Project Kama Fear
Sir,
I refer to Nick Herbert MP’s scathing piece about those advocating a ‘leave’ vote in the upcoming referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU headlined ‘Brexit campaigners have more positions than the Kama Sutra‘. Far be it for the Brexit campaigners to come up with a plan should the UK vote to leave when that is the sole preserve of the Government.
In the event that the the UK votes to leave the EU Nigel Farage will have no more effect on the negotiations than he does on the day-to-day running of the country today; it will be this Government in charge and if they do not have a fully fledged plan in place then they are acting grossly irresponsibly.
I know it is likely that Project Fear will win the day and we will vote to stay in but if we don’t (a real possibility) then the Prime Minister and his Ministers must be prepared for that eventuality. Not only should the Government already have an exit plan, they should explain it as well.
Whilst, as leader of Conservatives In, Mr Herbert’s piece is indeed predictable it is the Government that should spell out their own post Brexit plans.
Yours,
Peter Drummond, West Sussex, UK
Does it really matter how many “credible” reports warn us of disaster? I have looked at the PWC report for the CBI. I concede that it is “credible” but I also note that it would not have been commissioned if its conclusions had not been agreed in advance. Further, the report is holed beneath the water line: it acknowledges itself that it has not taken into account public policy responses to what might happen post-Brexit.
Yet, even allowing for its “credibility” there are also innumerable equally “credible” economists (such as Gerald Warner of this parish) who take a different view. Who are we to believe?
We are grown up. We should look at these things with our own minds, with simple common sense and with Google. That is what I have tried to do and this is my take.
1) I see that there are about 170 countries who do not belong to the EU. Of those, I find that the advanced economies have been growing, over the last 20 years, at a slightly faster rate than those of the EU, irrespective of the Euro. I conclude that the empirical facts indicate that the EU does not, overall, confer economic advantages on its members.
2) I remember that in the 1970s having a trade agreement was significant – trade with Europe was a higher proportion of our GDP and we did not have the WTO rules. But today we do have the WTO. Membership of the EU is much less important for trade than it was.
3) Only 11% (after the Rotterdam/Antwerp effect) of GDP relates to the EU and that this is declining. I read in a report by the House of Commons Library that the most likely average trade tariff (in the unlikely event of no trade deal) would be 1%. Most UK exports have high added value, so the elasticity of demand for our exports will be low. This means that even if we didn’t have a trade deal post-Brexit (a most unlikely, but possible, outcome) we would lose only a tiny proportion of that 11% of our GDP.
5) Even if there are some economic disadvantages to Brexit , there will be some advantages. We will save £10 billion a year. Also our subscription will get bigger. It has been going up much faster than inflation over recent years and is likely to continue to do so.
6) 89% of our GDP unconnected with the EU will benefit from us being able to tailor regulation to the needs of our economy.
7) I think it highly probable that outside the EU we would have an immigration policy that will better maximise growth and minimise the burden on the NHS, schools and welfare.
8) Most of all, it seems to me that flexibility and adaptability are the keys to economic success rather than size. This is true for individuals, businesses and entire countries. And is there anyone outside a lunatic asylum who thinks that the EU is good at being flexible?
This Brexit economic debate is at best a great big red herring and at worst a ploy to fool a largely non-numerate and unthinking electorate into voting Remain. I think we should be asking: Will we have better government in or out? Will we have more freedom and democracy in or out? That could be a good debate.
Anthony Thompson, Herefordshire, UK
Mr Herbert seems pre-occupied with what the “outers” can’t do. However, he neglects to state or reflect on the fact of our loss of sovereignty, our inability to get rid of a governing body if it fails to perform. He seems also to have little faith in our ability to negotiate trade deals notwithstanding the fact, historically, we are a trading nation.
He fails to address the shambles and ill thought knee jerk reactions to “open border” migration. He seems to have little faith in the UK and her ability to make her own way in the world.
Magnus Kwaszenko, Lancashire, UK
More on the Brave New World
Madsen Pirie’s article encouraging us to enter a brave, new world outside the EU, accepts the argument that this represents a “step into the unknown”. While true, the alternative of remaining in the EU is also replete with unknowns. Unless the EU intends to stay exactly as it is – i.e. no ever-closer union, no enlargement, in fact, no new regulation – the Remain campaign’s claim that a vote to remain is a vote for the status quo is logically ridiculous.
The EU is vastly different from the EEC we joined in 1973 and will be vastly different again in another forty years.
For example, the Commission is currently working on plans to establish quotas for migrants: how many the UK would have to accept is totally unknown. How much the UK contribution to the EU budget would increase by after the next wave of eastern European accession states in 2020 is also unknown. How the Eurozone crisis will be resolved is unknown: will Greece even be an EU member in 2020?
Ironically, one of the few knowns is that the Commission will keep bringing forward plans for financial regulation specifically designed to damage the City of London’s pre-eminence as a financial centre. As L P Hartley might have said, “The past is being joined at the hip to 27 foreign countries”.
Let’s do things differently from now on.
Vernon Stradling, Hampshire, UK
The EU is undemocratic and its policymakers are unaccountable. When one mixes unaccountable power with human nature, eventually, one will get tyranny. So, think of the children… we are not experiencing widespread abuse yet (although it’s started), but as long as our rulers remain unaccountable to the public, abuse will only increase.
James Daniels, Derbyshire UK
Kim Philby
Sir,
If Alastair Benn really regards the achievements of Kim Philby as nothing more than ‘dull banality’ as he suggests in We should judge Philby as he was, a narcissist dissident – 8th April 2016 , then either his own life must be truly remarkable or he should perhaps re-examine his choice of words.
That he was a dissident is self evident, but this is hardly the term of abuse it is apparently intended to be. Philby’s closest opposite number in the history of Cold War double agents was Col. Oleg Penkovsky of the GRU. He could equally be described as a dissident, but of course his dissent was from the Soviet system and not capitalism or Western democracy.
To describe Philby’s dissatisfaction with life in 1960s Moscow as the ‘background’ to the recently unearthed recording of his Berlin speech is to skip over no less than two decades in the blink of an eye. His address to Staatsicherheitsdienst recruits was in 1981; his final defection from Beirut was 18 years earlier, in 1963.
No analysis of Philby can be complete without consideration of the impact of the class system on SIS at the time of his recruitment, and of SIS’s then lack of regard for the Security Service MI5. I am in no way whatsoever an apologist for Philby, but he picked the side he was on, and he exploited the weaknesses of the side into which he was born. In this, he was successful, and certainly neither dull nor banal.
Yours faithfully,
Tony Hetherington (MSc Terrorism Studies, Chairman, Friends of the Intelligence Corps Museum), London, UK
Defecit dictionary
In response to Great news! The UK’s running a current account defecit! – 6th April
This is all fine depending on how you define “investment”.
Gordon Brown defined it as revenue spending on the NHS which was obviously nonsense but I am not sure that Andrew’s definition is any less suspect.
Ideally investment is capital spending to produce greater productivity more income and jobs. I suspect that the sort of “investment” occurring is that having sold off all major state and British owned companies and utilities, we are now selling off the London property and farmland on which we all live.
We are selling ourselves into tenants and serfs to pay for iPhones and iPads and this is not a good thing at all.
Jonathan Munday, London, UK | @UKIPWellingboro