Nick Clegg’s Standard column this week concentrated on the European Referendum, as I suspect many of them will in the next few months. He sought to smash 5 key themes of the Leavers’ rhetoric.
The first is the claim that our membership of the EU costs us £55 million a day, a figure repeatedly used by Farage, Johnson and others. It’s a total con. As the fact-checkers at InFacts have found, in 2015 the net cost was in fact £17 million a day, or around 30p per person. For that entry fee we then get all the benefits that our access to the world’s largest single market brings, which the CBI has estimated to be worth £3,000 to every British household. So every man, woman and child materially benefits many times more than what we pay in.
The second is that, when it comes to trade, the EU needs us more than we need it. At a debate I took part in last week, this was the very first point made by Tory minister Andrea Leadsom. Again, totally bogus. Our exports to the rest of the EU represent around 12 per cent of our GDP but the EU’s exports to us are just three per cent of its GDP. Neither side will want a trade war but we should be under no illusion that the EU would have the much stronger hand to play in any negotiations if we left.
The third is that fewer than 750,000 Brits live elsewhere in Europe, far fewer than the number of EU nationals who live in the UK, a fib that Farage used against me in that same debate. But his figure is complete baloney. The Government’s own estimates a few years ago suggested around 2.2 million British people were living at least part of the year elsewhere, which is only slightly less than the 2.3 million EU citizens estimated to be living in the UK. The right to live and work across the EU is a two-way street.
The fourth is that EU “red tape” costs British businesses £600 million a year, a figure cited recently by Boris Johnson, and that the UK is run by a monstrously bloated bureaucracy in Brussels. For a start, this fib is based on the cost of applying regulations not just to business but to the public sector too. And, as with the £55 million-a-day figure, it takes no account of the return we get, either in terms of matters such as cleaner air or the huge benefits those same businesses get from being able to trade freely in the world’s biggest marketplace. And the European Commission is in truth about a 10th the size of Whitehall, employing around half the number of officials employed by HMRC alone.
But the fifth is perhaps the most pernicious. It is the claim that if we withdraw from Europe we can somehow “reclaim our borders” and wish the problem of mass immigration away. The Farages of this world like to suggest that if we were not part of the EU fewer desperate refugees fleeing war in Syria and elsewhere would seek to make their way here. What cynical nonsense. The truth is that we are not part of the borderless Schengen area and the thousands of traumatised individuals clamouring for refuge in Europe do not make a distinction between EU and non-EU membership. They just want safety and sanctuary. What’s more, if we want to trade with Europe in future as we do now, free movement will undoubtedly be part of the deal. That’s what Norway and Switzerland, which the Brexiteers love to cite as models, have found. Both have to sign up to the EU’s rules in order to be part of the single market (even partially in Switzerland’s case), and we would too.
He went on to talk about how our influential place in the world is enhanced, not diminished by our role in the EU.
You can read the whole article here.
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31 Comments
It is insane that exit from the EU is even considered. Both economic liberalism and social liberalism are unquestionably good for everyone.
The EU is our bastion against nationalism and socialism. Britain needs to commit to the EU, join the Euro and champion an EU army and support market liberalisation in all sectors.
We need to stop being this arm lengths partner because of misguided “patriotic” beliefs, which are a danger to our global liberal corporate values.
Nick Clegg as always talks sense. It is a shame he was bullied out of office by the hard left and the UKIP brigade, the man would have made the greatest prime minister this nation has ever seen.
Although ordinarily a great fan of Stimpson, I feel it does look like Clegg is repeating the mistakes he made in the European Election campaign. You remember, “What would you like Europe to look like in 10 years time?” ” “The same.”
Making these points is irrelevant, especially from him. The ever excellent Paul Murray over in the members forum has linked to this fascinating analysis of polling by YouGov https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/03/24/eu-referendum-provincial-england-versus-london-and/
You don’t win referendums talking to the people who agree with you. And being dismissive of those who have their doubts.
