Spot on.

What many calling for a referendum don’t get is that, thus far, the electorate has heard *opinions* (rather than straight reporting) from only the antis. As I pointed out yesterday:

http://zelo.tv/pqKpIE

a campaign would introduce information from both pro and anti viewpoints. And those opposed give the impression that they would rather only their own point of view were presented. Bit of a giveaway.

OK, so what you are saying, with reference to your own figures, is that 67% of people would vote to leave the EU entirely or leave to joing a free trade area like EFTA.

Seems pretty overwhelming to me.

Funny how the right wing are only concerned about losing national sovereignty to Europe, but have absolutely no problem giving our rights away to Washington. As these moronic brownsirts froth at the mouth at Europe they are getting ready to vote on Ken Clarkes surrender to the CiA bill which will allow the govt to hold more secret trials.

I seem to remember Clarke telling us during Blairs reign that we should stand up to thr Americans more. That was obviously all for show because he caved like a pack of cards on demands to give away more freedoms.We become more like the terrorists every day.

@2 – EFTA membership is LESS democratically free than the current situation. Again, about £2 billion a year to be a member, NO say in how the rules are made (count on a Tobin Tax) and we’d have to give up some things like the EU Working Time Directive opt-out!

The problem is that a referendum campaign would not have many facts involved. Like the “no” campaign in the AV referendum, major backers would be anonymous and there would be a constant well-funded barrage of lies to overwhelm the facts. Indeed, I can absolutely see US contributors like the Koch Brothers giving, to weaken the UK’s position.

And as I’ve said elsewhere, with the “right” question in a poll (as opposed to a study, where there was control for bias and questions carefully crafted to be neutral) I could show a “consensus” for slapping gingers.

(I don’t support slapping anyone, for reference, outside computer games)

I want Europe to be both more integrated and less integrated. Where does that put me?

I think that as the poll suggests only 13% of the population feel we have the right balance with the eu suggests we do need a referendum on the issue, however as to whether now is the right time for one I am not sure but you should never stifle debate as the 3 main parties are doing now. Seems to me like the European leaders are completely inept on averting this crises anyway so a referendum might not be needed in a years time, I cannot see the eu surviving the collapse of the euro if it comes.

@Sally it was opinions like yours which lost the vote for av. I suggest if there is a referendum on the eu you keep your bigoted, self-righteous elitist views to yourself as they do more harm than good.

@6 – No, the funding – the SECRET funding – behind the No campaign’s media blitz, which pushed a good number of outright lies which lost it. And how DARE someone who disagrees with you give their view. What does Sally think this is, a democracy or something?

Nuts to your view. You keep on talking down the EU for your own reasons, never mind the damage which you’re courting to the UK. It’s very much the politics of arrogance and of short sightedness.

Leo Barasi: “Given various options for different kinds of membership, the split works as roughly (depending on the question wording) 3 in 10 wanting to leave, 4 in 10 wanting a less integrated EU, and 2 in 10 wanting the status quo or more integration.”

Maybe so, but the fact is the most popular option – renegotiating for a more UK-favourable settlement, also known as “having our cake and eating it” – is not really on the table. The other European countries have absolutely no incentive to agree. In practice, it would mean leaving (or back to the status quo, after a series of embarrassing fruitless negotiations, something which would surely go down like a lead balloon with voters).

In addition, I’d be incredibly surprised if public opinion shifted in favour of staying in the EU as a result of a referendum campaign; the press are overwhelmingly anti-EU. That’s also where the money is. There is lots of money in abolishing EU directives regarding consumer protection, worker protection, human rights – employees and customers without rights are bound to be much more profitable. I’m not so naive as to imagine the fury about human rights (brought to us by the same people who hacked Milly Dowler’s phone) stems from genuine concern about the various ridiculous bogeyman stories concerning human rights / health & safety in the press.

