Alphen,
Netherlands. 9 October. In a speech
yesterday entitled “Richer, Stronger, Secure and Greener” fellow Sheffielder, fellow
former Eurocrat (sort of) and Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg made
an impassioned plea for Britain to remain within the EU. “The day I dread”, he thundered, “...the day
I hope never comes – is a time when it is all too late: Britain has stumbled out of the EU, and we
look back to these days and say we should have done more”. So let me debunk Nick Clegg.
“Let me
be absolutely clear: leaving the EU would be economic suicide”. At its Eurozone heart the European Central
Bank will shortly move to stabilise the Continent’s broken banks many of which
were exposed to the Spanish property bubble.
Fixing the Eurozone's banks some of which are German could cost up to €200bn ($270bn) of taxpayer’s money and
by so doing kill economic growth for the rest of the decade. Moreover, Greece will require further bail
outs whilst Italy, Spain and Portugal have not even begun to carry out the structural
reforms vital if the EU economy is to become globally competitive. Staying in the EU looks more like economic
suicide than leaving it.
“Three
million British jobs are linked to the Single Market – three million. As a
member we are part of the world’s biggest borderless market place, made up of
500 million people. It’s now the largest economy in the world - where we do
around half of all our trade.” The annual
cost of EU regulation to Britain is now €5bn ($7bn). This is a ‘tax’ on jobs which by extension
makes an already uncompetitive European economy dangerously so.
Furthermore,
a recent report by Britain’s Office for National Statistics highlighted
Britain’s growing trade deficit with the rest of the EU and the burgeoning
trade surplus with the rest of the world.
The EU represents 45% of Britain’s trade of which 90% of that is
with Germany. Indeed, Britain is
Germany’s biggest world trading partner.
The Germans are not noted for acting against their national interest and
whatever Britain’s EU status Berlin would want to keep the relationship
strong.
“What
will happen to our influence in the world if we choose to go it alone”? Take European defence. Between 2008 and
2012 small European countries cut defence budgets by 30%. Medium-sized states
by 10-15% and Britain and Germany by 8%.
Of the €180bn ($243bn) or so EU members spend each year on defence Britain
and France alone represent almost 50%.
Moreover, Britain, France and Germany spend 88% of all the defence
research and development in Europe.
Worse, 19 of the 28 EU member states spend less than €4bn per annum and
much of it horribly inefficiently.
Today, the EU average spent on defence
is 1.36% of GDP and the NATO average (excluding the US) 1.52% which is well
below the agreed NATO target of 2% GDP.
Ironically, given proliferation elsewhere in the world it is Nick
Clegg’s “Little Britain”, one of only 3 NATO members (including the US) that
spends 2% GDP on defence that is leading Europe back to defence sanity with a €200bn
($270bn) defence equipment programme over the next ten years.
“What
will happen to our citizens’ safety if we leave…Criminals cross borders – so
must we”. These are the borders Nick Clegg and the EU want to scrap. Indeed, citizens’ safety would be better
served if Nick Clegg simply got the UK Border Agency to work.
“Brussels
isn’t perfect by any means. But it’s just not true that it’s some kind of
sinister super-bureaucracy…” Strange that.
The Economist (hardly an
anti-EU trumpet) this week said, “…some Eurocrats admit many national
politicians have little idea how much power they have conceded to
Brussels”.
Nick Clegg and I
agree on the need for a referendum on EU membership to be put before the British
people. Given the deeper political
integration that is coming if Nick Clegg was honest with the British people the
question would be essentially the same as that which will be offered to the Scottish people
next September; “Should Britain be an independent country”. Indeed, for that is the real choice now to be
made and which is implicit in Clegg’s speech… and Nick Clegg knows it.
Unlike
some I do not want Britain to leave the EU but the choice Britain faces now is either
to leave the EU or surrender its distinctive political culture. There is no middle ground for Britain to
occupy. Indeed, such are the forces at
work in the Eurozone crisis the EU and the Euro are one and the same thing. The only option thus available is for the
Union to integrate further or dismantle the single currency.
Clegg says he
fears the day Britain leaves the EU. There
is a much greater danger. Britain awakes
one day to find itself part of a federalised Europe over which it has
absolutely no influence.
The saddest
thing about Nick Clegg’s speech is what it reveals about the man himself; a
British politician who is blind to the EU’s many failings and who believes neither
in Britain nor the British people.
He must be a
Wendy – a Sheffield Wednesday fan.
Julian
Lindley-French
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