Dave Cameron’s list of demands, nay abject pleas, to the EU gives him a sporting chance to claim the title for himself.
Think of any pejorative adjective you care to name, and you’ll see it applies to Dave’s initiative. Craven? Yes. Stupid? But of course. Cynical? To say the least. Dishonest? You bet. And we haven’t yet reached treasonous, unpatriotic and self-serving.
Every word he wrote to Donald Tusk or uttered in the subsequent speech is a blatant attempt not to change the EU’s ways, but to trick us into voting to stay in come the referendum.
Actually all those pejorative adjectives were already valid before one word went on paper or crossed Dave’s lips. For, as he has made abundantly clear, he’ll campaign for the In vote no matter what.
It’s as if you started negotiating a discount on a new car by promising to buy it at any price. Hardly a strong bargaining position, is it?
Dave’s inner premise for the negotiations, his assumption, or rather pretence, is that the EU is reformable.
Pretence is actually more likely than assumption because Dave, though hardly the sharpest tool in the box, isn’t a clinical idiot. He has to know that the EU is the equivalent of a beast, not a human being.
Unlike man, it has no freedom of choice. Like an animal, its every action is predetermined by its genetic make-up, and it single-mindedly pursues the sole purpose for which it was created.
A lion devours smaller animals for their protein. A bee gathers pollen. The EU creates a single European state. It can no more offer any concessions deviating from its in-built imperative than a lion can turn vegetarian or a bee shun flowers.
Peter Oborne says in today’s article that even Dave’s pathetic little pleas are likely to go unheeded, and he may be right. However, if EU bureaucrats thrash out with Dave a strategy to trick Britain into staying, they very well might make it look as if they’ve relented.
That would only mean a change in words, not in substance. Take, for example, Dave’s entreaty for the UK to be released from the commitment to an ‘ever-closer union’.
You don’t like ‘closer’ Dave? Not a problem, mon ami. How about ‘friendlier’? Or ‘cooperation’ instead of union? Would that work?
This distinction without a difference probably will, especially when billions in the EU’s ill-gotten cash are thrown behind the In campaign, propped up by our own billions Dave will generously toss into the fire of pro-EU propaganda.
Or take the issue of immigration from the EU, one that’s close to most British hearts, and for good reason. HMG has acknowledged that about half of such fortune seekers are receiving social benefits of at least £6,000 each.
Let me get my trusted calculator out… Right. Legally there are 3.5 million EU immigrants here. Half of that is 1.75 million, let’s call it 1.5 to be fair – and to be fairer still, let’s disregard the multitudes who are here illegally.
Now ‘at least’, when applied to money, is as mendacious as ‘average’. Bill Gates and I have an average income in the billions. This statistic may tell you something about his income, but precious little about mine.
And ‘at least’ is so open-ended that it leaves room for stratospheric conjecture. But let’s be modest and round it up only to £10,000, and then multiply it by 1.5 million. The product is 15 followed by nine zeroes. A hell of a lot.
At this point I’m talking only about the financial cost, not the social, cultural and demographic ones, which are even more crippling. So what’s Dave begging the EU to do about it?
Oh, to let us withhold benefits until the immigrant has been here for four years. Never mind the 15 followed by nine zeroes that’s already being doled out. Anyone who knows elementary school arithmetic will see that, since the influx of immigration will hold steady, the staggered qualification for benefits won’t reduce our overall expenditure a few years down the line.
And, as Mr Oborne writes, even that meaningless request may be ignored since one already hears squeals of ‘discriminatory!’ coming out of the federasts’ well-oiled throats.
More likely, there has to be a semantic copout there too, such as introducing terms along the lines of ‘reduced entitlement’ or ‘limited access’. Dave and Angie will bang their heads together and think of something, I have every trust in them.
My favourite plea is that “The United Kingdom would like to see a target to cut the total burden on business.” If I were Merkel, I’d have a broad smile on my face. It’s like asking a florist for a free leaf.
If there’s one thing (other than corruption) the EU has in abundance, it’s targets. How many would you like, Dave? Ten? Twenty? Have all you want, mein Freund, they don’t cost anything.
Another abject plea is for our Parliament to regain a teensy-weensy bit of its sovereignty. Not much. Certainly not all of it. Just a smidgen will do, enough for Dave to carry the referendum.
All this proceeds to the accompaniment of mathematical calculations, with one side trying to prove that, if we leave, we’ll be a fiver worse off, with the other side countering that we’ll be a tenner wealthier.
This in the year in which Britain celebrated the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, an event that led to the gradual development of the best legislative system the world has ever known. This in a country known as ‘the mother of all parliaments.’
That sort of thing has an emetic effect on me. Well, at least Dave isn’t nauseated.