Having said that, personally I wouldn’t see leaving the EU as entirely negative: it’s very undemocratic, and it increasingly promotes/enforces neo-liberal economic policies on member states. It looks likely to proceed further in that direction, with increasing talk of enforcing austerity (and more privatisation, of course) on recalcitrant members. I’d not pin any great hopes in that direction on leaving the EU under Tory Eurosceptics though – putting free market ideology above national democracy is about the only aspect of the EU they like, and as Leon says in the comments, they’d probably find some even less democratic way of keeping it…

4 – “EFTA membership is LESS democratically free than the current situation. Again, about £2 billion a year to be a member, NO say in how the rules are made (count on a Tobin Tax) and we’d have to give up some things like the EU Working Time Directive opt-out!”

Where’s the source for this last point? Incidentally while I agree that leaving the EU would have the cost you mention re not having a say in the rules, we would at least be free of the CAP, CFP, the size of contributions we make now and the compulsion to level a tariff against various non-EU countries. It would be useful if someone could provide some unbiased figures re costs and benefits. There’s also no reason why we wouldn’t be able to come to the sort of free trade agreement that, say, Mexico and South Korea have, unless you can think of one?

7 – Given that Sally is a deliberately inflammatory serial troll who is a parody of Dave Spart on crack (her frequent use of the word “brownshirt” is a classic) I would be wary about defending her. I’ve had her down as a Tory supporter since 2009.

“the compulsion to level a tariff against various non-EU countries”

Nope, that’s in the package as well. You really do need to read up on what EFTA membership means! And my source? Er, the EFTA countries have had to implement the WTD…

And no, I don’t believe for a moment that the EU would go for a loose agreement, it’s not in their interests. Neither could the UK afford it…we’d NEED to join the EFTA or go down, hard. There’s NO ability to withstand a shock to the current economy, the EU could wait a year and then give us even worse terms…

Even if we did, let’s see;

“The EU-Mexico FTA is broad and comprehensive and covers trade in goods and services and has specific chapters on access to public procurement markets, competition, intellectual property rights and investment.”

So it’s not limited to trade, and MANY products still have substantial tariffs attached! For only a third of products are there no tarrifs, and the UK’s cross-carry trade would be decimated.

But wait, SK? Er…

“FwA provides a basis for strengthened cooperation, including on major political and global issues (human rights, non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, counter-terrorism, climate change, energy security, etc.”

The EU extends political deals as much as it does trade ones, and you’d have us as outsiders to that network!

@7 I think you missed my point, I was saying it’s wrong to call someone a moron or a nazi just because they have a different opinion to yours. In the case of av and here with the eu there are valid cases both for and against. The point is to educate and persuade not insult, but yeh just call me anti democratic

A referendum campaign would tell people a lot about the EU that they don’t already know

A fact unlikely to be helpful to Europhiles. Most people have no idea of the extent to which their votes are mere charade and the naked desire to avoid democratic process is becoming positively sinister .Look at the transparently fraudulent manifesto commitment by the Lib Dems to an In /Out vote. It evaporated when that vote became a possibility. We have only just experienced an orgy of mendacity on the subject of Lisbon and since then powers have continued to flow out of our hands.
The argument put forward by Leon is essentially that the elites of Europe will launch a protectionist assault on our exports if we do not submit to Franco German rule. Makes you wonder why were ever bothered defending ourselves from Phillips of Spain and his heirs
Personally I doubt the German will refuse to sell us their BMWs but if 80% of our trade is internal, which it is there would be enormous advantaged is deregulation for most of our economy whilst we weaned ourselves off German Cars Washing Machines, big ticket electrical goods engineering, Italian ice cream ,French Wine and the rest..none of which will happen.

Many would appreciate controlling our own borders and lives. I would .

As for the supposed bias of the media don`t get me started . The BBC which is , above all things a good European swamps the rest of News and its bias over the years is well documented
Remember , all these terrible things were going to happen to us if we didn’t join the Euro-zone for which the same collection of of egg on face myth sellers had the uncontrollable hots .

As someone once inolved in polling; you can get whatever answer your client wants.
Ask the ‘right question’, choose where, when and to whom you ask it.
The ‘anti’s’ tell their lies, the pro’s theirs’ – the public, unable to differentiate just get angrier with the seeming incompetence, corruption, authoritarianism and lack of democracy exhibited by those politicians in Europe and Westminster.
People want real change and they just get talk.

