Author: johnredwood

The text of the Council meeting is wordy. The preambles make clear that the agreement is entirely within current EU treaties and law. It says it is seeking to clarify, not change. Language affirming a multi currency union did not survive the Council. Instead the UK had to settle for a recital of the opt outs that the UK and Denmark enjoy and the conclusion that all the time those derogations remain “not all member states have the euro as their currency”.

The preamble goes on to recite UK opt outs from the common borders policy, and some criminal justice measures. Four pages remind us of the current legal base and the areas where the UK already has opt outs. Then we get into the Decision of this latest Council. This begins with a balanced statement for the UK vis a vis the Euro:

“(UK) will not create obstacles to but facilitate such further deepening (economic and monetary union) while this process will, conversely, respect the rights and competences of non participating member states”

The more detailed explanation of banking rules is also similarly balanced. Whilst member states not in the Euro are accorded some freedom to regulate their own markets there is also a statement that “this is without prejudice to the development of a single rule book and to Union mechanisms of macro prudential oversight for the prevention and mitigation of systemic financial risks in the Union and to the existing powers of the Union to take action that is necessary to respond to threats to financial stability.” The current position sees an increasing amount of common EU regulation and rule making for all financial institutions and markets within the wider EU, where the votes and needs of Euro members can hold sway.

The addition of the right for the UK to request a rethink of an unhelpful rule does not convey any veto or prevent the EU Council simply affirming their intention to press on with such a measure.

The competitiveness section is short and is a repeat of existing Union policies. Pledges to better regulation and some repeals are imprecise and similar to past statements.

The section on sovereignty does say “ever closer union” will not apply to the UK. It also goes on to state ” These references do not alter the limits of Union competence governed by the principle of conferral, or the use of Union competence governed by the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality”. In other words no powers are transferred back, and the general powers of the current treaties remain in place.

The addition of the right of 55% of member states Parliaments to request a rethink on a new law is a very weak power. It would still be easier to seek to block a new law by getting enough support around the Council table in the normal way. None of this relates to current laws or the occupied field of activities which can be extended by secondary legislation and ECJ decisions.

The section on social benefits and free movement is also weak. The document reminds us that ” Free movement of EU citizens under Article 21 of the TFEU is to be exercised subject to the limitations and conditions laid down in the Treaties and the measures adopted to give them effect.” In other words, no change.

The issue of whether all this is legally binding is not important, as so little new has been granted. Most of the text is a restatement of existing powers and requirements under the current treaties.

The EU promises secondary legislation to allow Child Benefits to non resident children to be paid at a rate related to the conditions in the child’s home state. This falls well short of the UK request to be exempt from paying child benefit to non resident children. The EU also grants an emergency brake provision to allow a member state to limit in work benefits for EU migrant workers , tapering them in over a four year period. Again this falls well short of the UK request for no benefits to be payable for the first four years.

The EU also promises eventual treaty change on ever closer union, but this will not result in powers returning to the UK.

We have been reading reports for a week or more over whether Michael Gove and Boris Johnson will join the Leave campaign. It has clearly worried the Remain campaign a lot, and they seem to have been briefing about their negotiations with the two men. Given their concern, to lose one was careless, but to lose two is bad news indeed for them.

Michael Gove followed up his decision with a magnificent statement setting out why many of us think the only course of action for the UK must be to leave the EU. He explained why our democracy matters, and why it is incompatible with the current commitments and legal entanglements of the EU treaties. We can now look forward to Boris’s journalistic abilities also helping our just cause.

The Remain campaign is much keener on arguments by endorsements, because their campaign is so thin on any good reasons for the course of action they are taking. In contrast the Leave campaign has a wealth of material of how things will be better when we are out, and much to explain to voters about how we are currently badly governed from Brussels.

Proceeding mainly by endorsement has been the way the pro EU faction has done so much damage to our country and our economy in the past. It was weight of business and political opinion that forced us into the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. That led to massive job losses, factory closures and a substantial recession. It damaged the very profits, dividends and even jobs of those who recommended it.

There was also a big business led lobby to get the UK to join the Euro. This time those of us who fought it succeeded, thanks to the commonsense of the British people. There was no way Labour could win a referendum to abolish the pound, so we managed to keep our currency despite the weight of so called expert opinion in favour.

So whilst it is good news that Michael and Boris have joined us, and their voices are very welcome, it is even better news that we have the best arguments on our side. Experience shows that so called informed opinion which favours the UK staying in the EU has so far got it very wrong. That is why many voters will now ignore the endorsements that will scurry out in the next few weeks, and will instead come to their own conclusion based on the arguments. The arguments point as Michael and Boris have realised in favour of us leaving.

THE UK MUST TAKE BACK CONTROL OF OUR MONEY AND OUR BORDERS AND MUCH ELSE.

