THE FUTURE IS BRIGHT AND IT’S CERTAINLY NOT WITHIN THE EU

A FELLOW I knew years ago who was extremely shrewd advised me once: in politics and economics do not concentrate on the status quo, study the direction of travel.

In either discipline nothing is stationary, all is on the move. It is not the present that will affect you but the future. We are constantly told by the EU fans that over half our exports go to the other 27 EU countries so we would be crazy to endanger that. Sorry, that was some time ago. The present figure is 43 per cent and sinking.

The EU’s percentage of world trade used to be somewhere in the 30s. Today it is 16 per cent and annually sinking. More and more the evidence is that the future in mercantile terms is that mysterious market called ROW: meaning rest of world.

The Confederation of British Industry has just told us yet again that the EU and our subordination to it is vital for our future. Its view would be more believable if the CBI had not been comprehensively wrong on every prediction it has made for 50 years, including its passionate advice to abolish the pound sterling and switch to the euro.

You might think the giant companies represented by the CBI dominate British commerce. A real eye-opener is that the 5.7 million small and medium enterprises (the SMEs) that we have in our country represent a staggering 99 per cent of all businesses and employ more than 16 million people. They too have a representative body (not the CBI) and they are saying exactly the opposite of the CBI. And they have a record of being almost always right.