Self-interest

Click here for his "My generation betrayed the young generation."

In the above tweet 'mace grabbing' Lord Heseltine claims that "his generation betrayed the young generation" by voting to leave the EU. He talks of self-interest and is well placed to do so.

In 1996 when Deputy Prime Minister he faced considerable condemnation after admitting that as a businessman he had delayed the payment of bills, thus putting self-interest above the interests of his creditors.

At the time the Government was consulting on whether companies should be entitled to interest on unpaid invoices. Up to £20bn was owed to UK companies, some of them facing financial ruin.

An ardent Remainer who is campaigning for a second vote in the guise of a 'people's vote', Lord Heseltine complains that "those who are the Brexiteers" are driven by obsessions of yesteryear.

They are "ignorant of the wishes of generations yet to come", he said,  perhaps attempting to add seer to his list of  aspirations.

Self-interest is rampant in the Brexit debate. In politics it is to be expected that political parties will exploit a situation for their own advantage but the animosity generated between factions has reached a new low.

Democracy is the loser. If hardliners do not like a result they campaign until they get what they want, even if it puts the institution they claim to serve at peril. Witness the decline of Western Anglicanism after the feminist onslaught.

It is claimed that people who voted to leave the EU did not understand what they were voting for or those who did could not have foreseen the outcome of the negotiations so the people need to be consulted again even though the majority of voters in a massive turnout voted to leave, no ifs or buts.

Far from betraying future generations many Brexiteers were anxious to safeguard their British identity before it is subsumed into an EU political model nobody voted for.

The Pew Research Center (PRC) reported in 2016:  Immigration to the United Kingdom has been one of the most important issues driving the debate over whether or not the UK should remain a member of the European Union.

The Guardian reports that more than three years after Europe’s biggest influx of migrants and refugees since the second world war, tensions between EU member states over how to handle irregular immigration from outside the bloc – mainly from the Middle East and Africa – remain high.

Since 2014, 1.8 million refugees have arrived in Europe, more than 1 million of them in 2015 alone.

According to PRC figures, the UK’s immigrant population more than doubled from 3.7 million between 1990 and 2015. As of 2015, about 13% of the UK’s resident population was foreign-born resulting in multiculturalism rather than integration.

There are regular reports of migrants putting their lives at risk by crossing the English Channel in unsuitable inflatable vessels to gain illegal access to the UK illustrating the determination of people to settle in the UK by any means.

One of the founding principles of the EU is free movement of workers and their families among member states. Further uncontrolled immigration is unsustainable in the UK where the infrastructure is already under considerable pressure.

The EU attitude is take it or leave it. The option was clear.