Unfortunately, beauty and brains seldom reside at the same site. And though anger does sometimes improve people’s looks (women hate hearing this, can’t imagine why), it invariably has the opposite effect on their mental faculties.
Nick Clegg proved at least the second part of this observation by blowing his top the other day. What caused his ire was a very timid suggestion that perhaps now would be a good time to repatriate some of our erstwhile powers from the EU. Not all, God forbid. Some. Very, very few. That was enough to set Nick off. The kind of people who say such things are demagogues! Populists! What we should focus on is jobs! And growth! Blimey! There, there, Nick. Take it easy, mate. Look, you’re getting red in the face. Loosen your tie, sit down, relax. There, you’re looking much better. Good lad. But don’t bandy ‘demagogue’ and ‘populist’ around ever again, all right? People might talk about glass houses and stones, so you’ll get upset again. God only knows what you’d say next.
First aid out of the way, let’s look at what Clegg actually said. One can infer that, according to him, trying to reclaim some of our sovereignty from Brussels would be tantamount to no jobs and no growth. And conversely, the EUSSR equals growth and jobs. To proffer this equation at the best of times would be neither amusing nor clever. To insist on it now, when Europe is looking at the biggest economic disaster in its history, is, well… I don’t want to cause another tantrum by finding the right adjective that would do justice to this folly. And my wife says I mustn’t swear.
Since about 25 years ago, when I first took interest in the subject, I haven’t heard a single rational argument in favour of the EU that can’t be destroyed in 10 seconds flat by any averagely educated person. Lately I’ve been hearing from all sorts of people that the consequences of us cutting loose would be too awful to contemplate. We must be in the EU to trade with Europe. Right. So without signing such treasonous acts as the Maastricht Treaty we couldn’t be a trading nation. Shame they forgot to tell that to the Duke of Wellington, that notorious eurosceptic. In fact, Britain did reasonably well in that department throughout the 19th century, with no European commissioner anywhere in sight.
So suppose we left the EUSSR tomorrow. Would the French stop selling their Bordeaux and Brie (pasteurised) to les rosbifs? Or the Germans their Volkswagens and Brauns? Europe has a healthy trade surplus with us, and the burghers of either Calais or Cologne are unlikely to cut off their economic noses to spite their faces. Any reduction in trade will hurt them more than it would hurt us.
Moreover, rather than bleeding both domestic and foreign taxpayers white (an idea close to what passes for Clegg’s heart), Britain could then offer all sorts of concessions to investors and traders, turning herself into a bigger Channel Island, but one with old culture and architecture. Stop trading with us? They’d be elbowing one another out of the way to get into the queue. The resulting revenue could then be used to repatriate some of our manufacturing capacity. This even at the risk of upsetting those ‘conservative’, which is to say Friedmanite, economists who insist we can all get rich by selling houses and bonds to one another, while letting those swarthy foreigners actually make things. The first part of that theory was proven wrong in 2008, if any proof was necessary. The second part doesn’t answer the question of jobs, the kind traditionally done by the working classes. The assumption was that, once liberated from degrading themselves on the assembly line, they’d all become systems analysts. Instead they’ve become an unemployed, unemployable and brutalised lumpen proletariat, assisted in that development by education that doesn’t educate.
Wouldn’t this offer a better prospect for jobs and growth than becoming a gau in the Fourth Reich ever could? Of course it would. But it wouldn’t offer better prospects for Nick Clegg’s job and growth, and that’s the whole point. Just put yourself into the poor chap’s shoes. Chances are he’ll be out of a job at the next election, if not earlier. I’m guessing here, but the plan must have been to go back to his political roots in the EUSSR, like ‘the wind [that] returneth again to its circles.’ He’ll never be Prime Minister here, will he? But the chances for Clegg to land a top EU job would be nil if Britain kept even marginally aloof. If by then a single European state has been set up, as seems likely, with Britain not at its centre, all the cushy jobs will go to the likes of Monti and Merkel, not to any subject of a recalcitrant monarchy.
No wonder Nick is angry. Wouldn’t you be?