Prosperity In Our Time

I have seen a report — not yet confirmed — that prior to returning to England David Cameron was invited to another private meeting with Mrs Merkel — in Munich, I believe. Without the French President present it seems that this meeting went off in a much friendlier atmosphere and that the two were able to sign a document — an accord — that would form the basis of a new relationship with Europe. Waving the document aloft when he met Tory back-benchers at Chequers last night, he said that this agreement guaranteed a new Europe. "It gives us prosperity in our time," he said.

If this agreement is confirmed, it will mark the start of a new era in which Britain again becomes an independent nation with total control of its finances, without interference in it legislation, without needing to contribute buckets of money to Brussels, without needing to attend the expensive, meaningless meetings about the EU, without piles of red tape, without need to subsidize corruption, without a bloated bureaucracy, without needing to elect members to a useless European Parliament, without anti-British legislation, without H&S legislation that shuts down kids playgrounds, etc., etc. and with an opportunity to make new efforts to sell into the world of emerging economies.

You may suggest that I am just another nationalistic Little Englander. But I am not. When we had a referendum on UK membership of the EU in 1975, I voted, "Yes!" But then I thought — like most people — that I was voting for an enlarged free-trade area. In the last 36 years the EU has gone way beyond that with a vast undemocratic bureaucracy that seeks to control our lives. And this new accord will take the EU one step further down the road to a monster federal state. At least, it will if it succeeds in its objectives. In reality, I think it is more likely that the euro area will collapse under the unrelieved debt burden. We will have to see. As I said yesterday,I think we should get out and try again to re-establish our connections with EFTA.

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