Must-read, compelling arguments against Brexit and for the EU from a surprising source
This speech was delivered last week by a leading British politician. It hasn’t got the attention it deserves. Can you guess the speaker? (Answer at the end):
People in Britain deserve a Prime Minister who is focused on their priorities – raising standards in education, taking care of the health service, reforming criminal justice, helping the economy prosper, improving people’s lives.
Instead, they have a government obsessed with its own priority of Brexit, using its power to further its political aims and all the while neglecting and mismanaging public services in Britain…
The fundamental strengths of the European Union, and the benefits it brings to all of its constituent parts, are clear.
But we all know that the Brexiters will never stop twisting the truth and distorting reality in their effort to denigrate the EU and further their obsession of ‘independence’.
It is their single purpose in political life.
We need to be equally determined to ensure that the truth about the EU is heard loudly and clearly…
We must take this opportunity to bring the European Union closer together.
Because the EU which we all care about is not simply a constitutional artefact.
It is a union of people, affections and loyalties.
It is characterised by sharing together as a continent the challenges which we all face, and freely pooling the resources we have to tackle them…
Our European Union has evolved over time and has a proud history.
Together we form the world’s greatest family of nations…
Bringing people and communities closer together allowed new connections to be made…
Ours is not a marriage of convenience, or a fair-weather friendship, but a true and enduring Union, tested in adversity and found to be true.
And the great institutions which we have built together, the pillars of our European life, are the result of common endeavour…
All have been admired and imitated around the world, and all were created here as a consequence of our common life together.
These achievements are the fruits of our Union.
They are the signs which signify its deep and fundamental strengths…
We should never be shy of making that positive case for the EU, because logic and facts are on our side.
Take the economic arguments.
One of the driving forces behind the European Economic Community’s creation was the remorseless logic that greater economic strength and security come from being united.
Not the transient and shifting benefits of international alliance, but the fundamental strength of being one people.
Those enduring economic strengths are obvious.
Our wholly integrated single market for businesses means no barriers to trade within our borders.
That has always been of immense value to firms here in Britain.
And yet the Brexiters propose UK ‘independence’, which would wrench Britain out of its biggest market.
They think independence is the answer to every question in every circumstance, regardless of fact and reality.
It simply does not add up and we should never stop saying so….
Time and again the benefits of the European Union – of doing together, collectively, what would be impossible to do apart – are clear.
There is no economic case for leaving the EU, or of loosening the ties which bind us together…
The pooling and sharing of risks and resources on the basis of need across our European Union is the essence of our unity as a people.
All of the practical benefits which flow from our membership of the EU, and which are hallmarks of it, depend on that deep and essential community of interest which we all share.
It has been shaped by geography and refined by history…
We are all diminished when any part of the EU is held back, and we all share in the success when we prosper.
We need to build a new ‘collective responsibility’ across the European Union, which unites all layers of government, to work positively together to improve the lives of everyone in our continent…
While fully respecting, and indeed strengthening, the subsidiarity principle and the member state governments across the EU, the EU’s leaders must unashamedly assert this fundamental responsibility on their part…
So in those reserved policy areas where they legislate directly for the whole European Union, they must explicitly look to the interests of the Union – both the parts and the whole – in their policy-making.
And in policy areas where responsibilities are devolved, they must look for ways to collaborate and work together with the governments of the EU member states to improve the outcomes for everyone.
This truly EU-wide strategy would represent a new approach to government, stepping up to a new, active role that backs business and ensures people in all parts of the EU share in the benefits of economic success…
We must ensure that right powers sit at the right level to ensure the EU can operate effectively and in the interests of all of its citizens, including people in Britain…
Our aim should be to achieve the most effective arrangements to maintain and strengthen the EU, while also respecting the interests of individual member states, and the EU’s leaders shoukd work constructively with the national governments on that basis.
But unlike any of the individual member state governments, the European Parliament is elected by the whole EU, and the European Commission serves the whole EU.
That places on them a unique responsibility to preserve the integrity and future viability of the EU, which they must not shirk…
Because politics is not a game and government is not a platform from which to pursue constitutional obsessions.
It is about taking the serious decisions to improve people’s lives.
A tunnel vision nationalism, which focuses only on independence at any cost, sells Britain short…
We know we are united together by a shared history, but we are also bound together by enduring common interests.
The EU we cherish is not a thing of the past, but a Union vital to our prosperity and security, today and in the future.
The European Union I am determined to strengthen and sustain is one that works for working people across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
An EU which everyone can feel secure in.
A European Union in which our national and local identities are recognised and respected, but where our common bonds are strengthened.
Where difference and diversity are celebrated, but where those things we share are celebrated just as much.
Because at the heart of the European Union is the unity of our people: a unity of interests, outlook and principles.
This transcends politics and institutions, the acquis and the economy.
It is about the values we share in our family of nations.
Our pooling and sharing of risks and resources, our social and economic solidarity.
That social union is the glue which holds us together.
We should never forget that the people who benefit the most from solidarity across the European Union are not the strong and the successful, but the poorest and the most vulnerable in our society.
We are 28 nations, but at heart we are one people.
That solidarity is the essence of our European Union and is the surest safeguard of its future.
Let us live up to that high ideal and let us never stop making loudly and clearly, the positive optimistic and passionate case for our precious union of nations and people.
The speaker? Theresa May, at the Scottish Conservatives’ Spring Conference 2017.
The text has been altered to change references to the United Kingdom to references to the EU, and references to Scotland and Scottish Independence to references to Britain and Brexit.
Inspired by this piece by Ian Dunt, I decided to see just how extreme May’s hypocrisy actually was. Astonishing, is the answer.
