It was a clash of the Euro titans at our latest sell-out Spectator debate: “Britain’s future lies outside the EU”. Nigel Farage led the team for the motion and the former president of France, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, led the opposition – with Andrew Neil in the chair. Patrick Minford and James Delingpole supported team Farage, while Steve Richards and Richard Ottaway MP spoke for the EU. And there was all to play for. On the way into the debate, the vote was:
For: 196 Against: 105 Undecided: 99
After the speeches – and Q&A – there were no more undecideds and the votes fell as follows:-
For: 247 Against: 123
Everyone came back to The Spectator’s HQ for dinner, and there was no violence. The arguments were as good as you’d expect – we’ll post the video later.
Britain’s future lies outside the EU. Length: 1:38:00
I am against political union but for alliance of sovereign nations. Nothing will persuade me to support a political union in it’s present format which works toward ever closer political, social and economic union with an end game to create a superstate. No one voted for it, it lacks all democratic mandate, it was formed on lies, and it must be exited by Britain.
http://www.facebook.com/phil.price.50 Phil Price
I was disappointed that the speakers for the motion – Farage & co – seem to think that all they needed to do was sneer at the EU and be rude to foreigners present. Even the great economist Mimford seemed to think it was perfectly OK to immediately describe the speech of the former President of France as ‘rubbish’. The second speaker Delingpole boasted of his ignorance, saying he knew of no arguments for EU membership, Well, there are some and he would earn more respect if he had listed a few and put his case against them. They were allowed to get away with gross inconsistency – proclaiming their support for the single market whiles railing against unified regulations, which are an essential feature of one! They seemed to think that pointing to what is happening in Cyprus is all that is needed to condemn the EU. Nobody mentioned Germany, Austria, Holland, or Denmark who are all richer, more internationally successful and ‘open to the world’ than we and who have all flourished from within the EU. The real point is that EU membership or exit will not of itself make us into a second Norway or a second Iceland. Our prosperity will come from how well we educate our children, and how professionally and productively we work at the personal, enterprise and national level. The EU is simply a magnifier and enabler – if you are strong and effective like Germany you can be stronger still within the EU. If you are badly run, semi-corrupt and want prosperity without earning it like much of southern Europe, the EU will ensure you have no place to hide, and that chickens will eventually come home to roost. The debate about EU membership is really about whether we are confident in our ability to function and compete effectively. On balance I would rather be part of the process than outside but still having to follow the rules to trade.
J Smith
A bit late reply to your comment but… Yes, £50m a day on educating our children will certainly help! The Chasm between the Nations of the EU are enormous, too great to integrate them, Germany had USA $ to rebuild and has always had a tremendous head start after WW2, that the rest of us could only dream of! The EU is collapsing as are most of Western Capitalist nations. When it falls best not to tied to the sin king vessel. FACT (of course I will be attacked so FYI – I have been Chair of 14 companies, employed thousands, traded throughout the World, still have offices in the UK and in Los Angels, so I do have a little experience). The UK (I voted NO) voted for a Common Market not a United States of Europe, and even then the capaign was rigged and the UK people lied to. It wont happen again.
jazz606
I noticed that Andrew Neil gave James Delingpole a poke in eye by suggesting that northern industrial decline was down to Mrs T.
Nothing to do with the fact that these industries were inefficient, union ridden, nationalised basket cases then ?
Radford_NG
Same industries collapsed in capitalist USA:and in communist europe when their main support was removed;the Russian tanks.
http://twitter.com/Waltroon Walter Ellis
There is a lot wrong with the EU. Most obviously, the euro was badly structured and turned into a disaster – though only after the near-collapse of Wall Street. But, slowly and painfully, that is being put right. The single currency has not collapsed (as widely predicted by the nay-sayers). Five years from now, it will be one of the world’s strongest currencies.
Next, we need to sort out the CAP, a problem Britain has bleated on about for years without ever coming up with a workable alternative. Thatcher didn’t care about ending the CAP. She simply didn’t want Britain to be part of it. That’s why she negotiated the rebate. Today, that is the mainstream British position: go ahead, rebuild your eurozone. Just don’t expect sterling to be part of it or the City of London to work within its rules. In other words, we’ll remain members of the EU only so long as we’re not bound by the terms of membership.
Great!
