Where the stalking horse grazes...

Hidden away amongst the Brexit Lectures on BBC Parliament is a long boring speech by John Redwood.  Well, someone’s got to make an argument for Brexit … so he does.  For those of you who don’t remember what John Redwood has ever done he was the stalking horse against John Major in the 1995 leadership election.  This he lost after being parodied by the press as even more boring and wooden than the other John – which let’s face it is quite an achievement.  At one point he was derided as Mr Spock which was rather unfair as Spock is half human.  John R’s catchphrase these days is "People used to call me an extreme Eurosceptic. Now I’m a moderate."  The truth is probably more along the lines of people don't call John anything much because he’s boring.

John tells us how many times we were promised not following the EU would end in disaster and following the EU ended in disaster.  He mentions the Exchange Rate Mechanism debacle and how we were forced out of the ERM.  He does not blame the EU entirely for this … but neither does he place a lot of blame at the door of his own party. 

John tells us being in the EU has been devastating for primary industries like coal and steel.  And for those wondering how far bare faced hypocrisy can be taken John (Mrs Thatcher’s Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in July for Corporate Affairs at the Department of Trade and Industry) reminds us that the UK hasn’t a single deep coal mine left – as if this, and indeed he, has nothing to do with ‘80s Tory policies.

John tells us confidently that we can deal with the EU on WTO rules because that is how we strike trade deals with other countries – ignoring the fact that those countries are part of other trading blocks.  I suppose we could join CARICOM but that would probably result in a dangerous loss of sovereignty.  John’s main line of attack was to say that even though it was a zero sum gain the EU hadn’t really boosted UK productivity – something that, of course, is very difficult to assess except through complicated statistical modelling without actually leaving the EU.  Oh well, let’s try that then…

John said the UK economy expanded rapidly after the war but went into decline / levelled out after we joined the EU.  Of course it could alternatively be that the UK joined the EEC because its economy was in decline…?  The most powerful argument he pursued was to do with the undemocratic nature of adopting so much EU legislation.  It would be interesting to see how other trading blocks tend to legislative unity and to what degree.  Well, I think it would be interesting.  Normal people would fall asleep…