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Opinion Polls which confirm the general public antipathy towards the European Union (EU) are always good news, one such appears in
The Sunday Telegraph today, carried out by YouGov, commissioned by the Tax Payers Alliance and Global Vision.
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Headlined, "Loosen Britain's ties with European Union, say two-thirds of voters", it tells us that almost two-thirds of voters want "a significant loosening" of Britain's ties with the EU including "an end to the supremacy of the European Court of Justice. ECJ)" (One wonders, incidentally, whether all those polled know the difference between the ECJ and the Court of Human Rights - a lot of journalists do not and confusion is very common.)
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As to the detail of the poll, 16 percent of voters want Britain to withdraw from the EU, while 48 percent want a "much looser relationship." Added together this makes 64 percent in favour of weakening Britain's ties with the EU. By contrast, just 22 percent favour full membership including the Lisbon Treaty. Additionally, 64 percent oppose the euro, while only 24 percent support membership. However, the choice between outright withdrawal and "looser ties" is false and indeed impossible.
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Membership of the EU is not an à la carte option where you can pick and choose from existing treaties and reject those bits you don't like, while keeping the others. In particular, in respect of the supremacy of the ECJ, that is so fundamental to the very essence of the EU that rejecting its dominance would amount to a rejection of the EU in its entirety. You can imagine, say, if you accepted traffic laws, but rejected the authority of any court to fine you for speeding, what would happen, which is why the EU would never allow the authority of its "supreme court" to be challenged.
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One can see the tactical advantage, though, of posing the "looser ties" question, but it would make much more sense in a future poll to have another question. This one should pose to the "looser ties" bods the scenario that no changes can be made to existing treaties and, therefore, their original choice is not an option. In that scenario, what is the preference: in or out?
Faced with that stark choice, some "looser ties" advocates would fall by the wayside, unable to countenance the idea of letting go of nanny, but the likelihood is that we would see a much higher proportion than 16 percent who now say they want to leave.
Even then, 16 percent could be electorally significant. Potentially, those who want to leave – despite the massive tide of propaganda that says we can't or shouldn't – could be influenced to vote for a party that promised our departure, that 16 percent is well over twice the margin between the two main parties. Arguably, the party that made the promise could win the next election.
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The problem actually is that, for many years , the political classes and businesses organisations have fudged it, holding out the false hope of "reform", keeping alive the myth that the EU can be changed into a more acceptable form of construct or that lobbying can have an effect. It can't, and the EU makes this very clear – "take it or leave it" is its ethos. Buy the whole EU package or nothing.
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Only insignificant concessions can be found as 'lobbying' success stories which perpetuate the myth that the EU is other than a rigid machine producing a frighteningly fixed agenda. Soviet style licenesed dissidents are permitted with in the EU system and to those that properly understand the ways of the EU, the so called lobbyists prostitute their principles when caught up in the vast egos of the eurocrats. On the subject of elections, the poll also asks about voting intentions for the election to the European Parliament in June this year. It puts the Tories at 35 percent, Labour on 29, Lib-Dims at 15, and UKIP on seven. The Greens get five percent, BNP four, and the Nationalists also four. These figures are pretty meaningless though since they don't give the "don't knows" and the "don't cares", which probably exceed in number those who would vote for any specific party.
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All this is borne out by another result, which finds that some 45 percent of voters believe none of the three main political parties adequately reflects their views "on Britain's future relations with the EU." We also get 59 percent wanting UK Ministers to disregard the EU's VAT rules if they feel a further cut in VAT is necessary, which is an interesting idea but would result in the UK being fined in the ECJ if they took that action.
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The UK's small businesses community - which now counts for 55 per cent of the UK's GDP - has constantly been skeptical of EU membership.
Back in 2001 a resolution proposed by Peter Troy (editor of this Blog) and seconded by Colin Stratton now head of the recruitment division of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) was presented to many hundreds of delegates and passed by a majority of over two to one at that years Federation's Annual Conference, in it has to be said the face of considerable objection from the FSB's establishment. Despite that resolution seven years ago and a previous successful motion in 1995 ahead of vast EU regulation (particularly anti-entrepreneurial employment law) that was about to impact on the UKs business community the FSB Board failed, amazingly, to adopt a withdrawal policy from the EU.
What is now clear is that the people of the United Kingdom do not want to live with the constraints and vast cost that comes with membership of the EU. The price of the combined direct and indirect expenses of EU membership is now very much in the public's mind. The propaganda fondly promoted by government agencies and moronically repeated chant like by business agencies has lost acceptance by true business practitioners. The vast wrath of regulations and directives is bad enough, the financial cost is now huge. In 2008 the EU costs Britain £55.775 billion. Set out in the latest Bruges Group research document where the full financial burden to Britain has now been calculated.
The conclusion is clear in 2008 there has been dramatic increase in the financial costs of the EU as well as a continuing erosion of our national sovereignty a process that started in 1973. Clearly the people of the United Kingdom (if not the managers of the nation's business representitive organsistions) are now accepting that membership of the EU is at a cost they cannot afford.
One hopes that Her Majesty's Subjects in ''our dear Channel Islands'' (Churchill's broadcast May 1945) will wake up to the gradual occupation that is marching up their path and into their business and domestic front doors, but that is a piece (or perhaps a campaign) for an other day.
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