For the past two days, I’ve been speaking at the Freedom Festival, an annual gathering of conservative and libertarian activists organized by the Freedom Association in Bournemouth, on the south coast of England. The mood at the Festival is a lot like that in the United States: No one has a good word for the establishment.
The cause of the year—in fact, the cause of this generation—is the upcoming referendum on Britain’s exit from the European Union (EU). Brexit, as it’s known, is the fondest hope of every activist in Bournemouth, for the simple but obvious reason that as long as the EU is in charge, Britain doesn’t govern itself. Leaving the EU would also allow Britain to negotiate its own trade treaties and preserve NATO as the security link with the U.S., but it’s the cause of self-government that warms the heart of the Freedom Association’s friends.
The arguments for staying in the EU are accepted by the leadership of both major British parties, which is enough to make you suspicious immediately. As in the U.S., bipartisan agreement usually means that everyone’s got it wrong. When political leaders get together to rig the free market of opinion, they do so to avoid challenges to their shared illusions. And when you tinker with the market, you often get results that aren’t what anyone intended.
During the Festival, the news broke that President Barack Obama will be visiting Britain next month, making a campaign stop for the European Union. As one of the Festival attendees joked, he’d take the president’s views seriously as soon as Americans start welcoming foreign politicians who want to tell them how to run their lives.
It’s doubtful that the president’s intervention will change many minds: Everyone in Britain who likes him is going to vote for the European Union anyhow, while the undecideds are at least as likely to be alienated by his interference.
It’s been a long time—perhaps since 1959, when President Dwight Eisenhower visited Britain shortly before an election—since an American president arrived in London for such clearly political purposes.
Nor is it clear why the establishment thinks that the best way to promote the cause of the EU is to get it endorsed by as many establishment figures as possible. All across Europe, as in the United States, establishment candidates and parties are on the run. Yet the propaganda case for the EU relies heavily on having famous people—from scientist Stephen Hawking to the president of the United States—deliver finger-wagging lectures about how the great the EU is.
This might work. Spreading scare stories and lining up celebrity endorsements is clearly a better approach for the EU’s defenders than relying on facts, or making the honest admission that remaining in the EU means that the House of Commons will steadily continue to lose the power to make Britain’s laws. But it didn’t impress anyone in Bournemouth.
Freedom’s friends, in Britain and America, are made of sterner stuff than that.
