Richard Heller: Would you take up arms for a European state?

A HUNDRED years ago, thousands of young Yorkshiremen were about to be mown down in the Battle of the Somme. As volunteers they offered themselves for sacrifice not just for their country but for Yorkshire and their part of it.
Would you volunteer extra service to the EU?Would you volunteer extra service to the EU?
Would you volunteer extra service to the EU?

Many had joined up together, when war was declared, to serve with their pals. Would any young men today offer to die for the EU? That should be the central question of the referendum.

The EU has not only claimed the powers of a state – to make laws, levy taxes and sign treaties. It has asked all its peoples to identify with it emotionally.

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It has adopted the symbolic trappings of a flag, an anthem, logos and rubrics. It pumps out expensive propaganda to create warm feelings about itself.

But the EU has never provided the one ingredient which binds people to any modern community: democracy. For the EU, this has always been an after-thought. It does not answer to its peoples for the bulky and dreary sheaves of legislation and policy which it inflicts on them from afar. Its institutions inspire no love, no loyalty, no dreams – and virtually no interest except from those who hope to profit from them.

And this will only get worse.

We have been told very clearly where the EU is heading. It is a one-way express bus journey to Federal Terminus. Very few of the passengers ever wanted to go there.

They hoped to get to the big Central Market, or to the Peace Garden, or to Speakers’ Corner, or just to a better neighbourhood.

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Several of them rang the bell to stop the bus, but the invisible driver ignored them.

Lately the bus has been driven very badly and several passengers have been seriously hurt.

But after each crash the driver heads even faster to Federal Terminus.

The bus map for the EU was set out in the so-called Five Presidents’ report last year. (It says almost everything you need to know about the EU that it needs five Presidents, none elected by popular vote).

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Intended primarily to prop up the calamitous euro, it entails more and more power moving from nation states to the EU – including taxation, business and employment law, banking and capital markets – and an open-ended commitment to accelerate political union.

If we vote to Remain, more and more power and influence will leech from our Parliament.

The EU’s governance is neither efficient nor democratic. Whatever comes out of the EU is something imposed on its peoples, not chosen by them. This is a fatal weakness.

Britain faces a raft of problems, domestic and international, which require big solutions. We must enable our workforce to compete with the billions of people who can now produce more output than the average British worker at far lower cost.

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That entails a gigantic improvement in our education, not just tinkering with structures and imposing more and more meaningless tests and targets.

We need health, care and pensions systems which can cope with the demands of our ageing population. We have huge housing needs. Internationally, we are challenged by terrorism, racketeering and organised crime. The Putin regime in Russia cynically promotes expansion abroad to distract from massive failure, corruption and abuse at home.

We face a global migration crisis, in which countless millions of people find their present countries unbearable to live in. Huge areas of the planet are ravaged by climate extremes and environmental degradation.

Experts and politicians disagree about the right responses to these problems. But all those who are serious know that they require the sacrifice of current living standards to make the required investments, public and private, in physical, intellectual and human capital. Indeed, they demand permanent adjustments in the way we live.

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History tells us that people will make that kind of effort for England – and for Yorkshire – if they are told it is needed by leaders they believe in. They will even walk into barbed wire and machine-gun fire.

But would anybody make any personal sacrifice of any kind for the EU? It does not seem so. Millions of people throughout the EU ignore its decrees when they choose and actually defraud it without a moment’s scruple. Never mind dying for the EU, would you pay more tax to the EU? Would you volunteer extra service to the EU?

Try this simple test. Think of something you are now asked to do for your country – such as eating five helpings of fruit or vegetables a day. Now (if you can) imagine the face of one of those five unelected Presidents of the EU. And then ask yourself this question: Would you eat up your spinach for M. Jean-Claude Juncker, the current President of the European Commission?

Richard Heller is a former adviser to Denis Healey. His new book (with Peter Oborne) White On Green: Celebrating the Drama of Pakistan cricket will be published on June 30.

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