More economic news supporting IN
The possibility of Brexit, and Boris Johnson’s self-serving jump to OUT, has led the pound to a 6 year low against the dollar.
FTSE 100 company leaders have signed a letter in support of IN, reports The Independent.
Bosses at more than a third of the companies in the FTSE 100 have signed a letter declaring that Britain is better in the European Union, saying a Brexit would threaten investment in the UK and lead to potential job losses.
The letter is being co-ordinated by 10 Downing Street and is expected to be released on Tuesday, but signatories are known to include the chairmen or chief executives of Vodafone, BAE Systems, GlaxoSmithKline, easyJet, Barclays, BT and Shell.
Insurance giant Standard Life have warned against Brexit too.
Friends of the Earth
Friends of the Earth, which many Liberal Democrats are also members of, are backing an IN vote. This is good as not everyone is the environmental movement has always supported EU membership.
We’ve benefited from cleaner air, cleaner beaches, cleaner seas and stronger protection for our precious species and habitats.
However, it’s far from perfect. For example, the Common Agriculture Policy has proved an environmental disaster.
Our air, our sea and our wildlife are all part of the environment we share with our European neighbours. It is not possible to tackle the challenges of the future alone.
Leaving the EU would consume much needed time and political energy. This time and energy would be better pushing for rapid action on global issues such as climate change, air pollution and the rampant destruction of nature.
“Spend whatever it takes”
A Conservative MP has revealed a pro-Brexit plan to avoid campaign spending restrictions and has been reported to the police (Daily Mail).
Glastonbury, Euro 2016, and Eu Ref – a great summer for a postal vote
Conservatives have denied that the 23 June coinciding with the Glastonbury festival is deliberate. It is important that festival goers register for a postal vote that they can cast before they go. Same advice for anyone at a Euro2016 football match that days (Mirror).
Tory Civil War
The Daily Mail sets out how split the Cabinet is. The referendum feels like a Tory civil war in many ways.
New opinions polls and bookies’ odds – leads for IN
The Mail had a new opinion poll at the weekend, putting IN 15% ahead.
ICM and Mori also both has IN moving back into the lead at the end of last week (UK Polling Report).
Ladbrokes are giving IN a big lead.
North West England
The Liverpool Echo looks at what the referendum means for Merseryside. There are strong voices against Brexit in Manchester.
Falklands wants IN to win
Brexit would threaten the Falklands says an MP for the islands.
It would have a large impact on the Falkland Islands’ economy in particular. The key concern for us is access to the single market. If there is a decision to leave, if we suddenly lost that tariff free and quota free access to that major market then that could be catastrophic.
* Antony Hook was #2 on the South East European list in 2014, is the English Party's representative on the Federal Executive and produces this sites EU Referendum Roundup.
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19 Comments
The significant fall in the pound today shows that voting leave = big price increases. Supermarket goods more expensive, holidays more expensive, possible second referendum on the EU, possible second Scottish referendum – vote leave = chaos and instability.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/eu-referendum-jpmorgan-warns-brexit-will-lose-uks-transatlantic-trade-clout-1433429
JP Morgan is right to warn us that Brexit will lead to Britain having no part in the important free trade deal with the US. TTIP is an essential deal to bring prosperity to Britain and is worth an extra £400 a year to every family. 65% of the British support this deal, so it has a huge mandate in Britain, even if the far left and far right oppose it for the usual tiresome and wrong reasons related to corporations and migration. Nick Clegg is right to defend the TTIP deal as a reason as to why we must stay in the EU.
http://www.reuters.com/article/goldman-sachs-uk-brexit-idUSL5N0ZD0MX20150627
Goldman Sachs would shift resources towards locations in continental Europe and away from Britain should the country’s voters choose to end the country’s membership of the EU, a senior executive told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
The UK will be cast out of important trade deals, and major multinationals will pull out of the country.
I don’t want to scaremonger, the markets were probably overreacting, but people need to understand that when the pound falls like that it means price increases.
The Bank of England has set aside £1 bn to spend to shore up the pound’s value in the event of Brexit.
@Stimpson – re: TIPP
I wouldn’t promote TIPP specifically as a reason to Remain, there is much that is wrong with TIPP – including the junk benefits maths – given the text hasn’t been published; as people are discovering with TPP now that it has finally been published. Also if TIPP (and TPP) aren’t completed and signed before Obama leaves the White house in November, it is likely that they will simply be put aside…
However, as a member, there is much that the UK can contribute to and benefit from EU trade negotiations…
“The Bank of England has set aside £1 bn to spend to shore up the pound’s value in the event of Brexit.”
