Next month, the Brits will vote on whether to leave the European Union. I hope the answer is yes. (The polls to date are split, with the no side marginally ahead.)
That it has come to this represents an irony of sorts. When Britain first tried to join the Common Market (as it was then known), French president Charles de Gaulle effectively sabotaged the effort. Now the Europeans want Britain to stay.
Much of what the EU has achieved is admirable. Shared passports, the removal of border tariffs, and easing the flow of goods and services have all contributed to a stronger economy. So why leave?
There are 28 countries in the EU, from Portugal in the west to Cyprus in the east, and from Finland in the north to Malta in the south.
But that is precisely the problem. Many of these states have little in common, whether it be culture, language, history or aspirations.
So long as the mission was modest — to create a common market — the project made sense. But when the EU began to view itself as a supra-national government, the mischief began.
There are numerous issues about which the member countries disagree. British common law is different than France’s legal system. The populations of Slovakia and the Czech Republic have been at daggers drawn for centuries. Greece is a financial basket case. Abortion is forbidden in Eire unless the mother’s life is in danger.
These differences cannot be papered over by hand-holding and clever wordsmithing. They are fundamental, and there are scores of them.
One way to deal with this is to scale back the EU project. Confine its various organs to matters that do not threaten the sovereignty of member states.
But this has proved almost impossible, in part because the two most influential countries — France and Germany — are intent on undermining the whole idea of sovereign states. They are motivated by Europe’s haunted past — war upon war — and the role nationalism played in it.
The other option is to accept that nation-states are indeed obsolete, and consolidate power at the centre. That is, in practice, the path being pursued by the EU. Its purpose is to reduce once-independent nations to the kind of scope we would associate with a municipality, albeit a large one.
Supporters of this project have a defence, of sorts. While yes, a central parliament in Brussels now reigns, it is still a democratic institution. There has been no loss of freedom so far as individual citizens are concerned. They continue to have a say.
This, though, is the crux of the matter. Individual voters are rendered impotent by the sheer size and amorphous nature of the EU.
The bureaucrats in Brussels understand this. They also understand that if issues were allowed to come before the European Parliament upon which there is no consensus, nationalism would rear its ugly head all over again.
In a union of 28 different countries, letting each retain its sovereignty would lead to bedlam.
So they cope with this reality by hammering out deals behind the scenes. By the time parliament gets to vote, the matter is already decided.
This isn’t democracy, the trappings notwithstanding; it is merely the pretence of one.
Josef Stalin supposedly said: “It’s not the people who vote that count, it’s the people who count the votes.”
Change that second phrase to read “it’s the people who organize the votes,” and you have a pretty good picture of where the EU project leads.
It needn’t have been this way. But Europe’s leaders fear their voters more than they fear an all-powerful, unresponsive bureaucracy. That’s why I would leave.
