The European Question

This week Our Glorious Leader announced that he had a plan. A plan to re negotiate the treaty with Europe with regards to the UK's continuing involvement. 

This is of a course a sop to the euro sceptics within the Conservative party and, more importantly that strange and bizarre section of society known as the Conservative voter. I jest of course. I do wonder just how much people are "floating voters", those people who are truly not determined to vote one way or another. My experience is that most people have already decided it's just a question of whether they show up to vote. 

For instance, although Tony Blair's Government had a huge majority in the House of Commons it was hardly a popular vote. I believe he had about 44 % of the vote. Compare that to Thatch who got 52% with smaller majority. What happened was that the conservative voters just didn't show up. 

The problem for this particular Conservative leader is that he does not have the luxury of ground support for his party that Thatch had. He needs all he can get to make sure he doesn't have to go into coalition again. And what are his floating voters doing? Apparently they are cosying up to the UK Independence Party.

So who are they and what do they stand for? That is a good question. Well I could direct you to the website   Which is probably the fairest thing to do www.ukip.org

You can make up your minds for yourself but I am about to put my ha'penny worth in.

My Ha'penny worth!

Put simply UKIP want the UK to leave the European Union. That is about it. It is not clear what they want to do about what happens next. 

The website talks of a report suggesting the UK leave the EU and refocus on the "commonwealth". This is the present name for the countries that once made up the British Empire. An entity that did in fact make us important. But this seems a fallacy to me. The commonwealth has no need to trade with us. In many African states right now the Chinese are busy building infrastructure in return for mineral rights. As a nation we have little to offer these states that the Chinese, or any far east country for that matter, can't offer for much less than we can. We can offer banking services and education. Our trade with the commonwealth was based on the fact that few others could offer the goods and services. It is a global village these days.

The Norwegian model of working is often held up by UKIP as a preferred model and the fact that Norway is considered the 17th most prosperous country. It might be worth remembering that this is largely due to North Sea oil and probably little to do with their arms length status in the EU.

In fact I cannot be bothered to critique the whole of the UKIP website. I wanted to research their aims some before I wrote this but nothing I read had altered my view of UKIP.

I am not sure they have thought through their ideas properly. At no time have I felt that following their plan would have any benefit for me. The website highlights a lot of EU failings, I can't be bothered to go through all their claims but my feeling after reading the headlines is that we should be striving to reform it rather than cut our selves adrift from it.

I have to admit I have reservations about a federal Europe but only because the present system derives from being a collection of sovereign states. I believe to have a federal Europe there would need to be much greater  accountability. But that is achievable, it is not impossible.

So in conclusion, it is a no brainer to stay in the EU, times are tough but it won't always be that way. We have so much to gain, travel/trade etc. UKIP is a one issue party locked in time warp where Brittania ruled the waves.