The British Industries destroyed by the EU
Mon 10:23 am +00:00, 23 May 2016 1
Treasury Forecast: Brexit shock will trigger year-long recession
The FT’s lead story is the Treasury forecast – which will no doubt be released, nugget by nugget, through the week. But compared to the threat of a Third World War, they’ve moderated their ambition – it’s only “a year-long recession”. Not quite the usual Apocalyptic nonsense, but nonsense nonetheless. They take the worst possible assumptions, and conjure up a scare story. The Leave Campaign is confident that Brexit in the medium/long term will deliver above average growth for decades. This report is widely carried in the press – for example, in the Times.
We need to be clear about this Treasury forecast. The Treasury reports to Osborne. This is not a balanced, dispassionate view – it’s plain Remain propaganda, incorporating all the most negative assumptions.
“Treasury claims are risible”: The Telegraph carries a story citing leading economists and former Chancellor Lord Lamont, saying that the Treasury’s claims are “risible”.
Steve Hilton backs Brexit
In a major intervention, Steve Hilton, described as “David Cameron’s Guru”, has come out for Brexit. This is the man credited with master-minding Cameron’s ascent to Number Ten, so his support for Brexit will cause shudders in Downing Street. Writing in the Mail, in a piece entitled “Why we must leave the EU”, Hilton warns that Britain will become ungovernable if we remain, adding that we have to take back power from the EU’s “self-serving élite”.
He says that Brussels’ refusal to grant rather modest concessions to Cameron shows there is no appetite for reform, and warns that the EU “will punish the UK with new diktats” if we vote to Remain. This is a key point that needs stressing. We have little enough influence in Brussels as it is. If we vote to remain, we’ll have none.
Italian socialist to order British Army into battle?
Yesterday I reported on the war games on Salisbury Plain. Today the Express expands on the story saying that British troops could be sent to war by the EU’s Foreign Affairs Chief Frederica Mogherini, an Italian socialist. The paper quotes Liam Fox: “They will try to say this has nothing to do with an EU Army but the truth is that, bit by bit, they are creating the mechanisms that will make it possible.” The only consolation is that any war would probably be over before the EU’s ponderous administrative structure could agree a plan of action.
Row over Turkey accession veto
Penny Mordaunt, a Defence Minister, made a small error: she said on air that we should be unable to stop Turkey’s accession to the EU. She is a bright lady and a redoubtable campaigner for independence, but in this case, she got it wrong. Easily done, considering the huge range of facts related to the EU. In reality all member states will have a veto. But the Remain Campaign, and our Prime Minister, have gone intooverdrive, accusing the Leave Campaign of deliberate lies.
Cameron’s position is utterly cynical. He wants to score cheap points by accusing Ms. Mordaunt of “lying”, when she made a small and forgivable error. But Cameron, his party and his government are committed to Turkish accession. Cameron has assured the Turks that he’s their biggest backer on the issue. So the question of whether we have a veto becomes almost irrelevant – even given that we have a veto, Cameron won’t use it.
Making Britain less safe: Penny Mordaunt has also pointed out that the five proposed accession countries, Turkey plus Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Albania, havehigher crime rates than the UK, with gangs and terror cells, as well as challenging levels of poverty. The Remain Camp has dismissed her comments – despite the fact that they are clearly true.
The backlash: Cameron’s attack on Penny Mordaunt has provoked a strong backlash from the Leave side:
Paul Nuttall MEP: Cameron wrong on food prices
The Prime Minister has said that household bills and food prices will go up if we leave the EU. He’s just plain wrong. Read UKIP MEP Paul Nuttall’s robust rebuttal.
“Brexit would harm cancer patients”
This is yet another example of Remain campaigners assuming that Brexit will damage the economy, and seeking headlines by pointing out group after group who would suffer. If the economy collapses, it will damage the NHS and cancer patients might be worse off. But we believe Britain will prosper as an independent country, while remaining in the EU will condemn the UK to long-term decline. So cancer patients (and everyone else) should vote for Brexit.
