Those on board the European gravy train have mounted one power grab after another Thursday November 25,2010 THE Daily Express today becomes the first national newspaper to call for Britain to leave the European Union. From this day forth our energies will be directed to furthering the cause of those who believe Britain is Better Off Out. The famous and symbolic Crusader who adorns our masthead will become the figurehead of the struggle to repatriate British sovereignty from a political project that has comprehensively failed. After far too many years as the victims of Brussels larceny, bullying, over-regulation and all-round interference, the time has come for the British people to win back their country and restore legitimacy and accountability to their political process. *** CLICK HERE NOW TO SIGN OUR ONLINE PETITION TO QUIT THE EU *** Following the debacle of the Lisbon Treaty – disgracefully imposed upon the public without the referendum they were promised by the three main political parties – many had expected matters European to take a lower profile in British politics. But the opposite has been true as those on board the European gravy train have mounted one power grab after another. At a time of austerity throughout Europe they have expanded their bloated budgets, pushing Britain’s disproportionate contributions even higher. And despite not being part of the failing eurozone, British taxpayers have learned that under Brussels rules agreed to by Labour after it had lost the election they are liable to help bail out economies wrecked by the single currency. A payment of up to £10billion for Ireland is apparently just the start, with speculators now starting to target the embattled economy of Portugal. Despite unemployment across Europe averaging more than 10 per cent, Brussels continues to propose new job-destroying regulations and conspire to turn the whole EU into a zone of high taxation. It is also seeking to take an ever more dominant role in border control issues, leaving its member states powerless to control migrant flows not only from other EU countries but from Asia and Africa too. The European Court of Human Rights has continued to trample on British justice, preventing the deportation of terror suspects and demanding that convicted prisoners are given the vote. Withdrawal from the EU should be accompanied by a withdrawal from the jurisdiction of this alien, pan-European tribunal so that matters of British justice are decided once again in British courts. Ever since the British people were bounced into ratifying membership of the Common Market in 1975, after the political class had taken us in with no direct mandate, that institution has been stealing our rights to self-determination, remodelling itself in turn as the European Economic Community, the European Community and lately as the European Union. * CLICK HERE TO PRINT OFF MORE COPIES OF OUR EU CRUSADE PETITION COUPON * Upon a wafer-thin permission for economic cooperation has been built a blueprint for the United States of Europe. Almost nothing the EU has proposed or enacted has benefited Britain – our trawler fleet has been devastated by the Common Fisheries Policy while our taxpayers have found themselves massively subsidising inefficient French and Polish farmers under the Common Agricultural Policy. The European Exchange Rate Mechanism – the forerunner to the single currency – caused a deep recession in Britain that was only ended by the removal of Sterling from its deadening grip. This newspaper has always been hostile to the dilution of national sovereignty that EU membership entailed, but it has also always acknowledged that economic arguments were key. So long as there was a case to be made that leaving the EU would risk jobs and investment in Britain there was a powerful brake on thoughts of leaving altogether. But since the ERM disaster 20 years ago that economic case has utterly collapsed. We were told that staying out of the eurozone would be a financial disaster yet it is now clear beyond doubt that the opposite was true. Joining it would have been catastrophic, removing Britain’s ability to vary its interest and exchange rates to suit economic circumstances and plunging us into a depression. The past two decades of European integration have turned mainland Europe’s economies from some of the world’s industrial powerhouses into also-rans, stuck in the global slow lane. DEBATE: SHOULD BRITAIN WITHDRAW FROM THE EU? Only Germany has prospered in the euro – thanks to the single currency locking its neighbours into exchange rates at which they are unable to compete. And now the price of belonging to the EU, in terms of surrendered sovereignty, is to be further raised with countries like Ireland effectively having their public spending and borrowing decisions made by the European Central Bank in Frankfurt rather than by their electorates. While the EU has spread economic sclerosis through its member states the two richest countries in Europe have remained outside: Norway and Switzerland have stayed as the lynch-pins of the European Free Trade Area – able to import from and export to the EU freely without being subjected to its federalist ambitions. Were Britain to break free of Brussels there is no doubt that such a happy status would be open to us. A s a heavy net importer from the EU we are simply too important a market for the EU nations to risk cutting their ties with us. Taking Britain out of the EU should not be seen as a move to “Little Englandism”. On the contrary, ours is a great trading nation with markets all over the world. The time has come to develop our neglected trading links with the new global powerhouses such as China and India. The creation of the EU is explained by the perfectly understandable desire to avoid further conflict on a continent that had been the scene of two world wars. But Britain is a land apart: A precious stone set in the silver sea, as Shakespeare so evocatively put it; a realm with a glorious island story stretching back a thousand years, with links to every continent and a language taken up throughout the world. Our political class bought into the European experiment after losing confidence in our nation and accepting the inevitability of decline. They viewed Europe as a life raft and clambered on board. The British people never took that view. Now it is Europe that is in decline and Britain that is being held back. It is time to break free.UK NEWS
GET BRITAIN OUT OF EUROPE
By The Daily Express
Thursday, 25 November 2010
It is time for Britain to leave the European Union.
