Congratulations, England: A Win For Old Bighty--and Freedom

The Old Lion Still Has Teeth, After All

Winston Churchill, 1946: "There can be no revival of Europe without a spiritually great France and a spiritually great Germany.

The structure of the United States of Europe, if well and truly built, will be such as to make the material strength of a single state less important. Small nations will count as much as large ones and gain their honour by their contribution to the common cause."............

With two World Wars just behind him and a Cold War looming, Churchill sought to prevent a third war and rebuild Europe.

He called for a United States of Europe. However, the United States as his model still had a federalist system of Federal power balanced against the power of the States as enacted in structure of the Constitution including the Tenth Amendment. That balance of power was largely intact in 1946.

Today, however, states are looked at as mere administrative districts of the Federal Blob--exactly what British voters rejected yesterday.

Churchill had one other condition: that it be "well and truly built". He envisioned a union to keep the National Socialists of Germany defeated and the International Socialists of Russia at bay--not to empower a Superstate Socialism in Brussels.

Lady Thatcher, 1992: 

"This is not so much constructing a common European home — as a Common European Prison.

And it's just not on.

Imagine a European Community of 30 nations, ranging in their economic productivity from Germany to Ukraine, and in their political stability from Britain to Poland,

—all governed from Brussels;

—all enforcing the same conditions at work;

—all having the same worker rights as the German Unions;

—all subject to the same interest rates, monetary, fiscal and economic policies;

—all agreeing on a common Foreign and defence policy;

—and all accepting the authority of an Executive and a remote foreign Parliament over "80&% of economic and social legislation".

Mr Chairman, such a body is an even more utopian enterprise than the Tower of Babel.

For at least the builders of Babel all spoke the same language when they began.

They were, you might say, communautaire.

Mr Chairman, the thinking behind the Commission's proposals is essentially the thinking of "yesterday's tomorrow".

It was how the best minds of Europe saw the future in the ruins after the Second World War.

But they made a central intellectual mistake.

They assumed that the model for future government was that of a centralised bureaucracy that would collect information upwards, make decisions at the top, and then issue orders downwards.

And what seemed the wisdom of the ages in 1945 was in fact a primitive fallacy.

Hierarchical bureaucracy may be a suitable method of organising a small business that is exposed to fierce external competition — but it is a recipe for stagnation and inefficiency in almost every other context.

It can collect and use only a fraction of the information that the market picks up, and acts upon minute by minute — and so it gets it wrong.

The top cannot be sure that its orders are carried out by the bottom.

And the organisation as a whole has no feedback that would indicate whether it is performing well or badly.

Such flaws might be of minor importance in a monastery where, after all, the wishes of the monks are not the criteria of success.

In a Government, however, they produce the economic chaos and alienation we saw under communism.

Yet it is precisely this model of remote, centralised, bureaucratic organisation that the European Commission and its federalist supporters seek to impose on a Community which they acknowledge may soon contain many more countries of widely differing levels of political and economic development, and speaking more than fifteen languages.

"C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la politique."

The larger Europe grows, the more diverse must be the forms of co-operation it requires. Instead of a centralised bureaucracy, the model should be a market — not only a market of individuals and companies, but also a market in which the players are governments.

Thus governments would compete with each other for foreign investments, top management and high earners through lower taxes and less regulation.

Such a market would impose a fiscal discipline on governments because they would not want to drive away expertise and business.

It would also help to establish which fiscal and regulatory policies produced the best overall economic results.

No wonder socialists don't like it.

To make such a market work, of course, national governments must retain most of their existing powers in social and economic affairs.

Since these governments are closer and accountable to their voters — it is doubly desirable that we should keep power at the national level."............................

Here, Member of European Parliament Daniel Hannan explains why voters should fire him, why the EU is a Crony Capitalist rat's nest and a Full-Employment Zone for failed lefties to impose their policies on voters despite having lost elections.

Congratulations, Brits--you've struck a blow for Freedom again.

Good Show!