In just a few day’s time the people of the UK are being asked to make a monumental choice, Whether to remain in the European Union or whether to leave it. Personally, I am firmly in the leave camp.
During the recent Buy Yorkshire conference at which I was both a speaker and panel chairman, I had the pleasure of meeting former MP, Ann Widdecombe. A diminutive, yet feisty figure who I think explained this perfectly. Better even than Nigel Farage whom I chaired the following day.
In Ann’s view, the economics are far from certain. Neither side really knows what will happen. The key issues to consider are two-fold. Firstly, control of our own lawmaking and secondly, control of our borders.
The Remain Campaign seem to have most economists on their side, but I would bet that most of the organisations commenting have a vested interest in remaining in the EU. The only argument they have that seems to hold any weight is the economic one and personally I think even that is a bit weak. After all, we may lose some jobs if we leave, but then we will gain others. We may lose a bit of money but on the other hand we will not be paying mega-millions into the bottomless pit that is the EU.
Are we also forgetting the chaos that nearly erupted with Greece so recently and the fact that other nations within the EU are effectively bankrupt too? Do we really want to have any part of that when relatively speaking we are doing so well?
For me, Ann’s two issues are the ones that matter. We are a sovereign and democratic nation and our Parliament needs to be able to legislate on its own terms without outside interference and the threat of punishment if it does not toe the line. At the moment we have to take note of an unelected and hideously inefficient body within which 10,000 or more people are paid more than our own Prime Minister. This is not my understanding of democracy and I believe we should leave them to it. Why do we agree to pay these people to flit between Strasbourg and Brussels - two parliaments doing the same job less than 300 miles apart? And we foot the bill for all of it.
As for our borders, there is literally nothing we can do at the moment to prevent any EU citizen coming to live here. Don’t get me wrong, our country has benefitted hugely from workers from countries like Poland. The factory I had in Hull until recently would not have functioned anywhere nearly as efficiently as it did without them. But this is not the whole story. A Polish gentleman is employed in a business I am a director of. He works a few hours a day 3,4 or 5 generally, and he works at very unsociable times so he can’t do any other work. He is therefore in receipt of benefits, his children are educated at the tax payers’ expense and he and his family receive medical care from the NHS. And his contribution to the economy is minimal. Without a full time job which would allow his to support himself and his family, he should not be here. As things stand there is nothing we can do to stop him and as many more like him who are currently here and who may follow.
Germany may well wish to invite 1 million new citizens into its country and that is their choice. But understand this. Every one of these new German citizens can come to the UK if they wish. Many may well see the grass being greener. See how migrants at Calais will not settle in France but are hell bent on coming to the UK. Once they have EU citizenship we can’t stop them. I am not being racist here, just practical. There has to be a limit to how many people we can house, educate and treat within our overstretched NHS. Of course people are welcome if there is a genuine need, but we have to be able to control this and at the moment we just can’t.
The average wage in Poland is €756 per month against €2330 in the UK. Just over 3 times. Now suppose in another part of the world the average wage was €6990 a month and any one of us could go there without any need to apply to move, speak the language, and so on. Then you would imagine a lot of our younger people might be off like a shot. This is precisely the dynamic we are dealing with. We do need overseas workers in the UK. Many of them put the indiginous workers to shame - but this has to be on our terms and not the free-for-all we have at the moment.
Then there is the illusion of the single market. For many years I manufactured wheelie bins in the UK. This involved a large investment into what was a pretty competitive market. Few manufacturers make these bins in the UK, most came from Germany. So when we bid to supply to a UK council, German-made bins were sometimes the winners. But could we supply out bins to Germany? No, we couldn’t,
Our bins were made to a standard - EN 840 - where EN stands for European Norm. The norm that is, except in Germany where they had their own standard. And to get that standard you had to be a member of a private club where admission was at the discretion of the owners of the club. Not only could we not sell bins in Germany but their standard worked its way into a lot of tenders here and were it not for our astute challenges of the folly of this, UK companies would have been excluded from supplying contacts in their own country!
I remember being asked to review a document from the EU Office of Harmonisation. They had taken it upon themselves to unify the colours, logos and placement of information on every waste and recycling bin within Europe. Clearly, it is very important that someone who separates out their waste in Greece should immediately be able to identify the correct bin when they might be in France. My response was that the colours chosen were not those used in the UK and it would take decades to change over, notwithstanding the millions of pounds this would cost. The idea was sent back to the drawing board where it will now incur more unnecessary expense for a fruitless and useless task. This is just bins, what else are these unelected teams of people pondering over in order to make our lives better and poorer?
When I recently chaired a panel at the Buy Yorkshire Conference last month, I asked the audience (primarily of small business people) how they intended to vote. About 60% were for staying and the rest were split between leaving and being undecided. On day two, Nigel Farage and the local MEP were on the panel. I took the poll again at the end of the proceedings and only two people had changed their position - one each way.
Along with others I am becoming tired of the scaremongering from both sides. The Remain campaign has had an unfair advantage from the start and so it is interesting to see the polls being so close. Sadly, politicians like Farage make being part of the leave camp appear extreme and this should not be considered the case. But people who are opposed to something are much harder to shift from their position than people who are for something - so the leave vote should be solid and should build.
I believe the UK has a much stronger future outside of the EU without being held back by its bureaucratic web of rules and regulations. I for one will be voting to leave the EU on June 23rd and hope that others will follow suit.
