One of the many problems with David Cameron’s threat that leaving the European Union could plunge us into war is that it sits so strangely with how he spoke about the EU before he called a referendum. In those days, he was studiedly cool about the union: he had no sentimental attachment to it, he told us, just a pragmatic weighing of the advantages for Britain, depending on what he could obtain. His ‘deal’ for a ‘reformed Europe’, supposedly essential to recommending a Remain vote, contained no Tolstoyan themes at all, just stuff about when migrant EU workers could claim benefits and suchlike. When he now says, ‘By the way, if we leave we’re all going to die,’ one feels he should have thought of that earlier.
‘In the modern world,’ says John Major, supporting the EU, ‘you have to share sovereignty.’ Does the United States, China, India, or Japan do this? Does Australia, Canada or New Zealand? Are they all wrong, Sir John?
I am no tax expert, but when 300 economists, particularly if led by Jeffrey Sachs and Thomas Piketty, all agree about something — as 364 did that Mrs Thatcher, in 1981, was messing things up — one can be confident they are mistaken.
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