Thread by @PJChapman74

Thread. I wrote this years ago on a pro-Brexit Fb page. Bear with it!

"A book review, if I may?  Be warned - I am going to be complimentary about Guy Verhofstadt.  I know people here dislike just about everything he stands for, but that’s no reason to dislike a person..

If you didn’t already know Guy Verhofstadt is in charge of the Liberals and Democrats in the European Parliament, and he’s going represent the EP in negotiations with the UK.  I never found him speaking highly of the UK – but then usually when I see him he’s in some...

...heated debate with Nigel Farage.

However, apply a dispassionate perspective, pretend he’s discussing Caricom or SACU or something you have no strong view about and he seems perfectly reasonable.  He has written a book, “Europe’s Last Chance.”  Not only...

...did I find his opinions reasonable, I agreed with most of the things he says.

He says that the European Union is gradually failing.  He compares the performance of the USA and elsewhere to the European Union it’s clear the EU is lagging behind, with high youth unemployment...

...across the Union.

He uses the banking crisis to explain why the USA emerged so much stronger than the EU.  The USA very quickly introduced TARP, an infrastructure programme and Quantitative Easing.  The EU couldn’t respond.

He addresses the United States’ criticism of the EU members who do not contribute enough of their GDP to defence spending as required by NATO.

The key constraint running through all the EU’s failings, according to Mr Verhofstadt, is the principle of *Unanimity*.

The EU couldn’t respond to the banking crisis because it has to find unanimity between 28 countries, or at least amongst the 19 states within the Eurozone.  It is abundantly clear that the Eurozone needs a massive transfer of wealth, roughly, from North to South. The EU has...

...to rely on performing bail-outs – and even these are probably illegal according to the EU’s own rules!  The Eurozone will continue to fail where there has to be unanimity, and where you have no fiscal union.  Split responsibility in areas of economic competence is always...

...going to cause conflicting policies…a fiscal policy decided by Greece and a monetary policy decided by the ECB, with no real fiscal transfers in between states is never going to work.  The Eurozone will have to centralise fiscal competence.  In a sense this is already...

...happening, Greece has already surrendered sovereignty over its fiscal policy – see what happens when it tries to pay its own pensioners more money.

On defence, he says, before we try to achieve some ‘percentage of GDP’ spending target, the fact that the EU defence force...

...is dysfunctional needs to be addressed first.  Again, 28 sets of armed forces without unanimity is never going to be as an effective force as the USA.  Regardless of the numbers involved, you’re never going to get 28 countries to agree on a strategy.  You have 28 sets...

...of bureaucracy, 28 different uniforms, 28 different strategies.  Why invest more when so much of it is “wasted”?  Mr Verhofstadt wants one common defence – not 27 or 28 contributions to a collaborative defence, but one defence – just as the United States has.

On borders he...

...asks, how can it be that our internal borders have free movement, but we have 28 external borders all applying different rules?  The EU needs one set of rules, and one border control.  Again, just as the United States has.

What Mr Verhofstadt is saying is not controversial...

...in my view.  If you want a workable political body, it cannot operate as the EU does.  You would never set up a nation to operate in this way given the choice.  It cannot operate as an effective fighting force, it cannot respond to crises, its Eurozone is doomed to sub-par...

...growth and self-perpetuating disparities.

So, he says, this is Europe’s last chance.  Europe needs to make a choice, it can break up, it can continue to fail, or it can reform along the lines of the USA. 

The objective here has been repeated several times.  The...

...Federalists want the European Commission to be the executive, they want the European Parliament to be the legislature, with the Council as a sort of second chamber and the ECJ as the Supreme Court.  This is how all decisions are made in this new nation.  Provided you can...

...persuade the citizens, I personally can’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work.  The USA works, if you form a nation along the same lines it will work.

Mr Verhofstadt and I are in complete agreement…the status quo will never work.  Mr Verhofstadt, actually, isn’t a typical...

...Eurocrat – we have had our figures like Brittan, Kinnock and Mandelson who would only extol the virtues of the European Union as if it was fine as it was, and just needs tweaking here and there - products of Monnet’s incrementalism.  Indeed, Mr Verhofstadt specifically...

...speaks out against “step-by-step Europe”.  It seems to me he’s saying to the EU, ‘it’s time to come clean’.

Mr Verhofstadt, who is not a product of Monnet, basically says it doesn’t work and it will never work as it is, and tells us exactly what needs to be done to make it...

...work.  A full federal Europe on the same lines as the United States. 

Being in the current EU is not going to do the UK any favours, but we could be quite prosperous in Mr Verhofstadt’s European Union.  There’s nothing intrinsic to the EU to make it fail if the...

...institutions are set up to succeed.   

I would recommend both leavers and remainers read his book, or at least seek some kind of synopsis thereof.  He is the quintessential pro-European with credentials as good as any.  Some remainers, some who abstained, and even some who...

...voted leave, may be persuaded of his positive vision.  A prosperous, unified, peaceful European Union, where the UK is to Brussels what Florida is to Washington DC.

Apart from the distinct lack of patriotism, I don’t see that being a dishonourable position – a person may...

...see their, and their family’s, future being better served in such an EU – it’s not for me, nor anyone else, to say where the UK’s independence sits in someone else’s list of priorities when they have a family to feed.  The more dishonourable position is trying to claim...

...that the EU does work as it is, and that the status quo is a feasible option.  It doesn’t, and it isn’t.  You would only argue that case from a position of ignorance or dishonesty.

Predictably, of course, Guy Verhofstadt lays the blame of European failures squarely...

...at the door of “the nationalist delusion that still haunts Europe”.  He speaks contemptuously of our ilk as merely xenophobic populists.  What Mr Verhofstadt seems to overlook is that he is a firm proponent of nationalism.  He wants control of the economy, at a European...

...level.  He wants control of the borders, at a European level.  His role model for his European Union is the United States – a nation.  So the difference between him and me is not that I am a nationalist and he is not.  He is every bit the nationalist that I am.  We both...

...know that the sovereign “nation state” works better than any alternative.  The difference between him and me is that his nation is the European Union and my nation is the United Kingdom. 

In the end, I quite like Mr Verhofstadt, notwithstanding his contempt for my...

...position.  All I ask of politicians is to tell me what you think, and what you want to do – don’t just tell me the bits that you think I’ll agree with, whilst all the time planning to do something I won’t. 

Guy Verhofstadt simultaneously...

...makes as brilliant a case as I have heard about the merits of European integration, and also the case as to why I could never support the UK being part of it.  It’s not about a Single Market, it’s about a Single Country.

It’s a timely reminder of what is at stake."