But our little brownshirt troll does not answer my point. Why is it that sovereignty only applies to Europe? Yet when it comes to America they are quite happy to give away the whole shooting match. I think some of the moronic brownshirts would happily become the 51st state.

Perhaps we should ask Fox,and his idiotic Atlantic bridge claptrap charity. It should be renamed ‘let’s give our sovereignty to Washington’ charity.

@ 5 Phil Hunt,

“I want Europe to be both more integrated and less integrated. Where does that put me?”

A friend to everyone – or an enemy!

The BBc bias is not well documented. Unless you count the various pro tory chip papers. But nobody with a brain takes lectures about bias from the Mail or the torygrpah seriously.

@12 – Well of course not. Millions, probably tens of millions would be ploughed into campaigns of lies by interests, many Foreign, about the EU.

Your kind of conspiracy theory is rather typical. You are xenophobic and don’t have the least idea what halting trade, or even a major disruption to it would do to this country’s extremely fragile economy!

Your spite would ruin this country.

@11 – If they are, I’ll call them that. Timidity and fright have allowed the far right to define much of the debate, to everyone sane’s longer term detriment!

Don’t you just love it when wingnuts do conspiracy theory?

Cos most of the time they like to lecture liberals about how there is no such thing as conspiracy theory, just cock ups. Their hypocrisy drips off them.

I think that there is a great danger that liberals and lefties only strengthen the xenophobic right when they go into a hissy fit every time the subject of the UK membership of the EU is mentioned. This EU referendum is going to happen eventually. When you understand and accept that reality then thinking about the subject should be more rational. All you are succeeding in doing is to allow the narrative that the political class are conspiring against the public to become the dominant meme. Pretty much because it is true.

The closer integration of the EU over multiple decades and the fact of eurozone were children of the contemporary phase of globalisation. This might surprise you but the contemporary globalisation has reached its high point and is in decline. Hence, why the very architecture of the EU and EZ is under threat. They were built for a world that no longer exists. The world is moving in a more protectionist direction and debates about how the UK relates to that changed world and interacts with its European neighbours are entirely appropriate. Just screaming at each other with scaremongering is not, as the Americans say going to get the job done.

Leon fears the loss of foreign direct investment if the UK left the EU. Probably true. However, it is then bizarre to argue that outside business interests would seek to influence the UK referendum to leave. All the major international business interests if they were seeking to influence the UK vote would be on the side of a yes to EU membership vote. The CBI and Institute of Directors and nearly all the large private sector employers would be on the side of the yes vote. The eurosceptic press would campaign on the no side. So what. Do you really have such a poor opinion of your fellow citizens to believe that they are such mindless drones who must get up everyday to read the press to tell them what to think? Only a minority even read the bloody rags nowadays.

Whether we like it or not the whole structure of the UK state will be changing over the next decade. Scotland will have an independence referendum and the minimum that will come from that is devolution max. Therefore, change in the UK state is inevitable. Within that context of change denying people a say in the UK’s most important outside relationship will become increasingly untenable.

Try this news report in the Guardian of “frank” exchanges between Sarkozy and Cameron at the EU summit in Brussels:

Nicolas Sarkozy tells David Cameron: shut up over the euro
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/oct/23/cameron-sarkozy-euro-debt-crisis?newsfeed=true

On this, I’m entirely with Cameron. The French are playing this to protect their own national interests regardless of the consequences for other EU member states, including the other 16 EU states in the Eurozone.

According to the report on the summit in the Telegraph: “a new bombshell hit as a joint report by the EU and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned that, without a default, the Greek debt crisis alone could swallow the eurozone’s entire €440 billion bailout fund – leaving nothing to spare to help the affected banks of Italy, Spain or France. ”

The trouble for France is that its banks would be especially hard hit by a Greek default which could involve banks holding Greek sovereign debt taking “haircuts” of 50% or even more – which gives us further insights into the mentality of banks which got themselves into this situation as well as the credibility of the credit rating agencies.

