What this is really all about. A protectionist EU.

Amidst all the stuff about Deal and No Deal, those who don’t accept the democratic process like the Lib Dems are actually very cleverly shifting the narrative.  It’s all about confirmatory votes now.   So soft and cuddly.   

So perhaps we should actually remind ourselves what this is all about.  Why we wanted out of the costly, failing, protectionist bloc that is the EU.    

Austin Mitchell was Labour MP for Great Grimsby between 1977 and 2015.  In an article for BrexitCentral he spelt it out, clear and simple.    

As Mr Mitchell reminds us, once we joined, and particularly after John Major signed the Maastricht Treaty, there was no escape.  We couldn’t trade with other economies, get food on the cheaper world market or give state aid to failing industries and redistribute growth by an effective regional policy.   

Instead we were forced to trade in a protectionist bloc weighted against us, accept whatever cheap labour came in from Eastern Europe and all without help from the EU whose grants are our own money back with their costs taken out.   

That’s the problem. Our political elite likes it as a bigger stage on which to strut. The vested interests want to keep their cosy status quo and business lacks the guts to seize an opportunity. Yet the Brexit vote was largely triggered by the effects of austerity and slower growth on our people. Staying in an unchanged EU would do nothing about either. It seems more likely to increase the alienation which caused the vote in the first place.