A europhile
The pro-EU lobby works on fear and dissembling, but their position is complete tosh.
At the Reuters website today is a piece by Hugo Dixon, entitled ‘Hari-Kiri’ British style. It is basically Dixon’s take on how last Thursday in Brussels doomed us to an eternity of poverty. In the entire piece there is not a single figure to back up his jet-black view of our future. But despite that, Mr Dixon – a former FT europhile whose arguments have almost all been proved wrong – tells us that
‘The biggest worry is that a vicious cycle develops — in which the euro zone squeezes the UK off the top table because of its lack of cooperation, London behaves increasingly like a spoiled brat because it is frustrated by its lack of influence, and this further antagonizes the big continental powers. Life could ultimately become so uncomfortable that Britain leaves the EU. It would then lose the automatic right of access to the world’s largest market….’
The Slog’s main raison d’etre is to deconstruct bollocks, so let’s demolish this paragraph and move on. First off, the EU is not the biggest market in the world – the US is, in that it is a genuine single market, as opposed to a fantasy collection of 27 Ruritanias all awarding themselves opt-outs on various bases. A quick visit to the Eurostats official EU site shows this….and plenty more besides. The Chinese share of world trade, for example – up from 9% to 12% since 2006 – will at this rate overtake the EU by 2023. But the EU and the US are losing share of international trade. So our entire diplomatic and trading strategy is at the moment hitched to a pair of even worse plonkers than us….losers, in fact, whose debts are horrendous, and export performances hampered by overpriced stuff much of the world no longer wants.
A raving euroloony
To give some idea of just how uncommercial and fiscally useless those trading ‘partners’ are, the US National debt is 42 times greater than the amount of gold bullion alleged to be in Fort Knox, while the EU has a running trade deficit all up of 18bn euros….and rising. Yesterday, the EU devoted an entire press release to trumpeting, ‘EU trade with Russia up 27% this year!’ Excellent – except that most of it is going in the wrong direction: the EU trade deficit with the Kremline shot up by 30 bn euros as a result. (And of course, in the light of this dismal failure, the Brussels sprouts awarded themselves a 2.7% budget increase…..forced down from 5%….by the UK).
Want to read something quite extraordinarily mad? Belgium – little white beer and choccies Belgium – represents 8.4% of EU ‘trade’….only 0.6% less than the UK, but with only 20% of our population. What, you might wonder, does all of that consist of? Keep scrolling through the numbers, and you come across all kinds of odd terminology and nomenclature – always a sure sign in official stats that the bureaucrats want to hide something.
Well here’s what they have to hide: ‘services’ account for 74.9% of Belgian GDP. Chart after chart refers to chocolate, machinery and equipment, chemicals, finished diamonds, metals, metal products, and foodstuffs. But that’s just a suitable veil: three quarters of Belgium’s output is services delivered to EU administration.
This helps explain why Belgium’s debt to gdp ratio is 98.6%. That’s rather high. This is partly because it spends a fortune on road and rail infrastructure, and there’s a simple reason for this: the Fat Cats who run the EU from Brussels need to get in and out quickly. Belgium hosts nearly all the major administrations and institutions, including the European Commission, the Council of the European Union and the extraordinary and committee sessions of the European Parliament. Belgium is the EU bureaucracy made Sovereign. Without the EU, Belgium would be, literally, nothing. It is also on the verge of complete break-up as a nation.
But these are the people without whom – the euroenthusiasts aver – Britain will go to the dogs.
A euroconomist from Common Purpose
To paraphrase Mervyn King, “If we were setting out to trade with the winners, we wouldn’t start from here”. Without the entirely protectionist CAP, French agriculture simply would not have a viable business model. Without the relatively cheap euro, Germany would be looking far sicker than it does. Most of the ClubMeds ignore a good 50% of all EU hygiene regulations, but the UK, Holland, Germany and Scanda countries obey them to the letter. This isn’t a ‘free’ market – it’s a pointless hotch-potch of grubby deals and compromises….in which a minority plays by the rules, and the rest cheat.