Outside the EU the UK will be able to draw up free trade agreements with the rest of the world.
Our trade with the EU is not at risk, as they sell us more than we sell them and they do not want to impose new tariffs or barriers.

Outside the EU the UK will have £10 billion more to spend or to offer in tax cuts, the money we currently have to send to Brussels and do not get back.That’s £300 a family every year.

Outside the EU we could have cheaper and more reliable energy.

Freed of EU control we save our fish and have farming and environment policies suited to the UK landscape and needs. We will carry on paying all current EU subsidies out of the money we get back from the EU.

Outside the EU the UK will regain seats on international bodies which the EU threw us off, and will have her own voice with more influence as a result.

Leaving the EU means we can take back control of our borders and decide who to invite in.

The UK will be more secure outside the EU as we can have our own foreign policy, cease to rely on EU common policies, and control admission to our country.

Above all the UK will be a democracy again. Public opinion and elections will be able to change policies and governments instead of having to accept many laws and spending requirements because the EU demands.

The risky option is to stay in. The rest of the EU is on a wild ride to political union. If we stay we will continue to lose control over more of the things that matter to us.

Bernard Jenkin’s question resonates throughout these renegotiations.

The Prime Minister asked for too little.

The first draft offered him considerably less than he asked for.

In the end he got even less.

The good news is the whole process must by now have driven home some basic truths to all UK voters.

The UK is not in charge of its own borders, welfare system or even its economy and banking system.

We need to get the permission of 27 other countries to make modest changes.

They deny us permission for the full change we wish to make.

The whole process gums up the poor working of the EU and dominates a summit when other issues matter.

The UK wants a very different EU from the majority.

So isn’t the good European thing to do to leave?

We and they need strong relationships between the UK and the EU based on trade, mutual co-operation and friendship.

The sooner we do that the better, for their sakes as well as ours.

Their wild ride to political union is not what we want to go on. We don’t need an emergency brake. We need to get out of the vehicle.

Amidst all the talk about our trade with the EU – which is not at risk on exit – the Stay in side always ignores the most important fact. The UK imports far more than it exports to the rest of the EU.

It’s not as if we are uncompetitive generally, because we usually have a surplus with the rest of the world, despite buying a lot from China. There is something about the way the EU interferes with our markets and imposes on us sector policies which means we end up importing too much.

Perhaps the worst case is fishing. The UK should be self sufficient in fish. The EU’s common fishery policy has instead allowed many industrial trawlers to come into our fishing grounds from elsewhere, taking large catches. In response to the damage they do to the fish stocks, the EU then imposes severe quotas on UK fishing vessels. Contrast the port of Lowestoft today with the bustling fishing port of 1970 before we joined the EEC. Most of the fishing vessels have gone. The UK ends up having to import far too much fish because our own fishing grounds have been both damaged and controlled.

Milk and dairy products is another area where our import bill has been increased partly by the EU regulation of our own dairy sector. The imposition of milk quotas for many years left us short of capacity to fill our own demand for milk and milk based products. UK farmers were told they could not increase their herds or augment their production. More recently a general surplus of milk has caused other problems from the EU milk price collapse. EU mismanagement of its wider milk market has been difficult for farmers.

In total we are heavy food importers. It makes sense for us to buy in Mediterranean and tropical fruits and other fresh produce out of our season. The UK though has much good soil and a temperate climate making it suitable for food production, where we should be able to offset the cost of imports with our own exports. The CAP has got in the way of us doing that on a big enough scale. It has also imposed duties on cheaper produce from non EU countries which we cannot grow for ourselves.

Energy is a major area of growing imports. As with agriculture, this is bizarre. The UK is an island of coal set in a sea of oil and gas. We were pioneers of civil nuclear power. Today we are discovering more oil and gas onshore, and there are apparently abundant coal reserves offshore which new technologies could convert into gas or energy sub sea. Instead of doing this, we are being made more reliant on the EU. The UK is putting in more interconnectors to buy EU electricity instead of generating enough for ourselves. We are dependent on large quantities of imported gas, some of which comes from a continent vulnerable owing to its dependence on Russian gas.

It looks as if the EU is determined to lock us into their own rather insecure energy policy. They have required us to become more dependent on wind energy – something all too many UK politicians also supported – which means ending up dependent on imports for back up when the wind does not blow. We should instead have a UK based policy using our natural advantages of access to plentiful energy resources including hydro and tidal.

We also manage to end up importing a large amount of timber from countries with slower growing conditions than ourselves. The Forestry Commission fail to be ambitious enough in meeting our timber needs.

The Uk needs a programme to reduce import dependence generally. Being in the EU makes this so much more difficult. Outside the EU we could reduce our import dependence in fish, food, timber and energy more easily.