It is clear that what the party should be doing is setting out its commitment to a renewed and reform EU, using as the basis of our campaign our own policy paper https://www.libdemvoice.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Europe-Policy-Paper.pdf
(HT Anthony Hook)
Instead Clegg is back again, playing the role of Cameron’s Poodle. And as usual the Party Establishment is following his lead.
Well Nick there are as many big fat lies put out by the stay-in EU camp as they are for the Brexit lot.
For a single instance of uncountable ones, such as what Paddy has stated today about the UK’s reduced security, but where according to quite a few including former CIA directors – ‘Former CIA director says UK national security would not be damaged by leaving EU’ – http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/brexit-former-cia-director-says-uk-national-security-would-not-be-damaged-by-leaving-eu-1551574 , the UK would be safer.
But there are as many unknown threats on both sides of the Brexit equation. Indeed, people consider the threat of the unknown from Brexit including yourself, but there is no-one shouting out that staying in the EU creates massive possible threats also and where the EU has presently all the hallmarks of disintegrating over the next two decades. If this happens the real disaster will happen and Brexit will look like a storm in a teacup. Therefore people had better get their head around the fact that even by staying in, there are definite unknown major threats and possibly ten-times the threat of Brexit.
Just one example again – Germany Is Crashing The Euro As Europe’s Economy Goes Into Meltdown – http://yournewswire.com/germany-is-crashing-the-euro-as-europes-economy-goes-into-meltdown/
But now as we stand today, the UK has a chance to pre-empt this possible major socio-economic future threat by going it alone and forging new trade treaties with the world. If that were the case and the EU was in total meltdown, the UK in 20-years time could weather the storm far better, but not if we were a part of the meltdown.
THEREFORE THIS VOTE HAS A LOT TO DO WITH THE WORLD THAT OUR NEXT GENERATION WILL INHERIT FROM US AND WHERE THE VOTE WILL DECIDE THEIR ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL FATE.
http://worldinnovationfoundation.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/brexit-three-of-great-myths-of-staying.html
Bill le Breton is sadly right.
Credit to Nick Clegg, his arguments are good, the tone is in places quite wrong, but it is overall the wrong message from the wrong person.
Nick Clegg , Cameron’s Poodle. Mr Clegg was at one time Cameron’s ‘assistant ‘ in the EU I would think that as a result, the poodle would run around doing his masters wishes and therefore looking up to him. The master would use this to his advantage. He would therefore know how his assistant worked, exploitation. The party must break away from the shackles of yesterday and give the right message from the right person Tim Farron our new leader.
The referendum is about Britain’s Future and Nick is mostly correct.
Do you want a Britain dominated by the hard right or broken up?
Dr David Hill
The future is Asia rising. SE Asia has formed the Asean Economic Community.
It is difficult to see an isolated Britain being able to successfully compete.
Singapore is now a major financial centre and is one place set to challenge the City of London.
Why don’t we set the European migration and possible refugee numbers from the Syrian crisis in the context of overall migration into the UK?
The numbers of people coming to join families already settled here for many years, somewhere in the region of 200,000 per year, might offer some badly needed perspective.
“The Government’s own estimates a few years ago suggested around 2.2 million British people were living at least part of the year elsewhere, which is only slightly less than the 2.3 million EU citizens estimated to be living in the UK.”
NIck’s figures are themselves “baloney” as they have been comprehensively rubbished by, among others, the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford. See :-
http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/press-releases/definitive-data-shows-more-1m-uk-born-migrants-other-eu-countries-26m-eu-migrants-uk
And :-
https://www.libdemvoice.org/remain-and-immigration-49613.html#comment-396065
According to them, “definitive” data shows that just over a million UK-born people live in other EU countries, whereas 2.6m people from the EU are living in the UK.
If I vote to stay in it will be with a monumental lack of enthusiasm and mostly because I think the immediate effect will be a very severe economic jolt.
