There is currently much debate about Brexit in the
Irish media, mostly from the Pro European Union side with scare stories about how Ireland's
economy will fall off a precipice should Britain decide to exit the European Union
on June 23rd. The debate, this side of the water at any rate, seems to be devoid of any balance.
Peter Hitchens is a columnist with the Mail on Sunday and has written several
books including The Abolition of Britain and The War
We Never Fought. He has kindly agreed to do an interview which includes discussion on Brexit, Energy
and Climate and a host of other issues. Questions by Owen Martin.
Q: I’m probably one of the few
Irish people who voted Yes in the original Lisbon Treaty Referendum, but voted
No in the second one. The Lisbon Treaty had reasonable stated aims :
• It shall work for the sustainable
development of Europe based on balanced economic growth and price stability, a
highly competitive social market economy, aiming at full employment and social
progress, and a high level of protection and improvement of the quality of the
environment.
The problem was that the European Union simply did
not honour its pledge. Going back to the early days of the European Union, was
its original intention to be a force for good, e.g. to prevent wars etc ?
PH: You need to read Christopher Booker and Richard North’s ‘The Great
Deception’, and also Hugo Young’s ‘This Blessed Plot’, for a discussion of the
origins of the EU. There is no doubt that these are *political* not economic,
born out of a desire to create a supranational body which will, slice by slice
and generally very quietly, remove power from national governments. This
Utopian project claims to intend to end war. All Utopian projects have such
claims. But given that one of the world’s worst wars, the American Civil War,
was fought to maintain a supranational government against secession, one has to
doubt its validity.
Q: The Remainers will say that UK has a
seat at the table and should be influencing EU policy not pulling out. That
with perseverance, you can bring the changes in the EU that are for the better
of everyone ?
PH: I have never found this persuasive. Outsiders
have plenty of influence on bodies, especially if they have something to give,
and something to take away. The old Leninist ‘Who Whom?’ test suggests that a
single member of the EU has very little influence. The defence of specific
national interests is not allowed for in the QMV system, nor is it meant to be.
Q. Is there a breaking
point for the EU ? A lot of people thought the Greek and Irish crises would
spell the end of the Euro and/or EU, and then similarly the refugee crisis but
instead it’s 2016 and we are talking about EU expansion.
PH: I think this is a ‘Eurosceptic’ fantasy. The
founders and maintainers of the EU have always had a burning political purpose
and are prepared , quite properly, to make sacrifices for it. The EU may
well decide to create a ‘Core Europe’ whose members will proceed to a much more
complete integration, while second-class members remain much as they are, but that is just a sensible adaptation.
Q. One of the
arguments in favour of the EU is that it helped Eastern European countries such
as Poland escape Communism. I also heard the same argument made about Portugal [Note: the Portugal argument was made on BBC Newsnight this week].
PH: I know of no evidence that the EU played any
significant part in either process. Portugal, of course, was never a
Communist country.
Q. Is the rise of the
far right and left around Europe a natural reaction to EU’s plans for ever
closer union ?
PH: No, it is largely a response to mass immigration. Most people
couldn’t care less about ever-closer union..
Q. In Ireland, we have
the whip system. Those who fundamentally disagree with their Party on issues
are forced to either conform, run as independent or form a new Party. In the
event the Remain side wins, do you foresee a breakaway group formed by
Brexitiers from different parties ?
PH: I doubt it. Tories are absurdly loyal to their
party, more loyal to it than they are to their country. Why change now?
Q. Despite installing
hundreds of billions of Euros worth of renewable infrastructure, carbon
emissions are rising throughout the EU and the EU is more dependent on fuel
imports than it was in the 1980s. Electricity Prices
are skyrocketing resulting in industry jumping ship to America and Asia. The
recent finding by UNECE Compliance Committee that the EU failed to ensure
proper public participation in Ireland’s energy plans has been largely ignored
by the European Commission. They now have backtracked on biofuel targets.
It’s environmental policies has been a mess from start to finish, yet as Colm
McCarthy has said, when faced with a problem, the modern political solution is
to repeat the same mistake double-fold. Even if Britain does stay in, won’t
resentment grow throughout Europe anyway ? And isn’t this how Empires
throughout history (if we can class European Union as one) collapsed in the
end, rather than through plebiscites ?
PH: Possibly. As I don’t take the man-made climate
change case very seriously, or regard these policies as being effective in
dealing with it even if it is a genuine threat, I don’t much care. Dogma of all
kinds drives nations and crowds mad.
