DOMINIC LAWSON: The Lib-Dems lies about jobs and the EU would put Goebbels to shame By Dominic Lawson To Joseph Goebbels is attributed the remark that ‘if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually believe it’. In fact the Nazi propagandist-in-chief never said this; but the phrase has stuck because it encapsulates the most unscrupulous aspect of political campaigning methods down to the present day. However, in Britain the public now have the valuable antidote of the Freedom of Information Act — the reform which (make of this what you will) Tony Blair now says is the measure he most regrets introducing. Last Friday, it helped nail the Liberal Democrat chief secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander — who, along with David Cameron, Nick Clegg and George Osborne, is a member of the ‘quad’ at the apex of the Tory-Lib Dem coalition. Back at the end of June, at the height of the row over the appointment of Jean-Claude Juncker to the presidency of the European Commission, Alexander asserted in a speech (which he helpfully leaked in advance) that ‘over three million jobs’ were at stake if Britain left the EU. He attributed this to ‘the latest Treasury analysis’, adding: ‘That is the measure of the risk that isolationists would have us take.’ What ‘latest Treasury analysis’ would this be? My father Lord (Nigel) Lawson, with his interest as an ex-Chancellor advocating British exit from the EU, wrote asking to see on what it was based. He duly received a letter from the clerk of the House of Lords Library, saying: ‘I have contacted the Treasury a number of times to confirm whether or not the analysis is available, however I have yet to receive confirmation.’ Eventually, the official reported back: ‘The Treasury have now informed me that this analysis has not been published and they are not intending to publish it.’ There, most unsatisfactorily, the matter would have rested, were it not for the fact that the Open Europe think-tank on June 26 submitted a request under the Freedom of Information Act for release of the ‘latest Treasury analysis’ purportedly demonstrating the risk to ‘over three million jobs’. And now, the best part of two months later, the ‘Information Rights Unit’ of Her Majesty’s Treasury has responded. It admits that ‘the full source’ of Alexander’s claim is a Treasury assessment done in... 2003. So much for the Lib Dem Cabinet Minister’s assertion that this is hot news of imminent employment disaster in the event of Britain’s exit from the EU. Even more devastatingly, the official response to Open Europe’s FOI request goes on to point out that this 11-year-old research ‘is not an estimate of the impact of EU membership on employment’. All it did was to suggest — in a very rudimentary piece of analysis — that approximately three million jobs were involved in our trade with the EU. This ‘three million jobs at risk’ canard is based on the absurd proposition that if we were to leave the EU, all our trade with those 27 other countries would immediately cease. It is a piece of fiction which Alexander’s party leader Nick Clegg also likes to present as truth. In one of his ill-fated television debates with the Ukip leader Nigel Farage, Clegg asserted that if we left the EU, it would be a ‘sort of Billy No-Mates Britain — well, it will be worse than that; it will be a Billy No-Jobs Britain’. Yes, that’s right: according to the Deputy Prime Minister, no one in Britain would have a job at all if we left the EU. Well, it might be true in his case. These grotesque and indeed hysterical claims stem in part from the fact that both men’s careers have been inextricably linked to the EU. Clegg’s political life began in Brussels, first at the European Commission itself, then later as a member of the European Parliament. Alexander spent eight years as director of communications at the European Movement and its successor, the Britain In Europe campaign. In the latter guise, this was the main organisation lobbying for Britain to abandon the pound and join the euro: you will recall that its principal claim was that if we didn’t join the single European currency, it would be immensely damaging to our employment prospects. Here’s the latest on that one: Britain, outside the euro, has just reported a 3.2 per cent growth in output for the second quarter of the year, while the 18 countries in the single currency area registered no growth at all. It is increasingly clear that the over- regulated economy of the EU is not so much enhancing British employment prospects but is itself the source of greatest concern. At the same time — and given that the UK currently imports about £45 billion more a year from the rest of the EU than we export to them — does it seem remotely likely that if we were to leave the so-called ‘single European market’ its members would be happy to cease trading with us? The EU is now desperately trying to negotiate a free-trade deal with the U.S.: does that suggest it is somehow opposed to close commercial ties with states outside its own customs union? Moreover, under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, the EU is legally mandated to negotiate ‘free and fair trade’ with non-EU countries — us, in other words, were the British people to vote to leave in the in-or-out referendum pledged by David Cameron (if he is fortunate enough to lead the Conservative Party to an election victory next year). Above all, it seems to have eluded the Lib Dem scaremongers that the country with consistently the highest employment rates in Europe . . . isn’t in the European Union. This is Switzerland, which has negotiated a series of bilateral trade treaties with the EU, and which pays a fraction of the fees Britain does for full membership. Last year I visited Switzerland and met Beat Kappeler, who for 15 years was secretary of the Swiss Federation of Trade Unions, and so knows a thing or two about negotiations. He told me: ‘You can have your bilateral agreements, just like Switzerland. And like us, you already have more trade with countries outside the EU than normal European countries have. You are much more globally oriented than France, Italy, even Germany.’ It is in this context that Alexander’s blanket condemnation of ‘isolationists’ is such a calumny against those who are prepared to consider exit from the EU. But then, in pursuit of the big lie, other falsehoods follow.
Posted on: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 08:01:05 +0000
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