Imagine the UK is the best place in the world to do business. With controlled migration that means we choose the skilled people we need, we now have a high wage, high productivity, high skills economy and are trading in a globalised world. Investment is strong, attracted to a high performance Britain, and we have a solid, independent currency. We have been able to react to the turbulence of an uncertain world because we have control of our own affairs.
Wednesday 22 June 2016 7:30pm
John Longworth
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| This imagined future can only become a reality if we shrug off the shackles of Brussels (Source: Getty) |
We will have invested our reclaimed £10bn net annual contribution to the EU in our own public services and boosted our economy to the tune of 0.5 per cent of GDP per year as a consequence. A further 0.7 per cent of economic growth has been added by cutting the cost of red tape by just a tenth, saving business £12.5bn a year. This had the same effect as a tax cut for business and stimulated an investment boom.
The removal of external tariffs of 10 per cent and above on clothing and footwear boosted consumer spending, while we also cut VAT on fuel, reducing the cost of living. Our exports have become more competitive.
Removing tariffs of 20 per cent and above on food that we are unable to produce ourselves because of climate, seasonality or capacity cut the cost of living for hard-pressed families and boosted consumer spending. In fact, we found that the booming economy did not need any trade deal with the EU’s Single Market to prosper.
Once and for all we realised the Single Market is a myth. Nevertheless, a satisfactory trade arrangement was negotiated with the EU, giving access to the UK for German and French cars and consumer durables in exchange for continued access and favourable arrangements for banking and the City into the European Union.
Since leaving the EU, we have retained many of the EU trade deals, as third countries did not want to see any disruption in their trade with the world’s fifth largest economy. In addition, a number of trade arrangements were agreed with Commonwealth countries and the USA in quick succession, focusing on sectors important to the UK.
The gravitational pull of expertise, language, time zone and deep capital markets, coupled with new-found global trading, continued to mark out the City of London as a global financial centre. Free of a never-ending stream of hostile and costly rules from Brussels, the City roared ahead as the world’s financial centre in its third renaissance since the Second World War.
We were able to escape the continuing troubles of the Eurozone and avoid the bulk of the cost of further bailouts. At the same time, the UK became a beacon of light for the peoples of Europe who demanded reform of the European Union and changes to the “let them eat cake” attitudes of the EU political and multinational elites. Although still not performing as well as the UK or US economies, the EU eventually began to improve.
The British people felt rightly proud of their achievement on Independence Day and, one by one, the people, institutions and organisations who had argued against Brexit were forced to acknowledge their grave error of judgement.
This imagined future can only become a reality if we shrug off the shackles of the Eurozone and the dead hand of Brussels bureaucracy and corruption; and if we choose who comes into the country and remove the overarching “whip hand” of the European Court of Justice. It will only happen if we take back control of our own affairs and our own economy, by voting Leave.
City A.M.'s opinion pages are a place for thought-provoking views and debate. These views are not necessarily shared by City A.M.
