

Reform is not on the table - and never will be 30/01/2016

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After talks with top EU officials, David Cameron has said the proposal for reform currently on the table is “not good enough. It needs more work, but we are making progress". After talks with top EU officials, David Cameron has said the proposal for reform currently on the table is “not good enough. It needs more work, but we are making progress".

In just twelve words, Mr Cameron manages to pull off some masterful understatement and perhaps the biggest political lie of the century thus far. What we see is Mr Cameron failing to obtain minor tweaks to EU policy, focussed on the decoy politics of migrant benefits and an emergency brake leaden with caveats.

What is not being discussed is EU reform. There are no moves afoot to significantly alter the make up of the EU, nor are there any moves to change the UK's relationship with the EU. So no, it is not good enough at all. To say Mr Cameron is "making progress" is a naked lie.

And then supposing Mr Cameron were looking at the more substantive item for discussion, that of "ever closer union", we would still only be looking at pausing further integration without reforming the existing relationship.

What we take from this is that the EU is unreformable and we have only limited influence even in adjusting minor procedural issues. Many months have been invested to no avail. It rather confirms our view that the EU is unresponsive to the needs and wishes of its members and cannot affect timely change.

When the question is posed as to what it would take for us hardline leavers to change our minds, we would have to address the central issue. Supranationalism. We have identified several areas where the EU negotiating on our behalf not only causes us to miss out on broader global progress , but also runs counter to our own developing interests . In the insistence that the EU must present a common position, it routinely overrides and undermines British efforts.

But in this regard, the supremacy of the EU in all such matters is not now and never will be up for debate. To do so would be to start picking at the very fabric of the EU. Were the EU to abandon supranationalism, to dismantle the institutions and cultural programmes designed to engender a single European demos, culture and government, it would no longer be the EU. Reform in the vein we seek is an existential threat to the EU.

We would like the EU to be a common forum for international progress based on mutual cooperation, democracy and multilateralism. We would like it to be cooperative rather than coercive. We seek partnership rather than subordination. But this is incompatible with the EU. The EU never had this in mind.

The EU has always been about the gradual accumulation of power, using all arms of civil society to embed itself in our respective national narratives, to assert itself as a political entity to which we owe it our prosperity, health and democracy. Little by little, day by day, it eats away at the host from the inside out. It has used our finding to buy of NGOs, local authorities, universities and advocacy groups, making them all EU dependents who will never turn on their paymasters.

The modus operandi has always been integration by stealth, seizing upon every crisis to assert the need for "more Europe". Utopia is always just over the horizon, just one more slice of democracy away.

To those who understand what the EU is, and has always been, and the ultimate destination - a supreme government of Europe, leaving is the only remedy. We know it cannot be reformed even if reform were on the agenda. It is a castle of lies. The fact that it's chief proponents insist on conflating the EU with the single market and cynically calling it "Europe", amidst a shroud of baseless scaremongering tells you the true nature of the EU. It is a power-grabbing cult for elitist zealots who believe democracy is too dangerous.

Were this even an honest debate the ballot paper would look very different. The real question on the ballot paper should be "Do you want Britain to be ruled by a supreme government for Europe?". To us the answer would be no every single time. There is no economic argument that could convince us that democracy was dispensable, and the fact that our politicians continue to lie to us about what they are doing to us is justification enough to leave.