Even the Indy questions the EU’s economic prospects
The Indy carries an interesting piece headed “The EU and IMF deal over Southern Europe hangs over the Brexit debate” reporting the view that the EU may be “the new Japan”, and that the UK may be Better Off Out. Good thinking. Someone should tell Osborne and Cameron.
Vote Brexit to liberate Europe!
Geert Wilders of the Dutch Party for Freedom is often regarded as being on the wilder fringes of politics, and I would certainly not endorse or quote much of what he says. But his recent comments on Brexit are bang on the button, and are well worth repeating. Bear in mind that Wilders’ Party is currently leading the polls in Holland, so it’s hardly a fringe party.
He says that on June 23rd, Britain has an opportunity to liberate Europe for the second time in a century (by implication, he’s suggesting the same comparison between the EU and Hitler that has got Boris into so much trouble – indeed he refers to the EU as “another totalitarian monster”). He believes that a Brexit vote in Britain will lead to a “Patriotic Spring” across Europe, and an outpouring of popular discontent against Brussels. He believes that it would be quickly followed by a referendum in the Netherlands.
This popular discontent is illustrated by the possible election of an Austrian Freedom Party President in Austria, and by the rise of the anti-€uro Five Star movement in Italy, which has recently topped the polls. Also riding high are the Swedish Democrats, and even in Germany the anti-Brussels mood is rising with the popularity of AfD.
I have always said that I want a Europe of independent, democratic nation states, linked together solely by free trade and voluntary intergovernmental cooperation. Some people still imagine that that’s what the EU represents. They could not be more wrong. The EU is a protectionist Customs Union governed by a power-grabbing technocratic élite in a system that deliberately denies democratic accountability and treats voters with contempt. We can give our verdict on the EU project on June 23rd – and we have an opportunity also to save Europe by our example.
The British industries destroyed by the EU
Sunday’s Telegraph carries a thoughtful piece by James Bartholomew which is well worth a read. Under the title “Few realise Brussels has destroyed some of our most prosperous industries”, he does an audit of the damage.
First fisheries. Not only the British fishing industry, but arguably fish stocks as well, have been decimated by the CFP. Then the fine art auction business – a major British industry, until the EU introduced its 75 year “droite de suite”, which pays a royalty to the artist’s estate until 75 years after the artist’s death. Jolly good thing, you might say – but the result is that the market has moved to New York and elsewhere, and Britain’s share of the global market slumped from 36% to 16% in just five years.
Britain is a world leader in science, and used to conduct 12% of the world’s clinical trials. That’s down to 1%, following the Clinical Trials Directive. Bartholomew quotes Matt Ridley: “(The Directive) destroyed clinical trials in Europe”.
There’s the Port Services Regulation, designed for state-owned continental ports, which will be hugely damaging to privately-owned British ports.
And the big one: The City, and financial services, slowly being strangled by well-intended but destructive EU regulation, where Brussels rules are replacing national control. In this global market place, it’s not the risk of the business going to Frankfurt – it’s the risk of it going to Hong Kong and New York.
One omission: I was surprise that Bartholomew did not mention EU energy policy, which has forced up prices and driven energy intensive businesses out of the EU altogether. It’s not just Port Talbot and steel: it’s aluminium, chemicals, fertilisers, petroleum refining, cement, paper, glass. Yet Brussels is making matters worse: I myself have sat in innumerable meetings where the discussion has been aboutincreasing energy prices by tweaking the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme.
Did Brussels deliberately set out to damage the UK? asks Mr. Bartholomew. He answers his own question “I don’t know. But rules were made in Brussels by people who at best did not care about the damage they’d do”.
