The EU vote raises the same question that is never explicitly asked.

Why do Labour and the Lib Dems never vote against Europe?

This was largely the question posed to me by a friend when the discussion of exiting Europe came up. I have to be honest, I had to think. If the population of the UK wants to get out of Europe, which it does (why else would a government be so scared to hold a referendum?) surely it would be easy money for Labour or the Lib Dems to cash in on this by saying they would exist Europe.


Well, the reason begins with this; no one believes in independence anymore. Confused? Let me lay it out. Power is dictated by money, whoever has the most money, has the most influence and has the spare cash to spend on financing a nice shiney military. But even without guns money gives control (more on this a little later). To get money you need a good economy.

The US has a good economy, for example, because it has low tax, highly skilled workers and a huge home market. If you don't know what I mean by a home market take this example.

Your name is Bob, you like in the US, you make a product which brushes your teeth for you. You can now sell that to the whole US population of 300 million people at $5. You make $1.5 Bn.

Your name is Francois, you like in France, you make the same product. You can now sell it to the whole of France's 65 million people for $5 which makes you only $325million.

If you want to sell else where you need translation, you need to address the change in cultures their toothpaste tubes don't fit etc etc. This all causes expense and profit margins go down.

In short, if you live in a big country or area with the same rules and regulations and culture, you make more money.

This is why the US is so rich. Everyone speaks the same language, drive on the same size roads, has similar values and so on.

Great. Lesson one, done.

Lesson two I'm going to abridge to stop this getting too big. The more money a country has the more you can get other countries to do what you want. If they don't do as you ask, sell all your investments in their country and their economy goes down the pan, people lose jobs, the leader gets kicked out, and you start the process again.

So with this in mind the leaders of the UK know that if we go it alone, we're going to get screwed with by countries like the US. So we need to get along side someone equally as big. The two obvious options at the moment is the EU and the US. Frankly I'd rather get on side with Australian, New Zealand and Canada, but whatever.

This is where the explanation comes in for Labour's and the Lib Dem's behaviour. Everyone in Parliament knows we need to choose between the EU and US... how do they decide?

Ideology.

The United States is a free market, free speech, small government, morally Christian kinda place.

Europe/the EU is 'generally' is a protectionist, socialist, big government, morally secular kinda place.

Labour is protectionist, socialist, pro-big government and morally secular
Lib Dems are big government, morally secular
The Tories are for free speech, small government, free market, and half of them are morally Christian.

Get it?

Basically this is lifes play ground and we're having to choose who our friends are. Each party is trying to pick the ones that are most like them. This is just an epic sized question of "do you hang around with the junkies, the nerds, the jocks or the Crispys?"


You're not going to spend your life on your own, so it is time to choose some friends. But be careful who you choose, "Do not be deceived: “Evil company corrupts good habits.” or another proverb "The righteous should choose his friends carefully, For the way of the wicked leads them astray."

Now I'm not saying Europeans are evil or good or vis-a-versa. But you will become more like your friends, whomever they may be. Whether they are good or not.

So the next time you heard about a EU treaty and who has voted on it and how. Don't look at the small picture, whether the treaty has merit or not. Look at the bigger picture of the aims of the two parties, because I'm willing to bet that there is one group of people who will vote for it no matter what it says and others who will vote against, almost everytime.

That's because the question is not about that individual treaty really, rather it is about the country you want to live in in 30 years: a socialist leaning, protectionist, big government secular one, or a free market, small government (slightly more) Christian one.

That is the question for the EU vote, and that will ALWAYS be the question for each EU vote.