Tomorrow, voters need to judge not only the state of Britain’s relationship with the EU today, but what that relationship could look like in ten, twenty, forty years’ time. The last forty years have shown that the European Union is not so much an organisation as a process. But, crucially, voting to remain does not mean voting to keep the status quo. It may be that the control Britain has already lost over its own affairs is a price worth paying for the benefits of EU membership. Nor could they have known that within their lifetime, their Prime Minister would have to spend days and nights locked in a room with people nobody in the UK had elected asking their permission to change the rules on who was entitled to British welfare benefits. Still less, that citizens of all twenty-eight would have the automatic right to live and work in Britain, and that the institutions of what had become the European Union would be able to tell us what kind of vacuum cleaners we could buy (a trivial example of something rather more serious). In the 1975 referendum, few who voted to endorse Britain’s membership of what they knew as the Common Market could have foreseen that it would, within forty years, comprise twenty-eight countries, nineteen of which would share a single currency. But whatever your view of Cameron’s negotiating skills or the sincerity of his professed Euroscepticism, there is a wider point at stake which is, for me, the heart of the matter. They say that he failed in his renegotiation, complain about his treatment of colleagues, and talk of lining up a leadership challenge whatever the result of the referendum. Many leavers are not, shall we say, tremendous fans of the Prime Minister. A less frantic tone, arguing that the EU had plenty of faults but on balance we were better off in – rather than that calamity would ensue were we to leave – might have sounded more credible and, particularly from David Cameron, more convincing.īut I think the Leave campaign has missed a trick, too. The approach undermined the campaign’s believability as wavering voters in my final round of focus groups said last week, the warnings became “white noise”. Their claims that leaving the EU would be a catastrophe for Britain’s economy and security, and the lurid terms in which they were made, probably weakened their case rather than strengthened it.
It was probably a mistake for the Remain campaign to go nuclear so early. For voters struggling to make sense of the referendum campaign, this sort of thing has hardly helped. But nor would it mean another £350 million a week being spent on the NHS, and staying does not mean eighty million Turks will be arriving at Dover. Leaving the European Union would not put a bomb under the British economy or end Western political civilization as we know it. The latter reference is to David Cameron, who has been criticised for calling the referendum on Britain’s EU membership, which led to Brexit.Forget the hysteria. I should have been clearer when I then said it was the best thing that had happened to us for a long time – because I greatly disliked the behaviour of the previous PM, who at that point I felt had abandoned us and everybody felt angry and let down. In response I said that we had a woman in charge of our country, and that I felt it was a good thing to have women in power. I felt he was putting a really negative slant on powerful women, referring to a witch hunt involving Hillary Clinton. My response to the interviewer was not meant to be political but rather was in the defence of women in power. She says she decided not to clarify her words at the time but was now moved to comment after the quote had been aired again in articles about her recently remastered back catalogue and a book of her collected lyrics. Writing on her website, Bush says the quote was “out of context … it seemed as if the focus went on to the quote rather than the work. She’s very sensible and I think that’s a good thing at this point in time.” “I will say it is great to have a woman in charge of the country. She’s a very intelligent woman but I don’t see much to fear. I think it’s the best thing that’s happened to us in a long time. I actually really like her and think she’s wonderful. In the interview with the Canadian magazine Maclean’s, Bush was reported as voicing support for the British prime minister, Theresa May.Īnswering a question about Hillary Clinton and “the fear of women’s power”, she said: “We have a female prime minister here in the UK.
0 kommentar(er)
