Wednesday, 18 May 2016

Europe: stay or leave? Focus on fact - 6



Today’s fact: leaving Europe is not just for Christmas.

Interesting to hear some people inclined to vote for Brexit on the radio yesterday morning. They were asking: ‘if we leave Europe and it all goes wrong, when do we get the chance to join again? Is it in 3 years or in 5 years?’ The fact that the answer to the question is ‘probably never’ and that Brexit is a one-way ticket, does not seem to have dawned on some of the anti-Europeans.

Interesting also the way the anti-Europeans dismiss the overwhelming weight of reputable, statistically supported economic forecasts that leaving Europe will damage us, and that the only question is how much. The Brexiters reply: ‘forecasts are nearly always wrong’. And yet they base their own arguments on completely unsupported forecasts that the EU is going to (a) get closer and closer or (b) break up. As these forecasts are contradictory, plainly at least one cannot be right.

And even if either should one day come to pass, neither is a reason for leaving now. Should the EU get closer and closer, we are exempt from the process, and if we should ever feel our exemption was insufficient, we could then leave. Similarly, if the EU were to break up, we would, like everyone else, leave.


The anti-Europeans are behaving like a man on a cliff top who jumps off because he is afraid that at some time in the future a dangerous animal may appear.

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