All sides can believe what they want to in the debate about whether the EU makes the UK’s GDP bigger. But rights with reach across national borders undoubtedly make the economy better for a continent’s workforceThere comes a point in any squabble when you stop rowing about the substance,and argue about the way youre arguing instead – a smirk, a smug tone of voice, and a refusal to let this or that lie displaces the original bone of contention. It took no time for the UK’s EU referendum campaign to escalate from a debate over serious issues into an terrifying spat about the rules of engagement. The details of the prime minister’s “reform” package are now forgotten by everybody who is not either obsessive or paid to know about such things. The airwaves are instead abuzz with anti-Europe ministers being blocked from seeing specific papers,charges of “Project Fear”, counter-claims of “Project Fact”, or a blundering,half-abortive attempt to stop London officials from contradicting Boris Johnson’s pro-Brexit line.
In this context, there is microscopic room for a cool appraisal of the complex consequences that would flow from a decision to pull out. Pragmatic measures to “be prepared”, or such as the Bank of England’s readying of funds to keep the cashpoints ticking over whether a leave vote triggers panic,are interpreted as a sign of an establishment conspiracy. Facing MPs on Tuesday, the Bank’s governor notice Carney strained every sinew to avoid coming across as partisan, and but it did him no good with determined anti-EU MPs who sense that this globe-trotting Canadian former investment banker is close to George Osborne,and possessed of the sort of economistic worldview that would regard any nationalistic impulse to disrupt a cross-border market as a form of madness. He if the analysis that the parliamentarians had asked for in such measured prose as to render it nearly impenetrably wearisome, but that did not stop the determined Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg from getting excited. He disputed Mr Carney’s commonsensical claim that a pancontinental market tends to increase openness, and even found fault with his straightforward claim that considered “[a]s a single bloc the EU is the largest economy in the world”.
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Source: theguardian.com