Another day, another unwelcome intervention in the Brexit debate from a group of people on whom the referendum result will have no immediate effect.
One the eve of President Obama visiting London to tell Britain it should vote to remain in the EU on June 23, eight former US treasury secretaries have said the same thing in an open letter to The Times of London.
George Shultz, Michael Blumenthal, Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Paul O’Neill, John Snow, Henry Paulson and Timothy Geithner state: “A strong Britain, inside the EU, remains the best hope in our view for securing Britain’s future, creating a more prosperous Europe and protecting a healthy and resilient economy.”
This octet wheels out familiar arguments, threatening shocks to international trade and financial damage.
But nowhere do they mention the waste, sloth and corruption endemic to Brussels.
And, oddly for high-profile money men, they fail to point out the truth of the matter: that if the EU were a company, none of them would want to invest it.
The EU’s accounts have not been audited for 20 years.
Britain’s ability to trade on its own terms with the rest of the world is also currently non-existent.
Britain’s membership leaves her some £10 billion per year worse off, all the while paying out for fleets of limos and nonsensical travel arrangements between the body’s twin HQs in Brussels and Strasbourg.
As was memorably demonstrated when the Guardian newspaper tried to affect the US election in 2004 by lobbying swing voters, Americans hate being told what to do by worthy foreigners.
And, as Labour MP Kate Hoey argued for Heat Street on Monday, it is patronizing in the extreme for the US to lecture Britain on an institution in which the US would never embroil itself.