01/10/2015
Conservatives for Britain now has as its president Lord Lawson - he of IEA Brexit competition fame - which,
he tells us, "is helping to establish a professional campaign to leave the EU". "We will", he says, "be working with business leaders, academics and all political parties to call for the UK to leave unless there is real reform" (see above - click to enlarge).
As to the nature of the "reform" he would accept, his priorities would be fourfold: the end of the automatic supremacy of EU law over UK law; the ability for the UK to negotiate its own free trade deals with fast-growing countries such as India and China; the ability to control immigration from other EU countries to the UK; and the explicit renunciation by the EU of its absolute commitment to "ever-closer union".
These, of course, are issues which are fundamental to the European Union, and there is not the slightest chance that the "colleagues" would even sit down at a table to discuss them. This would not be reform, but annihilation: an EU that accepted these "reforms" would no longer be the European Union as we know it. This is "barking cat" territory.
With that, one has to ask what the point is of demanding something which is unachievable, and then calling to leave because your wishes are not granted? Although the analogy is not perfect, this is like joining a tennis club and demanding that it digs up its courts and turns them over to rugby pitches.
Logically, the only tenable stance is to walk away from the idea of reform altogether. This is not going to happen â not on the terms stated. Thus, the way is open for a purity of line. We leave because the structure and objectives of the EU are incompatible with our own requirements, and cannot be reconciled.
Instead, though, we are left with this ghastly Tory fudge, where we are stuck in the same old groove, presenting "reform" as the default option and the prospect of leaving as second-best, entered into reluctantly because Mr Cameron has failed in his negotiations.
This is an intellectually untenable position, and no basis on which to found a campaign. Furthermore, it leaves it open the option of an eleventh-hour resolution, whence Mr Cameron comes hot-foot back from Brussels with a new deal, which the likes of Lord Lawson grudgingly accept. Anything will be better than the prospect of an "accidental Brexit".
Therefore, we have at the head of that group a man who is not committed, as a matter of principle, to leaving the EU. Leaving, to him, is an option and he is open to persuasion on staying in, given the right terms.
His concern is that "we stay in an unreformed EU", thence "handing over ever more control of our economy and our borders to political bureaucrats whom we cannot vote out and who have made clear that they do not care what we think".
Therefore, if you are concerned about the prospect of staying in an "unreformed EU", Lord Lawson wants us to join with him helping to build the campaign to leave.
But how can one work with a man (or an organisation) which thus concedes the core point (on the unacceptability of the EU) before the battle even starts? Clearly, there is no room for anyone who considers that we should leave on a matter of principle.
