Any lie will do

Returning to the issue of labour rights, I am perplexed by this notion that the EU underpins such rights. More likely this is brainless repetition of rhetoric. It has no validity in the world I inhabit. In this country your rights exist only insofar as you can afford the tribunal fees and legal professionals. And though there are notionally protections against unfair dismissal, if you've ever had a real job then you know just how empty that is.

But there's the clue isn't it? Look at who is telling us these things. MPs, MEPs and those who live in a world divorced from ours. IF these people have ever had real jobs it must have been long ago and Britain's workplace must have been very different to the one I work in.

Meanwhile, successive interventions in the labour market have made jobs less secure now than at any point in my lifetime. In the most basic terms, when they say that we have rights we would not otherwise enjoy, I do not believe them. There are those who are mistaken and then there are those of our political class who are lying to you.

Ultimately the best defence of workers rights is effective unions. And though the left may point fingers at the Tories for weakening unions, the unions themselves have been most instrumental in their own demise by cosying up to government for grant payments and consultation fees, making them less reliant on their members and consequently more remote from them. It is for this reason we see unions toadying up to the EU - the big jolly Father Christmas who dispenses jollies and jamborees to union officials.

The unions of yore had a backbone. They knew who they served. The kind of legal tinkering we have seen from the Tories would not have concerned them and breaking the law was second nature to them. That they now see illiberal constraints as a wall rather than something to be punched through speaks to how EU membership has made us bovine and submissive. We have lost the art of defiance. In that regard, the only thing the EU actually underpins is the supremacy of the state and the continued subordination of the public.

Effective unions start with individuals organising and acquiring their own expertise. We are out of that habit. Instead we casually submit the the corporate unions we deduct dues directly from salaries which then go into a black hole. And when you see union bosses on salaries most would never dream of, that is ultimately the product of this bovine behaviour.

In the end only workers themselves protect workers rights. There is no benevolent European entity keeping a watchful eye over your rights. The only justice to be had is for those who can afford it. To surrender to the myth that the EU underpins any of your rights is to give way to just one of many monumental lies put forth by an establishment which needs you to keep believing - and in so doing you are telling them they can do as they please. The lesson they will learn is that no lie is too big and any lie will do.