European Communities Act 1972 (Repeal) Bill Debate
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Steve Baker
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European Communities Act 1972 (Repeal) Bill
Steve Baker Excerpts(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell) on provoking this debate. I am slightly more optimistic about those who sit on the Front Bench than he is, and I will return for the second if not the third time to a speech made by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in Prague in 2007, when he said of the European Union:
“It is the last gasp of an outdated ideology, a philosophy that has no place in our new world of freedom, a world which demands that we fight this bureaucratic over-reach and lead Europe into the hope and potential of a new, post-bureaucratic age.”
Of course I am reminded of my hon. Friend’s book, “The End of Politics and the Birth of iDemocracy”, which I would recommend to everyone. Both he and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister have, with typical wisdom, hit upon the trend of our times. This great experiment with social democracy, which the European Union typifies, is coming to an end. That can be seen right across the continent. Indeed, it can be seen in the United States.
The crux of the matter is that if nations will be combined in a customs union yet persist in interventionist policies, we must end up with economic centralisation. That policy has not worked. For 100 years, increasing state power has led us to this point. The idea that laissez-faire liberalism has failed is a total fallacy. The state right across Europe has produced the disaster that now faces so many of our friends around the continent. We must not return to a Europe of economic nationalism, so it is time to find a future that is hopeful, prosperous and free. That means a post-bureaucratic age.
The Prime Minister has called for a post-bureaucratic age, and my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton has in his own words called for the same thing. It is time that we moved on, got beyond the European Union and found a more hopeful way forward for the entire continent.