Stuart Wheeler

OIf course, the big news this morning is that Stuart Wheeler has come aboard. Here’s the piece he did for the Sunday Times explaining his decision:

This country has not been successfully invaded since William the Conqueror in 1066, yet most of our laws are now made in Brussels by unelected commissioners, who impoverish the people of the EU, while making fortunes for themselves. At the same time the Hungarians threaten that five million unemployed migrants will head West unless we bail them out. How much do they want? About £160 billion!

What is wrong with the EU and why is it so important? Above all – cost – it is astronomic. The chief difficulty for those who want to draw attention to it is that the figures are so awful that people think they cannot be true.

The well known economist Patrick Minford and the merchant banker Ian Milne put the cost at about £1,000 per annum for every man, woman, child and baby in this country.

Others think it is far more. Let us stick with £1,000 i.e. £4,000 for a typical family of four which, if it has only one breadwinner, has to live on an average of about £17,000 a year after tax.

How can this conceivably be worth it? What are the colossal benefits which could justify the enormous cost even in normal times, let alone in the worst recession for a very long time?

Remarkably the answer is that we get nothing we could not get by normal agreements and cooperation with the other members or with the EU itself. Ask a Europhile what the advantages are. You will get general waffle as an answer. Insist on specifics.

Pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it?