Wrong, wrong wrong! Why Major’s spin on Europe just doesn’t add up
CLAIM:
Flirting with leaving the EU, at a moment when the whole world is coming together, seems to me to be very dangerous and against our long-term interests.
REBUTTAL:
Sir John is adopting the language of the official campaign to keep Britain in the Brussels club. Its leading figures have repeatedly claimed leaving would jeopardise national security – despite the fact that Europe’s wide-open borders were a significant factor in the Paris attacks. Business leaders have denied quitting the EU would be dangerous for the economy. Graeme Macdonald, chief executive of JCB, said: ‘I really don’t think it would make a blind bit of difference to trade with Europe.’
CLAIM:
If we leave the European Union it won’t be a friendly departure – it will be very acrimonious. Negotiations with an irate ex-partner could be very difficult. We may get a very sub-standard deal to enter the single market.
REBUTTAL:
The Vote Leave campaign points out that it will be in the overwhelming interests of the EU to strike a free trade deal with the UK. In 2014, the EU sold the UK £61.7 billion more in goods and services than the UK sold the EU. It is unfeasible that EU leaders will not want to get a good deal for their exporters
after the referendum. From Britain’s point of view, exports to Europe have now lagged behind those to the rest of the world for a record 14 months in a row.
CLAIM:
If we left there must be a high probability that Scotland will have another referendum and leave the UK. The UK would be fractured – that would be very damaging. Our international prestige, I think, would suffer.
REBUTTAL:
Scotland is on course to be £50billion in debt by 2020 and, following the collapse in oil prices, is ever more financially dependent upon the rest of the UK. Each person in Scotland received an average of £10,374 from central government funds last year thanks to the Barnett formula. In England the amount was just £8,638. The gap between those two figures rose by 8 per cent in 2014-15 – the year Scots went to the polls about whether to leave the UK. If it so chooses, the SNP could think of any number of grievances to call an independence referendum, regardless of the EU referendum outcome.
CLAIM:
People say we can save all our net contribution – not true. We would have to pay at least half and possibly more of it simply for entry to the single market.
REBUTTAL:
The UK’s net contribution to the EU is around £9billion a year. Out campaigners argue that many countries around the world, such as Chile and Peru, have comprehensive free trade agreements with the EU without having to pay billions into the EU budget each year. So- called ‘ own resources’, which account for 99 per cent of the EU’s revenue, are levied exclusively on EU member states.
CLAIM:
They say we can control our borders and we will have no
immigration. I don’t think that’s so. In or out we can’t keep the world at bay. And if we were out one question arises: in present circumstances would France be holding so many immigrants at Calais, or would they not? And if not they would be heading here.
REBUTTAL:
Britain currently has no control over who comes in from the EU – with EU net migration running at around 180,000 a year. Leaving would allow the UK to impose a visa regime for the entire world in which only those with the skills the economy needs are allowed in. Britain having so- called juxtaposed controls (a border on French soil) is not reliant upon EU membership. That arrangement could be ripped up while we are still a member or kept if we depart. In any event, there is strong anecdotal evidence that France already waves migrants towards Calais from where they can attempt to sneak into the UK.
CLAIM:
We are told our parliament would be sovereign. Well that of course is total nonsense. In order to trade with the European Union we would have to accept their regulations. We would have no possibility of an input into those regulations or changing them.
REBUTTAL:
Less than half of Britain’s exports are to the EU. Many businesses do not export their goods or services at all, or do not do so to the EU. These companies – including a huge number of small firms currently strangled by red-tape – could be freed from EU regulations altogether. Britain is regularly ignored by Europe. On the 72 occasions when the UK has voted against a measure in the European Council, it has gone on to become law – including 40 times since Mr Cameron became PM.