Ok, they may not be lies exactly but it does make a good title. UKIP have dropped a leaflet through my door looking for my vote in the upcoming elections.
They ain’t getting it.
But let’s take a look at their leaflet or rather some of the things they say in it …
…from the UK Independence Party, South East Region
Well done! You’ve annoyed me with the first bit of text on the leaflet … I do not live in the south east, but in the south … or to be more historic, Wessex. Given the importance of the Wessex region to the history of England, you would have expected a nationalist party like UKIP to incorporate a bit of national pride in their history. But perhaps none of them know anything about history.
… allowed open-door immigration
Well that was not much of a surprise, but “open-door” is a bit of an exaggeration isn’t it? After all, nobody from outside of Europe can come in without special permission. UKIP will say that they mean the open-door for European migrants … to which I respond: Say what you mean then.
And considering migration within Europe, you have to consider migration from the UK to the rest of Europe as well as migration from Europe into the UK. Stop the Europeans from coming in, and Europe is very likely to stop people from the UK migrating to places within Europe.
And there is probably a great deal more of it than UKIP suspects. According to the UK Office of Statistics :-
If you look at the graph, you can see that the overall level of immigration was falling in 2008 and at the peak was at roughly 225,000 people per year. The number of people born in countries other than Britain is still a tiny minority of the total population. What has happened over the last decade is that various factors have encouraged immigrants to settle in more areas of the country than would have been the case in the past, so it appears to some than we are getting flooded with immigrants. When people say we are getting too much immigration, they are probably being deceived on how much immigration there is.
And indeed according to the Wikipedia article on immigration to the UK, only 3.3% of the population were born in Europe whereas 7.7% were born outside of Europe. So the majority of the “immigration problem” are in fact non-European immigrants.
And it’s easy to overlook than many – indeed probably most – of those immigrants want to be British.
… United States of Europe …
Scary isn’t it?
There are basically two ways to approach this – either be on the outside observing what is happening, or be on the inside and be part of what is happening. In the later, those who oppose the idea can work on stopping it. It’s a fact of life that Europe is there and isn’t going away, and it’s going to have an enormous influence on the future of the UK whether we are part of it or not. Given that it makes a great deal of sense to stay in Europe to change Europe to suit us more than would otherwise be the case.
Europe has problems that need to be addressed … part of which is that the unelected European Commission has too much power, and the European parliament has too little power.
There are those who say Britain is a major global player and that we can survive on our own. Sure we can survive, but hopefully our ambitions are to prosper and not just survive. It is true that we are a major global power, but not to the extent that the US or China are … to oppose the superpowers, we need to be joined to a superpower. Those believing we can go our own way and still push the superpowers to act in our interests is unrealistically jingoistic and looks back to a time when the British Empire could do that. That time has past.
more jobs after we leave the EU
I don’t think anyone can predict the number of jobs that would be lost or gained by leaving Europe – it’s such a complex question to answer that anyone who knows is probably deceiving themselves (and us).
As to Europe shrinking as a world player … well that’s just ridiculous. It may be shrinking a bit, but it’s still the largest economy in the world with a GDP of approximately$17 billion; a smidgen more than the USA (which is the largest country). Anyone who believes that Europe is in decline is foolish in the extreme; it would have to decline enormously for it not to be a benefit to be part of it. Look at the newest members of Europe – how many of them had to be forced to sign up?
No, Europe won’t stop trading with us. But leaving Europe will put barriers in the way … not sufficient barriers to stop Europe buying from us, but sufficient that if a choice had to be made between nearly equal quality sellers then the British seller would lose out because buying from inside Europe will be just a bit more convenient.
Food and fuel will be CHEAPER outside the EU
It is true that the European agricultural policy results in higher food prices than would otherwise be the case. And changing that policy is somewhat difficult. It could be that food prices would be lower if we left Europe, but there is no guarantee … after all farmers are a particularly loud lobby group and would probably manage to argue for some level of transitional help equivalent to the European agricultural policy.
And nobody seems to have a figure for just how much food prices would decline if we left Europe.
One thing that is overlooked is just why the agricultural policy is in place; amongst other things, it is in place to ensure that farmers can make enough money so that they stay in the business of producing food. This is to ensure that European citizens have food security – so that we are not reliant on food imports to feed ourselves. Given our history, it is somewhat surprising that the UK isn’t a fan of the agricultural policy – before WWII, much of Britain’s food supply was dependent on food imports, as a result of which Britain suffered during WWII because food imports were difficult to get. Anyone remember rationing and food scarcity?
Perhaps we can decide that food security is not as important as it used to be.
As to fuel costs, the “green taxes” are not so much European inspired, as global warming inspired. Perhaps there are better ways of doing it, but reducing fossil fuel usage is definitely an aim worth going for.
We’ll SAVE enough to mend our economy for our children
According to UKIP, our membership fee for Europe is £55 million a year, which adds up to some £20 billion a year. So where is the £165 billion a year coming from?
Of course £20 billion sounds like an enormous amount to any normal person, but in term of government spending it’s a drop in the ocean. It’s also wrong; according to the BBC, the membership fees paid by the UK actually add up to around €11 billion which comes out at about £9 billion.
Now in addition to this, we have to take account of European spending on projects within the UK … including all those payments to farmers that we complain about. So when you come down to it, the amount we pay overall is a lot less than £9 billion. Whilst we don’t benefit greatly by those projects, it’s worth remembering that much of European spending goes on European countries in trouble; if we find ourselves in trouble at some point in the future, we can expect to get lots of European money to help us out.
Too much perhaps? I’d argue that it’s well worth it, but the main point here is that the UKIP leaflet is vastly over-exaggerating the cost of Europe.
We can tell the European Court of Human Rights where to go
According to UKIP, the UK has a proud tradition of liberty and freedom – which is correct. But today there is something worrying about the UK government as it seems to be eroding rights everywhere it can – take for example the immense amount of surveillance by GCHQ.
Europe doesn’t have a GCHQ; I’d rather trust them to look after human rights than the UK government.
We can TRADE with the world, not subsidise it
I’m not sure what point UKIP is making here. We can already trade with the world independently of Europe; we can already decide not to subsidise other countries. As to complaining about Europe sending money to that list of dodgy countries (what’s so dodgy about them?), it’s worth pointing out that the UK doesn’t provide all of the money that Europe has … so when UKIP says it’s your money, they are in fact exaggerating … only about 1/3 (at most) is yours; most of it “belongs” to other European countries.
By being part of Europe we can take advantage of both trade deals that Europe organises and trade deals that the UK organises. There are limits to this of course, but we still benefit from two sets of negotiators whereas on our own it would be just one set of negotiators, and a behemoth like China, or the USA would be more likely to pay attention to Europe than a little country like the UK.
Summary
I’m pro-Europe, so I’m hardly likely to vote for UKIP. But even if I were anti-Europe, I’d be unlikely to vote for such a bunch of ignorant racists.
I’m used to seeing politicians distort the truth (if not outright lie), but this UKIP leaflet takes the prize for being the most ignorant distortion of the facts that I’ve ever seen. Perhaps the BNP would be worst, but those get thrown away without reading.