Alphen, Netherlands, 28
September.
Dear Mr Sikorski,
I have waited a few
days to comment on the speech you made to the Oxford Analytica Global Horizons
Conference on 23 September at Blenheim Palace and on your recent piece in The Times about Britain and the EU. Some would see such comments by a Polish
Foreign Minister as gross interference in Britain’s internal affairs, but then
we are a tolerant people. That said I am
not so sure you Poles would have appreciated such comments from a British
Foreign Secretary.
Your remarks were
clearly less for our benefit and more to do with relations with your President
and your Prime Minister, who too often feel the Sikorski foreign policy is not
Poland’s foreign policy. Indeed, my sources tell me
that after your recent Berlin speech your Prime Minister took up to three days
to approve and the President criticised you for not having consulted more
widely before the speech. Moreover,
given your call last year for German leadership I felt I could have been reading a
lecture by the German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle about how we British
have no alternative. Maybe that was the
point.
However, out of respect
to you as a fellow Oxford man I will limit my comments to your Little Britain
speech. You set out to
blind your audience with facts. You said
that British membership of the EU cost a trifling £15 ($24) per British head
per year against some £1500 ($2435)-£3500 ($5680) (clearly a scientific figure)
of benefits. And, that only one-sixteenth of UK primary legislation stems from
EU decisions.
Let me immediately
correct those figures for you. According to the Office for
National Statistics in 2011 the net cost of EU membership for the UK was
£10.8bn ($17.5bn). Some outlier estimates
put the gross cost at £65bn ($106bn) per year or £1000 ($1620) per head if one
includes the cost of all regulation and transfers plus the £15bn ($24bn) paid
annually into the EU budget. The cost is probably between £400($650) and
£440($715) per British household. The
only year the UK was a net beneficiary was in 1977 when a referendum was held
on UK membership. You say that half of
Britain’s exports go to the EU. In fact,
the latest figures show that trade with the EU is somewhat less than 50% with a
£50bn ($81bn) trade deficit.
You cited the usual
Polish nonsense about ‘betrayal’ in 1939 and in 1945 at Yalta (Britain went to
war in 1939 for Poland and if you were betrayed at Yalta it was by mighty Washington
and Moscow not by exhausted and marginal London). And then you went for what you thought was
our jugular – the EU single market. You said that the single market was a
“British idea”. Indeed, Britain has been
remarkably consistent about this ‘vision’ for Europe. The British people never signed up for the
kind of German-led European super-state you seem to be espousing, although it
is hard to understand from your remarks whether you seek an empire or a union as you imply a European balance of power. You might wish to clarify your thinking about
just exactly it is that you seek. You also
overlooked the fact that the single market is not, well, single. Euro-virtuous Germany has consistently and
repeatedly blocked the Commission’s Services Directive, where Britain is of
course strong.
Your venture into
foreign and security policy was at the very least misplaced. You say a British commissioner runs “our”
diplomatic service. However, no-one in
Britain had ever heard of her before she was appointed and we know even less about
her now, but that is hardly your fault. As
for your suggestion that Britain “could, if you only wished, lead Europe’s
defence policy” it is, I am sure you will admit, very hard to lead
nothing. And whilst I grant you Poland
has marginally increased its defence expenditure to bring at least something to
your famed Weimar/Bermuda Triangle, the rest of the EU thinks military power
far too messy.
Quite simply, Mr
Sikorski, you have missed the point. The
EUrosphere you are about to take Poland into is a political trap that Britain
will never fall into. We would of
course wish you well and we respect Poland’s right to decide its destiny. Indeed, that is why we fought both World War
Two and the Cold War. However, you of all
people should uphold our right to choose our destiny. This may not be what you
and Germany clearly want for us, but then we are not you. There
is certainly no reason at all why we could not still be friends, in spite of
your thinly-veiled threats to future trade relations.
Our objection to the
Europe you espouse is not because we have delusions of grandeur, even though we
have one of the world’s biggest economies, hugely-experienced armed forces and
an excellent diplomatic machine, although I grant you our political leadership
is not up to much. Rather, the simple EU truth is
that on matters of economic and political culture Britain will always be in a
minority and forced to accept the ‘diktat’ of what Tocqueville (did you read
history at Oxford?) called the tyranny of the majority. Majorities are not always right.
I hope you find your
Brussels job. Perhaps you see yourself as a kid of super-commissioner combining
foreign, neighbourhood and aid portfolios.
That is after all what your friend Guido Westerwelle has called for.
Sorry, but we are poles
apart.
Yours sincerely,
Julian Lindley-French
