If there is anyone out there who hasn’t seen the M.P. Daniel Hannan speech on BREXIT two weeks ago, it’s worth your 6 minutes. It’s articulate. Compelling. Why would any great nation vote to give up their right to set their own laws and negotiate their own deals?
The EU is it’s own best example of big-government grown too big. As Hannan says, the “Every continent on this planet has grown over the past decade except Antartica and the European Union.” And it is so much more than just economics, but economics is the main reason given to stay.
“It’s not just the financial price of EU membership – it’s the democratic price.
We fought a civil war in this country to establish the principle that laws should not be passed nor taxes raised except by our own elected representatives. And now supreme power is held by people who tend to owe their positions to having just lost elections: Peter Mandelson, Neil Kinnock and what have you.
No one is talking about drawbridges or isolation. Nowhere else in the world do countries apologise for wanting to live under their own laws. New Zealand is not about to join Australia. Japan is not applying to join China – and do you hear anyone complaining about these bigoted Sino-sceptics in Tokyo?
It is a natural healthy thing for a democracy to live under its own laws whilst trading with every other country in the world.
The United Kingdom is the world’s fifth-largest country, its fourth-largest military power.
How much bigger do we have to be before we have the confidence to raise our eyes to more distant horizons?
— Daniel Hannan
The other argument to stay revolves around solving “global” problems like climate change. But since these are global, not European, it’s a non-argument (and about a non-problem). Brexit in or Brexit out, it won’t change China’s emissions.
In the West everywhere we need better public debates — we need a discussion of the dangers and costs of big-government.
UPDATE: See Brexit The Movie.
(H/t Steve Kates and Catallaxy)
Hear James Delingpole — “The single most important political decision any of us will make in our lifetime.”
This movie is excellent, ominous, frightening — how did this bizarre faceless elite layer of unaccountable power come to be?
…
Nigel Farage – the EU is not undemocratic. “It’s anti-democratic.”