Over the coming months we are going to be inundated with claims from either side of the debate on the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union. Through our television screens, social media, campaign pamphlets, door step volunteers, newspapers, online blogs, and any other mediums campaigners can muscle in on, we will be blasted with sound bites and increasingly familiar narrative. These may just shape the final consensus. And there are already some familiar noises out there: “stronger, safer, better off”; “3 million jobs at risk”; “a leap in the dark”.
Whilst both sides, it should be said, are guilty of misrepresenting data for campaign traction, the offence is particularly marked on the Remain side. Their central argument is that ‘Brexit’ is not a risk worth taking. An exit from the European Union, they say, will damage jobs, growth, science, workers’ rights and security, among other things. They set out to reaffirm these points with a range of assertions and statistics.
And therein lays the problem. Under even the slightest level of scrutiny many of these assertions and arguments dissolve. At their core they are misrepresentative, and in many cases they are unequivocally disingenuous. So let’s review a few of them.
Jobs: “3 million jobs depend on our membership of the EU”
Politicians and campaigners have regularly claimed that 3-4 million jobs ‘depend on’ or are ‘associated with’ our EU membership. The figure originates from a report by the National Institute for Economic and Social Research in 2004. This research found that 3.2 million UK jobs were ‘associated’ with exports into the European Union.
And that’s precisely the point. The jobs are associated or dependent on trade, not on membership of a supranational political union. The notion that UK exports of traded goods and services would fall from over £230 billion per year to zero immediately after the UK left the EU is ludicrous.
In truth, the worst case scenario for the UK in the event of Brexit is a failure to negotiate a free trade deal with the EU. In the event, both parties would be bound by the WTO’s ‘most favoured nation’ (MFN) principle, preventing imposition of punitive tariffs that are out of kilter with every other developed nation outside the EU.
And even if we run with the ridiculous proposition that all trade would stop overnight, all these jobs would not be lost due to the offsetting role of ‘import substitution’. This is explained in more detail by Ryan Bourne of the Institute of Economic Affairs.
Trade: “We need them more than they need us”
We are the EU’s biggest customer, larger than China or the United States, and we run a significant traded goods deficit with EU member states. This trade deficit reached a record level of £23.2bn in the fourth quarter of 2015, with exports to the EU falling 0.5% and imports from the EU rising 2.7%. To put it simply, UK exports into the EU are becoming anaemic and the trade deficit – the excess in imports versus exports – is widening.
So let’s be clear: it’s in the EU’s interest to continue to sell goods into the UK, and vice versa. The pressure from international businesses dependent on this trade to reach a mutually beneficial trading agreement would be colossal in the event of a British exit from the EU. French winemakers won’t be content with shrivelling revenues and German car manufacturers will shudder at the thought of choking sales to one of their leading markets.
But Brexit is not just a defensible position based on the continuation of EU trade. It’s about developing a truly internationalist trading outlook. The last three decades of GDP data have exemplified the EU’s declining economic status in the world, reducing from a 26% share of world GDP to 20%, and forecast to fall further still to 15% by 2020. Meanwhile, our export performance outside the EU is resilient and growing. All the while, however, we are unable to independently agree free trade deals with our export partners, meaning we incur higher tariffs than necessary and weaken the UK’s manufacturing potential.
Global Influence: “Britain has more influence than it would have alone”
There are two issues to consider here: the UK’s influence within the EU and the EU’s overall influence on the global stage.
The UK’s influence within the EU has been in decline ever since 1973. Research by Business for Britain found that the UK has opposed 55 EU Directives in the EU Council of Ministers since 1996 and all of these proposals have gone on to become UK law. In addition, UK representation has diminished as more members have been granted EU accession. Since 1973 the UK’s voting power in the Council of Ministers has decreased from 17% to 8%, in the European Parliament it has decreased from 20% to 9.5% and in the European Commission it has decreased from 15% to 4%. This will continue to be watered down as more countries are admitted as member states.
On the issue of the global influence of the EU, the UK has nothing to fear in exiting a political union. We are a member of the G8, G20 and IMF, amongst other institutions, one of only five holders of a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, the fifth largest economy in the world, and the fourth biggest military power in the world. These are the things that demand influence.
Specifically relating to trade, upon Brexit we would stop giving up our seat at the World Trade Organisation (WTO), where we currently allow an unelected Swedish sociology professor to represent the economic interests of 28 member states whose economic objectives are often in conflict.
Red Tape: “Common rules make it unnecessary to adopt 28 different set of rules”
The idea that the EU has reduced the amount of ‘red tape’ is contrary to the evidence. EU regulations have had a significant adverse effect on SMEs in the UK, harming profitability and growth potential with burdensome administrative and legal requirements. In 2010, Open Europe estimated that EU regulation has cost Britain £124 billion since 1998.
Business for Britain found that between 2010 and 2015 alone, a total of 3,580 regulations and directives were passed by the EU that affects British businesses. The total word count of these 3,580 regulations is over 13 million words. It would take a UK business person, working an average 40 hours a week and reading at the average reading speed of 300 words per minute, 92 days to read them.
But just what are these regulations? And are they for the greater good?
Many EU regulations are undoubtedly sensible policies. Unfortunately many are not. Some EU regulations can range from the darn right ludicrous – e.g. restrictions on the maximum power of vacuum cleaners that can be sold – to the incredibly complex and burdensome – e.g. the rules on the application of VAT on digital products.
Let’s deal with the second example. From 1st January 2015, VAT liability on digital products was switched from the country where the product is sold to the country where the consumer buys it. In other words, in order to charge VAT on a digital product in the country where your buyer is you have to be registered for VAT in that country, regardless of whether the sale is for £5 or £100,000. There are 75 VAT rates across the 28 member states in the EU. Think about the level of administrative burden this can put on small digital service providers in the UK.
The list of problematic EU regulations is endless. We cannot remove VAT on tampons because of absurd EU rules deeming this product a luxury. We have to charge the same car insurance levels for men and women, despite statistical analysis showing distinctly different risk profiles.
So what now?
We are shackled and burdened by the EU’s failures. Far from propagating peace and democracy, it has bred hostility & supra-nationalism. Far from delivering economic prosperity and jobs for its members, it has delivered stark unemployment and the most anaemic GDP growth of any trading bloc in the world. Far from freeing up businesses to innovate and easily trade with its neighbours, it has stifled entrepreneurialism and burdened SMEs with administrative headaches.
The solution to all of these problems, despite the short-term uncertainty it may bring, is to vote to leave this failing political and economic experiment on June 23rd 2016.
Info Angle. 
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