The answer is yes, effectively. The qualifier is necessary because, though most Remainers have few tools in their intellectual box, some have plenty. It’s just that those tools stay in the box whenever the subject of the EU comes up.
Hence neither group relies on reason when arguing the issue of the EU in general or Brexit in particular.
I can testify to this, having been drawn into many an argument along those lines both in England and in France, against both casual acquaintances and close friends (this second group of Remainers are exclusively French).
Some of my opponents have been genuinely stupid and ignorant, yet some of the French in particular are brilliant and erudite. Yet even those who possess rational minds refuse to apply them to the issue at hand.
This means that EU champions approach this problem exclusively from an ideological angle, or else from a purely emotional one. Neither is indicative of any systematic rational process.
That’s why arguing with Remainers is both easy and impossible. It’s impossible because one can’t argue against ideologies inspired by visceral emotions without any rational input. It’s easy because there are plenty of rational arguments against the EU and none for it.
Applying a crude version of the Socratic Q&A method blows every pro-EU argument out of the water. It’s simplicity itself.
Q. Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland, said almost 400 years ago: “If it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.” Do you agree that unnecessary change is to be avoided? A. Yes.
Q. Thus you must think that being (or staying) in the EU is necessary? A. Yes.
Q. Let’s explore this. The British constitution is founded on the sovereignty of Parliament, isn’t it? A. Yes.
Q. Therefore transferring all or much of this sovereignty to a foreign body constitutes a fundamental change, doesn’t it? A. Yes.
Q. And yet you maintain that this change is necessary? A. Yes.
Q. (and this is always the clincher). In that case you must believe that the EU is the best or even only answer to some vital questions involving our nation’s wellbeing. Do you mind telling me what they are?
That’s where Remainers and other EU fans drop into the bottomless hole they’ve dug for themselves. For I’ve never heard a single answer to this question – not even from my brilliant and erudite French friends – that holds water better than your average sieve.
When they bother to answer it at all (usually they don’t), they cite reasons that are demonstrably false either logically or factually or both.
“We need to trade with Europe.” Why is it necessary to destroy national sovereignty for this reason? After all, Britain became the greatest trading commonwealth in history without compromising her independence.
“The EU is all about free trade.” That’s simply a lie. First, the EU is free of tariffs only among its members. Vis-à-vis the rest of the world it’s a protectionist bloc, which is rather the opposite of free trade.
And, as the pronouncements of the founding fathers of European federalism, such as Jean Monnet, show, their aim from the 1940s onwards wasn’t economic but political: the creation of a single European state.
“We need to travel to Europe.” So how did we manage to do so for centuries before 1992?
“The EU has maintained peace after the Second World War.” Nonsense. It has arguably maintained peace between France and Germany, the two countries that created the EU for their own benefit.
In any case, the EU only came into existence at Maastricht. So did it maintain peace between 1945 and 1992 retroactively? And in the face of Soviet aggression, the security of Europe was upheld by Nato’s nuclear shield – c’est tout, or das ist alles if you’d rather.
Actually, in those situations where the EU could have kept or restored peace, such as during the Yugoslavian bloodbath, it pathetically failed to do so.
And so forth, in the same vein. No argument in favour of the EU exists that can’t be destroyed in a few seconds flat by an averagely intelligent teenager, even a Scottish lad who may initially think that EU is the way he greets his friends.
Such thoughts have frequently appeared in these pages, so why repeat myself? Two factors have acted as triggers.
One was the joint press conference delivered by three political has-beens Nick Clegg, Nicky Morgan and David Miliband on why we need ‘soft Brexit’, meaning, for those of you who aren’t fluent in stupid and pernicious, no Brexit at all.
I was especially surprised to see that Dave Miliband was taken off the mothballs for that occasion. That made me see in a new light the incident involving Dave, then Foreign Secretary, and the Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov.
Dave meekly mentioned the abuse of human rights in Russia, to which the former KGB officer replied, in the style unique to Russian diplomacy, “Who are you to f***ing lecture me?” Much as I detest Lavrov, the same words crossed my mind too the other day.
The second trigger was provided by that awful woman with learning difficulties, and my frequent target Rachael Sylvester of The Times. Every paragraph in her article proves that her failing is actually the absence of a mind, rather than the refusal to use it.
One sentence in particular caught my eye: “The problem is that Brexit is a revolutionary policy being implemented by a reactionary prime minister, and the people who lit the touch paper on this insurgency are disruptors without a plan.”
‘Revolutionary’? ‘Insurgency’? God help us all, the girl must be out of her mind, provided – and this is a generous proviso – she has one.
If anything, Brexit is a counterrevolution, reversing the deadly effects of the Maastricht revolution that subverted British sovereignty and constitution. And vapid, vacuous, vacillating Mrs May ‘a reactionary prime minister’? Let’s have a drink, Rachael, I’ll show you what reactionary means.
