The poll that mattered!

So, with the final count giving a good majority to the Brexiteers, we may expect that, over the next 24 months, we will see the links with the EU broken - one by one. Reading some of the comments on social media, it would appear that some do not realise is that all that has happened is that a referendum of the British people (the referendum was NOT an individual country/province affair!) has resulted in the clear message that the majority want the UK to LEAVE the EU.  We have not yet done so!

What is interesting, however, is the way in which some of those who were the bearers of doom-laden messages in the campaign running up to the referendum - and I think of the current incumbent of The White House; certain of the so-called "captains of industry; and even certain bankers - are already changing their tunes in the light of yesterday morning's announced result.  I also notice that WW III has not commenced, that the sky has not fallen in, and that, "before the ink was dry", non-EU countries were already making overtures with regard to trade deals! Perhaps Brexit won't be as bad as the "Remainers" tried to make us believe it would be!

I confess to having been a wee bit apprehensive.  I was aware that the result could be very closely run, but was concerned that the "In" vote would just outstrip the "Leave" vote.  However, as my final pre-referendum post indicated, I knew that Almighty God was not about to be caught out!  He Who, from His eternal perspective, sees all of time simultaneously, could 'see' that result even 'before' the EU was formed!

This, of course, is the bottom line for the person of Biblical faith.  We serve the Sovereign God Who is the Creator of all that exists, and Who knows the very heart of man better than we do ourselves. He is the One Who, as the hymn-writer put it "... is working His purpose out, as year succeeds to year." (A.C.Ainger).  The old cliché was: "I don't know what the future holds, but I know Who holds the future"! There's a lot of truth in that!  It could be a very interesting two years (if the Rapture is delayed that long!), but for the disciple of Jesus, there is nothing to fear.

BREXIT, or remain: Some final thoughts.

This is the final pre-referendum post to be published on this blog.  As I shall be travelling all day Friday, my comments on the result will have to wait until Saturday!

One of the areas that the "Remain" camp seemed to avoid is that of national sovereignty.  That topic also ties in with democracy.  If those who make our laws are not accountable to those who elect them, then we have, not a democracy, but an autocratic dictatorship.  It is an indisputable fact that the EU Commission is the group that actually makes the EU laws.  It is equally indisputable that they are unelected, and unaccountable.  If there was no other reason for voting to LEAVE, that one would be sufficient for me.  

If sovereignty has been avoided by the "Remain" camp, they could not avoid the subject of immigration.  One of the points that has had to be repeated, almost ad nauseum, by the BREXIT camp is that to be opposed to uncontrolled immigration is not to be opposed to controlled immigration.  The system that has been regularly proposed is a points-based system similar (but not, necessarily, identical) to the Australian system.  This would allow the UK to accept those who have the skills that are currently lacking here (due, I would contend, to the 'dumbing-down' of the education system in every part of the UK over many decades - but that is a whole new topic!), while denying access to those who merely wish to take advantage of the UK benefits' system, or to take on unskilled work - at a wage that is less than a UK worker would expect but that is, to them, in terms of their own national income scales, undreamed of wealth.

Then there are the basic issues of honesty and integrity.  In 1975, I was one of those who voted against the UK becoming a part of what we were assured was nothing more than a Trading Bloc - the European Economic Community.  I did so, I confess, not because I had some wonderful insight, or prophetic vision, but because I did not trust the then Prime Minister, Edward Heath.  He did later confess that he was fully aware that, in spite of the assurances given, he was aware that the end-goal was a political integration that would subsume the UK.  I do not trust the current incumbent of 10 Downing Street any more than I did that former one!  Even the so-called "renegotiation" has yet to be ratified by the EU Parliament.  Does any right-thinking person really believe that this will happen?  I certainly don't.  On the other hand, I do believe that there are a number of plans (some of which have been 'leaked') for after the referendum, that will not be to the advantage of the UK, and that will be set into motion in the event of a win for the "Remain" campaigners.