As for the rest of it, the EU is not stopping the rise of the hard or even far Right, not stopping countries from erecting razor wire fences to keep the victims of their collective military interventionists “strategy’ in the middle East out, not stopped ever increasing flood up from labour to the already wealthy, blocked welfare cuts, decreased homelessness, tackled banking fraud or ended terrorism or done anything worth doing very much at all. It isn’t liberal or progressive. It’s been turned into a neo-liberal project to lessen the power of national electorates for the benefit of international finance. It basically sucks, but probably less so than another economic crash caused by trying to extract oneself from it.
In the Clegg-Farage debate Farage referred to the number of citizens of EU member states entitled to enter the UK legally, an alarmist figure because most do not. It is only half of the number who were previously entitled to come to the UK from the former British Empire. They did not actually come in in anything like such huge numbers, despite rising populations, rising prosperity and improved air travel. Choose your historian, in this case Andrew Marr.
Tabloid newspapers used to have screaming headlines saying that the objectives of the EEC were impossible because yellow headlights were compulsory on cars in France and Illegal in Germany. They did not suggest that political leaders in those countries could be among those talking to each other to sort out these issues. They did not predict that a French Socialist president and a German Christian Democrat Chancellor would hold hands in public at an anniversary of the battle of Verdun, nor that another French Socialist President would attend an anniversary of the battle of the Somme with a British Conservative Prime Minister saying “nous somme solidaires”.
An example of regulation was the Bavarian beer purity law, which required a high standard of purity. There was reluctance to reduce the standard, which had the effect of an import restriction for other beers from Belgium, UK, etc., since overcome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_in_Germany
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinheitsgebot
Please also see the Opinion on page 27 of the Times of 26/3/16.
Matthew Parris’ article is headlined “Tories have got to end their affair with Boris”
“Charm can make us forget the dishonesty and recklessness that would be ruthlessly exposed if he became leader”. The word “reckless” is a quote from a Court of Appeal judge in 2013.
http://www.lemonde.fr/attaques-a-paris/video/2015/11/23/cameron-en-francais-dans-le-texte-nous-sommes-solidaires-avec-vous_4815494_4809495.html
@Glenn
I agree with your “economic shock” point. Those who try to dismiss this as a temporary blip that we will soon emerge from all the stronger are not the people who would suffer the years of disruption that Brexit would undoubtedly unleash, even if it true to say that we will eventually emerge with some sort of solution. It is as always the less well off who will bear the brunt if this happens.
As to Dr David Hill I cannot equate the grand designs of his World Innovation Foundation with the efforts he is currently taking to pursue the isolation of the UK from its continental neighbours. Of course there are potential threats within or without the EU. But for us to leap overboard, with as I have noted above the severe disruption that would cause to our people, just in case the EU (even with our help and support) might in future struggle to surmount its problems makes no sense whatsoever, especially given our special status outside the eurozone and Schengen. The forces available to ensure the entire edifice of 28 countries does not come tumbling down are pretty strong. And in any case many of its difficulties are world problems.
Those who are most loudly telling us that the economy would be devastated by BREXIT are broadly the same group of people who ten years ago were telling us how devastating it would be if we did not join the Euro. As Mervyn King trenchantly observed a few weeks ago “Why on earth should we listen to them?”
I find it puzzling that Liberal Democrats – who drone on endlessly about decentralization and devolution – are so keen to abrogate executive power to a supra-national organization with so little democratic accountability. Perhaps if there are people in the party who envisage the ultimate end goal of “ever closer union” as the creation of a United States of Europe then they should say so clearly and unambiguously.
I have not decided which way I shall vote, although my inclination is to vote “leave” on the basis that I believe the democratic deficit is insurmountable and I am not convinced about an organization that would launch a disaster like the Euro without considering the implications of monetary union without fiscal union or – worse still – after considering those implications. I see merit in both cases, but have yet to hear a killer argument from either side.
