Living wage makes Britain a migrant magnet

THESE things are sent to scare us! The Remain campaign hasn’t yet warned that dragons will invade Britain if we vote to leave the European Union, but frankly nothing would surprise me now.

None of us can turn on the radio or TV without being insulted by another scare story from the pro-EU camp.

The behaviour of supposedly impartial institutions like the civil service and even the Bank of England defies belief.

Far more frightening than these fantasy claims about the future are the genuine facts about today’s EU economy.

Europe isn’t working. Literally. Over the past five years the youth unemployment rate has averaged 44 per cent in Italy and 58 per cent in Spain. That has been devastating for millions of young Europeans.

Apart from the frozen wastes of Antarctica, Europe is the slowest growing continent on the planet. And the low-paid of Britain are suffering too, with uncontrolled migration leading to a demonstrable downward pressure on their wages.

Last week we saw figures showing that immigration into our country is continuing to rise. With the inevitable pull factor of the National Living Wage, that can only increase – and it is the poorest Britons who will suffer the most.

But this isn’t the worst of it. The worst thing is that the EU has no plan to put any of it right. No plan to reform the euro. No plan to cut back the red tape stifling business and seeing the continent lose its share of world trade twice as quickly as America. It has no plan because its 28 members struggle to agree on anything. Whether it’s the refugee crisis or eurozone crisis, the answer from the unelected Eurocrats is ‘more Europe’.

Britain wouldn’t choose to join this economically declining, political talking shop if we weren’t already members – so we should have the courage and self-belief to leave. Self-belief is the ingredient missing from the current debate. Britain has world-beating universities and a highly skilled workforce. London is the greatest capital city on earth.

As the fifth biggest economy in the world there can be no doubt that we will flourish if we are unshackled from the declining European Union.

Our trade relations with the EU will continue to be good because, to be blunt, Europe needs British customers. But, regrettably, Europe is a declining part of the world economy, and the advantage of leaving the EU is that we can get our relationship with the rest of the world right.

Tomorrow’s world economy is going to be about the 2.2billion consumers of the Com- monwealth, and the fast-growing economies of the Far East and the Americas. Currently we are forbidden from establishing trade deals with them because it breaks EU rules – but if we leave we can negotiate deals that are focused on Britain’s interests. And we could use some of the £350million gross that the EU requires of us every week to help British exporters break into new markets.

My 30-year experience of financial markets, including working through the ERM [Exchange Rate Mechanism] crisis and the financial meltdown of 2008, tells me that a vote to leave the EU can be made in full confidence that a bright economic future awaits us.

Myvote will be made as a mum, thinking about the future for my children – and all our children. Staying in the EU puts their future at grave risk of what’s coming down the track – voting to leave means taking back control, and re-building our future as an internationalist free trading nation.

But let me make one final appeal: think about people who most need this change – the lower-paid Britons who are seeing their wages shrink and their jobs at risk because of uncontrollable immigration from the EU, the families who are struggling to get their kids into good schools and finding it ever harder to get on to the housing ladder.

Think about those who are struggling to make ends meet because the EU’s protectionist agricultural policies add around £45 every month to their monthly grocery bill. Outside of the EU we won’t just be freer, safer and better off – our society can also be fairer. It’s our country, it’s our future – Vote Leave.