As for the democratic deficit, the European Council, which takes all the big decisions, is made up of the governments of the member states, with voting weight allocated in accordance with population. Why is that not democratic? The European Parliament is even more democratic. MEPs are directly elected. Britain has 78. The trouble is that half of the British contingent spend their time bitching about the fact that they don’t want to belong to the parliament and trying to sabotage its work. Then there’s the European Court (not the Court of Human Rights). Two British judges sit on the bench in Luxembourg. If they are in some way unconstitutional, then so is every appointed judge in the UK. In Brussels, meanwhile, there are hundreds of UK citizens occupying senior positions in the European Commission, which for four years was run by Roy Jenkins. The High Representative of the Commission is Catherine Ashton, a former member of the (entirely unelected) House of Lords, nominated by Gordon Brown.
Britain’s dispute with the EU is couched in terms of the Union’s alleged undemocratic character. The truth is, half of the British people – maybe more – hate being in Europe and are looking for any excuse to get out. This was made crystal clear by the ecstasy aroused in Ukip and the Conservative Party when the euro looked as if it was about to disappear down the plughole. This was the best news the antis had received in years. They were THRILLED that the EU economy was in deep, deep trouble.
Okay. Fine. That’s your point of view, and you’re entitled to it. So don’t vote Labour or LIberal Democrat in the next general election. Instead, vote Tory and then vote No in the 2017 referendum. Just don’t pretend that you’re doing so because the EU isn’t run exactly like the UK … i.e into the ground, with the highest public debt ratios in mainstream Europe and a currency struggling to keep its head above water. If you think its bad being inside Europe, wait until you find out what it’s like on the outside looking in.
Boudicca_Icenii
It isn’t democratic because WE THE PEOPLE didn’t agree that politicians and bureaucrats from 26 other nations could have the right to make laws which would be enacted in the UK.
We only agreed to a Common Market.
beat_the_bush
Not to sound pedantic. But the Common Market included the concept of “Community law” that took precedence over National law in its founding Treaty, signed in 1957. That is the entire concept of the Common Market. You can not even begin to realise how stupid attempting to separate those two things out makes you sound. We joined in 1973. That’s 16 years after the EEC had been in existence for some 16 years. 1 Year before we joined, the Heads of State had signed a PUBLIC (not private) document committing the EEC to “transform the whole complex of relations of the Community into a European Union”. 3 years before we joined, the Werner report was published by the European Council proposing a European Monetary Union. All of these developments were both public and in the press
.
You have committed historical revisionism.
rob232
Yes. We who voted ‘no’ knew all this. But our politicians including Roy Jenkins,Shirley Williams, Jeremy Thorpe, Edward Heath et al assured us this was not the case. They convinced the electorate that such intellectually honest politicians as Peter Shore, Enoch Powell and Tony Benn, who warned us of the consequences of a ‘yes’ vote were mad and bad.
J Smith
Yes, but the British public were told something very different, they remain largely uneducated on the matter, and only now are they beginning to wake up to what this all meant to their country. I was not ignorant of what was happening, I remember it very well indeed, I campaigned against the Common Market, I camapigned against Wilson’s trickery to again foor the British people in 1975. ALL the things the EU wants to have in terms of free trade and close relations can be had without sleeping in the same bed! Rob232 below has it spot on!
Andy
First of all the Euro was a disaster before it came into being – it was a stupid idea and could not, would not and does not work. It is busy destroying the Greek economy for example. This idea that it only happened because Lehman Bros went bust is arrant and simplistic nonsense. If you think the problems are being ‘slowly and painfully, that is being put right’ then you are a damn fool.
If the Euro does survive in exactly the same form as today in five years time just what ruin will have been visited on countries like Greece ?? I was there in January and I was dismayed at what I saw. I have lots of Greek friends, some of whom I have helped as best I can – one friend is working full time for just 2 1/2 Euros an hour. The arrogance in your post makes me so angry, but that is typical of the arrogance and hubris that created this damn mess in the first place.
Like many people in the UK I have no objection to working with other countries to our mutual benefit. But I do not want to be a member of a country called ‘Europe’.
http://twitter.com/Waltroon Walter Ellis
Good to know, Andy, that you have “no objection” to working with other countries.
Why is it that anyone who defends the EU is denounced as a fool – indeed a “damn” fool – and a knave? I am reminded of a comment last night by the American comedian Bill Maher. The Republican Party, he said, having lost election after election, remain convinced that the people of the U.S. reject Obamacare, taxing the rich, all forms of abortion and any nod towards same-sex marriage, when in fact most of them either support these things or have no strong opinions either way. Similarly, the Faragistas – the “We the People” brigade – imagine that everyone in England loathes and despises the EU. The more prosaic truth is that most Brits – while having no affection for Brussels – acknowledge it as a necessary fact of life. What they really care about is unrestricted immigration. David Cameron would be well advised to appreciate the distinction. If he moves sensibly, and sensitively, on the latter, he can still win his referendum.
