Britain’s choice in Europe

Its not often one sees such a stark analysis of our future, but Dominic Cummings, Director of The New Frontiers Foundation pulls no punches in his description of Europe’s future. On the philosophy behind the EU:

The political and bureaucratic Establishment that has so consistently mis-analysed the process of European integration has a related vision. It believes that Great Britain has no credible alternative to the European Union (EU), based on the assumption that the European Project, blessed by historical inevitability, will produce economic growth and cement political tranquillity.

This assumption is trotted out ad infinitum without any recognition that it could be flawed. Without challenging the assumption all arguments become circular, but Europhiles do not believe that the assumption is wrong. In contrast he offers a rather bleaker possibility for the future:

By 2050, the unfunded pension commitments of Britain will be merely 5% of GDP, but 70% for Italy, 105% for France and 110% for Germany. The technology gap between America and Europe is large and growing. The Brussels Commission recently warned that 75% of EU students in America will not return. The single market brought increased regulation, not liberalisation; there is little chance of this dynamic changing.

This is because the single market is not a free market initiative but rather a harmonisation exercise. Europe’s brightest and best meanwhile have realised that their potential is better rewarded elsewhere and are acting as logic dictates.

It makes no sense for Britain to give further powers to an institutional matrix which promises decline rather than adaptation to a rapidly changing and unknowable future environment.

The mentality behind this no alternative approach mirrors the managed decline philosophy of the 1970’s very closely. Before Mrs Thatcher, defeatist politicians of all stripes had declared that there was no alternative to an orderly decline. Likewise today Europhiles claim that despite its weakness, we have no alternative from EU membership.

The psychology of those now preaching the European dream and the European century their preference for supranational bureaucracy over Hayekian markets and national self-government will combine with remorseless demographic decline to prove their latest fantasy predictions as false as those of 1999 about the euros success and Europe becoming the most dynamic economy in the world.

If instead we plump for the Road of Hayek, we can once again prove the defeatists wrong and create a much better future. The alternative is not just the Road to Serfdom, it is also the Road to Ruin.