The Moron Exchange

The evening's chores can be a time of amused observation or, in this case, an irritated rant running in my head as I shovel goose poo. My thoughts were circling the EU Referendum and the regular festival which I both dislike and cherish, and I call it the Moron Exchange.

So, confession up-front, I am a reluctant brexit supporter. According to all the analysis I have come across in the media, I ought to be a remainer, other than the fact that I live in Cornwall which overall voted for out.

As a brexiter I am apparently worried about immigration and deeply opposed to freedom of movement. Send all those immigrants home... Err... no. So my great-great-grand parents don't count as immigrants, do they – Britain ruled all of Ireland back then.

Freedom of movement within the EU strikes me as no worse than the natural freedom of movement within the UK – giving us cities in the north with empty houses, and over-crowding in the south-east. You can't blame people for heading to the places where they think the money and the jobs are.

Personally, I blame successive governments for not addressing the economic imbalance, but the freedom of movement is something I support. Otherwise we are back to medieval serfdom - you want to go to the next county? Put your hand up and say 'please, sir' and I'll consider it.

As a brexiter I am sure that the UK will be able to make much better use of all the money we have been sending to the EU. Err... no. I won't be holding my breath on that one.

Of course, I naturally believe that we will be freed from the burden of excessive regulation... or not. Take cover, winged pigs incoming. Bureaucrats and their love of regulation is not a special, EU phenomenon. And relax about the pigs, because I am sure there are regulations on their minimum altitude and safe-flying.

Getting desperate here, but surely I am going to be so much better off outside the EU? At the time of the referendum, my suspicion was that I would be worse off with brexit, and the post-referendum fall-out just reinforces that view, but I am still a brexiter.

Starting to run out of big issues now... so why not vote remain? My problem with the EU, one of the issues barely touched on from what I saw, was the relationship between the European Parliament and the European Commission. It feels to me like the tail wagging the dog. The Eurocrats, as they've been dubbed, determine policy, the MEPs apply the rubber stamp, and that troubles me.

Over a serious number of centuries in the UK, we have gone from absolute monarchs to a parliamentary democracy (please pardon the up-coming fast-and-loose analysis of history – I'm a physicist). Go back a handful of centuries and Parliament was still just there to do the Monarch's bidding (according to several monarchs of the period) and if they chose not to then Parliament was invited to think again. Or a few members were imprisoned and asked to think again. Or accused of treason and asked to think again. Or executed as an example to the others who could then think again. Or, if all else failed, Parliament got dissolved and the Monarch went it alone. Now, the Eurocrats don't do the imprisoning, false trials and such like, but if the EU Parliament doesn't apply the rubber stamp, they get invited to think again.

So which is better, a trained, professional, expert Eurocrat, or an MEP whose only qualification is they got enough votes? I've been a technical expert myself, and I wouldn't trust me as the final arbiter of how things should be done, other than the seriously technical and unequivocal ones such as which way round the batteries go. Equally, you can find examples of elected officials who shouldn't be allowed out without parental supervision. Frankly, you can get a dangerous moron either way around, but my personal preference is for the elected official.

All of this brings me round to my Moron Exchange – or the election in more formal parlance. With elected officials determining, debating and deciding you can still get the most awful outcomes, but if it is that bad, and enough people agree how bad it is, then in a few years time you can fire those elected officials and pick a new moron to screw up your life. The Eurocrats come up with the best policies, the expert policies, and they take away the fundamental, unwritten right in a democracy – the right to vote for a less perfect solution because you feel like it. After all, if the bureaucrats were fully in charge I probably wouldn't be allowed to chose something detrimental to myself even if I signed waivers agreeing that I knew I was doing something against the expert advice.

I like the whole concept of the EU, but until it is governed via the Moron Exchange, I will be a brexiter. Anything else is just tyranny in disguise.