// Lord Digby Jones
grateful. Yet all this is going to be sacrificed on the altar of ideological compliance in the ridiculous belief that a set of rules created in 1957 for six countries emerging from World War, destroyed economies and Nazi oppression can be applied successfully in the globalised, brutally competitive economy of Asia's century. Free movement of labour worked fine between Italy and Germany in 1965, but between Romania and the UK in 2016? For when economies fail, when huge, but necessary cuts in public spending cause civil unrest, when the Emperor's New Clothes Party tell you that it is possible for everyone to live in harmony when some major, globally successful countries are ordered (I hear the sounds of "Europe doing to you" again) to co-exist in and pay for a Club which includes countries that think that basing their economy on exporting olives and importing BMWs will result in anything other than
bankruptcy...the evil men get to work, extremists pull the strings and those achievements are destroyed.
The case for remaining in a reformed EU is almost unanswerable. What is on offer might have slightly reformed the UK's relationship with the EU, but there is no hint, let alone substance, of any reform of the Club itself. The UK electorate is being bombarded every day by the heavy mob of Project Fear, sowing the seeds of doubt and worry as to what life will be like outside the Club. I have yet to hear anyone explain what life will be like for our grandchildren if we stay in! Tied to the globally uncompetitive, racially-divisive, getting-poorer Club of 1957, earning less, but giving everyone prizes every day, practising the "if it moves, regulate it" system of so-called governmental leadership and implementing the speedy flexibility of a glacier. And no-one in the EU will have any truck with us again if we vote to stay, in as far as seeking to reform the Club Rules in the future. "You had your chance," they'll say. "We're doing it our way now," will be the refrain. Our influence is diminished forever.
Reform? Tell a UK steelworker worried sick about redundancy caused by the dumping of Chinese steel that the EU works for him when it will take months for Brussels to bring in tariffs to stop it. Reform? When most of the population of the EU have so switched off from being "done to" by Brussels that they can't even tell you the name of their MEP! It's almost as if they no longer care; they are resigned to their fate. How damning is that!
But what if we left? Italy sells €500 million worth of shoes to the UK every year; Germany sells us €16 billion worth of cars; the majority of the trains we use every day are built in Düsseldorf. If we left the EU, there would be a Free Trade Agreement in place in the morning, for although those well-known business experts Diane Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn will tell you otherwise, the EU needs us a lot more than we need them. All we would need to do is believe in ourselves as the fifth largest economy on earth. We are not Switzerland or Norway. And as for being threatened with the, "but we would be subject to regulations that we've had no influence in drafting"...well neither have the Chinese or the Americans! And I would just point out that the UK has not managed to block a single proposal from the EU Commission passing through the EU Council despite trying 55
times...and that's when we belong! Influence? Pah!
The UK is a free-trading, open, globalised economy. Sadly, the EU is not. I want skilled immigrant workers to be employed in UK businesses
because of the contribution they can make to their own and our country's success (so we can afford the prizes the politicians want to give everyone, so we can look after our getting-older population). I do not want the decision as to who can work here to be made on where they come from rather than the skills they possess. The global success that is the UK Financial Services Sector, indeed the very status of London as current capital of the world, is based in part on quality immigration from all over the world, not just from the EU. So why should the UK Government be prevented (by sheer overall numbers) from allowing skilled immigration from America or India because they can do nothing to stop unskilled people from Slovakia or Bulgaria settling here?
I don't frankly care if some Latvian isn't going to handle £6,000 a year more or less because of some change agreed over the lobster one night in Brussels. I'm not moved one way or the other if the Sales Prevention Team have assured us we don't need to worry about the City of London being harmed by nasty Paris or Frankfurt (anyway, my money's on the girls and guys in Canary Wharf any day). For me, the debate is wider, deeper and far more long-term than that. To what sort of life are we condemning that little girl born today in Birmingham if we stay in? How are the subsidy-junkies from the EU going to ensure that a 25-year-old lad in Athens has a future by skilling him up rather than subsidising his job (if indeed he has one at all) in the olive groves? How does a Brussels marching valiantly towards 1970 give Beijing or Washington sleepless nights in the battle for global competitiveness.
I have always said I would like to remain in a reformed EU. It has the ingredients to start ahead of the game in the Big Race that is Asia's century. But I sadly have to accept that the chances of achieving far-reaching change, indeed any change, in the myopic, "The Emperor's New Clothes Club" are virtually nil. So, on balance and with something of frustrated regret, I shall be voting to leave the Club. I don't want my country dragged down with the rest. I don't want the most successful economy in Europe to be diminished by the legalised search for the lowest common denominator. I shall put my faith in the amazing people of my country to weather the initial turbulence of exit and then fly into the clear, quality air of the staggering opportunities of a globalised, not just European, 21st century. Globalisation was made for our country; now is the time to make talk a reality.
Lord Digby Jones
Digby, Lord Jones of Birmingham KB has been a cross-bench Peer since 2007. He is the only Minister of Government in the history of the UK not to belong to the Party of Government.
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