Given previous events, there are either a few zero’s missing off that number or the BoE are prepared to let sterling float wherever the markets take it…
Supporters of a high pound can’t , much as they’d like to, have it both ways. A high pound sucks in imports and prices our exports out of the market. That puts the UK into deficit and so we have to sell bonds. Selling bonds puts the UK into debt.
But then the same people say we shouldn’t run deficits or be in debt!
Sterling down FTSE up…next.
How do I vote to get the old EEC/EC/Common Market back?
When we just had a small group of freely trading nations, each with its own currency, everything seemed to work reasonably well !
Hi petermartin, I’m not in favour of an artificially strong pound, such as through high interest rates or other forms of currency manipulation, but in general I think it is good that our assets, of which one is the pound, are in demand.
Eddie, But we do have an artificially strong pound. Obviously if the interest rates on offer were higher we’d sell more Treasury securities than we do. But even with interest rates very low there’s still a healthy demand for Treasury gilts simply because overseas holders of sterling (like the Bundesbank and the Peoples Bank of China) need to have somewhere to park their money.
Those purchases force up the value of the pound and add to the Trade Deficit on a 1:1 basis. They are part of the capital account which is always in surplus if the current account is in deficit.
TTIP is a perfect example of something that is rotten with the EU, which the Brexiter Tories who are agitating would retain anyway. Ie if we left the EU the UK govt could stand for people rather than corporate interests, but none of the Tories care about this and they are the worst when it comes to being influenced by directorships etc
Id challenge the FoE assertion on cleaner air. In theory we have seen benefits. In practice, motoring regulations have been watered down because Germany happens to have a luxury motor industry and Germany is powerful in the EU, meanwhile in our own capital the pollution exceeds EU regulations with no consequences on the folk that run the place, and our own government lobbies to make car emissions tests weak facilitating the VW scandal. Not a track record of success. I support the EU but with the outlook that in many areas it has been poor and its very hard to improve it. Leaving will be even worse, the UK would never exist in a vacuum.
“Given previous events, there are either a few zero’s missing off that number or the BoE are prepared to let sterling float wherever the markets take it…”
Agreed. £1b is chickenfeed in this context.
A question….I did not watch all the HoC debate but I gather that, although all other party’s leaders spoke, Nick Clegg spoke instead of Tim Farron…
Who is speaking for the party on this? If I remember correctly it was Nick Clegg who announced that LibDems would support the Syrian bombing campaign. Is he still ‘running the show’?
I didn’t watch it in full but I saw a clip of Tim Farron’s speaking.
I watched much of the Commons debate yesterday. Both Nick Clegg and Tim Farron spoke, I’m glad to say. My overall impression was that the “remain” case overwhelmingly prevailed in the chamber – and that is not just my pro-EU bias talking. Cameron was in compete command of his case and I for one felt he was totally justified in putting down his erstwhile friend Boris, who was left mouthing “rubbish”. Many of the best contributions came from the opposition side of the chamber but it was good to see quite a lot of Tories supporting Cameron. On the question of sovereignty (much instanced by Boris Johnson) Nick Herbert (Con. Arundel & South Downs) made a penetrating intervention –
“Does my right hon. Friend agree that when this country, in our national interest, makes an international agreement of any kind, it may involve a loss of sovereignty? That may be the case through any trade deal, through trading under World Trade Organisation rules and on the single most important decision this House of Commons could take: whether or not to engage in military action. We are treaty-bound by NATO, under article 5, to go to the defence of a fellow member that is under armed attack—that obliges us. In that sense, we have lost sovereignty because we believe it is in the interests of the country to enter that agreement and that it has made us safer. If the claim of “sovereignty” and its loss were the trump card, would not all those international agreements have to be torn up?”
To which the Prime Minister replied: “My right hon. Friend makes an important point: if your only determination was never to cede any technical sovereignty, you would never join any of these organisations, you would not do a trade deal and you probably would not be a member of the UN, the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank. Therefore, the question really is: what maximises our power, influence and ability to get things done? As the Transport Secretary put it so brilliantly at the Cabinet meeting, “I would love to live in utopia but I expect the EU would probably be there, too.” That is to say, you do not abolish the EU by leaving it; you simply cut yourself off from something and therefore possibly make yourself, in many ways, less powerful, rather than more powerful.”
What a pity so few people hear what is actually said in parliament!
FTSE 100 company leaders have signed a letter in support of IN
As Mervyn King drily says in his interview in The Telegraph today, “Some of them are the same people who said we should adopt the Euro. Why on earth should we listen to them?”
@Paul In Wokingham “Some of them are the same people who said we should adopt the Euro. Why on earth should we listen to them?”
This is an important point that came up in a previous thread. The IN campaign needs a strategy to address those who say, “You were wrong about ERM and then the Euro, why should we believe you this time?”