Roger Helmer MEP
Why we MUST quit the EU, by Cameron’s guru: Friend and strategist Steve Hilton breaks ranks on Brexit to say Britain will be ‘literally ungovernable’ unless we take back power from the self-serving elite
- Former key adviser to David Cameron defies him a month before the vote
- Says Britain is ‘ungovernable’ after being ‘corruptly captured’ by the EU
- Believes EU will take revenge on Britain for vote and impose new diktats
- Said their refusal to grant ‘modest’ demands shows no will for reform
2.1k
View comments
David Cameron’s closest friend in politics today, Steve Hilton (pictured) breaks ranks to say Britain must leave the ‘arrogant and unaccountable’ EU
David Cameron’s closest friend in politics today breaks ranks to say Britain must leave the ‘arrogant and unaccountable’ EU.
In a shattering blow to the Prime Minister, Steve Hilton claims the UK is ‘literally ungovernable’ as a democracy while it remains in a club that has been ‘corruptly captured’ by a self-serving elite.
And in an attack on Project Fear, the former No 10 adviser dismisses claims by Mr Cameron, the IMF and the Bank of England that being in the EU makes us more secure.
In an exclusive Daily Mail article, Mr Hilton – who persuaded Mr Cameron to stand for Tory leader – also delivers a devastating assessment of the PM’s referendum deal.
He says Mr Cameron made only ‘modest’ demands of Brussels – and that even these were swatted contemptuously aside. He also warns that Brussels will take revenge on Britain for the referendum if it votes to stay, by imposing fresh diktats.
Mr Hilton concludes: ‘A decision to leave the EU is not without risk. But I believe it is the ideal and idealistic choice for our times: taking back power from arrogant, unaccountable, hubristic elites and putting it where it belongs – in people’s hands.’
His declaration for Brexit with exactly a month to go until polling day will send tremors through No 10.
Along with Michael Gove, he provided the intellectual heft behind Mr Cameron’s rise to power.
Both men now argue that the PM is wrong to urge voters to remain in what Mr Hilton condemns as the ‘grotesquely unaccountable’ Brussels club. The former policy guru’s intervention came as:
■ George Osborne sparked fresh accusations of scaremongering by claiming Britain would be tipped into a year-long ‘DIY recession’ if it leaves the EU;
■ Mr Cameron clashed with one of his senior ministers over his support for Turkish EU membership;
■ Rival camps in the referendum traded blows over the impact on the health service, with NHS boss Simon Stevens saying the organisation’s financial woes could be made even worse by Brexit.
Mr Hilton, who remains close to the Prime Minister, had previously declined to be drawn into what is already a bitter ‘blue on blue’ row. But today he claims the key issue for him is that Britain cannot make its own laws and control its own destiny from inside the EU.
Mr Hilton says Brussels directives have crept into every corner of Whitehall and that less than a third of the Government’s workload is the result of trying to fulfil its own promises and policies.
The rest is generated either by the ‘anti-market, innovation-stifling’ EU or a civil service dancing to the tune of Brussels, he says. Mr Hilton continues: ‘It’s become so complicated, so secretive, so impenetrable that it’s way beyond the ability of any British government to make it work to our advantage.
In a shattering blow to the Prime Minister, Steve Hilton (pictured together in a Cabinet Room at Number 10) claims the UK is ‘literally ungovernable’ as a democracy while it remains in a club that has been ‘corruptly captured’ by a self-serving elite
In an attack on Project Fear, Hilton (pictured with Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne, left) dismisses claims by Mr Cameron, the IMF and the Bank of England that being in the EU makes us more secure.
‘Membership of the EU makes Britain literally ungovernable, in the sense that no administration elected by the people can govern the country.’
Mr Hilton warns that the tentacles of the EU have placed constraints on everything from employment law to family policy, ‘all determined through distant, centralised processes we hardly understand, let alone control’.
Mr Cameron has spent recent weeks insisting that Brussels is working in the best interests of British families, and that leaving would clobber incomes and house prices. But Mr Hilton dismisses this as nonsense, describing the EU as being ‘anti-trade’ and ‘anti-enterprise’.