Q. Norway supplies
something like a third of EU gas imports and 11% of its oil imports. Norway and
Iceland are the third and fourth largest exporter of fish to the EU.
Switzerland are one of the top exporters of goods to the EU. All three
countries are outside the EU. Obviously, EU needs these countries more than
they need EU. But these countries have another thing in common, namely they all
have some form of direct democracy (granted Norway’s is only advisory rather
than legal). Do you see direct democracy as a better system than plain vanilla
democracy we have in Britain and Ireland ?
PH: No
Q. The British media,
and indeed in Ireland, portray Ireland as net beneficiaries of the EU. However,
if you do the sums, we received about €9 billion in terms of farm subsidies and
road funding but an ex IMF official has stated that the ECB forced Ireland to
pay €8 bn to unsecured bondholders which we did not have to pay. If you
throw in EU Directives like Renewable and Water Directives, that have pushed
taxes up further, it’s hard to see how Ireland is economically better off
inside the EU ?
PH: I do not know enough to comment on this. I had
the impression that Ireland, like Poland now, had been an EU favourite (as a
pro EU ‘Anglo-Saxon’ state) and was rewarded with huge infrastructure
grants . But I have never looked into it. What a pity so much of it was spent
on hideous motorways, and so little on railways and trams.
Q. If UK do leave the
EU in June, do you have any faith in the current British democratic system in
solving the problems that you highlight ?
PH: I have no faith in the existing political
parties. I have given up any sort of active politics, since the absurd survival
of the Tory Party in 2010 when it ought to have collapsed and split. I merely
write the national obituary.
Q. In the event of
Brexit, how do you see Irish and British relations ? Will we see borders in
Northern Ireland again ?
PH: I hate the word ‘Brexit’, which conjures up in
my mind the picture of a disgusting laxative breakfast cereal. I do not think
Britain can leave the EU.
Q. Quite a lot of the
arguments made against Brexit both in UK and (particularly) in Ireland refer to the
short term negative economic impacts that would result. Is this type of thinking
a symptom of the wider culture of today that puts short term gain ahead of long
term interests ?
PH: Yes. I am amazed that the fundamental question
of independence barely arises. The level of the debate is woeful and tedious,
bald men arguing over possession of a comb.
Q. This week, a small
community in Donegal found their local environment, one of the most scenic places
in the British Isles, altered forever by a large industrial windfarm. This is a
place where one could not get planning permission for a garden shed let alone
something of this size. There seems to be a total disconnect between laws
made by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels and the people that they eventually
impact on.
PH: Indeed. This is what empires are like. It is a
great paradox that the Irish struggle for freedom has ended with Ireland
becoming a German province. The only compensation for a nationalist is
that England has become one too.
Q. You are a vocal
critic of the Tory Party in its current guise. One thing they have done though,
which no other British Party apart from UKIP would have done is offered a
referendum on EU Membership.
PH: This offer was not genuine, and made in the
confident belief that the Tories would not win a majority in May 2015.
Q. They have also
abolished subsidies for wind energy which the SNP and Labour criticised them
over. Are these signs that the Tories still have some capacity to reform in the
future ?
PH: Not fundamentally, no.
Q. Is
part of the problem, especially in these times of social media and
headline driven media, that a complex message is much harder to get across than
a simpler one ? This would apply as much to Parties on the Left as on the Right
?
PH: A complex message is almost impossible to get
across. NB James Carville’s first rule of political survival ‘While you’re
explaining, you’re losing’.
Q. Is the climate
change movement simply a new religion ?
PH: It is certainly a new public dogma, and it is a
lot more risky to express doubts about it than it is to be a fashionable
atheist. But as it does not require its devotees to improve their own selves,
it is more of a cult than a religion.
Q. When J.Corbyn took
over as leader of Labour, his aims included renationalising railways and Royal
Mail as well as setting up a National Investment Bank to revitalize British
manufacturing. It could be argued that these are reasonably sound policies. However,
European Competition law would likely not allow him to implement them. Mr
Corbyn is now campaigning to remain in EU. Does this show lack of decisiveness
on his part ?
PH: Alas, yes.
Q. Mr Corbyn was once
a defender of coal workers rights, but has now bought the Green Party / EU
anti-coal climate change line. Are the traditional Labour Party roots
been torn apart and if so, can they ever achieve electoral success again ?
