What happened to the level playing field?
Since Winston Churchill isn’t here and it’s impossible to know what he would think of the world as it is now, more than 50 years after his death, we don’t know exactly what his views would be.
He wasn’t opposed to political union. In 1940 he proposed a union between France and Britain in order that France would continue its fight against Nazi Germany.
The world has changed since Churchill’s time. There is no more British Empire. In his last speech about Europe at London’s Central Hall, Westminster, in July 1957 – four months after France, Italy, West Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg established the European Economic Community, Churchill welcomed the formation of a “common market”, provided that “the whole of free Europe will have access”. He added, “We genuinely wish to join.”
The Conservative Party of the 1960s, as the party of business, mostly favoured membership because it realised the UK’s share of trade would be greatly increased. A level playing field requires uniform regulation. Hence, Churchill said in the House of Commons in 1950, “We are prepared to consider and, if convinced, to accept the abrogation of national sovereignty, provided that we are satisfied with the conditions and the safeguards.” “National sovereignty is not inviolable, and it may be resolutely diminished for the sake of all men in all the lands finding their way home together.”
The EU embraces this in the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality.
Today many in the UK’s business community look with some trepidation at the prospect of Britain’s exit from the EU and the restrictions on trade that will follow. Assurances of “hope” from Boris “Stag Party” Johnson are not enough.
Ian Martin