Hugo Dixon ends his piece with this ex cathedra, patronising piece of nonsense: ‘Salvaging the situation will be tricky. But Britain doesn’t have an interest in being at loggerheads with the rest of Europe or vice versa — especially when the region’s worst financial crisis in a lifetime is still raging.’ The assumption of his article from start to finish is that the UK would be in the mire without the EU. This same assumption infects all of Camerlot, the LibDems, most of Labour, and about 60% of the Conservative Party. But it simply is not borne out by the data.
The EU needs us far more than we need them. Not just because we know more about what we’re doing and loathe the bloated, corrupt bureacracy that sits in Brussels: but rather because 12% of our imports are from the EU. The EU exports £150bn of goods to the UK – a colossal amount for them to put at risk.
Britain, on the other hand, has by far the lowest dependence upon the EU among the major players. Only Greece does a smaller share of trade with the Union than we do. British trade with the EU stands at 51% of our total (on which we make a thumping loss). Germany does 65% and France 68% (both at a whopping profit). The Belgian figure – surprise surprise – is 81%. All those services, do you see. All that paper. All those straightened sausages and ideas for odour-free garlic.
Last year around this time, a senior Cabinet Minister opined to me that “Britain’s future is inextricably linked to our partners in the EU”. I asked him why he thought that, and he smiled the smile of those dealing with the village idiot.
It is all bunkum. Here’s another corker:
“Politically the UK has lost power and credibility, and its isolation weakens its future position,” Joan Costa i Font, professor of political economy at the London School of Economics said yesterday. “There will be a lasting effect, as effectively the EU will operate from now on as an EU of 26 plus the UK.”
Oh blimey, the LSE….it must be true then. Well Joan, wrong: the five inbetween the 21 and the UK are reviewing their position. The chances of the Finns or Swedes buying into the Merkozy Plan are zero. The Dutch will also, I suspect, balk at some of the more extreme ideas in Merkel’s head. The chances of Germans outside the CDU going along with it are even lower. The Opposition to Sarkozy in France is also committed to renegotiating the Plan. (See yesterday’s Slogpost)
A europhiliac
Yesterday, the Times carried a poll by Populus, in which 58% of UK respondents backed Cameron’s go-it-alone decision. Yet again here, we have a Government elite out of step with what its citizens think. The europhile minority continues to spray fear and drivel in the path of anyone in possession of entirely sound commercial reasons why we should be out of the European Union as soon as possible. The press media continue on the whole to be wishy-washy anti or enthusiasically pro an EU melting like a cheap Woolworths candle before our eyes. The BBC’s economics team doesn’t have a eurosceptic in it anywhere. The FCO raises eyebrows in horror at the very suggestion that the UK might plough new green fields on its own.
Why do they do this? Simply because they are risk-averse, spineless and herd-driven people who don’t want any trouble. They are the same mindsets that appeased Hitler, wanted detente with the USSR, won’t stand up for human rights in China, get every foreign policy wrong, ignored the facts about immigration and banking dominance, believe in the Special Relationship, invent pc gobbledegook, ignore science on everything from feminism to families, and now whine on about the UK being doomed because it dared to tell a French clown and an Osti physicist that their ideas for a financial tax were insane and unfair.
This site always, I’m afraid, finds itself forced to arrive at the same depressing conclusion: until we rid this country of the privileged minorities in Whitehall, Westminster, rabid religions, gender lunatics, greedy banks, multinational thicknecks, and depraved tabloidistas, we will never get anywhere. But without them, we can get back to ideas, creativity, level playing fields, self-confidence and guts.
Who, one continues to wonder – or what – is going to either solve this problem…..or, worse still by far, exploit it?
David Cameron’s eurocratic nightmare
The Slog 