The civil war on the Tory party heated up this weekend. The leadership is doubling down on its anti-Brexit rhetoric. Chancellor George Osborne took to the airwaves and said it would “be catastrophic for people’s jobs and their incomes and their livelihoods.” He was on ITV’s Peston on Sunday. And just for good measure he added that, “Some people might think that wrecking the economy is a price worth paying.”
I can’t imagine anyone thinks wrecking the economy is a good idea, except maybe Paul Krugman. And even Krugman would say that if you break enough windows and do enough damage, you’ll create “demand” and produce inflation. But Osborne?
A disaster for the City?
Well at this point you have to take the chancellor at his word. Maybe he’s hearing something through back channels that tells him Brexit will be a disaster for the City. Or maybe, like some Conservatives, in his heart of hearts, he’s not really against the centralisation of power, as long as “the right people” are exercising it. Who knows?
All that’s clear is that the debate over what “Europe” means has been shifted. In the 1970s, it was about having access to a single market. It didn’t have anything to do with laws from the European Court of Justice, regulations from the European Commission, or fiscal and monetary integration driven by the European Central Bank.
Laws… executive power… judicial power… those are all elements of a federal structure. And of course, that’s the way the EU’s been evolving all along. The trouble is, Europe isn’t a nation. It’s a continent. Imposing federal structures on such a diverse group of peoples is… well… bound to fail.
Category: Brexit