How much more damage will we allow the EU and its so called single market do to British business and our jobs and incomes?
There are several important facts about the EU’s single market that Remain do not recognise.
- Since it was completed in 1992 the UK’s trade in goods has not grown with the rest of the EU.
- Between 1951 and 1972 when the UK first joined the EU manufacturing output rose 4.4% a year. Since we joined the EEC/ EU there has been no growth in UK manufacturing.
- The trade of non EU countries with no special trade deals with the EU like India, China and the USA has grown more quickly with the EU than our trade from inside it.
- The government’s own foresight report said that “Output and productivity growth (of UK manufacturing) was reasonable 1951-73” and worse after we joined the EU.
- The main advantage of the single market, that there are common rules and specifications for all 27 other EU countries making it easier to sell into the market, applies whether the exporter to the EU is in or out of the EU itself.
- The EU never completed its single market in services. The danger is that as it does so its rules and regulations will damage the UK rather than assist us. The City is often in dispute with the EU over its proposed rules.
- The single market has been used to add on all sorts of other laws, taxes and obligations which the UK does not want and have little to do with trade.
- The Germans and others see the Euro as an integral part of the single market and are not happy about the UK being permanently out of it.
- You can trade quite happily with the single market without being in it as a member.
- The EU’s trade agreements with a range of smaller countries will automatically apply to both the UK and the rest of the EU as the original parties, if we leave.
- Much of world trade is not under any special trade arrangements.
June 15, 2016
Indeed the single market is not about free trade it is about central regulation from Brussels of everything that they can possibly regulate or tie up in red tape. This for the benefit of regulators and the large vested interests who lobby for such protection from fair competition. They are after our pensions next too (just like pension muggers Osborne and Brown).
I see the rather pathetic Osborne and Darling is now threatening us all with even more tax increases if we dare to vote for Brexit. Fortunately he will be gone in a few days. The same Mr Darling who authorised ÂŁbillions of tax payers money for the EURO bailouts, even after Brown and Labour had lost the election.
Two good articles in the Mail yesterday. Dan Hannah on all the dire EU plans put on hold until after the referendum and Richard Littlejohn on the digging up of (pension robber and no return to boom or bust) Gordon Brown to impart his absurd thoughts on the EU debate.
Odds for Brexit moving nicely towards evens now. The more desperate Cameron & Osborne get the more foolish, pathetic and wrong they sound. They simply lack any rational arguments as the public can see.
If it is right to have a point (quality only) system for non EU migration why is it not right for EU migration? Why do they want this racist discrimination between EU open door everyone good and everyone else USA, Canada, Australia, Commonwealth bad?
June 15, 2016
Doubtless they will again say we have “control” of our borders through Schengen as this means they have to flash an EU passport at the airport, before being waved in regardless.
Does Mrs May and the rest of the remainiacs really think this line fools anyone? It just makes her sound foolish, absurd and with a complete contempt for her voters.
Do they think saying “Migrants pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits” fools anyone? Of course they pay more in taxes than benefits as the government has all the cost of the bloated state to pay for too. Schools, the NHS, roads, police, defence, over seas aid and all the rest. Most people would be very happy if they paid the same in taxes as they got back in benefits (ie no tax at all).
Low paid migrants are a large net liability to the UK’s per capita wealth. This is very clear indeed from the figures. Higher skilled and paid migrants only is the way to go.
June 15, 2016
I note that Rolls Royce (Aero-engines) are again this saying morning that UK investment is at risk if we vote for Brexit, stating that the company need to be within the EU to do business (with Airbus presumably), funny how their US based competitors don’t need to be in the EU though…
June 15, 2016
As Denis Cooper succinctly pointed out last week. If you extrapolate the annual growth from before and since the single market UK output has not increased.
Trade with the wider world has increased but with the EU it has dropped.
The single market is a straw man.
June 15, 2016
The EU Commission itself admits that the Single Market has added only about 2% to the collective GDP of the EU member states, far short of the original projection of around 5%, and the UK government does not contest this estimate in its official reports.
Moreover the UK has gained less than that average of 2%, more like 1%.
Given that the long term trend growth rate of the UK economy is 2.5% a year, and it has been right back to the 1950’s long before we joined the EEC with no perceptible effects of either the Common Market or the Single Market, all the connected sacrifices of our national sovereignty and democracy over the past forty-three years have been for the sake of a pathetically small, one-off, extra gain in GDP which we would have got anyway through natural growth over less than one average year.
At worst without it we would have needed to wait an extra year for our standard of living to reach a given level, on average, we would have been at most one year behind on the chart of rising prosperity through natural growth, was it really worth undermining our parliamentary democracy for the sake of that?
June 15, 2016
“The Germans and others see the Euro as an integral part of the single market and are not happy about the UK being permanently out of it.”
What is the difference between a “special status” and an “anomalous position”?
June 15, 2016
The EU economy is falling and the Euro is a wrecked currency . Our trade with the EU reflects these conditions . Germany alone will not be able to support such a failing situation and recent opinion polls there show a marked decline in their attitude to the EU . Brexit will spark off its inevitable collapse . We must re-align all our efforts in products and services to the rest of the world .
June 15, 2016
I hear a lot about the Single Market is not complete when it comes to Services. What sort of things would our kind host like to see for him and others to both declare that:
a) It is complete
b) They are satisfied with what has been done
Thank you
Reply I want Out. The Remain side keep telling me it is not complete so ask them.