Tim Reed
“The more prosaic truth is that most Brits – while having no affection for Brussels – acknowledge it as a necessary fact of life. What they really care about is unrestricted immigration.”
…but we can’t restrict EU immigration unless we end our involvement with that “necessary fact of life”. And I think most people are long fed up with the seemingly compulsory ‘sensitivity’ that we’re obliged to observe over the issue.
http://twitter.com/Waltroon Walter Ellis
I take your point, Tim. But, as you are no doubt aware, the big fallback position for most Ukipsters is that we should leave the EU and then negotiate a new role inside the single market. Sadly for those who take this view, extra-EU membership of the single market (as with Norway and Switzerland) requires acceptance of the free movement of labour. Either we’re outside the EU altogether, with all that means for trade and tariffs, or we’re not. There’s no middle way. Which is why I hope that Cameron can create reasonable, non-discriminatory barriers against easy and unrestricted access to the UK social welfare system by another wave of East Europeans.
Tim Reed
It’s all a bit of a mess, isn’t it. If what you say is correct, Walter (and I’ve no reason to assume it isn’t), then this is a rather pointed demonstration of the domineering, controlling nature of the European project.
“Whether you are in the club or not, you WILL submit to our rules”.
There’s no scope for independence or flexibility when dealing with this monstrous entity. Unfortunately, I’ve no faith in Mr. Cameron’s ability to force through any kind of reasonable ‘middle way’. He has neither the will nor the inclination, as far as I can see. And if there’s no scope for a middle way, I doubt that the EU will oblige the PM even if he does surprise me.
http://twitter.com/Waltroon Walter Ellis
I’m a reform from within man, Tim. Aside from the fact that I like the idea of a United Europe – which will prove vital to us in a future dominated by the U.S., China, India and Russia – I still think the present balance of benefit from our EU membership is in Britain’s favour. But it certainly ain’t easy. As the Cypriot business confirms, there’s a lot of hard pounding ahead and it won’t be pretty.
Tim Reed
Walter, you’re far more optimistic than I about the ability, or even the inclination, of the EU to reform into a more democratic, accountable body. I just think it’s a natural consequence of such an enormous bureaucratic institution to be unyielding and detached from the concerns of individual citizens. As the Cypriot raid so clearly demonstrates, the survival of ‘the project’ is the prime concern for the elites in Brussels, and no cost is apparently too great for others to suffer for the goal of self-preservation. I’m more convinced with each passing month that the losses far outweigh any benefits of membership. Bureaucracies don’t dismantle themselves, especially ones as large in scale and as deeply entrenched as the EU. Any meaningful reform will be impossible. It wasn’t designed to be flexible, it was designed to dominate.
J Smith
Rubbish. It isnt just immigration at all. Many people remember we were lied to in 1975 (I voted no as I had spent a lot of time in Germany), no one voted for a United States of Europe and a single currency, trying to take thousands of years of vastly different cultures, nation states with again with vastly different economies and integrate them into one United States of Europe is ridiculous and will lead to tremenous strife and possibley worse. It is an idealogical nightmare.
ballnshine
Where’s the video?
Radford_NG
Giscard needs telling the tyrant Bonaparte tried that.If the EU tries it on we will block imports from EU.Within weeks French farmers would riot over losing their main export market;Spanish and Italian white-goods factories would close and German motor works be in stuck.That’s just the good news for Giscard.The bad news is Britain would have abolished the 10% import duty imposed by EU on goods from The Commonwealth,Brazil,Sth.Korea,and RoW.
Radford_NG
There is a brilliant satire @Global Britain (briefing No. 82) which has Chancellor Merkel phoning Wolfsburg and Munich (after British withdrawal) to tell them that their motor factories are now in the stuck.
beat_the_bush
You: “We the powerful British will trade with the EMPIRE. ERRGHH ARGGGHH. ERGGH. IMPERIAL SPIRIT.”
You can stop masturbating now.
Boudicca_Icenii
And that’s why we will not be permitted a free and fair In/Out Referendum.
Until such time as the figures are reversed and the Elite can guarantee an IN vote, there will always be a reason why a Referendum is “inappropriate and unnecessary.”