However, let my final word be that I believe, fully and unapologetically, in the sovereignty of Almighty God.  The Psalmist wrote: "... dominion belongs to YHWH, and He rules over the nations." (Ps 22:28).  Accordingly, I believe that His will shall be accomplished.  For His own purposes, it may be that He wishes the EU to continue.  Certainly, that could be yet another sign that we are in "the last days" (there are many others all around us).   What I believe is that, for the disciple of Jesus, this must be a matter of continuing prayer and that, however we intend to cast our vote, we must be willing to pray, as the Saviour Himself prayed on an infinitely more important occasion: "Not my will, but Yours, be done". (see Lk.22:42).

On Friday, there will be jubilation, and there will be disappointment.  I pray that we who claim to be His will accept the result as His will at this time, and react accordingly.

Part 2.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the unelected president of the European Commission, sees intransigence as a great strength. His priority is the survival of the EU and the single currency: the welfare of Europeans and even the notion of democratic consent seem distant concerns. When he dismisses the ever-louder voices of protest as the shriek of ‘populism’, he echoes the Bertolt Brecht poem: ‘Would it not be easier… to dissolve the people/ and elect another?’ When Britain asked for reform, he took a gamble: that we were bluffing and would not dare vote to leave.

All this has placed the Prime Minister in an impossible position. Unable to make a positive case for staying in the EU, he instead tells us that Britain is trapped within it and that the penalties for leaving are too severe. His scare stories, peppered with made-up statistics, have served only to underline the emptiness of the case for remaining. It also represents a style of politics that many find repugnant. The warnings from the IMF and OECD and other acronyms have served only to reinforce the caricature of a globalised elite telling the governed what to think.

Talk of anyone being made ‘worse off’ by Brexit is deeply misleading. Of the many economists who have made projections for 2030, none have suggested that we’d be poorer. The question is whether we’d be, say, 36 per cent better off or 41 per cent better off by then. Not that anyone knows, given the monstrously large margin of error in 15-year predictions. So these studies offer no real reasons to be fearful. This is perhaps why George Osborne had to resort to concocting figures, such as his now notorious claim that households would be £4,300 worse off. If the economic case against Brexit were so strong, why would the Chancellor have to resort to fabrications?

As the world’s fifth-largest economy, Britain has a reasonable chance (to put it mildly) of being able to cut trade deals with countries keen to access our consumers. The worst-case scenario is to use World Trade Organisation rules, tariffs of about 4 per cent. That’s a relatively small mark-up, and the effect would be more than offset by a welcome drop in the pound. And if house prices fall, as the Chancellor predicts, then so much the better. A great many would-be homeowners have been praying for just that.

There would certainly be turbulence, which would be the price of our leaving the EU. This would affect City financiers more than the skilled working class (two thirds of whom support Brexit). This week, we’re being invited to panic at the prospect of a falling pound. But why? A weaker currency would give our exporters the stimulus they need.

The question at this referendum is not whether Britain should co-operate with our European allies; the question is how. Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6, has explained how our intelligence alliances are bilateral. Our closest is with the ‘five eyes’ of the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. The Lancaster House agreements with France over military co-operation is another example. Alliances work when they are between nations with a shared agenda, with the ability and (crucially) the will to act.

The EU is an alliance of the unwilling, which is why it is useless on security — as we saw with Bosnia and Libya. Even the migrant crisis has to be handled by Nato, which has been the true guarantor of western security. It’s sometimes claimed that Vladimir Putin would want Britain to vote for Brexit. This is unlikely: what could suit the Kremlin more than European security being entrusted to the most dysfunctional organisation in the West?

As David Cameron rightly says, the British way is to fight rather than quit. Given that the EU has proved that it is structurally incapable of reform, we now have a choice. Do we cave in, because we’re too scared to leave? Or do we vote to retrieve our sovereignty, walk away from the whole racket and engage with the world on our own terms? A vote to leave would represent an extraordinary vote of confidence in the project of the United Kingdom and the principle of national self-determination. It would also show reform-minded Europeans that theirs is not a lost cause. And that we stand willing to help forge a Europe based on freedom, co–operation and respect for sovereignty.

The value of sovereignty cannot be measured by any economist’s formula. Adam Smith, the father of economics, first observed that the prosperity of a country is decided by whether it keeps its ‘laws and institutions’ healthy. This basic insight explains why nations thrive or fail, and has been the great secret of British success: intellectual, artistic, scientific and industrial. The principles of the Magna Carta and achievements of the Glorious Revolution led to our emergence as a world power. To pass up the chance to stop our laws being overridden by Luxembourg and our democracy eroded by Brussels would be a derogation of duty to this generation and the next.