It’s all very well to keep blaming the Greeks for bad fiscal housekeeping but the French and German governments have also been culpable at times of breaching the Growth and Stability Pact of 1997 – for details, try the entry in Wikipedia. The clear implication is that the Pact wasn’t well thought through – but then much else about European Monetary Union wasn’t either. The fact is that, historically as well as theoretically, monetary unions don’t survive without associated fiscal unions.

Christine Lagarde the IMF chief, who was the previous French finance minister, has been refreshingly blunt and multilateral.

Holding a referendum before all this mess is cleared up would be hugely damaging to increasingly fragile business confidence. Consider the effects on investment decisions by SMEs dependent on sales to EU markets. And upon banks assessing the risks of lending to such SMEs.

But this is Not a Greek debt crises. This is a banking crises for the banks that lent Greece the money. The global elites think that ordinary people should suffer rather than themselves.

That is why our millionaire chancellor is so supportive of a bail out. Not for the Greek people, but his mates in thebanks.

@21: “That is why our millionaire chancellor is so supportive of a bail out. Not for the Greek people, but his mates in thebanks.”

All resolution options in the present crisis entail unwelcome outcomes.

If Greece defaults on its outstanding sovereign debt, the ensuing possible collapse of banking systems in EU countries which have taken on relatively large portfolios of Greek debt will impact back on the UK’s export markets in the Eurozone – which is the destination for 40% of Britain’s exports.. This is why the UK has been pressing for a Eurozone Stability Fund sufficiently large to be able to prop up those vulnerable banks.

Recap: by Osborne’s plan for the British economy, we are depending on the demand from additional net exports to make up for the cuts in public spending. If the additional net exports don’t materialise, what then?

But our chancellorhas nailed his shirt to the mast. He is shrinking his way to growth. He does not care how much pain he dishes out to the poor,but his wealthy millionaire mates must not suffer.

Sally; Sadly it’s cheaper to bail em out, if the UK had to absorb the shock to the banking system it’d be far more expensive. Because of the Tory mismanagement which has made the UK’s economy so fragile.

@19 – “The world is moving in a more protectionist direction”

That’s the narrative of your xenophobes. Outside China, which is setting itself up for a massive fall, there’s no convincing evidence I’ve seen of this.

“However, it is then bizarre to argue that outside business interests would seek to influence the UK referendum to leave. ”

Why? Because you know full-well it’d happen? There are interests outside the UK, many of which would be happy to tip the UK over for their short-term economic interests. Not governments, corporations.

The wholesale buying of a result in the AV campaign shows what happens – you get repeated lies across the media, and those lies BECOME the narrative. It’s not about what I “think”, it’s about what we have seen happen, and recently!

You hate the UK, fine, your choice. But not all of us are willing to write this country off without a try. The SNP did well in good part because they’re moderately left-wing, and Scotland’s voters have always trended further left than the UK’s…Labour are not credibly to the left, and the LibDems burnt their bridges.

If Scotland leaves, it’s because your Tories will have pissed them off enough – deliberately – to push them into doing so; for reasons of gerrymandering!

And while you recognise the damage it would do you’re still arguing FOR the referendum, FOR uncertainty. That say so much about you.

Even better, that would be the Sarkozy who would need to approve of any UK EFTA bid!

@23: “But our chancellor has nailed his shirt to the mast. He is shrinking his way to growth. He does not care how much pain he dishes out to the poor,but his wealthy millionaire mates must not suffer.”

That’s closer to the realities of Britain’s current predicament and the motivation for concerns over the Eurozone crisis.

I’m not claiming to be some economics genius in opposing Britain joining the Euro back in the late 1990s. My scepticism about European Monetary Union (EMU) came from reading the late Rudi Dornbusch’s paper on Euro Fantasies in the American periodical: Foreign Affairs for September 1996 – it’s accessible online but there is a high pay barrier: those interested are probably better off reading the sections on the Euro in revised editions of his popular text on Macroeoconomics (McGraw-Hill).

