Michael Gove, Boris Johnson, Gisela Stuart and John Longworth have today highlighted the risks of voting to stay in the EU, and why it is the safer choice to Vote Leave on 23 June.
They will point to the dangers of continued EU membership to our economy, security, democracy and borders.
Accompanying their speeches, Vote Leave has published “A ‘remain’ vote: the dangerous choice for prosperity, security, and democracy.”
Executive Summary
A vote to stay is not a vote for the status quo. It is a vote to lock Britain permanently in a broken system with ‘free movement’, a dysfunctional euro, and a permanent voting majority for the Eurozone.
The Eurozone has severe economic problems and is falling behind Asia and America.
- It has high unemployment, high debts, and low growth.
- It has a rapidly ageing population and large unfunded public sector pension liabilities.
- It has failed to develop the vital networks between world-class universities (of which it has none in the top 20), entrepreneurs, and venture capital, so it is failing to lead in new fields such as machine intelligence, biological engineering and advanced manufacturing.
- Its institutions are broken and cannot cope with the euro’s crisis.
The Eurozone crisis means that we will be paying the bills for the Eurozone’s failure.
- We will pay the bills for a higher EU budget. The EU budget is designed to demand more and more money from successful economies. The UK will be penalised for its relative success.
- Under EU law, we will be liable for Eurozone bailouts (Article 122(2) of TFEU).
- The EU also has spending commitments that amount to €217 billion, of which the UK can expect to provide €27 billion. The EU’s unpaid obligations threaten the UK with an extra £2.4 billion bill after the referendum.
- Nothing in David Cameron’s deal protects us from this triple whammy for UK taxpayers.
If we stay we will give away control of immigration permanently.
- David Cameron’s deal does nothing to stop free movement. EU inward migration is already at a record high of 270,000. It will grow and we won’t be able to control it.
- David Cameron has promised to reduce immigration to the ‘tens of thousands’ but he knows that this is impossible under EU law. This is corrosive of public trust in democratic politics.
- The EU is already opening up visa-free travel to the borders of Syria and Iraq. This is dangerous for our economy, public services, and security.
- The EU recently announced an ‘acceleration’ of the accession process for Turkey.
- UK taxpayers are already paying five new countries, including Albania and Turkey, nearly £2 billion to speed up their accession.
- David Cameron says he is ‘angry’ at the delays to Turkey joining and that he wants to ‘pave the road’ from Ankara. It is official UK Government policy for Turkey to join as soon as possible. It is also official UK Government policy not to have a referendum on accession.
- When these countries join, we can expect over 5 million extra people to settle in the UK.
- The Bank of England has calculated that a 10% increase in migration results in a 2% decline in wages for the lowest paid.
- Nothing in David Cameron’s deal protects us from these dangers. He promised that EU migrants would need to have a job offer but he did not ask for this change to the Treaties. The living wage policy combined with free movement will make these problems even worse.
The EU’s official plan is not to change direction, it is to take even more powers from Britain.
- The Eurozone already has a permanent voting majority in the EU system.
- The official plan - the Five Presidents’ Report - is to use the ‘Single Market’ system to transfer more powers to Brussels.
- The next phase of the plan is another Treaty and another transfer of powers including over taxes.
- It also plans to remove the UK’s representation in international bodies, reducing our influence. This is already happening.
- Nothing in David Cameron’s deal protects us from these dangers. In fact, his deal made things worse by surrendering our veto over further transfers of power to the EU.
The EU and rogue European Court are dangerous for our security.
- The Commission and the rogue European Court have already taken control of many aspects of UK border policy e.g. the European Court has ruled that the UK cannot require persons purporting to be EU citizens to have a document issued by the British Government, despite widespread cheating of identification papers.
- The Charter of Fundamental Rights gives the Court the power to take control of almost anything it wants. It has already asserted control of our intelligence services. It has already stopped us deporting dangerous people. The ECJ now has ultimate control of UK asylum policy since the crucial 1951 UN Convention on asylum was incorporated in the Charter, so the ECJ is in charge of interpreting whether UK law is consistent with it.
- EU rules have already made it easy for murderers and terrorists to access the UK and stopped us deporting criminals, making us less safe.
- If we remain, the EU plans a European army (cf. this video).
- Nothing in David Cameron’s deal protects us from these dangers. There are no mechanisms to stop us losing power and money remorselessly month after month to the Commission and the rogue European Court.
In a speech on 9 May 2016, Boris Johnson set out the five key questions that the ‘IN’ campaign need to answer about the risks associated with a ‘remain’ vote.
1) How can you possibly control EU migration into this country?
2) The living wage is an excellent policy, but how will you stop it being a big pull factor for uncontrolled EU migration, given that it is far higher than minimum wages in other EU countries?
3) How will you prevent the European Court of Justice from interfering further in immigration, asylum, human rights, and all kinds of matters which have nothing to do with the so-called ‘single market’?
4) Why did you give up the UK veto on further moves towards a fiscal and political union?
5) How can you stop us from being dragged in, and from being made to pay?
None of these questions have been answered by the ‘IN’ campaign or by the Prime Minister and Chancellor. This paper sets out how remaining in the EU is the riskier option:
1) The Eurozone is broken.
