A publicised image of an EU meeting in Salzburg (which I cannot reproduce) was reminiscent of a meeting of S.P.E.C.T.R.E in a James Bond film. Soon Britain will no longer be haunted by the SPECTRE of the EU disaster. The UK membership of the European Union since 1973 (when it was called the “European Economic Community”) has been disastrous. Years of relative economic decline have seen the EU’s share of world GDP fall from 22% in 1981 to 16% today in purchasing power parity – even though some 19 extra member countries have joined in that time! The UK’s economic performance in GDP and trade has been far worse than equivalent countries which did Not join the EU.
By comparison the USA, the UK, the Commonwealth and Ireland together account for 34% of world GDP.
The result for most EU countries has been even more disastrous with mass unemployment lasting nearly 20 years. Even today the Eurozone average unemployment is over 8% – twice the level in the UK and the USA. It would be much higher if 3 million EU citizens were not working in Britain. In Greece, despite the loss of 400,000 young people fleeing the country, unemployment is still over 20% and youth unemployment 39%. This is the Europe of which Remainers say we have selfishly deprived British youth!
If we look at specific examples of the political and economic costs of EU membership the track record is abysmal. While EU trade in manufactures has been freed to benefit France and Germany the UK strength in financial and other business services has not benefited from liberalised trade. On the contrary.
While the open UK Stock market has allowed EU countries to buy up many of our leading companies (in finance, transport, defence equipment for example) those same countries block or make virtually impossible takeovers of their own corporations. Many of those corporations are indeed either State owned or State controlled or State protected. We recently gave a good example:
Simon Boyd of REIDSTEEL, the UK international steel group (and a major supporter of Brexit) has repeatedly said how EU restrictions have curtailed his company’s trade. He refers to France where ironically this British firm was founded in 1919!
we cannot contract there because only French companies are able to buy the approved insurance. It is easier for us to export to Mongolia, as we have done, than to France and some countries in the EU.
Then we have within the “fair” “free trading” EU massive differences in tax regimes which are a form of protectionism. France taxes whiskey ,which it is hardly known for, much higher than it does wine for which it is famous! Germany has a thriving coffee industry not because it produces coffee but because it processes coffee. EU rules apply a lower rate of tariff to raw coffee than to processed coffee thus aiding the German processors and punishing foreign companies.
LIFE EXISTED BEFORE WE JOINED THE EU
As Brexit is negotiated British ministers and civil servants are getting to grips with the horrendous reality of membership of the EU and its economic, social and political control over our country. Even a Remainer like Jeremy Hunt was provoked into comparing the EU with the Soviet Union!
Unfortunately there are no civil servants or ministers who professionally recall that the world did exist before January 1st 1973 (when we joined the EEC) and that trade, movement of workers and friendly co-operation between European nations were all possible. I myself worked in Germany from 1971. There were no difficulties. Travel was no problem, my qualifications were no problem, my driving licence was no problem. I paid into the German tax and social security system and today I receive a pension for the few years I worked there. NO EU for the British then – but not quite the horror story depicted by the Remainers!
And, as this site has repeatedly pointed out, there are 160 countries in the world who manage to live a sovereign existence outside the EU, who trade with the EU and many of whose citizens travel to and work in the EU. The EU exports to most of them, makes cars and aeroplanes in some of them and yet those countries have not met the gruesome fate touted by Remainers!!
DEMOCRACY POWERLESS
Today the British state makes few laws which are not dictated by the EU, hundreds of thousands of EU regulations have been passed with little or no scrutiny by Westminster and when popular laws are passed to meet public concerns but which contradict EU law, then they do not proceed.
An historic example was the British weights and measures law which was declared null and void since it contradicted EU law. The “Metric Martyrs” case in Sunderland was a landmark in the revulsion of the British people at what their “democratic representatives” had done to their law and their customs. The trader who contravened the law by selling in pounds and ounces, Steve Thorburn, was put under enormous pressure, the case was lost and he died shortly afterwards.
Ironically the Judge in the case, Lord Justice Laws, who was at school with me in Durham, said in his judgement that there were a hierachy of laws which meant that the 1972 EU entry legislation was of constitutional power, overriding mere normal laws (like Weights and Measures legislation) which could not be overturned by “implied repeal”.
That had been exactly the argument in our 1993 constitutional treason charges (see Treason at Maastricht 1994 and subsequent editions) by which we showed that the whole legislative surrender of our country to the EU had been done by “implied repeal” and was thus INVALID. What a pity LJ Laws was not around in September 1993 ! When I met him recently he showed some sympathy with our cases.
Today, despite a vote in the House of Commons to abolish the 5% VAT on female sanitary products (a great cause of the eurofanatic socialist feminist movement!) our surrender to the EU means that the tax continues.
