Why we should be proud to have voted Leave

The hopeless self serving Establishment of the 1970 s , 1990 s and 2000 s accepted mediocrity, excessive bureaucracy, endless humiliations for the UK and ever growing bills as they sheltered in the closing vice of EU power. They lied to us all, telling us we were just joining a common market, that it would boost growth and leave our sovereignty untouched. Whenever the EU inflicted more damage we were told the EU needed more power over us amidst denials that the EU had caused any harm. Many senior politicians, civil servants, judges, executives in large multinational corporations took comfort in the EU making our rules, telling us what to do and sending us bills.

Instead in the EEC/EU our growth rate halved, membership wrecked once flourishing industries, took our fish and our money, and forced thousands of new  laws upon us.

It started badly in the 1970s. Whilst much of the economic damage was done by a Labour government overspending, over borrowing and ending up with an IMF recovery plan, the 1970 s also saw mass redundancies and many factory closures. Removing all tariffs protecting UK industry in a hurry on joining accelerated closures. We lurched into  permanent heavy trade deficit in goods with the EU as they took advantage of our weakness. Car output halved, steel and shipbuilding slumped.

In the 1980 s the UK rebuilt, attracting big overseas investment in automotive and entering a telecoms and City revolution , but the EEC continued to damage agriculture through its Common Policy and its fishing quotas,whilst preparing an avalanche of new laws for the so called single market.

John Major took the UK into the deeply damaging European Exchange  Rate Mechanism against my advice. This gave us boom/ bust,leading  to the nasty recession in 1992. This predictably led to the Conservatives being thrown out of office for 13 years and badly set back the UK economy. Too many people lost their homes faced with unaffordable mortgages and too many businesses went bust.The EEC never apologised and refused to help us when the markets tore the stupid scheme apart.

The EU used the outbreak of BSE to ban UK beef exports for an over the top 10 years. They harmed dairy farmers with insufficient quota , forcing us to import milk products. We lost big market share in meat and dairy. They paid us some  of our money back to grub up our orchards to shift us over to importing French and Spanish fruit. Subsidised gas and greenhouses in the Netherlands replaced some of our market gardens.

This century the EU turned to demolishing our coal, oil and gas industries in the name of net zero. UK Ministers were willing to accept this  and imposed penal bans, rules and taxes on fossil fuels to make the UK an importer.These were great strengths of the UK economy in the fast growing 1980s.

The UK became enmeshed in thousands of new laws. Most of them were needless for trade. All you needed for a common market was the simple rule that something sold of merchandisable quality in one country could be offered for sale  in the others. (The cassis de Dijon judgement). Instead the single  market was used as an excuse for a massive EU power grab.

Voters got more and more fed up that changing governments could not change so many bad laws and taxes. We voted to get our freedom  back.That led the Establishment to seek to thwart our will. They like being locked up in the EU prison. They accepted crazily  high bills to stay in , helping burden voters with unrealistic levels of tax. We had to watch the lower taxed advanced countries of the world  growing faster and prospering more as the EU fell  further and further behind the US.

I am proud of the voters voting to leave. We were right that the EU and its single market did us harm. Tomorrow as we celebrate 10 years from the vote I will set out our gains so far. There is so much more we can now do, now we have our freedoms.