One of the reasons the EU cannot be democratic is the inability to change its laws and policies following a General election in any particular member state. Mr Cameron has on this occasion tried to deal with some of this by having a one off renegotiation for us. The EU is very keen this should not become a routine for every country following a change of government, as the EU would do little else. The EU is a strong bureaucracy advancing by making ever more laws and common policies which cannot be changed or can only be changed after great efforts with a majority of member states wishing to do so.

UK voters expect a new government to be able to change any laws and policies of the old government that the voters by majority no longer like or are not working. The UK Parliament could do so, until the weight of Treaty commitments and EU laws became such that a newly elected government found it was unable to make the changes people or the government itself wished.

Mr Cameron won the election with three important popular pledges that are especially relevant vis a vis the EU. He promise to make a major reduction in inward migration to the UK, but has come up against free movement of people and the overriding rules of the EU. He promised to cut welfare benefits, including removing all benefits from recently arrived migrants for their first four years so they pay some tax before gaining entitlement, and promised to remove Child Benefit payments from children of migrants not living in the UK with their parent(s). It turned out both these promises are illegal under the UK’s binding treaty commitments in the EU and under EU law. So Mr Cameron rightly saw he had to try to persuade the other member states to let the UK government regain rights to do these things, or had to change the common policy to make them legal.

We know that it has proved impossible to stand by all three of these important Manifesto commitments. The EU will not budge on freedom of movement at all, so the Uk is likely to continue to experience more net inward migrants from the rest of the EU than Mr Cameron’s world total for net migration. Nor will the EU give the UK back a single power from the Treaties. It has agreed to very modest changes on benefits on a temporary basis, but these fall far short of the policies the Uk government wishes to follow. UK taxpayers will still have to pay some Child Benefit to children not living in the country, will still have to pay benefits to recent migrants and will still have to accept unlimited numbers of migrants under the freedom of movement rules.

There is an even bigger way in which the deal falls short of what is needed. The Conservative party in opposition spoke strongly against the Nice, Amsterdam and Lisbon treaties. These treaties surrendered the veto over more than 100 areas of policy., That means in 100 important areas of government spending, policy and lawmaking the Uk can no longer do as it wishes, but has to do what the majority of member states wants. Many Conservatives who will vote to leave wanted us to get back those lost powers. Without them there are huge areas of life where we no longer have a democracy in the UK capable of making the decisions and fixing the problems.

All this week we will hear of last minute pressures to worsen the deal Mr Cameron has negotiated. We read that the French want to water down the already weak statements on how the UK avoids being dragged into comprehensive Eurozone regulation and taxation. We hear that some Eastern European countries are still not content with modest changes to the UK’ s welfare payments system.

Some cynical Eurosceptics think this all a choreographed dispute to make it look as if the UK has won something worth having. Other observers think the push back from some countries is genuine,as the deal was not cleared fully with all member states when the Commission and Council President put together the package. I am inclined to believe the latter. If all this is stage managed, then it serves to help the Leave campaign more than the Stay in group. For what the protracted and difficult negotiation has shown many British voters is just how little power the UK has over basics like welfare and business, and how we have to beg and petition to get modest change to our position which we ought to be able to do for ourselves. If someone did think creating a sense of difficulty would make people value the deal more, they forgot that it might merely show people who had not though much about the EU just how much power of self government has already gone.

The wish to water down some of the original proposals is not good news. Without Treaty change none of it is binding legally anyway, but if you are seeking a political agreement and strong statement instead of legal guarantees it is important to have clear and firm ones which will take a bit more unpicking. The UK wants to be part of the so called single market, but it does not want the Euro area to be able to override all City regulation, impose transaction taxes and change the architecture of financial markets against London’s interests. France seem very reluctant to offer any guarantees, and is one of the main advocates of much more financial service and banking integration. It does not augur well for life outside the Euro but still inside the EU. France makes clear the EU is not a multi currency Union, but a union based around the Euro with just two members allowed legal opt outs. That’s a long way from the multi currency union of the UK’s imagining.

Nor are the benefit rows insignificant. Lower income member states do not want to see the UK paying lower Child Benefit than our domestic rates to children not resident in the UK, yet the UK’s starting position long since surrendered was we should not have to pay any child benefit to the child of an EU migrant to the UK where the child has not come with the parents. The UK has also been forced to back off from saying no EU economic migrant will receive any benefit for the first four years of residence, to accepting a four year phase in of all benefits. Anyway a new migrant has every right to school places for children and free NHS treatment from the day they arrive.

The deal Mr Cameron was offered fell well short of what he asked for, which fell well short of the good aims of the Bloomsberg speech. The further rows just serve to tell all UK voters interested that we do not run our own affairs, and even under pressure of a referendum our partners do not want to offer us what we want.