Will Hutton on the European elections

Europe remains the Tory modernisers’ blind spot. David Cameron and William Hague must know the risk they are running. They know, or should know, that a referendum on the EU constitutional treaty once every member state has signed it, as is likely this autumn if the Irish vote yes in a second referendum, is a European suicide note; 26 other countries are not going to spend another three years ratifying another treaty amended to meet David Cameron’s and his party’s prejudices. They are condemned to tell Britain that while some cosmetic concessions may be made, essentially the body of the treaty must stand.

If the British hold a referendum and there is a no vote, then the consequence will be that Britain must withdraw from the EU. So either this is a one-off stunt which the party leadership knows it must retreat from once the treaty is signed off or a ploy it knows will lead to a yes or no vote on de-facto European Union membership within two years of winning next year’s election. Either way, it hardly inspires much confidence.

So these European parliamentary elections really matter. Ukip will do well. The Conservatives will do better than 2004, but not as well as they need to win a general election. Along with the BNP, the opinion polls suggest that more than 50% of the vote will go to anti-EU parties. I’m not sure the British know the consequence of their vote, but a dynamic is in train that will lead to our exit from the EU.

Will seems to think there is something wrong with that. I of course don’t think there is anything wrong with that.

They go do their thing, we go do ours.

As a pro-European, I don’t want this to happen, but I’ve begun to wonder whether it wouldn’t be better for Europe. Only living outside the EU as the sceptics want - creating a politically diminished Britain fit for hedge funds, tax-avoiders and asset-strippers - is likely to convince the British majority that the option is a disaster.

Meanwhile, the Europeans can deepen the EU, along the way empowering the European Parliament. When a Tory government leads an impoverished, embittered Britain back into the EU in 25 years’ time, reality will have imposed political maturity.

That’s not what I think will happen of course. Rather, that freed of the stifling weight of EU regulation (which even a Commissioner has stated causes a loss four times greater than the benefits of the Single Market), freed from the zollverein (which Patrick Minford has calculated would provide a 3% boost to our GDP), able to make our own laws to suit ourselves, we would thrive.

Over 25 years there would indeed be a significant difference between the EU bloc and the UK. The power of compounding would see to that. Consider simply trend growth rate. If our growth rate were 2.8% higher than the bloc’s, then in 25 years time we would be twice as rich as they are.

2.8% is pretty high as a differential though, but 1.4% isn’t. I could easily believe (in fact I already do) that membership of the EU, with those regulations, costs us 1,4% of potential growth each and every year. And if that burden were lifted from our economy then over that 25 year period our economy would grow by 50% more than that of the bloc. We would be 1 and a 1/2 times richer than they.

Of course, we don’t know the counter factual. But it sounds to me like an experiment worth having, worth doing. Let’s leave. Let’s see what happens. If we, as Iam sure we would, thrive, then great. If we don’t? Well there’s always the Hutton option.

On how we’re ruled

From Camilla Cavendish in The Times:

The readiness of politicians to relinquish power amazes me. Take the European constitution, now rebranded as the Lisbon treaty. I read all the drafts of that document, spoke to lawyers and became convinced that its calculated opacity was a charter for the creeping takeover of national policy by bureaucrats and judges. There were brilliant MPs who could debate every inch of the detail - David Miliband, Gisela Stuart, David Heathcoat-Amory, Chris Huhne. But I met others who hadn’t even read the document and looked incredulous that I had.

I once ran a construction company. I didn’t sign contracts that I didn’t understand, especially when they involved other people’s money. So I could not believe that on an issue of such consequence - for their own role as well as for the nation - MPs had not done their homework. When the annual EU membership fee is £6.5 billion, when EU directives have driven almost half of the regulations passed here since 1998, and when implementing those regulations has cost £106 billion (according to a recent study by Open Europe), it is not surprising that people ask what MPs are doing.

About time we took back those powers and ruled ourselves, isn’t it?

The appalling corruption in Brussels!

BRUSSELS — The Belgian bodybuilding championship has been canceled after doping officials showed up and all 20 competitors fled.

Even pro-Europeans don’t like the EU

It comes to something when even those predisposed to like the EU decide that they don’t like what the EU actually does:

If opponents of the European Union are looking for evidence of political meddling and overreach, they could hardly find a better example than the new draft directive on alternative investment fund management. The proposal, aimed at imposing new regulation on hedge funds and private equity, is a politically driven effort to place obstacles in the way of an industry that is almost exclusively based in the US and the UK. It makes a mockery of any notion of subsidiarity – taking decisions at the lowest possible level – and is a classic exercise in closet protectionism.

