Voting to stay? Then prepare to obey EU's every whim
By Kwasi Kwarteng
If the bookies are right, on Friday, June 24, the British people will wake up to find themselves committed to membership of the EU. This will be a momentous step, and there will be consequences.
The EU will rightly say to Britain: ‘You have had a long debate. You have voted with your eyes open and you have voted to stay with us, within the EU family.’
After three years of speculation, and a four-month campaign, those countries will have no interest in our ‘plans’ for substantial EU reform. Why should they?
Their attitude will simply be that of neurotic adults who have grown tired of having their time wasted by squabbling children. ‘You have had your argument, now please keep quiet,’ they could justifiably say.
Or, as the Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee once said to the Left-wing intellectual Harold Laski: ‘A period of silence from you would be welcome.’
The truth is, if we vote to stay, Britain will have no bargaining position whatsoever.
The EU will be able to push through any policy, safe in the knowledge that we will continue to be members under almost any circumstances. There will be no more negotiation, no debate, no treaty reforms, at least for a very long time.
Not known for its lack of confidence, the EU will take an ‘In’ vote as a ringing endorsement of the project.
ANY subsequent British complaints will be taken as seriously as the whining of a small child in the back of the family car, crying as daddy drives purposefully to the holiday resort.
Many people in my Spelthorne constituency and beyond say to me that they were only voting to stay within the EEC, the European Economic Community, in the referendum of 1975. They ‘just didn’t know’ it would turn into the European Union.
Of course, they are right. At a time when we commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, you don’t need his mastery of the English language to understand that the phrase ‘European Union’ has a very different meaning from ‘European Economic Community’.
The organisation we know as the EU changed beyond recognition between the British referendum of June 1975, and the launching of the European Union 17 years later in 1992. Who knows where we will be in another 17 years’ time, in 2033?
This is why, after much consideration, I have decided to vote to leave the EU.....
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