Rarely has the aphorism, "there are lies, damned lies
and statistics" been more apposite
than among the multitude of facts and figures being pumped out by both sides of
the EU referendum debate. Even on the rare occasions where both side agree on a
matter of fact as a starting point, they then extrapolate and manipulate to
reach wildly different conclusions.
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| U-turn? What u-turn? |
A central plank of the Leave campaign is that we currently
pay £350 million per week into the EU budget and that withdrawing would free up
this money, which is enough to fund the building of a new hospital every week
and pay for 600,000 new nurses for the NHS. Nonsense, claim Remain campaigners.
Not only does this figure fail to account for Britain's rebate, it also fails
to consider payments made by the EU to the UK. Some claim that our net
contribution to the EU actually amounts to 'just' £136 million per week, a
still not inconsiderable sum but whatever figure you chose to believe, there are
no guarantees on how any money saved would be spent.
The Remainers will point to a report from the
independent research group, the
Institute for Fiscal Studies, who say that although withdrawal from the EU
would improve UK public finances by £8 billion[1],
Brexit could mean two further years of "austerity," with a reduction in GDP leading to an increase
in our deficit of between £20 billion and £40 billion in 2019–20. But this is
just so much speculation; no country has yet exited the EU, there are no precedents
to draw on and the effect of Brexit could just as easily be an increase in GDP.
If the value of Britain's contribution - which ought to be
verifiable, but clearly isn't - is debatable, then yet more contentious are
some of the other figures bandied about, particularly those projected by
Chancellor of The Exchequer, George Osborne. Brexit would mean every household
in Britain being £4,300 worse off per annum by 2030 according to George, since
Britain's withdrawal would cause the economy to shrink by 6% over the next
fourteen years. Except of course there is no evidence to support that claim and
the £4,300 figure is a representation of how GDP could shrink per head of the
population. It is total misrepresentation to claim that everyone will be over four
grand a year worse off. It is equally possible that the economy could grow by
6% over the next fourteen years; experience shows that economic forecasts are
rarely accurate, there are simply too many variables.
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| Would you buy a used statistic from this man? |
Osborne also claims that Brexit would cost pensioners as
much as £32,000. This is based on the assumption that having left the EU,
Britain would be faced with rising inflation, falling asset prices and other
economic woes which would erode pension values. On the other side of the coin
there are pensions experts who predict that pensions would fall if Britain
remains in the EU since regulations on the value of cash reserves that insurers
are required to keep would drive down the rates on the annuities purchased from
pension pots and similarly, final salary pensions schemes would lose out as
Brussels introduces controls on them, increasing costs and causing some schemes
to close.
When Britain voted on the EU in 1975 it was membership of
the Common Market that we were considering. The Common Market was little more
than a glorified trade bloc, but one that had delusions of grandeur, and having
transmogrified itself into the European Union, it is now an organisation that
its detractors claim interferes in too many aspects of our daily lives. EU
supporters will claim that it has protected and improved workers' rights
throughout the continent with directives such as The Working Time Regulations,
however trade union officials both in the UK and outside consider the EU to be anything but a workers'
paradise. Enrico Tortolano, campaign director for Trade Unionists Against The
EU says that the case for Britain to leave is stronger than ever, while Norwegian
trade unionists believe that they have enjoyed many additional rights and
privileges as a direct result of Norway remaining outside the EU. In Sweden
workers who saw their terms and conditions of employment deteriorate found that
their case went unsupported in the European Court of Justice, who according to
the Morning Star, "made it explicit that business and employers’ freedoms
trump all workers’ protections."
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"A
resounding No to continued membership of the EU should be coming from the
working-class socialist movement"
Enrico Tortolano.
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Ah, say some, but remaining in the EU surely must be good
for the NHS, which remains one of this country's most prized assets. NHS
England chief executive Simon Stevens has warned that Brexit would be extremely
harmful to the NHS, with a possible recession damaging investment in the health
service. It is possible, however that our continued membership of the EU might
force the break up and privatisation of the NHS through the implementation of
the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
Last week an article in the Evening Standard suggested that Britain
could lose control of Gibraltar in the event that we vote to leave the EU, if
combined with a victory for the centre-right Partido Popular in the Spanish
elections on 26th June. It is of course, equally possible to argue that our
continued membership of the EU makes a decision from Brussels to hand control
of the Rock over to the Spanish just as likely.
But what about all that pettifogging red tape that Brussels
insists in wrapping business up in? Is it really essential for there to be 109
EU laws regarding pillow cases, or 52 relating to toasters (if there are that
many for pillow cases, I would have expected the total for toasters to be
greater), or 1,200 about bread, or 12,000 concerning milk? Who knows, because
is it really possible to keep abreast of that number of directives? Freed from
these bureaucratic shackles, which apply whether a company trades with the EU
or not, British companies could flourish. Or that is one argument; another
would be that they would still have to comply with all of these directives if
they traded with the EU, so Brexit would not significantly reduce the amount of
red-tape. And anyway, as successive British administrations have proved,
Whitehall is equally as adept at passing legislation that companies claim
strangles their business.
Unlike General Elections, whatever decision we reach on 23rd
June is not one we are likely to be able to reconsider in five years time and
reverse if we are unhappy with the outcome. Which is why, in order to make an
informed decision, we need facts not speculation and thoughtful consideration
of potential outcomes rather than the hyperbolic purple prose employed by both sides in this
debate.
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Jeremy Corbyn voted out in 1975 and would be likely to do so now if he
were still a back bencher claims his long-time friend and journalist Tariq Ali. Corbyn now backs the Remain campaign.
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In the 1975 referendum,
it was 67% to 33% in favour of staying in the Common Market but polls suggest
that this time round it will be a lot closer. As many as 20% of voters remain
undecided on which way to cast their vote, and I include myself among them.
Making my mind up is proving difficult, because frankly I don't know which side
to believe - most of the time I don't believe either of them. The
scaremongering and peddling of the most dubious of 'facts' has been on a scale
unprecedented in any political campaign I can remember. If you believe some of the stories from the Remain camp, without the EU to wipe our noses and ties our shoelaces, Britain will be like a weak and frightened child in a bewildering adult land, while the Leave supporters forget that the world is a very different place from what it was before we joined the Common Market and that disentangling ourselves from and subsequently dealing with the EU may make the most acrimonious of divorces seem like a genteel tea party.
All I know is that this is the most important decision the public have been asked to make since, well 1975 probably, and I hope and pray we make the right one - whatever it is.
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