I say this as a committed European and a member of the advisory council of Business for a New Europe (BNE), which strongly supports the UK’s active engagement in Europe. Indeed, BNE was set up to promote a reformed, enlarged and free-market EU.

This is something that we find all too often. People being generally in favour of “Europe” and “cooperation” and all that kittens are cute sort of stuff. But when it comes to the actual activities of the EU, in an area where people have some expertise, no one actually likes what they do.

UKIP and fishing

Just a brief note on the UKIP fishing policy.

“The scandal of millions of dead fish being dumped back into the sea every year is now well known. Where British fishermen have landed fish rather than dump them, they have been prosecuted, ruined and in some cases imprisoned by our Government, acting for the EU, he said.

UKIP policy is for an immediate reinstatement of the UK’s 12-mile territorial waters, with all foreign fishing banned; and a further 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone in which fishing would be managed by the UK to ensure proper conservation of stocks.

“Our waters hold 70 per cent of Europe’s fish, but we may not catch more than 13 per cent under EU rules,” said Mr Farage. “Every other EU member state - many of whom subsidise their fleets - is entitled to a share, even if they’re landlocked countries in Eastern Europe.

Marta’s new book

Gets an airing in the Christopher Booker column.

Another, perhaps less obvious, reason why Britain has lost respect is reflected in a shocking new book, published tomorrow, entitled Brussels Laid Bare, by the EU’s sacked former chief accountant, Marta Andreasen. The outline of her story has long been familiar. In 2002, as the first qualified accountant to be given the job, she was appointed to sort out the EU’s accounts, which for six years running had not been cleared by the EU’s Court of Auditors due to a maze of “irregularities”.

It’s shocking, shocking stuff.

The EU Quiz

A sample question:

Questions include: How many staff does the European Commission employ?

That’s easy.

500 million.

The population of the European Union. For we all have to do what they say and we all have to pay them for the privilege of being told what to do.

Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (Alter-EU)

As a candidate I have received an email. One asking me to sign up to a pledge about lobbying in Brussels. You know the sort of thing, yah boo! to corporate interests and so on.

The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency and Ethics Regulation (Alter-EU), the European Attac network, the Seattle to Brussels Network (S2B), and the European Coalition for Corporate Justice (ECCJ) - together representing more than 400 European civil society organisations - believe that Europe needs strong Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to stop corporate interests dominating EU policy-making.

I’m no great fan of such corporate pork to be sure, so I have a look at their website. Hmm, yes, certainly I want a full scale rethink of the EU’s free trade policy. I think we should have one for example, rather than this Zollverein which we actually have.

But that isn’t what they’re suggesting of course. For the whole thing is being run by Friends of the Earth Europe. Those who get the vapours over anyone trading with anyone else not within walking distance.

Erm, yes, the people asking me to sign up to accountability in lobbying in Brussels are those people who get half their income from the Commission to lobby the Commission.

I think this might be an opportunity to Just Say No, don’t you?

Banning the Sporran

Oh well done to the EU Parliament. Well done indeed. So they ban the killing of those cuddly little baby seals and:

EUROPEAN politicians yesterday spelled the end of the traditional Scottish sporran by voting to ban the sale of seal products across the continent.

The move will mean the manufacture and sale of sealskin sporrans will be illegal from next autumn. This will affect existing unsold stock and also the second-hand trade.

This is the problem with law making at such a high level. When 700 odd people (cue joke, 700 very odd people) try to make the law for 500 million they are never going to be able to think through the details.  Things will just be done on waves of emotion rather than logic.

Still look at the bright side. There’ll be a roaring trade in illegal sporrans, both old and new. We like such employment opportunities, don’t we?

More laughter in the FT

No, I know, the FT isn’t where we normally go for laughs but this amuses:

Marketing for Duchy Originals’ new herbal remedies has been banned after failing to prove its efficacy.

The product is the first in the UK to fall foul of new European regulations governing alternative medicines.

Of course, there shouldn’t be such rules in the first place. If you want to take some tincture of herbs because it makes you feel better then you should be able to do so. Whether it actually makes you better is irrelevant, it’s how you the consumer feel about it. But who got caught in the first ban is, well, piquant at least.