My view is that the establishment now expect that they will be forced into granting the people a referendum. They will throw everything in to making sure they win it, and I have no doubt they will, but just in case they are carefully installing a back stop position - Article 50. Article 50 will make it impossible for us to disentangle ourselves from the EU as intelligently outlined by Torquil, Idris and others.
 
I see no reason for a referendum in the first place and I have been campaigning against it for some time now, after all the establishment refused us a referendum in 1972 (Tony Benn campaign) when the Heath Government used every trick in the book, legal and illegal, to force us in against the will of the people when support ran at only 20% (please study 'Shoe-horned into the EU - Swallow it now swallow it whole'). 
 
After attending Richard North's Harrogate Agenda meeting at the Swan in July of last year, I predicted that the Telegraph would in due course pick up the cause via Richard North's colleague Christopher Booker - last Sunday the Telegraph duly obliged.
 
I am also amazed that CIB on the same weekend reinforced the effort by allowing Richard North the oxygen of publicity to promote his discredited Article 50. I might have taken to the issue a bit more if Richard North had not forcefully suppressed debate about Article 50 at Harrogate and banned me from the next meeting (I can't remember where) in the Autumn. It was noticeable too that nearly everyone at Harrogate were so called disaffected Ukipers.
 
I think we have a dangerous (probably establishment inspired) die-hard group pushing a very dangerous idea down the public's throat. I hope that those who have influence can awaken Ukip management to this.
 
D
 
 
 
Torquil has persistently warned that Article 50 is a trap, and Ashley Mote's take on it confirms the "thinking" from the other side.
 
Booker and North seem strangely compliant and concerned with following the EU on withdrawal - why adopt/follow the enemy's rules?  Why not use our own? Repeal ECA 72 tomorrow and we're free.
 
J K



 Article 50/EU Referendum
 
and incidentally - what could prevent the other 26 repealing Article 50, or removing it from the new Treaty that is on the cards?

I

Article 50/EU Referendum

The following letter has gone to the Sunday Telegraph today:
 
Sir

Using Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty as a means of leaving as Christopher Booker argues (12 May) would lead us straight into the bureaucrats’ carefully laid honey-trap, as one of them was honest enough to tell me during negotiations.  Article 50 is about being told, after two years of discussions exclusively amongst the other members, what our terms of leaving would be.  We would then have to accept the EU’s terms or withdraw the application to leave. 
Meanwhile, those two years would be used by Brussels to mount a huge and sustained PR campaign in the UK to “warn” Brits of the terrible consequences of leaving.  Our own taxpayers' money would be used against us in a sustained campaign to undermine the then UK government’s objective.  Every incident, problem, crisis would be “sold” to the BBC and the other pro-EU media as being the direct and inescapable result of the UK’s decision to leave. 

Brussels would do everything it could - legal or illegal, moral or immoral, truthful or not - to undermine the application and the British government that made it.  Given the pathetic weakness of recent prime ministers when faced with the EU the then incumbent might easily buckle.  That, of course, would be the EU’s purpose. 

There is only one way to leave. 

As a sovereign country we are free to repeal the European Communities Act, 1972, which took us in.  We are immediately free.  We then negotiate consequential practicalities as equals and that is the ppoint!

Ashley Mote

Binsted, Hampshire

(Independent MEP for SE England 2004-09 and author A Mote in Brussels’ Eye) 
 
OKTC