What I am sure of is – as Bill le Breton notes above – that I will not be persuaded by someone shouting at me that I must be a fool because I don’t agree with their view.
@Paul Murray
I would just say that I am not aware of anyone on the “remain” side predicting that the UK economy would be completely devastated by leaving the EU. In the long term a new way forward would be found. While there is room for debate about how lengthy and how harmful to our people the interim period would be only the Boris Johnsons of this world are making the ludicrous claim that there would be no “economic shock” at all. Also as time goes on the way forward being offered by many on the “leave” side sounds (at best) closer and closer to what we already have, as they concede that we will have to do business with the 27 remaining in the single market on the best terms available.
By the way many of us were never in favour of the UK joining the euro. Perhaps the best example is Lord Hill the British EU Commissioner handlking the portfolio Financial Stability, Financial Services and the Capital Markets Union i
Sorry – must have hit the “post” button too soon again. My last paragraph should be –
By the way many of us were never in favour of the UK joining the euro. Perhaps the best example is Lord Hill the British EU Commissioner handling the portfolio Financial Stability, Financial Services and the Capital Markets Union. He was prominently involved in the campaign to keep us out of the euro and has now written to spell out severe concerns about the damage Brexit would do to the international position of the City of London.
@Dennis – I was specifically thinking of Richard Branson, who is one of the most “media friendly” faces of the “remain” campaign and leading cheerleader for Britain in the Euro. Here is exactly what he said a few days ago on LBC in an interview with Iain Dale: “Leaving the EU would be a tremendous disaster for Great Britain… I don’t think it’ll remain Great Britain for very long. It’ll become Little England. Scotland would leave and go back into Europe and I think it would have devastating consequences for jobs and for the economy.”
@Paul Murray
Richard Branson mocks “Little Englanders” while living on his own private island in the Caribbean – which is about as insular an existence as it’s possible to get. Still, it’s nice for him to be taking an interest.
UPDATE: The very wise Jonathan Calder (and perhaps MarkPack in a comment to his recent post at Liberal England ) explain why this kind of ‘rebuttal’ is an error: http://liberalengland.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/why-rebutting-your-opponents-charges.html
@David Hill – “THEREFORE THIS VOTE HAS A LOT TO DO WITH THE WORLD THAT OUR NEXT GENERATION WILL INHERIT FROM US AND WHERE THE VOTE WILL DECIDE THEIR ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL FATE.”
One of the few rational things you’ve said in this matter that I can agree with.
@Stimpson – “It is insane that exit from the EU is even considered.”
Agree, whilst I fully understand the campaigns to reform the EU and for the UK people to tie the hands of Westminster, so that they can’t simply sign treaties that giveaway ‘sovereignty’, the fact these real concerns have been totally hijacked by the exit movement is of concern whatever the outcome of the referendum.
@Roland “the fact these real concerns have been totally hijacked by the exit movement is of concern whatever the outcome of the referendum.”
Quite. What scares me is what the Brexit movement will do if they win the referendum. It would certainly mean a violent lurch to the right, and frankly it’s hard to think of anything that would be “off limits” for them in the flush of victory. We’d probably see the public services slashed to levels that George Osborne would shudder to contemplate.
And if the vote is for Remain, then Brexit will doubtless begin to immediately campaign for another referendum.
In any case, whatever the outcome, the losing side is likely to have more than 40% of the vote, so that’s going to mean a lot of unhappy people either way.
FURTHER UPDATE: @patrickwintour recently encapsulated and exposed the standard of campaigning in this referendum in this tweet:
“Campaign A turns a half-truth into an absurdity. Campaign B condemns A’s scaremongering. A says rich coming from B. B seeks retraction. Rpt”
Why are we going along with this nonsense and not using our campaign to communicate and engage properly?
