EU referendum: Shouldn’t liberals and democrats be fighting for Brexit?

As a general rule, it’s not wise to arrive at policy positions based on who else got there first. Much better to work out what you think by testing your argument against opponents, and knowing their positions better than your own.

And yet when people pop up in places that you don’t expect, for instance as a convert to a particular faith or cause, it naturally prompts an examination of one’s own prejudices. I have a faint feeling that some of you, who are generally pro-European and think Britain should stay in the European Union, may be questioning your beliefs in light of Lord Owen’s decision to back British withdrawal from the EU.

As Fraser Nelson, the excellent Editor of The Spectator, pointed out in the Telegraph on 26 February, Lord Owen is an unlikely Eurosceptic. He once resigned from Labour’s front bench partly because he felt it wasn’t sufficiently Europhile; and his setting up of the SDP was also partly motivated by a feeling that Labour had abandoned Europe. This week, however, he argued that continued membership is “a more dangerous option for British security”. Similarly, Frank Field, the respected Labour MP for Birkenhead, backs Brexit because he wants to regain control of our borders.

Might they have a point? I am not interested in taking one side or the other here, but I do wonder whether liberals and democrats everywhere might be tempted to follow these men of the left into the Brexit camp. Of course, the case for staying in the EU is familiar and strong. We’ve got a unique relationship with Europe: in the single market but not in the euro, border-free zone, banking union, or “ever-closer union”. We can influence big multilateral decisions much better from inside the camp than outside. Maybe sovereignty, so revered by the Brexit camp, is over-rated: these days it’s pooled anyway. And leaving the EU could weaken the West at a time when it is in swift retreat.

But the EU does very often trump the democratic will of the British people. I often say this newspaper was set up to fight for democracy. Many of you are republicans because you believe we should be citizens not subjects. Does the idea of officials in Brussels controlling vast swathes of our legislation not offend your sensibilities? And doesn’t the rampant failure of the EU to deal with either the eurozone or the refugee crisis not make you question whether Britain should be uncoupling from this continent, and making a strategic bet on the real shift in power in today’s world?

Lord Owen and Frank Field know which side they’re on. Plenty of people who call themselves democrats or liberals are wavering. Are you?