Posts
FOR MFD
25.11.10, 1:56pm
Here's a tip for you.
Leave. NOW.
The time is coming. Britain will be FREE.
I see you like to pose as the "voice of reason". Well, "voice of reason" explain to the rest of us the benefits of the totalitarian EU state. At the outset, we had a trading community not too dissimilar from EFTA. And that was OK. But the next steps were all based on lies. Now, if the EU is such a good thing, why was it necessary to lie?
So what are the benefits for which we pay £9 billion every year? Apart from getting fined for not displaying a bit of cloth. For not being allowed to punish criminals properly. For not being allowed to remove foreign nationals who threaten our country. For having more than 30,000 laws foisted on us.
And don't bother with the rubbish about saving Europe from war. What has saved Europe from war and defended it is British and American armed forces. The Soviets didn't dare. The Warsaw Pact puppets didn't dare.
Come on. I'm waiting. Waiting. Waiting!
• Posted by: agent0060 • Report Comment
WELL DONE !
25.11.10, 1:53pm
Well done EXPRESS! At last a media giant who has the guts to say what most of us have been fighting for, for the last decade or so. May the rest of the media rabble follow your excellent lead. Britain has never belonged to Europe and de Gaule's "non" to the repeated begging of our political twerps to join was so right.
• Posted by: Sylvia1984 • Report Comment
MIECXXXX
25.11.10, 1:52pm
Miecxxx whilst I appreciate your patriotism, pursuing your line of thought would sideline the UK and its economy from what little level of influence it still has in this world.
The UK's time has come and gone. Britain is still a great nation but the reality is that it is now an average EU country and breaking off from the UK will not change that in fact quite the opposite it would sideline us to having less influence in the world economy and sharing in the prosperity of this pooled club. Ironically we have more say and sovreignty by staying in than by observing on the sidelines.
I would leave China and the USA out of this arguement. Their history, geography and economic might are very divergent to ours.
Refer to all the studies that broadly agree that UK GDP has increased due EU membership. For an example: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.berr.gov.uk/
whatwedo/europeandtrade/europe/benefits-eu-membership/page22676.html
In your mention of Australia and Norway you omit to mention the number of EU staes that are ahead of UK.......
Miecxxx I can only urge you to get a balanced reporting view beyond the populist press whose only scope is to sell more unfactual pap which taps into the defiant spirit but is very short on actual facts and figures....Living outside of the UK would also make you appreciate the good and bad things of this country. As they say travel opens the mind....
• Posted by: MFD • Report Comment
MFD DOTH PROTEST TOO MUCH
25.11.10, 1:47pm
MFD means 'Minion For Dave'
He is straight from the propaganda dept of Conservative/Lib Dem H/Q.
Parties employ many people to counter those who do not agree with their dogma/Greed.
• Posted by: Smokey • Report Comment
OUT OF EUROPE
25.11.10, 1:42pm
BIGGEST UNFOUNDED DRIVEL I HAVE EVER HEARD....
Your contribution may have some facts correct but you missed out what it is costing the UK Taxpayer.
You also missed out the loss of the UK Fisheries and associated jobs and through gross mismanagement, the fish as well.
You also missed out the huge NEGATIVE trade balance with the rest of the EU.
You also missed out the total corruption of the EU Commission.
