouncements were made about what would happen if we didn’t join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism – and look what happened after we did, thanks largely to the dripping wet Europhiles in the Conservative party at that time.
Then came the demands we join the euro or face economic ruin. To his credit, Gordon Brown scuppered that notion and, as a result, we found ourselves in a position to manage our own currency and way out of the financial crash of 2009. Which also serves to highlight that economic booms and slumps have far more to do with the workings of financial systems within and between countries and have nothing to do with being part of or not part of some supra-national bureaucratic empire-building exercise. Though, obviously, for some countries trapped in the euro, membership of the EU has brought extreme economic hardship because that EU-wide currency is not a financial/currency system that operates to their benefit.
Unfortunately for Gordon Brown he then blotted his copybook by letting banks get away with reckless lending practices and, worst of all, signing away our ability to make large amounts of our own laws by putting his scribble on the Lisbon Treaty.
That is what our vote to leave the EU is all about – taking back the control that the likes of Gordon Brown, and others before, signed away without even giving us a say as to whether or not we wanted unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats overseas, in cahoots with our own unelected, and almost completely unaccountable, EU-worshipping Whitehall civil service making up the rules that we have to live by.
