Outcome of the European Union Referendum

Lord Maginnis of Drumglass Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maginnis of Drumglass (Ind UU)]

My Lords, it has been an interesting and informed debate, which I will approach perhaps from a more factual perspective, in line with the approaches of the noble Lords, Lord Vinson and Lord Howarth of Newport. I have always detested referendums in so far as our democratic system evolved in a manner where it was intended that the United Kingdom will be led by knowledgeable and principled parliamentarians who are meant to be known and elected locally, not by polls conditioned from above by faceless party manipulators.

It was a risk and a folly that the Prime Minister and Government would cede that privilege to the conditioned prejudice of the masses rather than to reasoned and honest logic. It was even less justifiable that the Prime Minister offered this referendum merely as an incentive to sway the electorate at the time of the last general election. Now, inevitably, in the Brexit case we have the nonsense where the losers are clamouring for a rerun. What comes after that—and again after that?

Despite the fact that our Prime Minister neither made the right decision nor succeeded in negotiating a tangible alternative deal with our EU partners, let me say that I am quite ecstatic at the outcome. Yes, ecstatic in so far as the old morality, the “auld decency” with which I grew up and which I have tried to represent as a schoolmaster, as a soldier, as a businessman and as a parliamentarian, seems to be dying on the vine of political correctness and internal party convenience. We now have the opportunity of a lifetime to reform and to ensure that our Britishness is rejuvenated, and that we do not flounder from tactic to tactic but relearn the value of strategic thinking and planning before setting out tactics in motion.

I hope that we in the United Kingdom now recognise how we have let democracy slide by allowing law-making powers to pass to non-elected foreign civil servants we cannot kick out, and that this has happened without popular consent. Subsequent transfers of British power have been made by a series of stealthy EU steps deliberately disguised as technical changes. Undemocratic diktat at the expense of our national sovereignty lies—or lay—at the heart of the EU.

So before we overindulge in self-flagellation in relation to our decision, we should strive to find out how Europe came to this undemocratic state. We surely understand the complex personality of Commissioner Juncker, President of the unelected European Commission. This is the crook, cheat and self-confessed liar from a country the size of Norwich who for 20 years dominated Luxembourg politics, running the grand duchy as his personal fiefdom.

Herr Juncker used Luxembourg’s security service to blacken rivals while he lined his pockets by conducting lucrative sweetheart deals with multinationals. Under his premiership, the duchy reinvented itself as Europe’s secret tax haven on an industrial scale. He was eventually forced to resign after a scandal involving telephone tapping of political opponents. Such basic standards of government would disbar Herr Juncker from any public office in the United Kingdom. Yet what was Herr Juncker’s comment on becoming President of the Commission? “I don’t have to worry about mere Prime Ministers any more”.

Interestingly, our Prime Minister initially objected to him but found Mrs Merkel in his way and failed politically to stifle the dubious Luxembourger. In so far as Mr Cameron is no longer a major player, it is the same Mrs Merkel who now moves to give the said Herr Juncker his P45. Ironic.

I wish I had time to develop my argument, but the clock defeats me. Suffice it to point out—others may expand on this caution—that the political parties in the UK, like Juncker’s European Union, have become or are becoming the property of bureaucratic academics, many of whom have emerged after university from little more than glorified bag carriers to their elders onwards to elected appointments and to run the country. However decent they may be, they are too often lacking in real practical experience, so that we have become dominated by diktat, not democracy. Internal party manipulation dominates practical objectivity and common purpose—the Leader of the House will, I know, be able to put that in context.

Today, Prime Minister Cameron’s political mismanagement has been fortuitous and opportune in so far as it opens the way for reform here in Parliament. The return of “auld decency”, and strategic purpose rather than tactical U-turns, awaits. We neglect this opportunity at our nation’s peril.