The former director of strategy, who left No 10 in 2012 to work in the US, is scathing about our supposed ‘special status’ with Brussels which was negotiated by the PM in February. And he warns that an emboldened EU will punish the UK if it votes to remain.
THE SCRUFFY GURU WHO PUT DAVE ON THE PATH TO NUMBER 10
The shaven-headed Mr Hilton is the Prime Minister’s oldest friend in politics, and for years was his closest adviser
By JAMES SLACK FOR THE DAILY MAIL
David Cameron has spoken publicly of his ‘disappointment’ that family friend Michael Gove decided to campaign for Brexit.
But to lose Steve Hilton to the Out camp – and at such a crucial stage in a bitter referendum battle that has already split the Tory Party in two – is arguably just as big a blow.
The shaven-headed Mr Hilton is the Prime Minister’s oldest friend in politics, and for years was his closest adviser. It was the Oxford-educated guru who first encouraged Mr Cameron to run for party leader in 2005.
The PM trusted him completely – Mr Hilton sat at the heart of the Cameron-led party and its Notting Hill set, and was godfather to Mr Cameron’s son, Ivan.
Yet, on the issue which will inevitably define the PM’s premiership, he has been unable to carry the support of the man who put him on the path to No 10.
The most common description of Mr Hilton is as a pint-sized Rasputin.
He is perhaps best known for his scruffy appearance – he used to pad around No 10 wearing just his socks, does not wear a suit and is usually pictured wearing cycling gear.
But Mr Hilton has been described by political commentators as being just as important to Mr Cameron as Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson were to Tony Blair. In opposition, he was credited with changing Mr Cameron from an Old Etonian ‘Tory boy’ into the modern, cycling, green politician able to speak to Britain.
Ian Birrell, who worked alongside Mr Hilton in No 10 as a speech writer, describes ‘his restless determination to transform Britain’. In 2012, he wrote: ‘He is… an iconoclast and an idealist, prepared to confront the cosy consensus of the civil service and fight those politicians who prize pragmatism over principles.’
It is that cosy consensus – from the pro-EU views of those same big firms, the Bank of England and the rest – that Mr Hilton is challenging again now. Mr Hilton is the son of Hungarian refugees who fled their home during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
Ferociously bright, he went on a scholarship to Christ’s Hospital School in Sussex, before reading Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Oxford – the same subject as the PM.
The pair became friends when they worked together at Conservative Central Office during the 1992 General Election, alongside George Osborne. Mr Cameron went on to work as a special adviser to Norman Lamont and Michael Howard. Mr Hilton departed to the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, before setting up his own consultancy, Good Business, which advised companies including McDonald’s on how they could do good by being socially responsible.
The Remain camp has tried to characterise those who want to quit the EU as being the old-fashioned Tory Right or having Ukip tendencies. It is, however, impossible to slide Mr Hilton neatly into this box (nor, dispelling this particular myth, is it possible to view Michael Gove in this way). Indeed, in 2001 he is said to have been so disenchanted with the Tories’ drift to the Right under William Hague that he supported the Green Party.
It was the Oxford-educated guru who first encouraged Mr Cameron (pictured together in 2015) to run for party leader in 2005
It was following the Tory Party’s third drubbing at the hands of Tony Blair, in 2005, that he returned full-time to the fold, and told Mr Cameron to run for party leader.
Mr Hilton is a firm believer in marriage and families – he has publicly urged the PM to do more to support them.
He is married to Rachel Whetstone, a former spokesman to Michael Howard and senior executive at Google. She now holds the post of Vice President of Policy and Communications at taxi app firm Uber.
It was in large part a desire to keep his family in the same place that he took up the offer of a post at Stanford University in 2012, after his wife’s work led her to the US.
Another reason, of course, was his exasperation with the EU and the way directives from Brussels had crept into every corner of Whitehall, stopping the elected government from implementing its wishes.