PH: I do not think it has anything to do with
electoral success. A party genuinely committed to these aims which fought hard
enough might win an election. But few have the nerve to take the risk. Real
politics dies when a country is taken over by the EU. All parties are compelled
to accept the EU position, or the media and the establishment culture shouts
them down and declares that they are ‘extremist’. You know politics is dead
when the media spend more time attacking the opposition than they do
criticising the government.
Q. The Greens get
about 2-3% of the vote in both Britain and in Ireland but quite a lot of their
policies get rammed through nonetheless. How can a minority movement with such
little support wield such power ?
PH: Your guess is as good as mine. People want
and need to believe in something. So they do.
Q. I’m in my 30s and
can just about remember as a child seeing “Made in England” on the back of
spoons and knives. Now, steel factories are closing in Britain. Is it the death
knell for British manufacturing ? What is the wider cultural impact from such
closures ?
PH: They probably weren’t actually made in England,
just finished there. Nicholas Comfort has written an interesting book on the
death of British manufacturing industry, a 60-year process of bad luck,
incompetence and bad decisions, finished off by the EU.
Q. England is
concerned understandably about the level of immigration into the country. But
isn't a certain level of immigration required to maintain a growing economy ?
PH: No .We have a million young people doing
precisely nothing, and abort 180,000 healthy babies every year.
Q. Hillary Clinton,
President Obama and Cameron were mainly responsible for the war in Libya which
has created so much instability in the world. Yet all three are very popular
with voters. Is the reason weak political opposition or just ineffective media
?
PH: Both, but add very poor levels of education,
and the dreadful conformism which pervades a society in which TV is the main
medium of instruction.
Q. Are the modern
economic ideals of continuous growth really realistic and/or sustainable ?
PH: I suspect not, but I have no expertise in the
matter.
Q. The polls are
continuously being proven wrong- the British General Election and the rise of
Trump for example. Credit Ratings Agencies have also proven to be completely
wrong. Most, if not all, of the predictions made by “climate change experts”
have failed to materialize. Are we living in a world where too much faith is
placed in “experts” ?
PH: Undoubtedly
Q. There is increasing
discussion in Ireland about the growing rural/city divide, that people in towns
and cities should not be subsidizing those who live in rural areas. But while
taxpayers subsidize a lot of things they often don’t like, only certain things
get singled out. The cost of prisons and foreign aid for example are not up for
discussion. Why do you think this is ?
PH: Because such campaigns invariably have a
sectional or political purpose, and seek to focus minds on the subject where
they want to influence opinion. Huge amounts of money and time are spent on
manipulating the public mind. It is one of the prices we pay for the absurd
system of universal suffrage democracy. You have to get people to think they
want the things they are going to get anyway.
Q. You’ve written an
excellent book “The Abolition of Liberty” which helps explain the rise of crime
in the past century. There is also a problem with the massaging of
official crime statistics, since proven to be the case here in Ireland too. Was
crime more of an issue in elections in the past and why isn’t it an issue now ?
PH: I don’t believe it was. Almost nobody has read
my book. If they did, the debate about crime and punishment in our societies
would be wholly different, rather than the ignorant drivel we have now. I
suspect most people have now got used to living in a more disorderly society
than we had before, and one in which all freedom will have to be constrained to
cope with this.
Q. Quite a lot of
Irish readers will probably wonder what the function of the Monarchy is in the
21st century although the visit by the Queen to Ireland in 2011 was warmly
welcomed here (with few exceptions). How do you see her role ?
PH: To occupy a space in politics which
politicians will otherwise seek, and should never have, that of respect and
love. The constitutional monarchy is like the King on the chessboard, powerless,
but also occupying space which no other can occupy. Nobody understands this any
more, and the monarchy rests only on the personal popularity of Elizabeth II . I
doubt it will long survive her.
Q. Michael O’Leary (a
fervent Remain campaigner) once said that the local newsagent would soon be a
thing of the past and this was an example of sound free market economics
winning out. Would you agree ?
PH: Yes. This is why I do not support free market
liberalism.
Q. Would you say it’s
harder growing up now than in the 1950s ?
PH: Undoubtedly. The children of today are far less
safe, far less free, far less well-educated, far less in touch with their
roots and past, and presented with an economic and political landscape of
terrifying uncertainty.
Q. Albert Einstein is
quoted as saying that “it has become appallingly obvious that our technology
has exceeded our humanity”. Do you see technology as a great enabler or is
there a cultural / social cost to relying too much technology ?
PH: I think technology should be our servant, not
our master. I wince to see the transformation of humans into zombies by mobile
telephones.
