Ask not what the Greeks ever did for you; ask what you can do for the Greeks. In my father and grandfather’s generation, Europe sent its youth to their brutal deaths. Now Europe throws them on the long-term unemployment scrapheap of despair, sacrificed on the altar of an ill-conceived union of unequal partners. That’s progress?
We have youth unemployment in Greece blighting 50% of their young people. Spain is racing to catch up – and Croatia and Italy are nip and tuck for third place with two out of every five young men and women having had their future stolen. It’s not merely membership of the Eurozone, as we are commonly told, 20% of youths without any work is the disturbing average across the entire EU. Don’t think this malaise just affects those unemployed – it drives down wages, conditions and opportunity for all of Europe’s youth.
Meanwhile the Eurocrats busy themselves setting a maximum power rating for my next vacuum cleaner – and that sucks. But it would be foolish to imply that all the EU does is meddle in petty things; they of course also have a grand vision. An ever-expanding EU, not just in terms of political influence but also in terms of geographic spread.
“It will never happen” is the mantra of the EU-philes,”Turkey is a generation away from joining”. I call bullshit. It is the stated intention of both the EU and Turkey reinforced in an EU memo put out on the 4th April this year, confirming Turkish accession will be accelerated.
“We can veto it!” they say, but our Prime Minister has said “My view is clear. I believe it’s just wrong to say Turkey can guard the camp but not be allowed to sit inside the tent.”
“We’d have to have another referendum”, Remainers purr like a smug Cheshire cat, but I remember when Labour promised us one on Lisbon, how did that turn out?
“You’re a paranoid Brexiteer,” I’m told, well perhaps I am, but so what, if that is the EU’s stated vision, what hope is there for our lost generation? Whether they can achieve their vision or not, the answer to the EU problem is not more EU.
I find it incomprehensible that anybody looking at youth unemployment across Europe thinks the solution to the problem is EU expansion. “What you’ve got no job, I’ve the very answer, I’ll open your country up to people with even higher unemployment and lower incomes. That’ll fix it.” If men are from Mars, Eurocrats
are from Uranus. Greece, the (literal) home of drama, the very birthplace of democracy deserves better than this.
Every child deserves a future; if the EU cannot or will not deliver that, then what is it for? Failed projects should be brought to an end. Polls across the EU now show Brexit contagion, people across the continent want their opportunity to have their say, and the groundswell of recognition that the EU is a failed project is growing daily. So once again Great Britain has an historic opportunity. For me leaving the EU isn’t about quitting Europe, leaving the EU is about leading Europe, and the path we beat will be followed by country after country.
On June the 23rd, your vote to Leave is vote to help Greece – to help Europe – and not merely to defend Britain.