No one — economist, politician or mystic — knows what tumult we can expect in the next 15 years. But we do know that whatever happens, Britain will be better able to respond and adapt as a sovereign country living under its own laws. The history of the last two centuries can be summed up in two words: democracy matters. Let’s vote to defend it on 23 June."

This is probably the longest post that will ever be published on this blog.  It is an article from The Spectator magazine, via a friend's Facebook page.  However, like the video-clip of two posts ago, it gives a very clear picture of the current situation - and why a LEAVE vote is the best way to go.  I had intended to publish it in two sections, and cannot understand why it appeared on the blog! Thankfully, there is the "edit" facility so, for those who don't like to read long comments, I am dividing it into two instalments now!

"The Spectator has a long record of being isolated, but right. We supported the north against the slave-owning south in the American civil war at a time when news-papers (and politicians) could not see past corporate interests. We argued for the decriminalisation of homosexuality a decade before it happened, and were denounced as the ‘bugger’s bugle’ for our troubles. We alone supported Margaret Thatcher when she first stood for the Tory leadership. And when Britain last held a referendum on Europe, every newspaper in the land advocated a ‘yes’ vote. Only two national titles backed what is now called Brexit: the Morning Star and The Spectator.

Our concern then was simple: we did not believe that the Common Market was just about trade. We felt it would be followed by an attempted common government, which would have disastrous effects on a continent distinguished by its glorious diversity. The whole project seemed to be a protectionist scam, an attempt to try to build a wall around the continent rather than embrace world trade. Such European parochialism, we argued, did not suit a globally minded country such as Britain. On the week of the 1975 referendum, The Spectator’s cover line was: ‘Out – and into the world.’ We repeat that line today.

Since 1975 the EU has mutated in exactly the way we then feared and now resembles nothing so much as the Habsburg Empire in its dying days. A bloated bureaucracy that has outgrown all usefulness. A parliament that represents many nations, but with no democratic legitimacy. Countries on its periphery pitched into poverty, or agitating for secession. The EU’s hunger for power has been matched only by its incompetence. The European Union is making the people of our continent poorer, and less free.

This goes far beyond frustration at diktats on banana curvature. The EU has started to deform our government. Michael Gove revealed how, as a cabinet member, he regularly finds himself having to process edicts, rules and regulations that have been framed at European level. Laws that no one in Britain had asked for, and which no one elected to the House of Commons has the power to change. What we refer to as British government is increasingly no such thing. It involves the passing of laws written by people whom no one in Britain elected, no one can name and no one can remove.

Steve Hilton, David Cameron’s chief strategist for many years, gave an example of this institutional decay. A few months into his job in No. 10, he was dismayed to find his colleagues making slow progress because they were all bogged down by paperwork that he didn’t recognise. He asked for an audit, and was shocked by the results: only a third of what the government was doing was related to its agenda. Just over half was processing orders from Brussels. To him, this was more than just a headache: it was an insidious and accelerating bureaucratic takeover.

With the EU’s fundamental lack of democracy comes complacency on the part of its leaders and the corruption of those around them — which has led us to the present situation. Voters are naturally concerned about the extraordinary rise of immigration, and their governments’ inability to control it. Free movement of people might have been a laudable goal before the turn of the century, when the current global wave of migration started. But today, with the world on the move, the system strikes a great many Europeans as madness. The EU’s failure to handle immigration has encouraged the people trafficking industry, a global evil that has led to almost 3,000 deaths in the Mediterranean so far this year.

In theory, the EU is supposed to protect its member states by insisting that refugees claim asylum in the first country they enter. In practice, this law — the so-called Dublin Convention — was torn up by Angela Merkel when she recklessly said that all Syrians could settle in Germany if they somehow managed to get there. Blame lies not with the tens of thousands who subsequently arrived but with a system hopelessly unequal to such a complex and intensifying challenge.

The Spectator was, again, alone in the British press in opposing Britain’s entry to the Exchange Rate Mechanism from the beginning. Why, we asked, should the Bundesbank control another country’s interest rates? When the single currency came along, the risks became greater: what if a country’s economy crashed, but it was denied the stimulus of a devaluing currency?

