Britain’s Future Relationship with the European Union
As many readers may already have divined from posts on the website from years back, your editor’s view (not shared by all contributors) is that Britain should vote on June 23rd to leave the European Union and forge a new partnership with it based on Britain as a fully independent, sovereign country once more, exactly like the other English-speaking nations – America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, all of whose roots lie in Britain, all of which are permanent allies.
For the next 17 weeks, the forthcoming referendum will likely dominate British news most of the time, and this website will reflect this.
Policy for Comment
We shall strive to make our comments as factual as possible. This will involve correcting public claims by protagonists which are so distorting of ascertainable facts as to amount to an inversion of the truth.
While protagonists in the media and in public meetings will generally be referred to by name, our comments will be restricted to their words and not extend to their supposed motives.
Defence Policy
Michael Fallon is Secretary of State for Defence and as such responsible for equipping the British armed forces and for their deployments, including those arising from Britain’s overseas alliances.
Mr Fallon has declared himself a supporter of Britain’s remaining part of the European Union. In defence of this view he gave a newspaper interview with Tim Ross, political correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph, published on February 21st and a BBC radio interview with John Humphrys on February 22nd.
On both occasions he stated that “now is not the time to withdraw from the Western Alliance”. If Mr Fallon believes that the EU is the “Western Alliance” he is gravely and dangerously mistaken. The Western Alliance is the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) whose founding treaty was signed in Washington on 4th April 1949. Britain, Canada and the United States were among the 12 founding members. NATO has been the cornerstone of Britain’s defence in Europe against the former Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies up to 1990. There are now 28 members. Decisions are taken on the basis of unanimity – there is no majority voting.
Since 1990, Britain’s armed forces have been deployed alongside US forces under the NATO umbrella in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, the Iraq training mission, Gulf of Aden anti-piracy, and Libya in 2011.
While NATO’s headquarters is in Brussels and some members of the EU are members of NATO, some are not. There are no EU military forces to participate in an EU “alliance” much as the EU would like there to be.
Britain’s leaving the EU will not therefore reduce its NATO-based security in the slightest. It may in fact increase its commitment to NATO by avoiding time wasting efforts to bat away EU efforts to involve Britain in their attempts to create an EU military structure.
