It’s not the EU we’re against it’s the idea of the EU

Or, to be more exact and precise, this specific idea of the European Union that strikes us as wrong:

EU rules on ethical investing are blocking almost £100bn of funds from flowing into the defence industry amid a push by Britain and Europe to bolster military spending.

Analysts at investment bank Morgan Stanley said regulations introduced by the EU four years ago had blocked “ethical” funds from investing in weapons. They said billions could be unlocked for European and UK defence if the rules were overturned.

The EU’s sustainable finance rules restrict environmental, social and governance (ESG) funds from investing in the defence sector.

That everyone should invest ethically seems to us to be an obvious thought. How we spend - or save and therefore do not spend - our money is the way in which we bend the capitalists and the wider society to our will. The money’s in our wallets, those others want it, we should, must even, send it off in the direction we see fit. That see fit should indeed include considerations of ethics. Because what are ethics if they’re not the way we live our lives and send our money off?

But ethics, like utility, are personal. The devout Muslim will not invest in standard bonds - interest, d’ye see? George Monbiot makes his investments open to all on his about me page and it seems to be lending to government and none of that icky capitalist stuff. We can imagine people determined to invest in defence companies on the grounds that someone, somewhere, has to be ready to repel the French.

These are all different ideas. They’re different sets of ethics.

And the problem - OK, a problem - to our mind with the European Union is that it’s a system of government which is telling us all what is ethical. They, the governors, are determining the morals that we must follow. Which isn’t, at all, a function of government. Rather, they should be structuring matters so that we out here get to follow our geas as we wish. They’re facilitators, or at least should be, rather than determiners.

This isn’t to pick on the European Union particularly - well, it is to pick on the European Union particularly because we think it’s a prime example of this form of bad government - it’s to argue with the very idea itself. We the people, individually and not collectively, get to decide what is ethical and moral. Not government determining that for us.

This is known as freedom and we maintain that’s a damn good idea.

Tim Worstall