The loss of jobs and wealth in the farming and fishing industries is worth a ten volume work in itself. Our fishermen cannot catch and our farmers cannot farm. We have the biggest fishing grounds in Europe but they have been carved up for other member states and we have the best farming land for dairy but we are not allowed to produce more than 70% of our own milk!
FINANCIAL MARKETS CONTROL
The EU’s “Markets in Financial Instruments Directive” (MiFiD II) took effect in the UK in January 2018 and has been a huge burden on the finance and financial products industry, costing time and millions of pounds. As the IEA says:
It has created a major compliance burden for the industry, increasing the transaction data-gathering requirement by 270%, as well as ……onerous private client regulations.
Furthermore, the regulation requires transaction reports containing 65 data fields to be stored for every investment .This will mean, for example, that a private client wealth manager with 2,700 clients will create 175,500 data fields (65 × 2700) every time they invest in a company.
BRITISH PORTS
Vital to the existence and prosperity of the UK have always been our ports through which we have traded with the world for centuries. But our ports are no longer our own if we were to remain in the EU.
The Port Services Regulation (EU 2017/352) was designed to improve competition and financial transparency between continental EU ports. It was in theory needed because 80% of them are state owned – with all the protectionism, manipulation and covert subsidies that that entails!
The regulation seeks to achieve fair competition because despite 50 years of the “European Common Market” fair competition is distorted. For instance:
Dutch ports are exempt from corporation tax
Antwerp, Bremerhaven, and Hamburg’s infrastructure costs are covered by the state and
French and Belgian ports receive tax breaks
even though these are all all illegal according to EU rules. Not that rules and laws are applied in the EU. Laws are for other people. It was an EU Commissioner who some 20 years ago, in conversation with an American journalist about the British in Europe, said:
“You know it is extraordinary but the British apply the law even when it is
not in their interests to do so”
The British ports are by and large private and competitive – that is democratically accountable! But these EU regulations add costs and bureaucracy and will control prices which are already competitive. What better way to frustrate British competition with Europe!
DEFENCE PROCUREMENT
The EU’s defence procurement rules have been designed of course to create one defence industry to serve one country – the “country called Europe” and so the process naturally tends to erode British defence interests. A Defence Minister was obliged to say:
“We will seek exemptions from EU procurement rules to sustain our technological advantage where we need to.”
On leaving the EU, World Trade rules allow for that.
But will the UK instead be absorbed into EU systems through the continuation of the EU defence strategy called PESCO—or Permanent Structured Cooperation – and the gradual creation of a European Army? The ever more frantic depiction of Russia as an invading enemy (whereas it is NATO and the EU which have expanded Eastwards, threatening Russia) is the major pillar in the drive towards a European Army. First find your enemy……..
As UKIP leader Gerard Batten has warned about the integration of the UK into EU armed forces:
“For years they have been doing this surreptitiously by means of common procurement policies, common command and control structures, and common communications systems.”
There have been UK opt outs from this drive but could a weak UK leadership surrender the most important of all controls just as we leave the EU altogether?
CORPUS JURIS
Although not yet fully implemented – thanks to a few informed eurosceptics who kicked up a stink when it was muted some years ago – the EU’s “Corpus Juris” was intended to create just one body of law in Europe, one jurisdiction, one judiciary and one system of criminal justice.
Instead in 1999 it was decided that there should be “mutual recognition” of each other’s justice systems (despite the manifest primitiveness of some of them!). So the European Arrest Warrant came into being and mere suspects were able to be extradited (without prima facie evidence and the usual British protections) to foreign jurisdictions.
Torquil Dick Eriksen summarises the situation:
The EU came to realise how inflammatory it was potentially, and how it would really frighten the monkey (Britain) who would escape their clutches if they put it on the agenda again. So it disappeared from the radar.
The main fruit of this has been the European Arrest Warrant. A provision was and is that a EAW should not provide any indication of evidence of a prima facie case, and the receiving country is not allowed to ask for any evidence, but has to trust the requesting country blindly.
Thus, the EAW, far from being an alternative to Corpus Juris, is actually a stepping stone towards it. By enabling arrest and lengthy imprisonment without evidence, it tramples underfoot our Habeas Corpus rights. The next step towards Corpus Juris is to establish its central pillar – the European Public Prosecutor. This is now underway, though the UK has opted out. But having accepted the EAW, our opt-out from the EPP’s jurisdiction can be circumvented, for he will be able to issue EAWs against Britons in Britain.
Now that we are leaving this is another slippery slope which the British will have a chance of avoiding!
We know that the EU Establishment’s answer to the many crises created by this horrendous, anti democratic, corporatist fascist Superstate, which has decimated so many countries and their populations, is “more Europe”.
They are like drunks or drug addicts (and supranational undemocratic power is addictive) who can only demand more. The British have decided to withdraw and resume their long road as a free, democratic, sovereign nation state. Most will never know how many horrors we will have avoided by doing so.
