The EU’s stranglehold over the UK: How impractical idealism created a real-life straightjacket

We have continually been sold solutions to ‘gatekeeper’ issues that sound very simple, are usually highly appealing and play up to the myth that membership of the EU is a one-way street to improved quality of life for everyone involved.

The problem is that behind those ‘gatekeeper issues’, such as the Working Time Directive of the Social Chapter, sit many knock-on effects and consequences for real People, that are not talked about, but will almost certainly impact many areas of life and business that make life for many much harder to live.

In a nutshell, its pure idealism hurting the majority, in order to glorify the ideas of the untouched few.

The nature of the relationship that the UK was obliged to sign up to when it became a Member of the EU and its forerunners, mean that many of the rules that follow as the direct result of welcoming in these ‘big ideas’ have been created in Brussels and then rubber stamped by our own Government and our Civil Servants.

The reality of Law and Rule making in Brussels is that we and our Parliament get no say. Rules and Laws created in the EU are simply sent across the Channel and then imposed.

So in the case of something like the Working Time Directive and the Employment Laws that surround it, the impact on our businesses from rules made by bureaucrats who have no understanding of running or managing businesses, is to restrict working practices very tightly.

Businesses becomes less profitable, less productive and for employees it might well mean less opportunity in every sense possible – that’s if they don’t lose their jobs as a result of the implementation of these ‘laws’ too.

This nanny-state management is representative of undemocratic coercion at best.

It is already getting progressively worse and would increasingly do so, if for any reason we were to end up having to Remain.

We should never hesitate to dream about creating a world that is better and works fairly and without prejudice for all.

But this is itself a dream with many steps to get there.

There is the practical reality of how the real world works standing in the way before any journey can be planned to get there. Otherwise, the downside of forcing this idyllic upside will hurt a lot more people than it will ever help along the way.

The EU and its direction for the future is based solely on impractical idealism.

Yes, the UK needs powerful aspiration to deliver something better for all.

But the journey to our future must be based on practical reality at every step and built upon the understanding of how the world and human behaviour actually works. Nothing more.