The referendum about whether Britain should stay in the EU has hit the headlines again, with Lord Lawson placing himself at the head of the campaign for a vote to leave.
For a brief period, all the pro and anti arguments have resurfaced in the media. Some are serious points, but many, and many of the most popular, are true KBNs. The current leader is "we must stay in the EU, because it is only the EU that has prevented war in Europe for the last seventy years".
Well quite apart from the fact that the EU only came into existence in 1993, if you look at history, the last war in Europe started by Britain was probably the Seven Years' War, which ended in 1763, 188 years before the founding of the European Coal and Steel Community, the original forerunner of the EU. The EU and its predecessors may possibly have stopped other European states from going to war in the last 70 years, but it is going to go on doing that after we have left.
Even if the predecessors to the EU, like the EEC, were responsible for keeping the Pax Europa, it is not the EEC, which we actually voted to join, that we are trying to leave, it is the EU, an organisation which, with its shenanigans in Ukraine, has arguably brought us closer to an new European war than we have been at any point since the second world war.
There are reasons for staying in the EU, but this is not one of them.
Debate Magazine
