Stephen Pollard

members of the EU – a perfectly honourable position even if it’s one that most of Britain disagrees with. This is a man who is responsible for magnifying and making worse some of the most damaging consequences of our membership.

Take immigration. It was under Tony Blair that in 2004 the government refused to consider imposing any real controls on the open borders as the then new members joined the EU. His government said that there would be about 13,000 immigrants a year from Poland and the other EU members.

The true figure for immigration under Labour turned out to be more than three million. Not one voter was ever asked if they approved. Tony Blair’s Labour pretended all along that it wasn’t even happening. And now that the figures are known he refuses to make the slightest concession or admit that there is any issue to be dealt with. Last month he said: “I don’t agree it was a mistake. All we did was bring forward what would have happened anyway.”

Or take the British EU rebate. Between 1985- 2009 the rebate gave us back £ 63.9billion of the cost of our membership. But in 2005 Mr Blair gave up the rebate terms secured by Baroness Thatcher in return for a meaningless promise that the Common Agriculture Policy ( CAP) would be reformed. As a result of his surrender the value of our rebate has fallen by 40 per cent since 2010 when the new arrangements kicked in. We know that this has cost us more than £ 10billion – or £ 445 per family.

According to Mr Blair yesterday, the real damage of a vote would be that business would be destabilised: “There would be significant business uncertainty in the run- up to the vote but should the vote go the way of exit then there would be the most intense period of business anxiety… and instability since the war.”

It sounds very worrying and it’s typical of the propaganda pushed by the Euro- fanatics. And, like the rest of it, it’s utter nonsense.

Because if you bother to ask businesses what they think, far from fearing uncertainty and instability the vast majority say they actually want a referendum.

AYOUGOV poll for Business for Britain shows that businesses back a referendum by 66 per cent to 26 per cent.

That’s because, as another YouGov poll shows, 52 per cent of businesses favour a looser trading relationship with the EU and another 10 per cent want us to leave immediately. Just 15 per cent of businesses think our existing membership of the EU works.

So let’s stop peddling this lie that business loves the EU and would collapse if the public was allowed by our political masters to have a say.

Business isn’t just opposed to a referendum – it actively seeks one because it knows that the renegotiations, which Mr Cameron would push forward, would stand a chance of success only if the other EU members know we are serious about leaving.

Yesterday Tony Blair seemed like a figure from another age entirely: an age when the public were denied a say in how we are governed, an age when the government thought it could pretend that immi gration was not an issue and an age when opponents of EU member ship could be dismissed as Little Englanders.

Those days are gone, whether Mr Blair or his fellow Euro– fanatic Ed Miliband like it or not. Our EU membership is a debate that is just beginning.

‘ Sounding like a figure

from another age’