Our Dearly Beloved Prime Minister David Chameleon has embarked on a frantic day of campaigning. He declared: “We are not shackled to a corpse.”
The British Gazette agrees. The EU is not dead – yet. However it’s death throws are not the only danger and – at this point, Dear Reader you may shout rubbish, but we nevertheless shall state it: the coming collapse of the Euro is not thing we should be primarily focused on.
“Why forever not!!!!!!!!!!!” We hear you shout!
In life, we have to deal with those things we can do something about. There is no point in trying to prevent those things that we cannot prevent happening. We cannot prevent earthquakes. We can of course design buildings resistant to same. However, as the Japanese and the Chileans know to their cost, if an earthquake of sufficient size comes along the building will fall.
As has been pointed out by both sides in this campaign, there is a significant amount of trade between the UK and the Eurozone. A collapse of the latter will severely affect the UK economy whether or not we are in the EU or out of it.
The big danger of the UK remaining in the EU is more political than economic. As we pointed out to the Unfortunate Simon Jenkins in our article of the 16th (http://www.british-gazette.co.uk/2016/06/16/oh-dear-yet-another-own-goal-this-from-simon-jenkins-i-fear-german-dominance-thats-why-im-for-remaining-in-the-eu/):
The UK has 29 votes out of 352 votes on the European Council. This works out to 8.24%. In the European Parliament, the 72 British MEPs form a small part of the 751 total of MEPs. This works out at to 9.59%.
Given that the European Parliament is elected by Proportional Representation and that most EU member governments are elected similarly, there is an obvious danger of the EU becoming dominated by extreme parties of the right or of the left.
With less than 10% of the votes the only thing a British government could do would be to “Whistle Dixie”!