Britain’s Brexit debate has moved onto zany ground with, among others Hitler, bananas and the supposed Brexiteers (if you believe David Cameron) of ISIS all making recent appearances, but this CapX article by a number of German lawyers and academics takes the argument back into more serious territory.
More specifically the authors look at lyin’ David Cameron’s supposed renegotiation of Britain’s position within what the prime minister insists on calling a ‘reformed’ EU. They are not wildly impressed.
Some extracts (my emphasis added).
As for the promises to improve economic competitiveness and reduce regulatory burdens, one only has to look back at the launch of the EU’s Lisbon Agenda in 2000 which was aimed to transform the EU into “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion by 2010.” As the year 2010 approached, references to the Agenda were progressively expunged from EU documents and websites, and it now primarily survives on Wikipedia and in fading memories….
[T]here is the symbolically important declaration that the UK is not committed to ‘ever closer union’. However, there is not a single important judgment where the European Court of Justice has relied on this formula as the exclusive legal basis for driving EU integration, and it is difficult to see how, in practice, the UK could in future escape the uniform application of future judicial activism in the EU except in areas where the UK already enjoys pre-existing opt-outs….
We believe that the EU needs the United Kingdom and her voice of reason, all the more at present when almost everyone appears to have quit reason. Whether Britain needs the EU just as much, is a choice for the British people. But it is not a choice between change and no change. Rather, it is a choice between leaving or remaining in an EU that would remain committed to further political integration, and there is nothing in the EU-UK Agreement that can offer the UK any permanent legal safeguards against being dragged along the path of further integration albeit with provisos and reluctantly. The Agreement cannot do so because it does little to reform the EU and does not exempt Britain from the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice and the uniform application of its pro-Union approach to judicial decision-making.
And the authors have no doubt that further integration is what lies ahead:
And, as so often, when the EU is facing problems created by premature integration, and no one knows what is to be done, Brussels, Paris and Berlin are responding not with plans for less, but for more EU integration.
‘Ever closer union’ means what it says.
Meanwhile, a touch awkwardly for lyin’ David, the Independentis reporting this (again, my emphasis added):
[L]etters emerged indicating the Prime Minister discussed the role big business could play in the Remain campaign before he had even completed his renegotiation deal with European leaders. In a letter to Mr Cameron from Serco chief executive Rupert Soames, sent 11 days before the renegotiation deal was completed, and the EU referendum formally announced, the business leader refers to talks held with the Prime Minister earlier in the month.
He writes that, following up on the meeting, he is planning to contact FTSE 500 companies to urge them to mention the risks of Brexit in their annual reports. At the time of the meeting and the letter, dated 8 February, Mr Cameron’s official position was that he could still campaign for a Leave vote if his renegotiation failed to secure the changes he wanted.
[Cameron] told the House of Commons on February 3: “I am not arguing – and I will never argue – that Britain couldn’t survive outside the European Union…If we can’t secure these changes, I rule nothing out.”
However in the letter, seen by the Daily Mail, Mr Soames states: “There were two points I thought I might follow up on. The first is how to mobilise corporates to look carefully at the risks Brexit represents.
“I am working with Peter Chadlington and Stuart Rose [head of the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign) with a view to contacting FTSE 500 companies who have annual reports due for publication before June and persuading them that they should include Brexit in the list of key risks. All public companies are required to set out in their annual report an analysis of key risks.”
Labour MP Gisela Stuart, chair of the Vote Leave campaign, said the Prime Minister had “serious issues” to answer.
“We now know he has been doing deals with businesses to exaggerate the risk of a vote by the UK to leave the EU,” she said. “He must now tell us urgently how many businesses he cut secret deals with? Who are they and what were they promised in return?”
Downing Street said it did not comment on leaked documents.
Brexiteer de la dernière heure Boris Johnson, the former London mayor with an eye for lyin’ David’s job, has selflessly stepped up to fill that gap.
Responding to the claims today Mr Johnson said they made Britain look like a ‘banana republic’. Serco has multi-billion-pound contracts with the Government.
’This is the biggest stitch up since the Bayeux Tapestry,’ Mr Johnson said
’Now we learn that some fat cats have been secretly agreeing to campaign for remain while angling for lavish Government contracts. It makes us look like a banana republic. And it is also now beyond doubt that the so called renegotiation was a fiction designed to bamboozle the public. It was a meaningless mime, a ritual, a kabuki drama in which the outcome was utterly preordained. This is not the far-reaching and fundamental reform we were promised.’
No it was not. And it never was going to be.
Brexit Update: Lyin’ David, the Bayeux Tapestry and Ever Closer Union