By Roger Helmer
I was first elected, bright-eyed and bushy tailed, to the European parliament in 1999. Back then, I still believed that there were benefits in EU membership, and that all it needed was a determined, Anglo-Saxon reform agenda.
Older and wiser now, and with a dozen years’ experience in Brussels and Strasbourg, I realise that the EU is simply beyond reform. It deserves to be put out of its misery. As my colleague Dan Hannan says, the EU is making us poorer, and less democratic, and less free.
I still believe that there are benefits in membership – but none that could not be achieved with a simple free trade agreement, such as dozens of countries around the world have with the EU, with more being currently negotiated.
The trade benefits of being in the Single Market are less than 2% of GDP, while the regulatory costs exceed 5%. And those are not my figures, but quotes from EU Commissioners.
Undemocratic
Meantime the damage to democratic accountability, and to public trust in politics, is incalculable. Most of our decisions are made by people we didn't elect, and can't get rid of. Again and again we face diktats from Brussels, or European Court decisions, that we (and our government) hate, but we have to accept anyway.
There is a view that we need to be in the EU “for trade”, but of course we will continue to trade with the EU after we leave, just as Switzerland and Norway – and the USA and Japan – do very successfully.
We are a major net importer from the EU, and therefore in a very strong negotiating position. After we leave, Germany will continue to sell us BMWs, and Nissan and Toyota will continue to sell British-made cars to the continent. The EU is an economic area in long-term relative decline. While the US will hold share of world trade, and the BRICs will grow, Europe lags behind.
It makes no sense for the UK to link itself primarily or preferentially to an area in long-term decline, while turning our backs on our natural partners in the “Anglosphere” – the community of democratic English-speaking nations.
All this was true a couple of years ago. But now we have the euro crisis delivering the coup de grâce to the EU economy. The eurozone is in melt¬down.
Two key aperçus emerge: first, failure is built in to the structure of the euro. It cannot survive without massive, on-going fund transfers to the periphery, which are simply unacceptable to the German tax-payer. While Merkel and Sarkozy look for a rescue formula, the truth is that no formula will work, nor be acceptable to national parliaments.
Break-up
Only an orderly break-up of the euro project offers any hope. And secondly, we see the totally dysfunctional nature of the EU. Again and again they promise decisive action. But again and again they deliver too little, too late.
Cameron and Osborne say (rightly) that the euro crisis will harm Britain, but then argue (wrongly) that we should support euro rescue plans. These plans will fail. They throw good money after bad.
We should be distancing ourselves from Brussels and strengthening what defences we have -- not getting sucked into bail-outs. And it is morally wrong that we stand on the side-lines and demand that euro-zone states accept an emasculation of their independence which we would never countenance for ourselves.
I was a Conservative all these years because I believed we were a eurosceptic party, and that sooner or later a Conservative government would sort out the problem. That view was getting very threadbare before Cameron's outrageous, damaging and pointless decision to apply a three-line whip against a motion calling for a referendum.
Cameron's pretence, adopted for electoral purposes, that he is a eurosceptic, is no longer credible. Like Macmillan before him, he is simply the London face of Brussels. Some are comparing him to Heath.
That's why I can no longer honestly sit as a Conservative MEP. I am looking forward to retirement, but I suspect I may not be able entirely to disengage from my commitment to the freedom and independence of our country.
Roger Helmer has represented the East Midlands in the European Parliament for the past 12 years.
