The conversation has begun for an EU referendum. Whether it is a good or bad idea is no longer the issue. It is going to happen and all sides everywhere accept that fact. So does this Blog. The important thing now is to hold meaningful negotiations about realistic concerns and to hold the vote as soon as possible. Business\u00a0never invests in doubt. At stake are jobs, the future of the economy and the maintenance of the Union of nations in the British Isles. So it is big.<\/p>\n
This Blog is emotionally committed to staying in the EU. To me it is not about trade and certainly not about tiresome regulations. It is about peace between France, Germany and Great Britain, united in a common purpose for the first time in a thousand years after centuries of blood letting and organised murder, referred to in polite circles as sacrifice. It is about universal democracy across a continent and being a citizen of a grouping unequalled since the Roman Empire. It is about my German cousins no longer being my enemy. It is\u00a0about the death of my eighteen year uncle on the Somme in 1916 and the void\u00a0of his life and his descendents\u00a0who would be part of my family today. It is about all those deaths in one war leading directly to another.<\/p>\n
If the people of this country would like an upgrade in the style of their membership I will go along with it, but I\u00a0will still vote to stay even if they vote to go. There is just one cloud on the horizon and it, and it alone, might\u00a0cause me to vote to go. It is not about immigration or human rights or free movement. It\u00a0is about Russia and the eastward march of the EU.<\/p>\n
Russia has come to Europe’s rescue three times since the onset of the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon. She is a complex country, the largest on the planet, which borders both Europe and Asia. She\u00a0has been the traditional protector of the Slavic people from assault by\u00a0Europe\u00a0from the west and the Ottomans from the south.\u00a0It holds China\u00a0from expanding north. Between Russia and Europe there are a number of states from the Baltic eastwards which have connections to Europe but also to Russia. A buffer area where cultures and ethnicities meet and mingle. For them to be brought into Europe requires Russia to come with them.<\/p>\n
I have for long advocated that Russia join both the EU and NATO. Integration would soften Russia’s behavioural trends and internal structures. Exclusion will harden everything. I do not approve of the eastward march of the EU into the buffer area nor do I think that NATO has any business there if its diplomacy is based on excluding Russia. If this policy is not revised it will lead to the ruin of Europe. Already the EU’s economy is stalled and so long as sanctions are being applied to Russia, it is unlikely to prosper. There are\u00a025 million unemployed in the EU now and unless\u00a0it\u00a0sorts out its economy it will suffer great instability. Russia provides an enormous opportunity for business at \u00a0every level and lively trade and commerce with her is worth millions of EU jobs.<\/p>\n
This\u00a0for me is a red line. I might vote to leave if I see that Europe is hell bent on a\u00a0path to its own disadvantage, even its own destruction. It has after all been there before. The idea of the EU is to prevent that happening again, not to bring it about.<\/p>\n
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The conversation has begun for an EU referendum. Whether it is a good or bad idea is no longer the issue. It is going to happen and all sides everywhere accept that fact. So does this Blog. The important thing now is to hold meaningful negotiations about realistic concerns and to hold the vote as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malcolm-blair-robinson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8361"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8365,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8361\/revisions\/8365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}