Month: January 2016

There’s something fatuous and dishonest about arguing for or against Brexit simply on the basis of economics.

The EU is a political, not, as its champions claim, an economic construct. Economic tools are used there only as auxiliary means of either bribery or blackmail.

Hence logically any argument about Brexit should proceed from constitutional and sovereignty premises first, second and tenth.

There can be no valid argument in favour of reversing two millennia of constitutional history for whatever economic gain – even assuming the impossibility of EU membership offering any economic benefits to one of the world’s largest economies.

One doesn’t recall too many Englishmen back in 1940 weighing the economic advantages of being incorporated into Germany and thereby saving the ruinous cost of fighting a war.

The benefits of such submission could have been argued plausibly, and Hitler doubtless would have agreed to much tougher terms than those Cameron allegedly asks from the EU today. Nevertheless, those Spitfires were still providing an expression of incipient euroscepticism.

Britain has nothing to learn about politics from the EU’s main drivers Germany and France, what with their, generously speaking, patchy past. Therefore we must leave that wicked political contrivance just because it’s indeed wicked, political and a contrivance.

This argument is too simple for our fatuous and dishonest elites to understand. Its simple and unvarnished truth is such that it precludes any troubled intellectual waters for them to fish in.

That’s why they insist on putting forth economic arguments, correctly trusting that the British public is ignorant enough to accept bogus calculations as real. After all, the elite’s 60 years’ investment into nurturing such ignorance must pay off.

Somehow The Times has positioned itself at the vanguard of this relentless assault on integrity. There’s hardly a hack there who hasn’t delivered himself of ponderous analysis pro and con Brexit, with the con argument rigged to carry the day. However, Oliver Kamm’s excretions on this subject stand out even against this backdrop.

Mr Kamm’s stock in trade is linguistic permissiveness touching on promiscuity: he attacks anyone daring to suggest that some English usage just may be incorrect. Whatever people say is right because they say it seems to be the underlying premise, which Mr Kamm defends with the agility of a dancer in an alcoholic coma.

But today he turns his clumsy attentions to the usual nonsense about the EU being our sole hope for economic survival. Mr Kamm starts with a couple of unassailable truisms: Britain’s manufacturing is in recession, mainly because of its sluggish productivity growth; our trade balance suffers as a result; as do wage increases in real terms.

These points are worth making, but specifically in the Brexit context they mean nothing – unless an argument can be made that, as a result of the continued vandalising of our constitution, our productivity will increase.

Even Mr Kamm laudably refrains from making such obviously meretricious claims. Instead he says that “The EU is our principal trading partner, accounting for 44.6 per cent of our exports…”

It appears that, arithmetically speaking, our exports outside the EU account for 55.4 per cent of the total, which number seems higher than 44.6. Moreover, Mr Kamm chooses not to notice that, while our exports to the EU are declining, those to the rest of the world are growing.

Hence The Guardian (a paper that can hardly be accused of euroscepticism) comments that the first four months of 2015 “showed that much of the growth in exports came from sales to countries beyond… the European Union. That will reassure businesses… for trade in the eurozone continues to suffer from shaky business and consumer confidence.”

Allow me to translate from The Guardian to human: the eurozone is an economic basket case, and we’re much better off doing business with more reliable partners. What does Mr Kamm have to say about this?

Nothing really, other than that “We don’t have just free trade with our European partners; we have access to a single market of 500 million consumers.” He seems to imply that leaving the EU would put paid to this access, which is patently cloud cuckoo land.

Britain managed to have access to world, and European, markets throughout her history – this without having to transfer her sovereignty to the tender care of the most corrupt setup in Europe, this side of Putin’s Russia.

Mr Kamm warns that by leaving the EU we’ll suffer the same tragic fate that has befallen Norway and Switzerland, which have stayed outside the EU but still have to comply with its regulations without having much of a say in its policies.

I’d be tempted to add that somehow those two countries happen to be Europe’s two most successful economies, but obviously facts won’t make a dent in Mr Kamm’s innermost convictions.

Really, his usual clamour for the advisability of the split infinitive and other grammatical solecisms seems almost sound by comparison.

 

 

Britain has values, declared Dave in his uncompromising New Year message. And these are the values that are well and truly… well, non-negotiable.

Unfortunately, the text released to the public has been edited so tightly that both the subtleties of meaning and the thunder of delivery have been lost.

However, as he always does, Dave did send me the unexpurgated text beforehand. “Alex, me old China,” he said (Dave likes to remind people that he’s just a common bloke when he’s at home, and he’s only ever really at home when in public), “have a read. This is what I really want to say, not the b******s they’re going to publish tomorrow. Djahmean?”

Of course Dave insisted on complete discretion on my part, which I solemnly vowed. “My word’s my bond, Dave,” I said. “I’ll never divulge this original version of your speech.” So here’s the unexpurgated text:

“British values are strong, and they are getting stronger by the minute. Property values especially, and those in my favourite neighbourhoods of Notting Hill and Islington are outstripping the overall mean growth by a wide margin.”

“But it’s not all about property values, although without this narrative our economy would be well and truly… well, less prosperous. We have other values as well: freedom, tolerance, responsibility, loyalty, to name just a few. And these matter to us at least as much as the price of a semi-detached, four-bedroom, two-bath house in Notting Hill.

“These are the values threatened by a seething hatred of the West, one that turns so many people against their own country.

“They don’t seem to understand the concept of tolerance and loyalty. But they won’t defeat us. For we – well, false modesty aside, I – have come up with a sure-fire way of countering their poisonous narrative of grievance and resentment.

“In essence, without boring you with too many details, we’ll give them nothing to grieve or resent. The narrative of tolerance means being ready to amend our ways, accommodating those good, peaceful people of the Muslim persuasion who find our ways so objectionable that they are prepared to blow themselves up on public transport.

“We are not going to appease the extremists. We are going to take their ideology apart piece by piece. For, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, the best way to overcome an ideology is to yield to it.

“Islam, as we all know, is a religion of peace, and desire for peace is one of those British values that are well and truly… well, indispensable.

“We’ll ask, ‘You resent every reminder that Britain used to be a Christian nation?’ Worry not, we are ready to become more Muslim than Christian to make you abandon your evil ideology.

“You’re upset that the English common law still holds sway in those tiny parts of our jurisprudence that don’t come down to us from Brussels? Not a problem: you can live by Sharia in your own communities, with the English common law well and truly… well, invalidated.”

“You lament the relatively small size of your communities? Point taken: we’ll admit millions of your coreligionists from other countries just to keep you company and make you happy.

“For, as any teacher will tell you, it’s easier to instruct people who are next to you than those hundreds of miles away.

“How else can we inculcate people around the world with British values, and I don’t just mean property values, everyone seems to grasp those with no outside help, if not by bringing those potential pupils to Britain, where those values are well and truly… well, flourishing.

“This is the narrative we wish to narrate forcefully and narratively. Because we have great confidence in – indeed we revel in – our way of life.

“Our way of life constitutes, narratively speaking, the greatest narrative of British values. And there’s no British value that my government can’t – or won’t – well and truly… well, uphold.”

Having read Dave’s speech, I immediately rang him on the dog, to use his parlance.

“Dave,” I said, “Churchill’s blood, sweat and tears speech has nothing on your uncompromising oratory. He only rallied the nation to fight a war. You’re rallying it to avoid one – and the best way of doing so is to surrender in advance.”

“Ta, mate,” said Dave. “You really understand me – and my narrative.”