Why the UK Couldn't (And Shouldn't!) Rejoin the EU.

Primarily aimed at well-meaning and open-minded remainers.

Why we couldn't, and shouldn't, rejoin the EU.

So as it's the 5th anniversary of leaving the EU, and lefties are using it as an excuse to push a 'let's rejoin' campaign and petition, I thought I'd explain some basics to them.

1) Brexit was NOT a set of laws or policies, it was literally the opportunity to make our own decisions as a sovereign country, as almost every single other nation on earth does. It wasn't a political manifesto saying 'we WILL do x,y and z, it was saying 'because of the undemocratic nature of the EU, we CAN'T currently do various things, but if we left, we COULD do those things'.

Brexit was opposed by the vast majority of MPs, despite being voted for by a majority of the electorate in the biggest political mandate in UK history. It was held up for almost 4 years. Imagine voting in your chosen political party, winning an outright majority, in the biggest turnout of any election ever, and your party were prevented from governing for 4 years. You'd, rightly, say that had a whiff of the anti-democratic about it.

But anyway, Brexit did get over the line, finally. We then had the freedom, the sovereignty and the power to do a whole range of things (and still do) but as a majority of MPs didn't support Brexit, some parties openly pledging to just ignore the referendum entirely, and as most MPs in all parties were essentially on board with the EU's general policies, even the ones who wanted sovereignty, almost nothing got changed.

Contrary to popular belief, the slogan on the red bus (£350 million a week for NHS, which was never a manifesto promise, but was a hypothetical 'we COULD do this with the money as an example') which the remainers screech was ALL A LIE, did actually happen. The NHS budget was indeed increased, actually by more than £350 million a week. Because the NHS is a bottomless money pit though, and government couldn't spend effectively if they tried, nobody actually noticed. Almost all our Brexit dividend was spunked up the wall and nobody even realised.

To put the Brexit figure in perspective, for what we were paying in contributions each year, you could have avoided the entire of the Tory austerity programme AND had enough left over to cut income tax. But no, of course our politicians wasted it.

Not just that though, they wasted every opportunity. They didn't pursue trade deals properly, including with the EU itself, they didn't slash the thousands of regulations that came from the EU that tied our businesses in red tape and which non-EU countries deal without perfectly fine. They didn't continue the project to leave the ECHR and various other treaties and obligations and, while EU migration did come down, subsequent Tory governments more than made up for it by massively loosening rules on non-EU immigration, meaning far from reducing migration to a manageable, 1996-style level, we were instead taking in more people than any time in our history, over a million a year. More than the population of Birmingham EVERY.SINGLE.YEAR.

Were we building a city worth of houses every year? Or creating enough doctor and school places to fill Birmingham every year? No, of course not.

It's for that reason that nobody feels the impact of Brexit, because in reality, very little has changed. That's not the fault of the process, it's the fault of the people carrying it out. You wouldn't, for example, scrap democracy entirely simply because for 5 years one particular parliament had been rubbish and made bad decisions. You'd simply say 'it's good we can make the decisions, but we should elect different people to make different decisions'. As is the case with Brexit.

The EU, essentially, is the House of Lords on a continental level. Many don't know that the elected parliament cannot propose legislation. The unelected commission (i.e the EU version of the House of Lords) is the dominant power in that regard. The parliament gets to vote yes or no, but it cannot propose new laws. Imagine suggesting here that two dozen unelected, failed politicians in the Lords were the only ones who could make laws and the job of the commons was just to approve them. There'd be outrage, it's quite literally what the Liberal Reforms in the early 20th century were meant to stop. Ironic then that the Lib Dem's are among the most vocal advocates of handing over this power back to unelected elites.

Now some people might like this 'rule by supposed 'expert' technocrats' as it keeps the sweaty masses from voting for all sorts of vulgar things like life sentences or limiting free movement, and to those people there's no helping you. If you believe the middle of the road, centrist politicians like Cameron, Starmer, Merkel, Macron etc should run the continent by dictat, you believe that. I'm instead addressing those of you who actually value democracy.

2) So after that long introduction, I'll now say why we COULDN'T join the EU even if we wanted to.

The primary reason is the EU's fiscal rules. By its own membership criteria, the maximum debt to GDP ratio a country applying for membership can have is 60%. Ours is 96%.

