This week, the Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron announced that his party would hold a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union “within the first half” of the next Parliament, should they win the 2015 election. In what was a risky move, Ed Miliband ruled out the prospect of One Nation Labour supporting Cameron’s new stance. Fortunately for us, the public do not seem to have held this against him, granting Miliband an even higher poll lead after the speech.
The so-called “eurosceptics”, more accurately described as europhobics on the Tory backbenches are guilty of extreme windbaggery about the European Union. Ultimately, the effects that its institutions have on our country are a mixed bag; the EU is neither the mind-bogglingly expensive red-tape dispenser that the Daily Mail imagines nor the basis of a progressive, affluent super-state as the europhiles would have us believe. Here are the key points that I would make:
- British funding for its institutions equates to a mere 2.5% of public spending
- Most proposed green regulations get watered down until they are nearly useless.
- Most of its components are not sufficiently accountable.
- It has been over a decade since auditors have approved its budgets- there is certainly corruption.
- Britain can enjoy free trade from outside the EU via the European Economic Area.
So yes, I would lean towards supporting a vote for withdrawal from the European Union. But there’s little need to bang on about it: it’s a moderate irritant, not a terrible problem. The fact that our political elite has spent so long denying the British public a chance to hold the EU to account is what has been encouraging the supposed “little Englander” mentality. Polling data shows that, whilst support for a referendum is high, support for withdrawal has been falling dramatically now that it has become a real prospect… wait a second, it hasn’t. It would need the Conservatives to win in 2015, and that looks blissfully unlikely. I would ask Labour to match Cameron’s pledge, though: it is the right thing to do and it will shut the likes of Peter Bone up for a good 20 years or so/