Need I go on? In short you have selected some minor benefits that could well be retained through association in the EFTA
• Posted by: MJHC • Report Comment
HALLELUJAH-LET THE CRUSADE(R)BEGIN..
25.11.10, 1:37pm
This is music to my/our ears.
BUT,let us not lose sight of and eradicate the evil ones whom led us down that EU garden pathway,whilst ignoring us and lining their pockets,there is no place for them ever again-thankfully for them, we no longer have `The Gallows'.
Their lucrative pensions shall be annulled and all of that that can be retreived-retreived.
SHAME-SHAME-SHAME ON ALL THOSE CO-COMPLICIT COHORTS.
• Posted by: korky • Report Comment
EUROPEAN UNION: COSTS ARE FIVE TIMES THE BENEFITS
European Union: Worst of all is the cost of red tape
Thursday November 25,2010
By Daniel Hannan, Conservative Euro MP for South-East England
HERE’S a nasty coincidence. All the welfare cuts put together will save £7billion: precisely Britain’s share of the Irish bail-out.
In other words, every penny we save from these painful benefits reductions will go to prop up the euro.
That £7billion is in addition to the £14billion which we pay into the EU budget every year: a budget that keeps rising.
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Britain’s share of the increase for next year – not our share of the budget, our share of the increase – will be £435million: enough to pay for 12,000 nurses, 15,000 police officers or 22,000 Army privates.
But our direct contributions are only part, and not the most important part, of the overall costs of the EU.
The Common Agricultural Policy hurts our farmers and costs every household an extra £1,200 a year in higher taxes and higher food bills. The Common Fisheries Policy has wiped out what ought to have been a great renewable resource off our coasts.
Worst of all is the cost of red tape. Here, I can do no better than to quote a survey by the most recent internal market commissioner, Gunter Verheugen. He found that the cost of regulation in the EU was 600billion euros a year. On the European Commission’s own figures, the advantages of the single market are worth only 120billion euros a year.
In other words, Eurocrats themselves admit that the costs of the EU outweigh the benefits by five to one.
What about commerce? We are often told that half of Britain’s trade is with the EU. True, but look at the balance of that trade. For most of the period of our membership, we have run a healthy surplus with the rest of the world but a deficit with Europe.
Since the financial crisis hit, we have run a small overall deficit on the non-EU share of our trade, too. Even so, our deficit with the EU last year was £14.4billion, as against just £1.1billion for the rest of the world.
Those figures are the answer to those who say that, if we left, our exports would suffer.
The other members benefit far more from cross-Channel commerce than we do. In any negotiation, the customer generally has the last word over the salesman.
In any case, we don’t need to be part of the EU’s political structures to be part of the single market.
Norway and Switzerland both sell around twice as much per head to the EU as we do.
They participate fully in the freedoms of the European market but are outside the CAP and CFP, police their own borders, settle their own human rights issues, trade freely with non-EU countries, and make only token contributions to the EU budget.
Oh, and unlike EU members, they pass the majority of their own laws.
Norway and Switzerland are thriving as independent states. So could Britain.
UK NEWS
BRUSSELS BILL IS £10BN A YEAR
British taxpayers will be pouring more than £10bn a year into the EU’s coffers by 2015
Thursday November 25,2010
By Daily Express reporter
BRITISH taxpayers will be pouring more than £10billion a year into the EU’s bloated coffers by 2015, official figures have shown.
That is the equivalent of just over £400 for every household in the country.
The UK’s total net contribution is on course to rise from £6billion this year to £10.3billion under a deal agreed by Tony Blair to phase out our annual rebate.
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Critics say the impact of Brussels regulations on business costs even more. One recent estimate put the total cost of EU legislation to Britain last year at £19.3billion.
Since 1998, Brussels regulations are thought to have cost the British economy a colossal £124billion.
The figures were calculated by the Euro-sceptic think tank Open Europe.
Mats Persson of Open Europe said: “Europe is an absolutely explosive issue in this country. Half of the population already want to leave the EU altogether according to some polls.
“The Coalition must embrace a radical agenda that involves less EU waste, more democracy and bringing powers back from Brussels. Without such a commitment, the number of people wanting to leave is going to increase.”