With that and other analytical papers with warnings from Paul Krugman and Martin Feldstein, it became clear that the EMU project was ill-conceived. Btw Rudi Dornbusch was born a German national who taught international economics at the MIT. He was Paul Krugman’s supervisor for the latter’s PhD thesis. Powerful criticism of the project also came from Walter Eltis, who was Michael Heseltine’s personal economic adviser in the DTI – see his book: Britain , Europe and EMU (2000).

The EMU project became even more doom laden at its launch in December 1999 when EMU membership was extended to countries which failed the eligibility criteria set out in the Maastricht Treaty of 1993 – strictly, only Luxembourg passed the eligibility criteria but the project was driven on by political imperatives and popular enthusiasm at the time for European integration as a panacea.

IMO we need a wall of shame to name those leading politicians and senior civil service advisers in Britain who pressed for Britain to sign up to EMU. Tony Blair, Michael Heseltine, Kenneth Clarke, Christopher Huhne, Charles Kennedy and Peter Mandleson were all lined up.

The best-selling, widely recommended commentary on the Euro is: David Marsh: The Euro (Yale UP 2009)

Leon, it is always courteous when you do not understand the point that someone is making to give them the best possible interpretation, not the worst.

Let me get this straight. Are you saying that foreign corporate interests would seek to encourage the UK to leave the EU deliberately to harm the UK? I can’t think of a foreign corporate with interests in the UK that does not want them to stay in the EU. Most of them wanted the UK to join the eurozone.

” The SNP did well in good part because they’re moderately left-wing, and Scotland’s voters have always trended further left than the UK’s…Labour are not credibly to the left, and the LibDems burnt their bridges. ”

They have their left-wing element. However, they seem to me to be quite a broad church who draw significant support from the business community. When I was growing up they were known as the Tartan Tories. John McTernan who is a Labour party apparatchik says they still are Tartan Tories. For example, before the last Scottish Parliament election the Tories promised to freeze council tax for two years. The SNP went further and froze it for five years and gave small business a tax cut. Left wingers would not freeze council tax because they are beholden to local government vested interests. The SNP do not really have any vested interests and speaking about them in left and right terms does not really capture what they are about. Areas that the Tories would win easily if the community was in England vote SNP. Now that Labour’s traditional support are deserting them they are switching to the SNP. Those voters were always more anti-Tory, than pro-Labour.

I’ve never bought the idea that Scotland was more left-wing than the UK. Scotland is more small c conservative than England and that includes the Labour heartlands. However, they are anti-Tory and that is where the confusion comes from. Since we are discussing an EU referendum, it is worth looking back at the last one. In Scotland 58% voted yes in the last one compared to 67% in the rest of the UK. In fact, the only regions that recorded a no vote were in Scotland.

Try this from August 2002:

Why Britain should join the Euro, by Richard Layard, Willem Buiter, Christopher Huhne, Will Hutton, Peter Kenen and Adair Turner:
http://cep.lse.ac.uk/layard/RL334D.pdf

I suspect they would now rather forget that.

2. Tyler

OK, so what you are saying, with reference to your own figures, is that 67% of people would vote to leave the EU entirely or leave to joing a free trade area like EFTA.

Which is final proof that the electorate is basing its opinions on duff information – mostly the sludge pumped out by anti-Europeans.

Being in EFTA means implementing EU laws, paying the EU a membership fee, yet having no say.

In other words, for a country the size and scale of the UK, that solution is barking mad.

@ BenM

That in itself is duff information. EFTA members have a lot more freedom in terms of their policies. They do pay in to the EU, but a significantly reduced amount.

London is a world-class financial centre. The tax revenues it generates for the national exchequer are important. The financial centres in ETFA countries aren’t in that league. Successive chancellors, including Osborne, have attended ECOFIN meetings briefed to defend the City from EU proposals that would have been damaging, sometimes seriously so. The financial centres in Frankfurt and Paris would like to attract business away from the City. The EU won’t disappear if we have a referendum. It will still be there deciding regulations and standards if Britain leaves – except that there won’t be a UK representative at the negotiating table.

