One of the most appealing arguments for Brexit is that it will make British citizens freer than they are now. The greatness of Great Britain lies, after all, in its long history of relative freedom. But now, so the proponents of Brexit like to claim, Britain is shackled by the tyranny of the EU, as though ‘Brussels’ were some alien dictatorship in which Britain plays no part.
Columnists huff that Britain is now just a colony of this ‘foreign superpower’. That the EU exists as a superpower would come as news to most people in Brussels — and everywhere else. The European Union has no army and no joint foreign policy, and cannot be described as a state, federal or otherwise. The closest thing it has to a government would be the European Commission combined with the European Council, where national government leaders haggle over and decide on EU laws and policies. Britain is a major player in both institutions. Odd colony.
It is not a loathing of foreigners that necessarily inspires the anti-EU arguments. Indeed Brexit’s brightest star, Boris Johnson, likes to express his fondness for Brussels and European culture. In the past, he has even voiced his support for British membership of the EU (when he wasn’t spreading rumours about EU bureaucrats wanting to ban bent bananas and square strawberries). Now he sees a ‘great and glorious’ future for Britain outside the EU and urges his fellow citizens to ‘vote for freedom’.
But few concepts, except democracy perhaps, are as fuzzy and as often abused as freedom. The question is freedom from what, or to do what? In the US, promoters of so-called state rights and the right to carry weapons depict themselves as freedom-fighters — freedom from the interfering federal government that deprived southern states of their right to slavery and now supposedly ‘wants to take our guns away’.
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