Bernard Ingham: Don't fall for the desperate voices of doom and defeatism over the EU

Migrants run past burning tents in a makeshift camp near Calais. Under the eye of hundreds of riot police, workers began pulling down tents and makeshift shelters in the sprawling camp in Calais on Monday, dismantling the fragile structures that have served as temporary homes for migrants hoping to make their way to a better life in Britain.

They seem blind to the fact that every time they have got it wrong on Europe. Back in the 1970s, they said we would not lose our sovereignty by joining the Common Market.

We have not been in command of our own nation for years.

In the 1980s the great weight of opinion – all against Margaret Thatcher’s instincts – was to join the ERM. Eventually she capitulated and look what happened. Within a couple of years, we were forced out in 1992 at enormous expense. The economy promptly began to look up.

Only by the grace of God – and Gordon Brown – did we avoid joining the Eurozone, which is in a right old mess and has dangerously impoverished southern Europe. We now have the best performing major economy in the EU.

And yet what do we keep being told?

We shall be more secure if we stay in the EU.

If we need a growing economy to fund our costly protection, then the Establishment should shut up. Its propensity for getting it economically wrong on Europe is becoming legendary.

Turning to terrorism, we cannot rule out militant Islam trying to stage an atrocity on British soil employing illegal immigrants either before or after the referendum.

We are a target whether in or out of Europe and only our security forces, and their links abroad, keep us safe.

If the Establishment is suggesting that Continental security forces would keep vital intelligence about terrorist threats from us if we voted to leave the EU, they should say so and risk the ire of Interpol. It would be utterly criminal for any security force to withhold such information. It also undervalues by a long chalk the work of GCHQ, MI6 and MI5 to Europe – indeed, to the free world.

And where on earth does our membership of the EU help us over the great migration out of Africa, Arabia and the North West Frontier? Our island state is a far more crucial safeguard, if a far from watertight protection, especially when the Eurocourts start meddling.

How Theresa May can be in the “Remain” camp after six years as Home Secretary trying to stem the flow of illegal immigrants passeth human understanding.

To be fair, we must recognise that we could create two land borders with Europe – in Ireland and also Scotland, if the Scots go off in an independent huff – that could become migrant routes into the UK.

But the Irish border already exists and we must not assume that all Scots are as daft as Alex Salmond.

It is said that Vladimir Putin is aching to see Britain leave the EU because it would weaken it. But it is the single currency that is weakening the EU and casting doubts on its survival without reform.

Undoubtedly, fragmentation of the EU would suit Putin but he would prefer an economically weak one. The weak are more easily bullied.

In any case, Nato – and not the EU –  has kept peace in Europe for nigh on 70 years.

It is the alliance with the USA that is the key. And Britain is no more  going to walk out of Nato than it is to  wreck the NHS. Britain outside the EU – but very firmly in Nato – is not going to weaken Europe militarily by a single trooper.

Instead, the threat to Nato comes from “ever closer union” with the EU aiming to have its own army as well as its own foreign and diplomatic service.

A European army could only be raised at the expense of Nato and would not be worth much if Europe’s miserable record of keeping the peace in the Balkans is  any guide.

I fear it would be about as much use as the EU’s foreign and diplomatic service, one of the weakest and most pretentious in the world since it cannot commit its 28 member states, who look after their own foreign affairs.

So why does the British Establishment persevere – nay intensify – its efforts to scare us about our security as an independent nation state? The Americans are not going to turn on their one reliable European ally.

The only answer can be that they know they have lost the argument. Only fear might possibly prevail over common sense. An Establishment sans hope, sans marbles, sans everything – bar doom-mongering.