Episode Details

I wrote this article for Moneyweek the day before the EU referendum, on June 22, 2016. I thought with everything that has happened since, as your Sunday morning thought piece, this was well worth re-reading and thinking about.

It’s amazing how many of these things remain issues, especially immigration, and how few have been properly acted upon.

It’s also amazing just how our leaders have failed us. Brexit was such an opportunity to “reset”, to start again, to re-design our country at a time when so many are craving change. In that regard, you would probably have to say that Boris was the biggest missed opportunity of the lot, especially given the mandate he had in 2019.

I love Europe, but I want to leave the EU

It’s obvious. But based on some of the things I’m reading on social media and elsewhere, it needs saying again. Voting to leave the European Union (EU) is not voting for Boris or Nigel or anyone else. The elected Conservative government will remain in power until there is another election, at which point we can vote for a different party if we so wish. This is simply a vote on whether we should remain part of the administrative body that is the EU. 

It does not mean you will no longer be able to travel to France. It does not mean your continental friends will not be able to come to the UK. And it doesn’t mean we will no longer be able to trade with our European brothers.

I should say, my grandparents were Italian. I speak five European languages, three fluently. I have lived several years of my life on the continent, and I do business with people in Europe all the time. I’m a europhile.

And I want out of the EU. Here are ten reasons why.

1. Centralised power is the wrong way to go

People thrive most in societies in which power is distributed as thinly and widely as possible. In such environments they are happier, healthier, wealthier, freer, and they achieve more.

The EU, by design, centralises power in Brussels. We are moving into an age of decentralisation and localisation. The EU is the wrong model for the times.

2. Fringe nations perform better 

Since the inception of the EU in 1993, the economies of Norway, Switzerland and Iceland (even with its financial crisis) – the fringe nations – have on a per capita basis dramatically outperformed their neighbouring EU economies.

We would be a fringe nation and that would suit us.

3. Regulation should be local

Around 65% of regulation is now set in Brussels. It is of a one-size-fits-all variety, and so often inappropriate to local circumstances. Rather than facilitate progress, regulation hinders it. 

Yet, once in place, regulation is hard to change. Rather than get cut, it is added to. We already have too much in our lives. What we need would be much better set locally, according to local needs and circumstances.

4. The economic disaster that is southern Europe

We now have 39% youth unemployment in Italy, 45% in Spain and 49% in Greece. These countries are unable to do the things they need to do to kickstart their economies because decisions are being taken on their behalf; not locally, but in Brussels. 

I cannot support with my vote an organisation that has inflicted such misery on its people. Reform of a bureaucratic organisation like that from within is an impossible undertaking.

5. Immigration policy is becoming ever more important

There are more and more people in the world and – whether it’s those displaced by wars, by lack of water, by poverty, hunger or lack of opportunity – more and more of them are on the move. We are in a migration of people of historic proportions.

The UK, in the way it currently operates, will struggle with immigration levels over 300,000 a year (and growing every year) for a sustained period. We don’t have the infrastructure. 

I wonder how we get those numbers down. I’m not sure we can, either in or out