At the start of this week, following the conclusion of the Prime Minister’s negotiations in Brussels, I made clear my view that Britain should leave the European Union.
Ultimately, my decision has little to do with the details of the agreement that has now been reached, which is self-evidently somewhat better than the status quo. Rather, I believe that the European Union is taking Britain in the wrong direction.
As an entity, the EU is bureaucratic, unresponsive and undemocratic. The struggle the Prime Minister faced in getting his counterparts to agree any kind of deal is illustrative of just how difficult it is to achieve things through EU structures. We should be grateful to the Prime Minister for battling through the night for Britain, remembering that it is thanks to him that we have this chance to vote in a referendum on EU membership. After all, such an opportunity has been denied the UK for two generations, a time in which the reach and power of the EU has grown beyond the recognition of those who were able to vote in the last referendum in 1975.
It is worthwhile to contrast how many of us perceived the European Community or common market, as it was then known when we last had a chance to vote on our membership, with the EU today.
Back in the mid-1970s membership of the EEC was seen as the hallmark of a modern forward-looking European economy. The rate of economic growth in the UK had long languished behind that of West Germany and even of France and Italy. Access to the common market was seen as a price worth paying for giving European institutions a limited role in determining policy here at home.
Fast-forward 40 years and both the European Union and our relationship with it have changed almost beyond recognition. The EU is no longer a club of rapidly growing advanced economies.
Today, economic growth in the EU has ground to a halt, thanks, in large measure, to the folly of imposing a single currency on profoundly different economies. While the UK rightly opted-out of the euro and of the Schengen agreement which enables people, regardless of their intent, to travel freely across the continent without border controls, the crises that these unwise polices have helped to create expose an organisation unable to face up to the challenges of the world in the 21st century.
As my friend and colleague Michael Gove wrote in a statement explaining his decision to vote to leave: ‘The EU is an institution rooted in the past and is proving incapable of reforming to meet the big technological, demographic and economic challenges of our time. It was developed in the 1950s and 1960s and like other institutions which seemed modern then, from tower blocks to telexes, it is now hopelessly out of date. The EU tries to standardise and regulate rather than encourage diversity and innovation. It is an analogue union in a digital age.’
There is nothing about the way the EU works which inspires confidence that it might find the right solutions to the profound problems it faces. Britain has spent over 40 years as a lone voice against the imposition of political union on people of differing nationalities, heritages and traditions. In that time the best we have achieved are individual opt-outs from the worst aspects of political union. In some cases, such as the supposed exemption the last Labour government negotiated on the Charter of Fundamental Rights, even these opt-outs have proven in practice to be meaningless.
Ultimately, it was the economic reforms of the 1980s that turned around the fortunes of the British economy, not EEC membership. More recently, the responsible policies of Governments since 2010 have re-established economic confidence in Britain at a time it has been undermined elsewhere.
Where we were once the sick man of Europe, now we have the fastest growth rate of any major European economy. This success demonstrates the ability of British government and of the British people to make a difference.
Britain has long been an outward looking nation, keen to trade with the rest of the world in ideas and innovations as much as goods and services. Once membership of the EEC seemed crucial to our ability to be part of the modern world, now the EU looks antiquated, stuck in the world of the mid-20th century. Rather than the intriguing delicacy it once seemed to some, the EU is now seen by most as expensive, unpalatable and well past its sell-by date.
Back when Britain first applied to join the EEC in the early 1960s the great Conservative reformer Rab Butler said of opponents of British membership: ‘For you a thousand years of history, for us the future.’ Today it might be said of those that advocate our continued membership: ‘For you 50 years of history, for us the future.’
We now have a chance – perhaps the last chance – to take control and shape our destiny – to be a proud independent nation once more.
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