Let’s take a look at the ICM polling on the EU referendum. The numbers below are exlusively from ICM because by using a single polling organization we should expect a consistent methodology that would detect meaningful changes in support. Here’s their last 10 poll results:
24/3 Remain 45% Leave 43%
20/3 Remain 41% Leave 43%
13/3 Remain 43% Leave 41%
6/3 Remain 40% Leave 41%
29/2 Remain 41% Leave 41%
22/2 Remain 42% Leave 40%
14/2 Remain 43% Leave 39%
7/2 Remain 41% Leave 42%
31/1 Remain 42% Leave 39%
24/1 Remain 41% Leave 41%
So in spite of all the distortions, the wild speculation masquerading as analysis, the celebrity endorsements and the leaflets through doors, there has been basically no movement in the polls in two months.
What on earth does that say about the campaigns?
Those who are not enthusiasts for the European cause but want to live in a UK which gives hope and succour to those of a liberal democratic persuasion should bear in mind on June 23 the position taken by Harold Wilson when asked why he advocated a pro EU vote last time, rather than taking a neutral position.
According to his confidant Lord Donoughue, Wilson was of the belief that “a victory for the ‘Nos’ would empower ‘the wrong kind of people’ in Britain; the Benn Left and the (Enoch) Powell Right who were often extreme nationalists, protectionist, xenophobic and backward-looking”.
Denis
Back in the days of Harold Wilson, there was no such thing as an EU. It was an EEC, and to be frank if it had stayed as an EEC,.. this coming referendum would probably not be necessary?
Nick Clegg was on the BBC1 Breakfast show on 29/5/2017, talking about security.
We should recall that that the Deputy Prime Minister was seeing the same information that PM David Cameron was seeing. The DPM also chaired the cabinet sub-committee on Home Affairs, thereby outranking Home Secretary Theresa May. When the DPM nominated Norman Baker MP as a Home Office minister she went to see the PM to protest, unsuccessfully.
Nick Clegg advised the BBC TV Breakfast journalists not to accept “generalisations” from the Tory who would follow him, but insist on specific answers. Home Secretary Amber Rudd said that the UK will lose access to EU security databases on leaving, but would need to replace this access by negotiation.
Theresa May has not said “nous somme solidaires” as David Cameron did when France suffered a terrorist atrocity. Hopefully May may have negotiated politely for reciprocity.
Stimpson: “an EU army” is politically difficult, putting relations with NATO at risk. The USA has often been isolationist or “neutral”. Canada has a relatively low level of military spending, while being politically friendly.
Think of the countries which have been attacked, or occupied if defeated. Spain had a civil war in which Germany and Italy supported the Falange against the elected government. Germany and then Italy, attacked France, Italy attacked Greece and was belatedly supported by Germany, through the former Yugoslavia. Belgium again, Holland and Luxembourg were invaded by Germany. France’s humiliation was not entirely resolved by De Gaulle, who suffered attempts at assassination. Denmark and Norway were attacked and occupied, leading to the resignation of a British Prime Minister after the Norway debate. When Germany invaded the USSR Finland fought to restore the territory Stalin had taken, but no more. Sweden was surrounded and nervous in armed neutrality. Poland was double-crossed, being invaded by firstly Germany and then USSR. There are more complexities involving Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Ireland, … In reality military unity derives from a military threat, such as happened with a Russian cyber attack on Estonia or to Ukraine.
The point about the EU is that almost every country has at some stage been in conflict with every other and are now at peace. The resentments can last a long time. The UK failed to defend the Channel Islands, which historical fact is still remembered.
Nick Clegg is always at his worst when he gets onto the figures, particularly economic ones. He’s just not a very numerate politician.
Nick Clegg has a new book out in 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/15/nick-clegg-book-will-reveal-how-to-stop-brexit.
Channel 4 News on Thursday last for Leavers and Thursday next for Remainers has focus groups. Worth a look.
Nigel Farage MEP has caused surprise by calling for “a second referendum”.
Nick Clegg has said that he does not agree with Farage on anything else but he does agree with Farage on this.
The UKIP leader has had a long talk with Nigel Farage. (BBC2 Daily Politics 12/1/2018).