Public Opinion was far weaker on the subject of going in in the first place, and only the combined forces of the establishment, a shameful BBC Conservative and Labour stitch up, got us into what was supposed to be a Common Market. Every single warning that antis ( branded loons and wierdos ) made has come to pass and far worse. Bob is quite right to draw attention to the fact that same crew of anti British doctrinal managerial internationalists deployed all the same scare stories about why we should join the Euro . What prats they now look.
The case Leon is essentially making is that Franco German elite are implicitly threatening us with a protectionist assault in our EU exports unless we consent to be ruled by them .The lie in the threat is that Leon has this countries interests at heart at all In fact the very notion of a Nation has , for him unpleasant resonances and his true goal is to eradicate the concept subsuming it into a empire of elites leaving “populism”, that we call democracy stranded
The EU has trade agreements with 53 countries and given that our trade deficit with the EU is £34 billion it is unlikely that the Germans will refuse to sell us their BMWs Fridges Hi Fis and or the French their wine etc.(In fact it is childish to suggest it ) They have more to lose than we do .80% of our trade is internal and our best trading relationships are outside the EU . All of our jobs and growth is held by by EU red tape for the small fraction that is even notionally affected and in reality non affected at all .
Meanwhile we forsake fantastic boons to our fishing industry employment , immigration control , growth throughout the Economy and the net savings on bureaucratic cost
Leon has obviously convinced himself that the resounding sod off delivered do the AV campaign was the result of misinformation and bias . In fact the opposition mounted as information became available .The real reason the EU progressive constituency fear a referendum is precisely because it would lead to the dissemination of information under circumstances they cannot control despite their great advantage in state media
On the subject of Greece the crisis was directly caused by the insane invention of a single currency without any corresponding discipline on borrowing. Good and bad economic seas are normal, constructing a ship made of porous concrete was entirely the fault of the EU and it associated institutions.

We need a referendum and I relish the truth coming out.

Bob – It is clear that Germany and especially France would like to stop London staying ahead as a Financial Services centre …..

@31 Paul: “Public Opinion was far weaker on the subject of going in in the first place, and only the combined forces of the establishment, a shameful BBC Conservative and Labour stitch up, got us into what was supposed to be a Common Market.”

More rewriting of history, I have to say.

I campaigned for a “Yes” vote in the 1975 referendum and attended the count for the county where I lived then as an official observer. As I recall, the county had the sixth highest “yes” vote.

The main opposition to Britain’s continued membership of the European Economic Community (EEC) came from the likes of Wedgie Benn, Peter Shore and Michael Foot on the so-called “left” and from Conservative Eurosceptics, like Sir John Farr, on the right. Frankly, they had little credibility.

In the referendum, 67% voted to stay in the EEC on a 65% turnout. That was a decisive result. Even so, by the time of the 1983 election, the Labour Party was committed to negotiating withdrawal despite the outcome at the referendum. Tony Blair wanted to get out, according to his personal message to voters in his Sedgefield constituency – but come the 1997 election, he was saying Britain should be at the heart of Europe.

The Conservatives had won the 1983 election with a landslide. The re-elected Conservative government pressed for – and gained support for – the Single European Market Act. Nigel Lawson, as Chancellor, prepared for the Pound to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) by keeping interest rates too low for too long to keep the Pound “competitive” with the DM.

The result of that was an unsustainable growth rate in Britain, bringing resurgent inflation, so he resigned. John Major, his successor as Chancellor, joined the Pound to the ERM in October 1990, cheered on by the Labour front bench.

@30 Bob B

Zurich and Geneva are the second 2 biggest financial centres in Europe after London, and ahead of Frankfurt and Paris. Both happen to be in an EFTA country.

@34 Tyler: “Zurich and Geneva are the second 2 biggest financial centres in Europe after London, and ahead of Frankfurt and Paris. Both happen to be in an EFTA country.”

London has the largest global foreign exchange market by a margin – followed by New York and Tokyo.