The answer can now be seen across Europe. Sado–austerity in Italy. Youth unemployment of about 50 per cent in Greece and Spain. The evisceration of these economies, in the name of a project supposed to bring people together, has been a tragedy.

Last week, a Pew poll showed how far dismay about the EU extends across the continent. In Greece, 71 per cent now view the EU unfavourably; in France, it’s 61 per cent. In Britain, it was 48 per cent — about the same as Spain, Germany and the Netherlands. This was why David Cameron had a strong case for renegotiation: the demand for change was widespread, and growing. A recent poll has suggested that Swedes will vote to leave the EU if Britain does. The absence of a deal worth the name was final proof that the EU is structurally incapable of reform."

The fragility of life.

During my adult life I have, at one time or another, voted for every major political party - and even for one or two of the 'fringe' parties!   With one exception.  I have never voted in support of any Labour Party candidate in any election in which I have taken part.  Normally, I am not unhappy to see the Labour Party experiencing any form of discomfort.

However, today's tragic murder of a sitting Member of Parliament is a shock to the system.  Oh, I know that there are parts of the world in which such politically-motivated assassinations are not uncommon.  But in the UK; in Yorkshire; in the street outside a constituency office?  That is frightening.

The late Jo Cox was not my own MP, and I only know what I have read in the media, but the young, married, mother-of-two was simply going about her lawful business when, it would appear, a crazed gunman shot her - not just once, but three times - and stabbed her.  Much will undoubtedly be made of the earlier reports that he was shouting some kind of "pro-Brexit" slogan (the MP was involved in the "Remain" campaign) but, at this moment, no-one seems to know the motivation behind the attack.

What we know, for certain, is that a man has been widowed, and two children left motherless, all because of a mindless act of violence.  It is also a reminder of the fragility of human life.  Writing to the church at large, James (the half-brother of the Lord Jesus) exhorts: "Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and get gain'; whereas you do not know about tomorrow. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes." (James 4:13-14).  Centuries earlier, the psalmist-king of Israel David, had written: "As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more." (Ps 103:15-16). 

It was Benjamin Franklin who said that "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."  However, while many will talk (and talk, and talk!) about taxes, death has become the taboo subject in polite social circles.  Yet, while it is possible to evade, and/or avoid, paying taxes, neither money, nor influence, nor position, nor anything else can enable us to escape the cold hand of death.  And, of course, we do not know the moment in which death will strike us.

Surely, then, the sensible thing is to be prepared for that inevitable event.  How may we make such preparation?  Well, there is the legal aspect of having a will drawn up so that there can be no doubt as to what we want to happen to whatever we leave behind (and that is, of course, everything!). However, I am thinking beyond that.  

The vast majority of humankind believes - even if they do not often voice that belief - that this mortal life is not the totality of our existence.  There is a life beyond the grave for which this life is but a preparation.  Only One has offered any hope for that life - the only One to have conquered death: Jesus of Nazareth, Who was crucified, died, and was buried, but Who rose victoriously from the dead.  Concerning Him, the apostle Paul writes: "... Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a Man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at His coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power." (I Cor 15:20-24).

What you and I need to do is to come to Him, confessing our own sinfulness - and our inability to do anything about it - and receive the forgiveness of Almighty God that the Lord Jesus has gained for us. This is how we may meet death with a steady eye, knowing that our eternal future is safe in Him.

Whenever I conduct a funeral service I try, sensitively, to make the point that, whatever the spiritual condition of the deceased, there is nothing that I can do for them.  However, I can point those who are present to the way of salvation.  Where do you stand in relationship to Almighty God as you read this post?  If you were to die in ten minutes' time, are you fully prepared?  

Writing, again, to the Corinthian believers, Paul reminds them that: "... now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation." (II Cor 6:2).   Have you come to Jesus, in repentance and faith? If not, then you are not ready for death. There are a couple of useful links at the right-hand-side of this page and, of course, you may contact me by e-mail at author@minister.com 

When Jo Cox set off to go to her office today, I am certain that the last thought in her mind was that she would never see her husband and children again.  I don't know how prepared she was.  But what about you?  Are you prepared?