Britain won't pau for EU's propaganda, says ROSS CLARK
Last December, in the wake of the referendum result, it set up a 2.8million euro (£2.5million) fund for projects which “enable participants to challenge Euroscepticism and to suggest possible actions that the EU could undertake to foster a sense of belonging to Europe, to understand the benefits of the EU and to reinforce the EU’s social and political cohesion”. The rearguard Remain lobby in Britain has been quick to try to hoover up the money. Ten projects in Britain have already been granted £490,000, including a twinning arrangement between the south London suburb of Streatham and six other places across the EU with the express aim of trying to “decrease the wave of Euroscepticism and Europhobia”.
The decision to leave has been made
In other words, the EU is directly funding campaigners who are trying to stand in the way of Brexit – and intending to send us the bill. There is nothing wrong of course with twinning arrangements and cultural exchanges. They have been going on since well before Britain joined the EU and there is no reason why they should not continue once we have left. There are after all plenty of British towns which have twinning arrangements with towns outside Europe. But what the EU is trying to do is hijack such arrangements for political purposes.
Brexit transition phase: Cabinet splits three ways Thu, August 10, 2017 Who is pushing for the most gradual departure possible from the EU? And who favours a cleaner break? Play slideshow AFP/Getty Images 1 of 15 HARD BREXIT: Andrea Leadsom
It is attempting to plant an association in our minds between pleasant trips to sup local wine in the Dordogne and membership of the EU – to try to make us think we are putting it all at risk through Brexit. It wants to distract us from the real reasons why as a country we voted to leave the EU: its lack of democracy, its lack of regard for the sovereignty of its member states and its boneheaded refusal to compromise its principles when things such as free movement and the single currency are not working well. How easily the EU could have persuaded Britain to vote to remain had it been prepared to make meaningful concessions when David Cameron set out to renegotiate the terms of our membership ahead of the referendum. They only had to win over an extra two per cent of the UK population to swing the vote in favour of Remain.
GETTY The EU is trying to bill the UK up to £91billion
They could almost certainly have achieved that by establishing some sort of control on free movement so that the richer countries in northwestern Europe were not forced to pay welfare benefits to ­Eastern European job-hunters from the moment they arrived. They could have done it by reforming EU institutions to ensure greater democracy, by respecting national sovereignty, by promising to stop the endless generation of legislation by an unelected European Commission on issues which ought to be decided at national level. Even the most ardent Remainers tend to go a bit wobbly when reminded of the “tampon tax” – the rules which prevent a British government from reducing to zero the rate of VAT on sanitary products (and many other things too). Yet the EU’s leaders failed to make any meaningful concessions to David Cameron.
GETTY David Davis has been carrying negotiations with Michel Barnier
They merely looked down their noses at him and said: “These are our principles and they cannot be compromised.” A clause on free movement written into a treaty 60 years ago, when all member states were at a similar level of development and no one could foresee that poor Eastern European states would one day join the union, was treated as if it had been carved in stone. Likewise EU leaders cannot bring themselves to admit that their pet project, the single currency, has proved a disaster and has ruined the economies of countries for which the single interest rate set by the European Central Bank was inappropriate. It is too late now for a propaganda campaign to try to persuade Britain to stay in the EU. The decision to leave has been made. Moreover the behaviour of EU officials ever since the referendum has persuaded even Remain voters that we are better off out.
GETTY Even Remain voters think that we are better off out of the EU