This Thursday Britain faces a very clear choice. Everyone has an equal vote and no single person, from the CEOs of big multi-national corporations, through to MPs, or even the Prime Minister’s vote counts more than anyone else.
We have had a month of often passionate – and sometimes unpleasant – debate. People I count as friends take a different view from me, I respect that. That is democracy. In the end the British people will decide.
My long-held view is that what started as a market of trading nations has grown out of all proportion into a pervasive encroachment into our daily lives by unelected and unaccountable officials in Brussels. It has moved from a common market, via an economic community, to something that closely resembles a country. Too much power has been given away and it is long past time that powers started coming back to national Parliaments. It is clear that our relationship with Europe is not working in the interests of British people.
My opposition to increased European federalism is long-held. I have opposed further UK/European integration for more than 20 years, since I was politically aware. I opposed the Maastricht Treaty, and fundamentally disagreed with it. This is what I wrote more than two decades ago in 1992, in an article for the Southampton University Debating Union magazine: “Ours is a radical agenda for the new post-Cold War agenda. We want Europe to be a loose, ever-expanding, outward-looking group of Nation States, each engaged to the full through national cultures and identities. … We want to see a Europe building on the achievements Britain enjoyed in the 1980s. Our success was achieved with a Bank of England, accountable to the people and to an elected Parliament, not to unelected bankers. It was achieved with the ERM and with the Pound Sterling, and was done by regulation, not by Delors’ restrictive socialist agenda. Above all, it was done without the British people being subject to common duties as “citizens of a European Union” … The new Europe needs to be a loose association of free trading, open, outward-looking sovereign states. We need to cooperate and work together as partners where we share common goals. Above all, our view of Europe is one which is shared by the people of our nation. It is one which we want the opportunity to put to them in a referendum. We need to let the people speak. We want their voice to be heard.”
I have also long maintained that the opportunity for the rebalancing of our relationship with the EU would come when the rest of the Eurozone machine woke up to reality and recognised the need, if it is to survive, for deeper fiscal and economic integration - the need to lock its regulations, central banks and treasuries into one unit. That would fundamentally change the entity that is the Eurozone and so alter the relationship between it and the UK. That would in turn require treaty change, and would offer the opportunity for the Prime Minister to achieve many of the things that he has argued that he would seek, including repatriation of powers to our national Parliament.
We still hear reference to voting ‘to stay in a reformed European Union’, as though this were an option on the ballot paper this Thursday. Many of us hoped that the Prime Minister would achieve many more of the goals that he set out from the outset. He proposed, but then abandoned, reform which I believe is fundamental to the best interests of the people of the UK, and therefore to our continued membership of the EU. For example:
- In 2014, David Cameron referred to “treaty change that I will be putting in place before the referendum”. There is no treaty change. Yet how can we trust promises of future treaty change obtained now, when current leaders may not be in power in the future to deliver on their promise?
- Before the general election, he said “we want EU jobseekers to have a job before they come here”, and “if any jobseeker has not found work within six months, they will be required to leave”. It seems to me if freedom of movement and freedom of benefit tourism is to be upheld despite the consequences, then our country will only regain control of our borders if we leave the EU.
- He also promised in 2009 to “limit the European Court of Justice’s jurisdiction over criminal law to its pre-Lisbon Treaty level”. Yet the Government has opted back into 35 associated measures, including the European Arrest Warrant against which I have long campaigned because of the real danger to British citizens that they could be extradited to face charges for offences that may not be against the law here in the UK.
- He pledged in 2009 “a complete opt-out from the Charter of Fundamental Rights”. The Government has since admitted that we have put forward no proposals that would disengage us from the Charter. I am concerned that, without a formal opt-out, any national legislation to introduce a Bill of Rights could, and undoubtedly would, be overruled by EU legislation.
- He said in 2007 “that it will be a top priority for the next Conservative Government to restore social and employment legislation to national control”. This has formed no part of the renegotiation. I believe that Parliament’s decisions on these issues must be sovereign.
The Prime Minister has set out the four ‘baskets’ of reform on which he has based his renegotiation – reform of sovereignty, to give national Parliaments more say; increased competitiveness that requires less regulation in the single market; enshrined fairness for countries outside the Eurozone, so we are not disadvantaged; reform of migration, including tackling of abuse of freedom of movement. I support these aims, but I am conscious that they require treaty change. What is to stop unelected Brussels bureaucrats from reneging in the future on promises made by today’s European leaders? What guarantee is there that the reforms now promised will make any long-term difference to our ongoing relationship?
Given my view that the Prime Minister has not achieved fundamental reform, and my genuine reservations about what is on offer, I have no doubt in my mind that the right thing for me to do is to vote to leave the European Union as currently constructed. I think it is unarguable that Britain’s relationship with the EU requires major change, and the simple fact is that major change is not on offer. I think it is clear that the EU cannot be reformed from within, despite the acknowledgement of Eurocrats that they would prefer the EU’s second-largest contributor to remain a member.
In the 1970s Britain voted to join the EEC – the ‘Common Market’. Now we find ourselves members of a European Union that has a flag, an anthem, a currency, a Parliament and a supreme Court with power to veto UK laws. I do not begrudge our continental neighbours their right to forge this political union. I simply don’t believe it is right for Britain.
Many scare stories are being put about by people who should know better about what leaving the EU would mean for jobs and security. Most are absolutely false. However outside the EU one thing will change. We will again make our own laws in the UK Parliament – elected by the British people and again fully accountable to them. The restoration of UK democracy is the fundamental consequence of leaving.
Leaving aside the fact that only 6% of UK companies export to the EU, the threat to British jobs rests on the assumption that outside the structures of the EU all trade would stop. Such a notion is absurd. The UK has had a trade deficit with the EU in every year of our membership. They sell more to us than we do to them. Why would they want to end a trading relationship?
Indeed many of those who issue the dire warnings today (the CBI, IOD, big banks etc) are the very same people who warned of dire consequences if Britain didn’t abolish sterling and join the Euro. They were wrong then and are wrong again.
Their warnings on security are more bizarre still. Does anyone seriously think the UK wouldn’t share intelligence and cooperate with our near neighbours on security outside the EU? A moment of reflection answers that.
Whatever one’s view, David Cameron is honouring his pledge that he would offer the country an In/Out referendum before the end of 2017; this decision is so important that it must be for the people of the UK to decide.
I was struck by the Prime Minister’s advice to all the Members of the Conservative Parliamentary Party from the Despatch Box in the House of Commons, when he told us “if Members passionately believe in their hearts that Britain is better off outside the EU, they should vote that way.”
That is exactly what I intend to do on Thursday.
A country like ours has a global future. Our language is the language of global commerce and diplomacy. We are leaders in the Commonwealth and NATO. We have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Of course we are big enough and powerful enough to be an independent nation.
I have a great belief in the British people. It is their energy, talent and enterprise that make us the 5th largest economy in the world. I believe they have the common sense and judgement to be able to elect a Government to make the laws under which they live. Like all of them, I have one vote on 23rd June. I will be casting it with confidence for Britain to leave the EU and forge a new path as a self-governing nation that trades with the world.
I believe a vote to Leave is the optimistic choice.