I don't try to discuss politics on this blog. But Brexit seems to be taking up so much time and energy and column inches in the press and endless arguments from both sides on television that I thought I'd throw my few pennyworth into the ring. The whole thing is crazy, particularly the fact that no-one has any idea how to break the stalemate that has happened in the House of Commons. It's a bit like a really poorly-written episode of the BBC sitcom 'Yes, Minister.' Except none of the episodes were poorly written. Even Sir Humphrey Appleby, brilliantly portrayed by Nigel Hawthorne, would have been stumped for words. The following dialogue from this series, written in the early 1980's. It seems that times (and much else) hasn't changed, regarding our thoughts on the subject of the E.U.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Minister, Britain has had the same foreign policy objective for at least the last 500 years: to create a disunited Europe. In that cause we have fought with the Dutch against the Spanish, with the Germans against the French, with the French and Italians against the Germans, and with the French against the Germans and Italians. Divide and rule, you see. Why should we change now when it's worked so well?
Jim Hacker: That's all ancient history, surely.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Yes, and current policy. We had to break the whole thing up, so we had to get inside. We tried to break it up from the outside, but that didn't work. Now that we're inside, we can make a complete pig's breakfast of the whole thing: set the Germans against the French, the French against the Italians, the Italians against the Dutch. The Foreign Office is terribly pleased, it's just like old times.
Jim Hacker: But if that's true, why is the Foreign Office pushing for higher membership?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: I'd have thought that was obvious. The more members an organisation has, the more arguments it can stir up. The more futile and impotent it becomes.
Jim Hacker: What appalling cynicism.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: We call it diplomacy, Minister.
Virtually every time I turn on the television news, amongst all the other gloom and doom, we have to hear about stupid politicians who can't agree with anything unless it's what they want to agree with. I feel sorry for Teresa May. Whatever she does is bound to be wrong, not form the point of view of the opposition parties, but when it's her own MPs it must be very discouraging. We don't hear anything fresh from Jeremy Corbyn who is only interested in the possibility of their being a General Election and the slim chance of him becoming prime minister. He just rants, but we never seem to hear anything positive which might possibly sort out the sorry mess. Well, at least the various factions and parties are 'sort of' meeting to discuss possible solutions, but why couldn't they join forces earlier? The best thing to do when Brexit pops it's ugly head over the parapet when I turn on the news is to either turn over to another channel or just turn the television set off.
In general there seemed a certain sort of apathy about the E.U. before the In/Out referendum. Most people were more interested in celebrities, reality television, sports personalities and any inanity you can mention, rather than the goings-on of a load of bureaucrats in the middle of Europe or even whether we were to 'remain' or 'leave' the juggernaut of the European Community. This could be said of the first referendum in 1975. Looking back, I don't have any memories of it, or even whether I even voted at the time. I don't know whether I was really that interested in it at the time. It didn't even come over my horizon. Who can blame me? Would I have been interested in the goings-on of a load of faceless pen-pushers in an office just off Whitehall? I doubt it.
Let's be honest, we were taken into the 'Common Market' as it was referred to in the early 1970's by Edward Heath, the then-Prime Minister, without consulting the country and then we had a referendum in 1975 when a Labour government came to power. I don't remember voting one way or the other at that time, but the result was that we remained in the bloc. (I don't know precisely when they changed it to the E.E.C. (European Economic Community) or then to E.C. (European Community), which, admittedly rolls off the tongue so much easier. From what I've been reading about the referendum in the 1970's, there was a certain amount of apathy amongst the public. I think generally people have no real interest in the E.U. and when it came to the 2016 'in/out' referendum the same could be said again. In general most people aren't interested in something which is distant from their everyday lives. It's run behind closed door, or so it seems. If you see footage on television of the E.U. buildings they look faceless and the same can be said about those that run it, the bureaucrats and the like. Did anyone really and truly think the British people were going to take to being told what to do by a bunch of faceless bureaucrats based hundreds of miles away in a bland, faceless building? Having rules and regulations foisted on us by Brussels or wherever the E.U. is based? I think not. Most of those 'laws' over-ride those made by the Whitehall parliament. Then there's the fact that we're an island. How many times have we been invaded? Once by the Romans and unsuccessfully by Napoleon and the Nazis didn't bother, basically because they knew they wouldn't wind if they'd attempted to invade.
The E.U. doesn't want us to leave. Well, who can blame them? They get a hefty payment from us. How many Billions per year? And they want us to pay something like £39 billion as part of the 'Divorce settlement'? Nobody mentioned anything about this sort of payment during the Referendum campaign. Oh, we were told that we gave them something like £35 million a week, or was it month? And that could have gone to spend on keeping the N.H.S. going. Or payment for new hospitals, schools, mending roads and the infra structure in general. Who came up with that figure? Once we've gone there's going to be a huge hole in the E.U. budget. In other words the United Kingdom seems to have kept the whole thing going with our payments. With the Euro in meltdown, what with the Greek economy needing fixing, and then the Portuguese and the Italian, all expecting to get handouts to pay their debts, without our money coming in to prop things up, no wonder they expect us to pay a hefty price.
The E.U. doesn't want us to leave. Well, who can blame them? They get a hefty payment from us. How many Billions per year? And they want us to pay something like £39 billion as part of the 'Divorce settlement'? Nobody mentioned anything about this sort of payment during the Referendum campaign. Oh, we were told that we gave them something like £35 million a week, or was it month? And that could have gone to spend on keeping the N.H.S. going. Or payment for new hospitals, schools, mending roads and the infra structure in general. Who came up with that figure? Once we've gone there's going to be a huge hole in the E.U. budget. In other words the United Kingdom seems to have kept the whole thing going with our payments. With the Euro in meltdown, what with the Greek economy needing fixing, and then the Portuguese and the Italian, all expecting to get handouts to pay their debts, without our money coming in to prop things up, no wonder they expect us to pay a hefty price.
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