One has to worry when the man essentially in charge of the direction of education in this country issues the statement “I’m a passionate Eurosceptic.” Michael Gove has rendered himself quite happily as an oxymoron, emphasis on ‘moron’. The term Eurosceptic is cover for slavering Europhobe but gives the veneer of a rational, if querying, mindset towards the Euro, the EU or Europeans in general. Yet to append passionate to it is nonsense, since one does not need to read David Hume to understand that the passion invalidates the rationalism, indeed that they are two contradictory mental approaches.
Since Euroscepticism in the UK generally expresses itself that ‘Europe is nice place, shame about the people living there’ whilst barely ever acknowledging that the United Kingdom is indeed part of the same continent, it should more properly be described as Europeanphobic or, to be generous, EU-phobic. This is before even coming onto the single currency. The Euro is anathema to xenophobic parliamentary representatives - mention joining the Euro to a member of the public will winkle out a laugh, probably quite hearty; do the same to, say, a Tory MP will induce apoplexy. The cobweb-strewn brains of Conservatives and right-wing tabloid journalists in particular (though ex-Marxists like Jack Straw are of the same bent) believe that the continental mainland is still a place of Napoleon, Hitler or Phillip II, champing at the bit to swallow Britain up into their monstrous design. They are a bit like duffer admirals issuing Jeremiads that naval cuts will endanger the Falkland Islands, even though Argentina may grandstand as a democracy but would never start another war as long as the civilians are in control of the government. The only reason there is a democratic deficit (one of the key Tory complaints) in the EU is because of the EU-phobic opposition in this country to any further democratisation as that would mean further integration, undercutting national parliaments, yet without more democratisation, they will continue to carp about a democratic deficit. It is akin to ETA trying to bomb a democratic Spain back to nationalistic Castlian dictatorship in order to justify their own existence. To fervently believe in a Catch-22 without recognising that they are doing so is a prerequisite for demagoguery of the most dangerous kind. They should look at the democratic deficit in their own minds.