Democracy and prosperity make the
case for voting to leave the EU...
PAUL TUSTAIN – founder of BullionVault – reckons that in the short term
Brexit will be bad for his company, because it will divert many new European
customers.
But, in his private view, some things
are more important than money...
Vote Leave, for democracy
Power corrupts. That's why Karl Popper
(one of the great thinkers of the 20th century) argued that we shouldn't get
too obsessed about how we put people into power, as long as we jealously
guard our right to throw them out again.
Thankfully, in Britain, we are good at
jettisoning stale governments – from both sides. We regularly change our
national direction, against the prevailing government's wishes. Through
exercising this right we have been able to stop our politicians veering to
their chosen extreme, and we have kept British politics more or less in the
centre ground, which is where the huge majority of British people want it.
But this is a power we do not have in
Europe. There we only get to vote for people who don't matter; for the
toothless MEPs you've never heard of, and to whom nobody listens, as their
dozens of parliamentary factions argue amongst themselves and get nothing
useful done.
Although we never saw it coming the
European Union we now find ourselves inside is run by the European
Commission. The Commission's power has become enormous, because it fills the
gap left by the failed European Parliament. That leaves the unelected,
executive arm of EU government in complete, effective control.
Can we change the direction the European
Commissioners choose? Can we get rid of them? No, we cannot. EU Commissioners
are appointed, not elected. Britain appoints just one out of 28 EU
Commissioners. Those 28 call the shots by creating the European Commission
Directives which we must all obey, even when they act directly against our
national interest.
You are not anti-Europe if you vote to Leave.
Indeed your author considers himself a Europhile, not a xenophobe, and he
likes a very great deal of what comes from Europe, including – in strict
order of priority – his wife, a very large number of his customers, Article 8 of the European Convention
on Human Rights, and directive 98/80/EC.
But he likes liberty and democracy even
more than he likes Europe, and the lessons of European history demand that
we, the people, retain a practical capability of ejecting a government which
steers us off course. Within the EU we simply don't have it.
After June 23rd, if we vote to Remain,
it will be too late. We will be stuck with whatever corrupted direction the
European Commission chooses, and probably for at least a generation.
Could a European government really
corrupt itself in a generation? You know it has in the past, and where better
to start than by setting the salary of an appointed junior Commissioner at
250% of the salary of an elected MEP?
Vote Leave, for prosperity
If there is a single economic lesson to
be drawn from world history it is that free, independent people will work out
a way to be more productive and more prosperous than controlled ones.
That's why all the economic arguments you
have heard from Remain are bogus. Those scare stories make the same
mistake. They assume that if some modest privilege of EU membership is
stripped away we will all stand there looking confused and lost.
Have we become so weak, so dependent, so
scared of liberty and self-reliance?
While seven years of stagnant data from
Europe show us, yet again, that centralised control and regulation is the
economic road to nowhere, here in Britain – if we Leave – hundreds
of thousands of inventive British people will be freed to do new
things.
Of course we cannot tell you what those
things will be. But we can say with great confidence, founded on 400 years of
repeating history, that people freed from the oppressive straightjacket of
regulated lives will innovate, produce, and grow their economies at many
times the rate which our current partners in the EU are managing.
That's why, if we lead the way, others
will soon follow.
It won't be the first time that Britain,
standing alone, and with steadfast determination, ended up leading the rest
of Europe back towards democracy, liberty and prosperity.
1.
The one that grants a right to a private life,
and a private correspondence, and prevents future governments trawling
through commercial data to see who they can profitably start persecuting.
Note – however – that under Article 8 the government rightfully retains the right to get a warrant from a judge to
look at the records of a named individual who is already under investigation.
Article 8 treads a sensible middle ground between total privacy and national
security.
2.
2. The one that insists that
investment gold bullion is a monetary asset and therefore cannot be subject to VAT.