As to a plan, it’s as simple as truth itself: restoring British sovereignty. Nothing more and, emphatically, nothing less.
Demands for a detailed, itemised plan for the aftermath of Brexit are just a knavish Remainer trick, typologically similar to the one used in the US many years ago by opponents of a federal judge who banned pornography.
“Define pornography!” demanded pornographers. “I can’t define it, but when I see it I know it,” replied the judge.
Of course the consequences of Brexit aren’t predictable or plannable in every minute detail. Brexit is an aim in itself, it’s not a guaranteed way of increasing our GDP, nor a guaranteed way of reducing it.
The Remainers’ plan, on the other hand, is clear-cut: joining a single European state by a series of camouflaged, incremental steps, thereby destroying Britain’s sovereignty altogether.
Those who don’t understand this are fools; those who support it despite understanding it are knaves. And some, including by the sound of her Miss Sylvester, are both.
“The EU has maintained peace after the Second World War.”
Actually it was U.S. Army and atomic weapons.
I thought that the message of remain was to hint (obviously not openly as it would be too strong and counter productive).
If we leave the EU, they will try to destroy our economy, even if it harms the EU and we are too weak/stupid to stop them.
Very well put Sir. I can’t know just how much “stupid” you can handle but please take a look at the FB page of celebrated Manchester lunatic Terry Christian. Stupid abounds, particulsrly on the topic of the EU. Better still, join in and rip the nauseating euro-squirt up!
‘Tired and emotional’ was once a famous excuse used in court for drunken indiscretions. ‘Ignorant and emotional’ is now the very stuff of modern discourse because the rubbish that normally pervaded the pubs and clubs has now moved to the internet where booze is no longer an essential ingredient. The argument of many remainders seems to be based on a desire to abnegate all responsibility and let others make all the decisions just like those who give up their freedom to live in an ‘aged care’ home when they are neither senile, grossly incontinent or otherwise disabled.
The number 1 reason that remainers give to me is that the withdrawal from the EU will hurt the economy. Maybe the economy will enter a period of mild turbulence upon exit, but it is an acceptable price to pay to regain the ability to become 100% sovereign.
People do not seem to understand that the political victories of the previous 800 years are too precious to sign away to some swaggering anti democratic mafia.
Good article, glad someone wrote something so unabashedly scathing of just how flawed Remainers & their arguments are.
We’ve had the debate over Brexit for years now, before & now after Leave won.
At this point anyone supporting any form of Remain or “soft” Brexit is arguing for capitulation to an arguably hostile foreign authority.
For good reason May’s deal was described as if an imposed concession of a state defeated in war.
Remainers are now at best useful idiots & at worst outright Quislings. Either way they are not remotely interested in the UK and what’s best for us. Stockholm Syndrome suffering Euro-cultists whos behaviour & mindset would not be out of place within a mid-west American cult compound, so slavish their devotion to a fundamentally ugly & immoral entity.
The fact so many Remainers pursue such obvious attempts to hurt the UK on behalf of the EU despite living here proves they are utterly intellectually & morally bankrupt, thoroughly compromised, brainwashed mind-slaves of their distant masters.
Call that hyperbole (no worse than Project Fear), but how traitorous must ones behaviour be before you can legitimately & honestly declare someone such, a traitor?
Remainers will reject the accusation but only in as much as they don’t feel themselves traitors, but loyal minions of Brussels. When you’re convinced the EU is the be and end all of ‘right’, no ill-will upon your own country is inexcusable when pursuing that ‘greater’ purpose.
Ideologues.
If I was Boris I’d shut down any further pretence of pretending there is valid debate on the matter. Brexit was discussed. Brexit was decided upon. Carry out Brexit as soon as possible, no capitulations, no remaining by other names (a stunt the drafter’s of the EU Constitution-come-Lisbon Treaty will understand all too well), make a clean No Deal break, and bury the issue once and for all.
Once the UK is clear, the UK is highly unlikely ever to return to the issue. Britain will survive, the EU will likely not in the long run. There will be no amount of Remainer tantrums that could find the momentum to push the UK back into an ultimately demonstrable, detrimental bloc.
Good riddance, fuck the EU and with any luck hopefully all the hardened Remoaners fuck off to the EU they love, maybe there they will eventually learn just how manipulated and wrong they were.
What remainers don’t understand is that is leavers are not anti Europe, In fact we feel sorry for most countries in Europe that have been ensnared by the EU (Germany and France rule over it), and it isn’t that we want to leave Europe. What we voted for was for us to be able to elect politicians who are able to make the best decisions for the UK, and if they don’t deliver, to have the power to vote in other politicians who will, (autonomy). In other words to put our own destiny back into our own hands, that’s it stupid it’s super sensible and clever.