Should Britain break from Europe?

By Contributing editor Emily Hohler Jan 08, 2013

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“First on the list for 2013 is Europe”, says Simon Jenkins in The Guardian. David Cameron has promised an ‘early speech’ on the subject. It is expected to set out demands for powers to be repatriated from Brussels, with a view to negotiating a new settlement that will be put to a referendum.

More Britons than ever want to ‘leave Europe’ – 51% against 40% for staying – and disillusionment with Europe has led to record levels of support for the UK Independence Party. Even Jacques Delors, architect of the euro, demonstrated a “sense of realpolitik” last week when he suggested in Handelsblatt, a German newspaper, that if Britain could not support the “trend towards more integration”, we could “nevertheless remain friends, but on a different basis”. The Union of European Federalists suggests Britain could be given a ‘second-class’ membership of the bloc.

It’s high time we reassessed our EU membership, says Dominic Lawson in The Independent. When we joined the European Economic Community in 1973, its name was “properly suggestive of an association of entirely independent nations coming together solely for the purpose of trade”. Forty years on, Britons are sceptical that being part of the EU is “axiomatically an economic good”.

It is a “diminishing proportion of our overall trade… a function of the fact that Europe’s share of global GDP has fallen by half over the past 15 years”. Our trade should be less with Europe and more with the developing world.

It should, agrees Daniel Hannan in The Daily Telegraph. But negotiating a new relationship in which we remain part of a European free trade area, but not in a political union, won’t be easy.

Brussels defines matters such as the 48-hour week and the emissions trading scheme as single market issues because this makes them subject to majority voting. Since other members “won’t want to give Britain a competitive advantage, this is where the hardest pounding will be”.

Luckily, we hold a trump card: Britain is the EU’s biggest export market. But if Cameron can’t strike a deal, “leaving should hold no terrors”.

Maybe, but a “decisive break” would “risk the future of the City” and Cameron knows it, says Kamal Ahmed in The Daily Telegraph. According to TheCityUK, a lobby group, the trade surplus with EU member states for financial services grew by 80% between 2005 and 2011.

European regulators and politicians will be “licking their lips at the chance to put the UK… at a substantial disadvantage when it comes to new rules for financial regulation”. If the City is to convince the public that EU membership is crucial, it must get out there and make its argument.

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Published in UK economy | More articles by Emily Hohler

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  • 1. Ellen

    (08 January 2013, 05:02PM)  Complain about this comment

    I have always felt the British press, which is really, mostly, the Murdoch press, have campaigned against UK membership of the EU for private political purposes and not for the greater good of the British people. It may have it's root in its support for a choice of commonwealth over EU - they are an Australian family. But they have pulled off one of the greatest campaigns of propaganda in modern times.

    I expect to get shot down for this but, England supports a class system that would not be tolerated in most countries. We all find ourselves labelled, most badly, according to our origins. CBEs, OBEs etc, only serve to endorse how lowly the rest of us are.



  • 2. Ellen

    (08 January 2013, 05:02PM)  Complain about this comment

    Lowly citizens, I think, are less likely to be exploited under Brussels than under Westminster. The UK, in 1992, were one of only two countries to opt out of Maastricht treaty's Social Chapter, which extends a raft of rights workers around the world take for granted. David Cameron wants to take the UK out of it again and presumably get rid of basics rights and the minimum wage.

    Then there is the whole issue of being a part of a large economic block to protect our population, economically and politically, against other large economic blocks such as the US and China. As the power of the US fades on the world stage, this will become very important.

  • 3. Ellen

    (08 January 2013, 05:03PM)  Complain about this comment

    The Euro is in crisis at the moment - but so is the rest of the world. The whole world went on an orgy of debt for 10 years but, in the end, it will solved everywhere - through inflation or default.

    There is a lot wrong with Brussels that needs to be addressed, not least of all a lack of accountability. But there are a lot of false perceptions in Britain about the EU and mostly, I think, it is in the interest of the majority for the UK to remain a member of the EU.

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