EU politics: The Times discovers "leaving the EU"
Thursday 4 July 2013
The newspaper's own story is safety tucked up behind its paywall, so we have reproduced it above, scanned from the print copy. Reference to the website, though, gives you a preview, in which there is an active link to the HoC report. Discerning readers will note that the link takes you to the EU Ref site, no doubt because you cannot view the paper online from the official Parliament site.
If nothing else, that proves Times journalists (one, at least) read EU Ref, even if what we say is completely ignored and/or unacknowledged. As it happens in this case, the paper chooses to ignore what we have to say, presenting a pessimistic view of leaving. In so doing, it homes in on one of the weaknesses of the HoC paper, which fails completely to recognise the progress of globalisation in trade regulation and standards setting.
One can only suppose the newspaper does this because, otherwise, it would contradict its own opinion piece. This has John Cridland of the CBI peddling his own brand of misinformation, telling us that "Norway and Switzerland pay the costs of membership with no say over EU law".
This, even at face value, is untrue – but doubly so if we take account of the globalisation aspect, which Hannan has picked up from our own reports. So important is this dynamic that Cridland dare not acknowledge it, and thus does The Times keep from its readership any of the wider debate. Get behind the paywall and you are paying to be misinformed.
In peddling his lies, Cridland is acting entirely in character, but the continued emphasis on denigrating the Swiss and Norwegian options really does show how worried the CBO and their fellow travellers are by the prospect of trade outside the EU.
Thus, loathsome as it may be, the next post up will be a critique of the Cridland piece, which a very kind reader has sent to me in electronic form, so I don't have to type is all out from the print version. That will be up shortly.
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