04/06/2015
Peter Wilding of the Europhile
British Influence writes in the
Telegraph, framing the referendum as a choice between Great Britain in Europe or Little England. We would, however, cast the choice as between Little Europe or Global Britain.
Thus in many respects defines the fault line between the two sides but, there is not all there is to it. Wilding, as a polemicist, reveals a little of himself when he writes of the "sceptics" wanting Cameron to play hard-ball in the renegotiation. "A Dirty Harry movie with 'Make my day' Dave toting his colt 45 (sic) at Angela and Francois, is what they want to see", he writes.
Yet, film buffs will know that the fictional "Dirty Harry" did not tout a Colt 45, but a Smith & Wesson Model 29 .44 Magnum, "the most powerful handgun in the world". This tells you that Mr Wilding is a man who doesn't do detail â a man who is careless of his facts.
In this, though, Wilding is not alone. Lucy Thomas of
Business for New Europe (BNE) publishes on
her blog "a look at the three most commonly cited 'Out' scenarios", and then "sets out the step-by-step process involved in arriving at them, along with the obstacles and pitfalls that accompany it".
She chooses three â ignoring
Flexcit of course â this is the one they can't beat, so they ignore it. Instead, what's on offer is: "EEA Membership â the Norway option"; "EFTA Membership â the Swiss option" and "Customs Union â the Turkey option".
The analysis of the Norway option has the usual crop of lies and half-truths, including the claim that Norway adopts 75 percent of EU laws. It doesn't. Last time I checked, the EEA
acquis comprised 5,758 legislative acts, out of the 20,868 EU acts currently in force â about 28 percent of the total.
But the interesting thing here is that Lying Lucy describes the Norway option as "EEA Membership", whereas strictly it is EFTA membership and participation in the EEA agreement. The EEA isn't a body as such, so you can't be a member of it. Hence, it's either the "Norway option" or the EEA option".
But this makes the contrast with what Lying Lucy calls: "EFTA Membership â the Swiss option". Here, she is also off the rails, mistakenly assuming that Switzerland's EFTA membership is in any way related to its bilateral agreements with the EU. However, as the rest of us know, these deals were negotiated entirely outside the EFTA framework.
Strangely, we can't get in to look at her infographic on this â which doesn't say much for her IT wonks - and her Turkey option isn't worth looking at. The WTO option, where Lying Lucy could have a field day, doesn't even get a look in.
All this points to another dose of ignorance - fundamentally, she is not master of her brief. So, while some think that these Europhile organisations are pretty slick, and feel intimidated by them, what we are seeing is low-grade players who have to resort to lies to make their case, to make up for the lamentable gaps in their knowledge. People who know their subject don't need to lie.
When the chips are down, therefore, these people will be easy to beat. We know their own subject better than they do, and have more respects for the facts. And, unlike them, we have no need to lie. Fortified by better knowledge and the truth, we will defeat them in detail.