In order to meet the absolute lowest standard possible for membership, and even if we postponed joining until the last day of this parliament in July 2029, it means we'd have to cut over £1 trillion from our debt. What does this look like in practice? Well, it looks like removing every single penny of the entire NHS and healthcare budget, everything, every year for the rest of the parliament, simply to reach the minimum economic criteria for membership.

So basically, you can have free healthcare or you can have the EU, by its own laws, you can't have both.

3) This brings us on to the more interesting of why we shouldn't want it anyway. So firstly, let's assume the EU did waive their financial rules just for us, which admittedly they might because they want our net contribution billions back. But if they did, that doesn't come without a price. Rejoining, especially under special measures, would mean signing up to the full EU project from now until eternity.

And don't think for a minute that means standing still or the status quo, it doesn't. The EU is quite open that it wants a joint European military, ever closer union, i.e centralised EU banking, tax policies, government, total free movement, membership for more countries etc. And free movement might sound good to the extent of 'well I get to live in spain if I want to', in practice what it means is that if one EU country, say France, decided to unilaterally admit a million new migrants a year, they would be absolutely free to travel anywhere in Europe with no means of stopping them. Every single issue we'd have to go along with, because they 'gifted us' re-entry, and we'd be paying tens of billions for the privilege.

Now, the more direct democratic issue. Some remainers might like parties or politicians considered more 'fringe', like Corbyn for instance. Well the EU rules would literally ban Corbyn or someone like him from doing almost any of what he'd want because of strict rules on spending, taxation, free markets etc. The EU is not, after all, a left-wing or right wing bloc, it's a neo-liberal technocracy. Yes it might prevent people like Farage from bringing down migration, but it would also stop the left-wing from any major reforms as well. Anything, left or right, that varies from the neo-liberal project is deemed unconscionable and not allowed. Now I don't want Corbyn's policies any more than many of you might want Farage's, but my sole point is that it should be the UK voters only who get a say over UK policy, and as much as you can delude yourselves, the EU rules are very clear, harmonisation of all policy, in a centrist, neo-liberal format, is the only system allowed.

I'll then just give you one more reason. For most of its history, the EU has generally been run by left-wingers, greens, centrist conservatives like Angela Merkel and the odd 'far right' voice shouting from the sidelines. Easy to take for granted what the EU 'is', but what if it weren't? Look around Europe. Meloni runs Italy, Orban runs Hungary, Le Pen is leading in France, United Right lead in Poland, Reform lead in the UK, FPO lead in Austria, Geert Wilders leads in Netherlands, AfD are 2nd in Germany, Sweden Democrats are 2nd in Sweden. Even in Spain and Finland and others, parties like VoX are climbing in the polls. It's absolutely not just conceivable but highly likely that within 5-10 years, Europe, and particularly the EU, are led almost entirely by figures the left wing would consider 'far right'.

Now I like Reform and Meloni etc, but assume you didn't, and thought they were evil etc. Would you seriously want to be legally bound into a federal system in which you were outvoted, consistently on every issue, by the 'far right' and had no legal or political recourse to change anything, and you were even paying for the privilege? I imagine now.

I lied, there is one more reason, trade and stability. Firstly, yes we do a lot of our trade with the EU, but for one, that is going to reduce as technology and communication and transport becomes ever easier. For two, the EU is the only trade bloc in the world which is shrinking as a proportion of global GDP every single year. In a decade or two, it will be one of the smallest of the major trade areas, and yet we'd be permanently shackled to it, unable to make any trade deals with other countries without the approval of every lobby group in Europe, from French farmers to Croatian wine makers to Swedish bakers to German engineers, even if the trade deal would suit us perfectly.

The last point is stability. Yes the EU is hanging on, despite its shrinking, for now. But if, say, Le Pen or the AfD got into power, it's very conceivable that one of France or Germany would leave the EU. If that happened, we are basically paying for the entire thing. It means any trade benefits completely disappear AND our bill for membership doubles overnight.

In short, if you're happy with all this, ok, push for a petition for another vote.

Alternatively, work out what it is specifically with policy you aren't happy with in the UK, whether housing or immigration or trade or whatever, and say 'well we can solve this simply by enacting a policy, in our parliament, as every non-EU country in the world does and as we did for 99.9% of our history.

Thanks for listening.