“The worldwide volume of foreign exchange trading is enormous, and it has ballooned in recent years. In April 1989 the average total value of foreign exchange trading was close to $600 billion per day, of which $184 billion were traded in London, $115 billion in New York, and $111 billion in Tokyo. Twenty-one years later, in April 2010, the daily global value of foreign exchange trading had jumped to around $4.0 trillion, of which $1.85 trillion was traded daily in London, $904 billion in New York, and $312 billion in Tokyo.”
Krugman and Obstfeld: International Economics (Financial Times 9th ed.) p.355

Try this from The Economist in 2007 on the City:

“The City of London is globalisation in action. It is, first of all, thoroughly international, handling more of the world’s deals in over-the-counter derivatives, global foreign equities, eurobonds and foreign exchange than any other financial centre (see chart 3). Second, its firms specialise in innovative, high-value-added products. Third, the City is living proof that clusters work in the way that economists claim. Capital can move like mercury. The main reason why international finance has made London its home is that everyone is there, making it easier to do complicated deals and to trade quickly in large quantities. The City offers a cluster of talent—financial whizz-kids, lawyers and due-diligence accountants—that is second to none, and self-renewing. It helps that English is a near-universal second language and that London’s time zone makes it possible to trade in a (long) working day with both Asia and America. Regulation is mainly deft but not lax, and the taxman takes a hospitable view of foreigners’ personal earnings.”
http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8582323

Zurich and Geneva aren’t in that same league.

In fact Benn was the prime cause of the referendum which was not inevitable and had been resisted by Heath nd Wilson, of course, but also by Thatcher. It is quite anachronistic to claim that Benn and Foot,yet to be leader, had no credibility, although its true that the political wind was changing against Old Labour.
The referendum seemed to many at the time a chance to break out of the managed decline of sclerotic Britain and was strongly supported by lots of sensible people ( Conservatives mostly) against the drawbridge economy of the left .
The yes campaign spent 14 times the amount available to the No campaign had the unremitting support of the BBC ( then virtually omnipotent ) . It was claimed , probably by you that aside form a few laws on commercial matters , out affairs would remain our own. That was a prodigious untruth, negotiations towards monetary Union were already under way and the direction of travel for the new super state was quite clear .
Fascinating don`t you think that at that time. Inflation was hitting 27% , our deficit was out of control and the ruling class ( combined in the all Party campaigning group) were energetically deceiving us about where our interests lay as they are today. I am not quite sure why you tell us the story of the ERM

Bob Do you now regret the untruths you told the good people of County X as regards the true nature of the EU ?

Still, on the brightside it only took the Tories a year and a bit to get back to what they do best i.e being completely divided over Europe. BRAVO Mister Cameron! BRAVO! 2015 feels so far away now don’t it.

@ 35 Bob B

Like I said….in Europe.

Geneva and Zurich are bigger financial centres than Frankfurt and Paris, and are in an EFTA country. The point being that EFTA is not a barrier to being a major financial centre. QUite the opposite if anything – more firms are moving to those places from EU countries.

…Gracious me, do you mean that Japan has achieved this predominance without being in any trading bock of any sort ?

Is that possible, I thought the word fell to pieces ….

@Paul: “Bob Do you now regret the untruths you told the good people of County X as regards the true nature of the EU ?”

I reject that claim for which you have no evidence whatsoever – it amounts to a gross attempt to rewrite history.

The telling argument at the time of the 1975 referendum – apart from the verging on zero political credibility of those on the “left” who opposed Britain’s membership of the EEC – was that British business needed better access to the then faster growing EEC markets at a time when Britain’s economy was performing relatively badly. It was believed that British business needed the challenging stimulus of competing in European markets. Recall that Harold Wilson, as Labour PM, and Sunny Jim Callaghan were in favour of Britain’s continued membership of the EEC on Wilson’s renegotiated terms – which were largely cosmetic.

During the 1970s, productivity in many of Britain’s then important industries – motor manufacturing, coal mining, steel – declined on trend. The syndrome of having the sick economy of Europe had been extensively analysed by the Brookings Institution on: Britain’s Economic Prospects (1969).

