Next stop … exit Europe

We are on our way out of the EU! I don’t know exactly when it will happen but I’m pretty sure we are on a path that will take us out. That’s the real outcome of David Cameron’s veto of a new treaty for the 27 members of the EU. The Tory eurosceptics have won and people like me who are europhiles have lost. With decades of anti-EU rhetoric backed by most of the newspapers and the Tory Party hating anything that the EU did, the time has probably come to have an in/out EU Referendum. Of course an “In” campaign would surely lose as like the “YesToAV” campaign it is torn apart by the rabidness of the right. At least we will have a settled outcome and we can carry-on trying to pick up the pieces as an isolated and declining world power that we have been ever since the great exhibition of 1851.

Nothing matters more to many Tory MPs than leaving the EU and the new intake of Tory MPs is the most Euro sceptical there has been. In fact I don’t think you can be a Tory parliamentary candidate without being deeply euro-sceptical. If Tories were willing to fatally wound John Major over Europe and march out of power, then a little matter of an economic crisis isn’t going to stop them now. They’ve seen blood and Cameron has shown his true colours as the most europhobic Tory PM ever, doing what even Maggie Thatcher wouldn’t have contemplated.

The Labour Party, my party, is weak on Europe. We’re caught in our own scepticism and the public’s disdain of the continent across the English Channel. It can be argued that this moment was inevitable as soon as Gordon Brown decided to keep Britain out of the Euro. Even for that act, the Labour Party has never received any credit from the Europhobes! On the biggest issue, Labour said “No” to Europe. We might be split on Europe for different reasons such as seeing it as a right-wing anti-democratic conspiracy but we are split nevertheless.

So, we have an exit out of the EU to look forward to and on top of that Scotland becoming independent. We’ll be left with a “rump” of a nation not aligned with anyone or anything. Oh yes, we’ll still have our alliance with the US, “the special relationship” or the Commonwealth. We hope!!

Britain was the last major nation to enter the European project and will be first to exit.

It’s a pessimistic viewpoint but I cannot see any other outcome, can you?

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