BigAl
Let the people vote now!
2trueblue
Frankly, it is all academic, we will never get the opportunity to vote on it.
http://www.facebook.com/richard.stanfordbrown Richard Stanford Brown
What happened to the other 30 people?
Brian Mooney
We need to get out. The EU legal order is stacked against any meaningful repatriation of powers. http://www.newalliance.org.uk/noway.htm has a readable account of why.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100004981542519 Tom Tom
Much like the North of England and Westminster
David Lindsay
Nigel Farage, Patrick Minford and James Delingpole
Even Question Time does better than that these days.
Wessex Man
BOB CROW? BOB CROW? at David Lindsay we find out where your political leanings really are! A Commie alongside Comrade Crow. Get real and grow up.
Tell me where did UKIP come in the by-election in Rotherham? I’m sure you remember!
David Lindsay
A lower percentage than the Tories sued to get there in the 1980s.
I fail to see how Crow is any less mainstream a figure than James Delingpole. But the barking made Far Right in this country has been treated as normal ever since the coup in 2010. Farage’s near-permanent spot on Question Time is another example. One among dozens.
There is plenty of time between now and 2015 for UKIP just to be made to go away. The Tories can do frightening things when they want to. And they are no longer amused by UKIP.
Wessex Man
Good to see you return to your usual blather, Bob Crow wouldn’t get elected to clean a Public Convenience and you know it!
So the Tories are no longer amused by UKIP, good it might sharpen their minds to govern this country for the next two years. “The Tories can do frightening things when they want to.” Your not James Patterson in disguise are you, no you can’t be, the stuff he writes is interesting!
Saint Steve
I honestly don’t know how anyone can be in favour of unelected bureaucrats making our laws. Surely being a free and independent nation is more important than anything else?
beat_the_bush
I honestly don’t think anyone could really believe this Eurosceptic straw man. Everyone knows that the Commission is indirectly elected and one of the nations that resists any attempt to directly elect it is the UK. Ashley Fox MEP in fact was the most recent Conservative to denounce any attempt to elect the Commission. Anyone who decries the democratic deficit yet shouts down all attempts to remove it, is nothing but a fraud and hypocrite who permanently seeks to cripple the EU.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100004981542519 Tom Tom
Even the USA does not elect the Executive, only its head
Anything that cripples the EU is to be warmly welcomed.
beat_the_bush
That may well be your opinion. But it ultimately cannot be based on the fact that the EU has a democratic deficit since you refuse to remedy it. Hence you cannot criticise the EU for it, since you are in fact promoting the deficit whilst they try to reduce it.
Andy
Not so. I would be perfectly happy if every measure the EU wanted to implement had to have the full approval and consent of our Parliament.
The EU wishes to diminish and destroy the Nation State. Therein lies the path to war. I want to make the EU work as an association of Nation States, and that is what most people (certainly here in the UK) felt they had joined. But that association has to be built on consent and not coercion.
beat_the_bush
Giving every EU national parliament a veto neither decreases the democratic deficit nor helps the effectiveness of the EU. By allowing any country to derail the legislative process you actually prevent majority’s from forming. This is anti-democratic. Furthermore, you decrease the “output legitimacy” of the EU, essentially crippling all policy areas by destroying any real decision making ability. With 27 National Parliament and thousands of MPs all you do is increase the horse trading, pork barrelling and dilute all legislation to the point of ridicule. This lack of so called output legitimacy further weakens the democratic deficit. Real academic research has been done in this area. Go and read. Don’t sit in an ideological dead-end.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100004981542519 Tom Tom
Really ? I wonder about Orders in Council
Andy
The Privy Council can hardly be compared with the EU, even by you. Her Majesty, when she signs an ‘Order in Council’, is acting on the advice of her Ministers.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100004981542519 Tom Tom
Her Majesty does NOT sign an Order in Council – it is simply laid before the House of Commons and is the basis of EU Legislation in the United Kingdom
Nicholas chuzzlewit
You might just be deviating from the really important issue of national independence here.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100004981542519 Tom Tom
Hardly. The EU Commission utilises Statutory Instruments under a Statute passed in 1946 to by-pass Parliament altogether and legislate hrough Secondary Legislation. In most polities this would be called Rule by Decree. In Britain the populace is so doped up on soma that they haven’t a clue
Russell
Here’s hoping we get an in/out referendum and if we do the votes are cast along similar lines to the votes above for the motion better off out at 2:1.