The hitherto enduring credibility of the bipartisan consensus over Butskellism and NEDO corporatism as a solution to Britain’s problems had finally waned, as shown by the ascendancy of the agenda of the Selsdon manifesto (see Wikipedia entry) at the June 1970 elections which Labour had (unexpectedly) lost. From a Conservative perspective in the later 1970s, it was believed that the Heath government had been elected on the strength of that Selsdon manifesto and then reneged on it by going keynesian with a cheap money policy to boost investment and home ownership.

Speaking with John Farr at the time of the October 1974 election, he told me that he was proposing to move that the Conservative party should hold elections for a new leader, which he duly did – he was personally wealthy and held a very safe seat so he wasn’t vulnerable to pressures from Conservative wets. Mrs Thatcher became Conservative leader as a result of the leadership elections – a result he had anticipated and wanted.

As mentioned above, on the return of a Conservative government in the 1983 elections, the government took the initiative of successfully pressing for the Single European Market Act – hardly the action of a government infused with Euroscepticism. By the 1997 elections, Tony Blair was saying Britain needed to be at the heart of Europe.

That narrative is much closer to the truth about those times than your claims.

On Britain’s economic decline, try this by Sam Brittan in the Financial Times:

“The relative decline of the British economy in the century up to the late 1970s has been reversed. Since then, the UK has caught up with and even overtaken its principal trading partners. The previous two sentences are neither a typing mistake nor a daydream. They are the sober conclusions of the country’s leading quantitative historian, Prof Nicholas Crafts”
http://www.samuelbrittan.co.uk/text399_p.html

As I said Bob …The referendum seemed to many at the time a chance to break out of the managed decline of sclerotic Britain and was strongly supported by lots of sensible people ( Conservatives mostly)
So I don`t disagree with what you say although the Common Market hardly arrested this trend . It is true that the referendum was timed to coincide with a period of National inferiority complex and would not have happened had a victory not been possible along the lines you suggest.
However there was no support for the already scheduled single currency and the leeching of powers out of our control .Had the truth been known the referendum would not have been won. If you were on the Yes side it would have been impossible for you not to have been telling wildly misleading tales about the commitment being made which has been evidenced ever since
This is why , as Roy Hattersley remarked the people can justly say , we were never asked . Not being asked seems set to continue.

I have never suggested that the Conservative Party from Heath to ..lets say late Thatcher, were not the more pro Euro if anything, although the ERM was more supported by New Labour .In the 70s the EU seemed a way to get away from socialism and unions and into competition and free trade as part of a larger world.
Now it is way into protectionism a smaller world and acquire precisely the sort of competitive disadvantages that we did not want .

@42 Paul: “However there was no support for the already scheduled single currency and the leeching of powers out of our control.”

You’re right. European Monetary Union was not perceived as a likely prospect at the time of the 1975 referendum – and Britain rightly negotiated an opt-out in the negotiations for the Maastricht Treaty of 1993. Hopefully, @25 I made it plain that there were and are considered reasons for concluding that monetary union was ill-judged, not least because only Luxembourg passed the eligibility tests in the treaty.

Even Delors, head of the EU Commission at the time of the Maastricht Treaty, came to have reservations about the implementation of monetary union according to this interview with The Times in 2004:
http://www.fuckfrance.com/topic/543173/1/France/UK-was-right-not-to-join-flawed-euro-admits-Jacques-Delors.html&replies=0

For some curious reason, the direct link to the original report in The Times no longer works.

Martin Wolf – now chief economic commentator in the FT – has plainly said that the Eurozone is not an optimum currency area.

The conditions for that have been extensively explored in a large academic literature. In simple language, we can appreciate that even contiguous countries cannot necessarily maintain internal economic stability (fullish employment with tolerable inflation rates) with loss of the freedom to set national monetary policies to suit national conditions in the absence of a fiscal union to compensate for trading imbalances (at the rigidly fixed exchange rates implied by Eurozone membership) and to ensure fiscal disciplines are maintained.

All that was in the analytical literature but it was ignored because of the political drive for European integration regardless. In this, I’m not saying anything here that is wildly unorthodox or starkly original by mainstream economic analysis. The surprise is that mainstream analysis was swept away by the Europhiles in their impulsive pursuit of European integration.