Cameron’s tawdry propaganda.
David Cameron has not exactly been covering himself in glory lately and Sunday was no exception as the de facto head of the remain campaign took to the Sunday Telegraph and Facebook to give the plebs his latest views on Brexit. You can read his piece here. So does it contain the inspiring words of a statesman eloquently expounding why we should remain or is it the work of nothing more than a two-a-penny propagandist?
He starts by outlining his vision for what our future in the European Union would look like in one short paragraph. Illuminatingly he states the following, “If you vote to remain in Europe, I can clearly describe what you’re voting for.” Except he can’t describe that, indeed nobody can, because what the EU and our place in it will look like in 10, 15 or 20 years time is highly uncertain. The nearest we can get to this is contained in the Spinelli group report of 2013, known as ‘A Fundamental Law of the European Union.’ This outlines the next moves to a truly federal organisation where a member state is either in the core eurozone or in the second tier of associate membership. From Cameron’s desire to secure an end to ever closer union it is not unreasonable to assume that he does not favour the former, but if it is the latter then he is prepared to take us into second class status. And what is worse it is a position that is described only vaguely in the Fundamental Law via Article 137 and protocol 9. At this stage what associate membership will look like is hazy to say the least so for the Prime Minister to declare what our EU future would look like is just disingenuous.
The above is as far as Cameron gets with a statesman like vision of the nations prospect. The rest is, I am afraid to state, the usual remain scaremongering. He uses as a vehicle for his stale arguments four questions to eurosceptics. He demands they are answered, so here goes:
“The first question is: what trading relationship would Britain have with Europe after leaving?” Under Article 50 we have two years of formal negotiations to leave. For expediency and practicality the negotiators will plump for the easiest way to leave that will also retain access to the single market and so be the most economically safe. This will be something close to the EFTA/EEA route, often known as the Norway option. David Cameron must surely know this to be the case yet he goes on to try and rubbish this and mentions other options which will not be contemplated during negotiation. Why write about them except to obfuscate and muddy the waters?
“The second question is: how long would it take to put a new relationship in place…” To which I am tempted to answer how long is a piece of string? Once we have left safely as outlined above then the next day will be no different from the day before, why would it for we will still be in the single market? We can then take our time in negotiating a new trading arrangement and the same goes for the various EU programs we pay into. For the Prime Minister to describe this as “wrangling” which would cause “huge amounts of uncertainty” and then “…it would have an impact on investment and trade — and, ultimately, your job, the prices you pay and your family’s finances” is quite disgusting fearmongering.
“The third question is about security.” Here Cameron’s argument is dependent on his audience accepting that all cooperation with the EU will stop on Brexit. This is patently nonsense and all I will say further is that Europol has operational agreements with 14 non-EU countries including Norway, Australia and USA.
“Fourth, there’s a bigger question about our role in the world: outside the EU, is Britain more able or less able to get things done?” The Prime Minister clearly believes the latter and that the only way we can have our influence felt is by being a member of the world’s only supranational organisation. However David Cameron out of anyone should know that intergovernmental cooperation is a well known way of getting things done, after all isn’t that how he got his ‘reformed’ EU deal?
The whole piece shows us not a statesman with convincing arguments to take his nation and its people forward with him but a charlatan who has to resort to misinformation, obfuscation and pure nonsense to scare voters on side. In David Cameron we have no Prime Minister but a mere propagandist for the EU…and not a very good one at that.
