The battle for Brexit is now well underway. While the Leave campaign champions hope, aspiration and an outwardly-looking Britain, the weapon of choice for the Remain campaign has so far been Project Fear.
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They say three million jobs will be at risk if the UK votes to leave the European Union, that car prices will go up, the housing market will crash, that Brits will no longer be able to live or study abroad.
What next? The socialists are afraid there will be no more champagne. Brits eating Greek hummus, Italian linguine and drinking French wine will all be things of the past too, I suppose. Actually, it’s worse.
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The Prime Minister has this week predicted World War III will break out if there is a Brexit – that genocide on the continent will be made more likely by the UK reclaiming its democratic right to self-government. It really is extraordinary – and a marked sign that the Remain campaign is getting worried.
The polls are neck and neck. The leave side has passion, thousands of grassroots activists and has demonstrated the kind of campaigning zeal that has put us in touching distance of getting our country back.
In contrast, the remain side say the EU isn’t great, but it’s our least worst option. They say the UK is not big enough, strong enough or good enough to go it alone. They talk Britain down and are consistently losing the key arguments.
Now the scaremongering has been turned up a notch. Europe will be engulfed in war once again if we leave the EU, they say. But they fail to realise the real risk to European peace is the EU itself.
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The EU has increased hostility in Europe. History shows that it is democratic deficiencies that lead to conflict. The EU holds the democratic wishes of European citizens in disdain, as proved by its treatment of the Greeks and its abandonment of an entire generation in southern Europe, where youth unemployment now runs at nearly 50 per cent.
On Sunday night, there were violent clashes in Athens. Is this the peace that the EU has secured? What did it do to stop the illegal invasion of the Crimea? How has the EU done at controlling its borders? And what of its failure to manage the social and cultural change brought about by its own failed policy programme, which notably reared its ugly head in Cologne last year?
The anti-democratic EU, far from bringing countries and communities together, has divided Europe. By continuing to impose the Deutschmark, rebranded as the Euro, on southern European economies with different demands and challenges, it is making ordinary Europeans suffer. And by administering a system where unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats have sole power to propose and scrap legislation, it is presiding over a system that can only lead to greater division and unrest.
If the UK remains in the EU, we will be locked inside a failed project that is pushing towards closer fiscal, political and military union, no matter the pain it brings to the people of Europe.
If we remain in the EU, we will further undermine the fundamental job NATO has played in securing peace since 1945.
Far from playing an equally leading role, the EU has only jeopardized that crucial work and created conditions that have fostered resentment, unrest and – maybe soon – upheaval.
Steven Woolfe MEP is UKIP’s migration & financial affairs spokesman