But there is a big difference between being frustrated with the EU and going over the top and declaring it is in Britain’s best interests to leave.
Only last month, Mr Hilton told the BBC he was not ‘going to get into the argument’ on the EU referendum. At the time, this must have come as a huge relief to the PM, following the loss of Mr Gove and his old sparring partner Boris Johnson to Leave.
Today, as he digests Mr Hilton’s devastating critique of a Brussels club which Mr Cameron is determined to keep the UK a part of, the mood inside No 10 will be very much darker.
The PM trusted him completely – Mr Hilton sat at the heart of the Cameron-led party and its Notting Hill set, and was godfather to Mr Cameron’s son, Ivan
In comments that will be leapt upon by the Leave campaign, he says: ‘The arrogant and dismissive treatment of Britain’s relatively modest demands in the 2015/2016 negotiations shows that the EU is just not interested in anything other than superficial change.
‘You might as well hope for Vladimir Putin to embrace liberal democracy.’
He adds: ‘One way of thinking about this referendum is that the choice is actually not between staying and leaving; but between leaving, and joining a new EU.
‘It would be the EU unleashed, freed from the constraints of having to placate the pesky British … Once they know we will never leave, all our leverage will be gone.’
Mr Hilton also reveals he was ‘amazed’ to hear Mr Cameron say that Brussels, rather than Nato, makes Britain safer from terrorists and rogue states.
‘The idea that a British Prime Minister can’t protect Britain properly without the EU is frankly astonishing and, if true, rather alarming,’ he writes. ‘But of course it’s not true.’
How the EU makes Britain IMPOSSIBLE to govern: With devastating logic, based on his years at the heart of power, the PM’s former policy guru makes an explosive intervention in the Brexit debate – and argues we simply HAVE to leave
The most common description of Mr Hilton is as a pint-sized Rasputin
By STEVE HILTON FOR THE DAILY MAIL
Not long after starting work in Downing Street, I found myself on a Eurostar train heading for Brussels. It was an eye-opening trip. But its origin lay in a truly shocking discovery some weeks earlier.
Before the 2010 general election, Francis Maude and Oliver Letwin, two of the Conservative Party’s key policymakers, and I had worked with each Tory shadow minister on detailed plans for the implementation of our policies — including work to understand how the EU would affect what we wanted to do.
We thought we had a pretty good idea of how to handle — or, ideally, circumnavigate — the constraints imposed by European rules, regulations and bureaucracy. However, we were little prepared for the sheer scale of it all.
After just a few weeks in government, I was struck by how many things the Government was doing that the Prime Minister and his team didn’t just not know about but actively disagreed with.
I investigated. It turned out that every few days, a pile of paperwork about a foot high was circulated in Whitehall. The paperwork gave the go-ahead for Government action and was supposedly based on written approval from the relevant ministers.
But here’s the catch: ministers were given two days to respond to any proposal. If no response came, then this was taken as a ‘yes’.
There was no way any minister could possibly read all the proposals by the deadline. Furthermore, there was an unspoken rule that one department wouldn’t interfere in proposals coming from another. In fact, as I recall, there was only one minister who regularly did so (much to the consternation of the others), and that was Michael Gove.
From my vantage point at No 10, though, I wanted to know where it all came from. What were these ‘requests for policy clearance’, as they were known? How many were really necessary for the delivery of our promises?
I asked for a detailed audit.
It turned out that some 30 per cent of government action was relevant to what we were supposed to be doing. The rest — you’ve guessed it — was generated from within the civil service machine, the majority coming from the EU.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3603793/Why-quit-EU-Cameron-s-guru-Friend-strategist-Steve-Hilton-breaks-ranks-Brexit-say-Britain-literally-ungovernable-unless-power-self-serving-elite.html#ixzz49TQqIz5E
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
Is it just me, or have comments tailed right off at the tap? I looked in about 9am today, it’s now 9.30 pm, and no new comments? PS VOTE LEAVE!