Biased BBC contributor Alan asks..” David Owen says we should leave the EU if it finally decides to integrate politically and financially…..but did the high fliers of the BBC’s top political programme notice?
The Today programme quizzed David Owen but failed to draw out the essential facts about his real views on European integration….although he did in fact say quietly about staying in the EU…‘personally I wouldn’t do that’……but Naughty completely ignored that rather important revelation……or didn’t realise its significance…which isn’t good for an exalted and revered political reporter.
David Owen has always been pro European but anti-federal Europe…..wanting a single market without a single government. His recent thinking on a referendum seems muddled and confusing to me…neither one nor the other….the questions he offers up for a referendum are vague and open to interpretation and later evasion and reinterpretation….
1. Do you want the UK to be part of the single market in a wider European Community? Yes/No
2. Do you want the UK to remain in the European Union, keeping open the option of joining the more integrated eurozone? Yes/No
Surely you could join the EU at anytime regardless of your current status within or without Europe….as he says non-EU member Turkey could join….so there is no need to remain in the EU solely to ‘keep a foot in the door’ for future integration….as it would always be open anyway.
The New Statesman certainly seems to think he is proposing closer ties to Europe.
Owen is very keen for Turkey to join the EU….however he reveals this……
‘The Agreement on the European Economic Area, which entered into force on 1 January 1994, covers a single market, referred to as the ‘Internal Market’, and when a country becomes a member of the European Union, it also applies to become party to the EEA Agreement, thus leading to an enlargement of the EEA. The EEA Agreement provides for the inclusion of EU legislation covering the ‘four freedoms’ – the free movement of goods, services, persons and capital.’
Note the ‘freedom of movement for persons’…….in other words if Turkey joins the EU her borders will be open and the clash of civilisations will really begin.
So would Turkey be merely a member of a ‘common market’ or a full EU member with these four freedoms?
But David Owen has also revealed something else…on 5Live on which Sheila Fogarty (starting at 13 mins 40 secs) winkled out of him an admission that we should leave the EU (at 18 mins) if it were to become a single financial and political block under one government as is now proposed.
Fogarty, the only genuinely impartial senior presenter on the radio, gets to the heart of his thinking which the ‘Today’ programme, the BBC’s prime political current affairs programme failed to do:
SF: ‘Do you view this moment as a kind of Geronimo moment in terms of the UK’s relationship with Europe?
DO: ‘Yes…if the button is pressed for a fully integrated Europe we must only be part of a single market….in a referendum we can ask if the public want to stay in the EU but once it moves towards this integrated model I would be prepared to say something I’ve never said before…that we should never join that.’
SF: ‘You’re saying more than we shouldn’t join, you’re saying we should leave it.’
DO: ‘Yes, alright….I see it as a new structure that we didn’t sign up to and much more integrated.’
Leave the EU? Perhaps Naughtie did hear him say it but his subconscious kicked in and steam rollered over the thought with the old mantra…’Keep calm and carry on…regardless’.
So there it is, either Naughtie is not a very good interviewer, missing the most significant part of Owen’s case, or he is so pro European that he can’t bring himself to contemplate even saying the words ‘leave the EU’.
My money’s on ….well both actually.