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Monday, February 20, 2006

Eurosceptic?

As a self-confessed and often vocal English nationalist I am often accused of all sorts of things.

I've been called a racist and a bigot. The BNP's lawyer, Lee Barnes, called me a liberal facist (two mutually exclusive terms but knuckle draggers aren't well known for their intelligence. I'm often called anti-Scottish and anti-Welsh and sometimes anti-European.

Now, I've never been anti-European - in fact, I've often argued in favour of a single European currency and in favour of the common market. I am not opposed to Europe or the common market. Europe is a continent and it's pretty pointless opposing a continent because no matter how times you complain about it, it's not going anywhere for a few million years at least.

The common market is a great idea too. Free trade helps the economy and that means we're better off as a whole. Empires were forged on the back of trade and the human race's time on this planet will probably revolve around trade until we eventually make ourselves extinct or nuke ourselves back to a hunter-gatherer existence.

The single currency I also think is a fairly good idea. In principle. We do a lot of trade with countries in the eurozone and a common currency would reduce costs. However, the problem with the UK is that we do more trade outside of the EU than within it so for a single currency to work it needs to be a global single currency or at least covering the majority of our trading partners. The euro, quite fairly I think, has been branded a bit of a flop. Fans of the euro go on about how it's a new thing and it's just teething problems but this isn't true. I can think of two single currencies in existence now that predate the euro and they work perfectly fine - the East Caribbean Dollar and the Central African Dollar (I think it's called a dollar anyway).

Anyway, onto the title of this post - am I a eurosceptic? If you'd asked me a couple of years ago I'd have said no. If you'd asked me 6 months ago I'd have huffed and puffed a bit and eventually said no. Ask me now and the answer is yes. I am opposed to the EU, the political union of European countries. I want free trade, I want preferential trade agreements and I want good relations with our neighbours. What I don't want is thousands of regulations a day from unelected foreigners - we get enough of that from Scottish MP's legislating for England.

So, am I a Eurosceptic? Yes, I suppose I am.