Why Britain Should Leave the EU

As the Prime Minister announces his support for a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union, William Bates argues that the UK should leave the EU and Ross Watkins argues that it should stay in the EU.

The European Union is without doubt one of the least democratic systems of modern times.  It directly costs us over 10 billion pounds a year. However, when you account for the cost of its tariffs and regulations to UK businesses, as of 2008, the European Union cost the UK £65 billion gross every year*. That's around £1,000 per year for every person in the UK (and this includes those who are too poor/young to pay most taxes). It increases every year, so now it will be much more. To show you how much this is, the benefits cuts proposed in the 2012 budget came to £10 billion.**

* Source: Office for National Statistics "Pink Book”.

**Source: The Guardian 

Nigel Farage: “It's a European Union of economic failure, of mass unemployment and of low growth."

(image source: 4.bp.blogspot.com) 

The government has never had a proper cost-benefit analysis as both Labour and the Tories have said that the "benefits" are “self-evident”. At every EU budget negotiation any suggestion of austerity is stopped by countries such as Poland who actually called for a 10% increase in the EU budget while we are in an economic crisis. This is because they benefit enormously from the EU’s subsidies and are a  net beneficiary from the EU (they get more back than what they pay in so they want us to pay more in so they can get more and more back). As the EU has an anti-democratic system, the impasse means that it will get an automatic ‘emergency’ budget increase of around 3% this year. For the last 17 years in a row the European Court of Auditors (the people responsible for checking the European Union’s funds are being spent properly, has refused to sign off the EU accounts and have said that in 2006 there were accounting errors in two-thirds of the EU’s budget. In 2010 3.7% of the budget ‘went missing’ or was spent ‘against EU rules’.

The EU is also a highly nationalist political organisation with a clear agenda to abolish the nation states of Europe and deny Britain of the ability to have an economy able to function outside of the EU. There is now a ‘European Foreign Policy’ and ‘embassies’ called the EU External Action Service. When the Ford Plant in Southampton closed with the loss of over 500 British jobs people were told this was due to a lack of demand. However, at the same time a brand new ford factory opened in Turkey – you guessed it, subsidised by the EU. We were effectively paying for our own jobs to be taken from us.

You may ask yourself why if the European Union is such a bad thing, then why does no other country moan about it? Why are we the only ones who wish for a renegotiation? The answer is simple. Every country except for Britain has something to gain from EU membership. The Germans gain from a weaker currency (which makes them more competitive). The French gain from the Common Agricultural Policy, on which 46.7% of the EU budget is spent. This gives huge amounts of subsidies to agricultural countries such as France, Romania and Bulgaria. When this deal was brokered we were given a ‘rebate’ to account for the fact we have a very small agricultural sector. Over the years these have been reduced and used to hold us to ransom during EU budget negotiations.

The EU runs a protectionist economy which in fact hinders global trade instead of helping it. It uses tariffs to ensure that inefficient German manufactures and French farmers are protected but is happy to cause chaos in the City Of London by threating to fund itself by introducing a financial transactions tax. This would lead to us paying even more in to the EU’s coffers. The Common Fisheries Policy means that our fisherman discard (throw back into the sea dead) 1 million tonnes of healthy fish. 'In 30 years at sea I have never caught a whale, destroyed a dolphin... or dumped nuclear waste, but I have been forced by the EU to dump hundreds of tonnes of edible fish in the name of "euro-conservation".' - George Stephen, Aberdeenshire fisherman, 2000. They have also caused huge cuts to the Post Office by banning monopolies on Parcel Delivery – the most profitable bit.

We are forced to take unlimited immigration from the entire EU. Under EU law as soon as somebody comes to Britain they are entitled to skip the council housing queue, NHS, benefits and a free (yes despite UK nationals having to pay) university education. Not bad when you consider that in Bulgaria and Romania over 44% of people live below the poverty line. There will be a huge influx of people coming into Britain in 2014, when these countries are given unlimited immigration. People who have paid into the system all their lives are being forced to take huge cuts because people can come to Britain and after only three months (not even working) they can take what they want an give nothing back. It is wrong that when we are short of jobs for our poorly - qualified young people (21% of young people are out of work or education) that we have no control over people coming here driving down salaries and taking many manual jobs. We should have proper work visas whereby we control how many people are working in this country and how long they are allowed to work for, so that in times of economic hardship we are able to ensure that able British citizens have a job before allowing people to come to the country, unless they have a skill that we are short of and are unable to train people to do or have lots of money to invest.  This policy is in fact more pro-equality than the current one because it will give those immigrating from EU countries the same rights as people immigrating from other regions in the world.    

The British government has refused to say what proportion of domestic laws come from Brussels, however, the  German Federal Justice Ministry has said that 84 per cent of the legislation in that country came from the EU.  According to estimates around 75% of all laws in the UK come from the EU. These are made by unelected bureaucrats and even if every British MEP voted against something we could not stop it and we could do nothing about it. We have no power to even suggest legislation, this lay in the hands of the ‘EU commission’ and President Jose Manual Barroso.

Who is this man? – EU Commission president Jose Manual Barroso, probably the most powerful man in Europe

(source: Daily Telegraph)

Baroness Ashton- A Labour Peer never elected to anything ever. Vice president of the EU High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. She is paid over three times the salary of David Cameron and gets a private get and £328,000 plus expenses and a private jet.
(source: wordlpoliticsblog.com)

Herman Van Rompuy – President of the EU council . Known as ‘Rumpy Pumpy’ and most famous for having ‘the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low grade bank clerk.’

(source: thesnowolf.com)

Outside of the EU we would be free to negotiate free trade deals with many countries, including the Commonwealth and the European Union (the claims they would refuse one are farcical – we buy from them than we sell to them so they would lose out more). This would effectively give us the single major benefit of the EU without having to pay or implement hindering laws we do not want or need. Also we would be able to join the world trade organisation. It is ridiculous that the sixth biggest economy on the planet is not allowed to join.

The very worst problem that the EU gives us is that it is hell bent on closer integration. It has its own flag, currency and anthem. The EU commission scrutinises national budgets and it forces out the elected leaders and puts in technocrats such as Mario Monti. There is no prospect of getting back any of our powers. The time to leave the European Union is now. As they drift into becoming a federalist state we will be forced to sign away our sovereignty until we are unable to get out. I hold out no hope for a referendum because in the last election all three of the main parties promised one and no action was taken.  There is only one mainstream political party who are 100% committed to a free and fair referendum – The United Kingdom Independence Party.