Labour and the Referendum

The Labour Party has made a serious mistake in registering as a campaigning organisation  to stay in the EU.  Members weren't consulted. A sizeable minority are opposed, our core voters don't share the vacuous enthusiasm of the right and we're saving David Cameron's bacon. Not that he'll be at all grateful. If he wins it's straight back to the nasty agenda of cuts, austerity and handicapping Labour and the unions.We should have learned the lesson of the Scottish Referendum when supporting him damaged us in Scotland and he immediately ratted on English votes for English measures

We're campaigning for a cooperative, munificent EU which exists only in the head of naive idealists, a group which is very strong in the Labor party.

The better off might benefit from membership but the workers have suffered severe damage They're less interested in the political case for a seat at the top table than in the economic results and the uncontrolled immigration both of which have which have hit them.

Labour's happy picture of a comfortable cooperative EU makes no mention of the loss of our fishing grounds and the destruction of our fishing industry,of the higher food prices due to French agricultural protection  or the destruction of British manufacturing shrunk to 10 per cent  of GDP or of the huge and growing deficit in trade with the EU which exports jobs demand and companies.

We say we'll reform the EU but it can't even reform itself. It can neither abandon the Euro nor make it work. So it imposes a Europe wide deflation. The less competitive states have to cut costs, put people out of work and impose harsh austerity on their people.The result is the rise of extremism. The EU has been turned into the high unemployment -low growth black spot of the world, so our trade with it suffers even more. Nor can we lead it because with reform concentrating on the Euro zone we're in a dog box on the periphery.

Labour's enthusiasm for the EU is a result of its loss of faith in itself. As it has now come to a belief that it won't hold power it's decided that crumbs from the Euro table are the only way of improving things.We could  do better than all Europe's reforms for ourselves but have given up hope of ever gaining power to do so.So we have to get everything undemocratically from the EU.

For those of us who've not given up hope the EU will become an obstacle.When Labour sets out to boost  British manufacturing it will run up against EU rules on state aid, on regional policy, on support for investment and exporters, and on takeovers of British firms. Better prepare for that eventuality by coming out now. Otherwise we sentence our next government to being a pale imitation of the Tories.