2) The EU will demand more of our money.
3) Migration will continue out of control and without democratic legitimacy.
4) The EU is already planning to take more power away from Britain.
It is safer to Vote Leave and take back control on 23 June.
The full document can be read here.
Speeches
Vote Leave chair Gisela Stuart explained how uncontrolled migration will put further pressure on our public services and have a negative impact on those on the lowest incomes:
‘For them, the Bank of England has calculated that every 10% increase in migration leads to a 2% fall in wages.
They are the ones who have to worry most if they can get a doctor’s appointment, a school place or a home--and who face the constant undercutting of their wages by migrant workers.
While we remain the EU, they can only look forward to more of the same.’
Justice Secretary Michael Gove highlighted how the EU weakens our national security, undermines NATO and that the rogue European Court of Justice takes powers away from the UK by driving its political agenda of further European integration:
‘The European Court of Justice is not a normal court, as we in Britain understand and have understood courts for centuries. It is not overseen by independent judges who seek to interpret and enforce laws agreed by a democratically-elected legislature.
It is a court with a fundamentally political agenda - to further the cause of European integration no matter what democratically elected legislatures think. Indeed the ECJ can over-rule Parliament and strike down our laws, forcing us to accept its rulings...
...They have consistently thwarted efforts by successive Home Secretaries to deport criminals and terrorists who endanger Britain.
They consistently take a fundamentalist view of freedom of movement so that even outside the Schengen arrangement we are constrained in deciding who can and cannot enter or stay in Britain.’
Boris Johnson pointed to the links between the arguments about democracy and economics, stating that the amount of control we have given over to the EU is having ‘disastrous economic consequences’ for both the UK and the EU:
‘It is a myth and a delusion to think that we can somehow gain greater prosperity by bartering away our freedom and our democracy. In fact, we can see at every stage how the loss of democratic control is turning into an economic disaster.
There is nowhere else that is engaged in anything like this experiment, of trying to fuse countries into a giant political entity; and in its centralising tendencies the European project is going against the tide of events and history.
The risks of remaining in this over-centralising, over-regulating job-destroying machine are becoming more and more obvious, which is why I believe we are winning the arguments today.
It is time to take back control, and speak for freedom in Britain and around the whole of the EU.’
John Longworth, chair of the Vote Leave Business Council and former Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce, explained how further eurozone integration creates real economic risks for the UK:
‘To try and safeguard the future of the single currency, the eurozone will need to consolidate into what looks very like a single state; financial, economic, legal and political integration. The plans have already been sketched out in some detail.
It will be driven by a mercantilist Germany benefiting greatly from the euro, which means its exports are significantly underpriced. This has come at the expense of other eurozone members, especially in southern Europe. It has "beggared its neighbours".
If we in the UK, remain as part of that setup, we will be on the margins, paying the bills, burdened by the regulations, with no say and, most importantly, no freedom to control our own economy.'
The full speeches can be read below
Gisela Stuart - The Risks of Remain - Immigration
When the Prime Minister appeared on television last Thursday night to argue for Remain, he had some awkward moments.
But nothing made him look uncomfortable quite like talking about immigration
He couldn’t explain why he wasn’t able to meet his pledge to get net migration below 100,000.
The best hope, he said, was if thousands of British people emigrate.
So there it is.
David Cameron’s vision for managing migration is to hope the British get out.
What an admission of defeat --- not just for his careless pledge, but for the country.
In a sense he is right, though.
Migration from Europe is uncontrolled.
And the grave risk of Remain is that it will always be uncontrollable and be without consent.
That means a future of:
--Growing Brussels control over our borders.
--Mass migration speeding up.
--Pressure heaped on public services.
--And the people who are hardest-hit will be those who can least afford it. Cameron offered not a glimmer of light for them.
Last year, Britain saw record net migration of more than 180,000 from the EU.
What’s happening on the continent is raising the pressure.
The single currency is a job-destruction machine.
Wide areas are trapped in a high-debt, low growth cycle and face decades of austerity and unemployment.
In Greece, more than half young people are jobless.
Economic migrants will flee the eurozone in growing numbers, many of them to Britain.
The pressure of migration into Europe from beyond is compounding the risk.
Last year more than a million people moved into the continent answering the invitation issued by Angela Merkel. She did so without consulting her voters or other EU countries.
They arrived with minimal checks, no one really knows their backgrounds.
Once they have a passport or an ID card from an EU country they will be free to come to Britain.
The scenes in the Mediterranean, bodies washing up on beaches by the hundred, are a human tragedy
The determination to rip down borders in defiance of popular opinion has fuelled the rise of far-right politicians.
Free movement without consent is dangerous and a risk to stability.
In Britain, the impact is felt above all by those on the lowest incomes.
For them, the Bank of England has calculated that every 10% increase in migration leads to a 2% fall in wages.
They are the ones who have to worry most if they can get a doctor’s appointment, a school place or a home--and who face the constant undercutting of their wages by migrant workers.
While we remain the EU, they can only look forward to more of the same.
Or worse.
Nearly ninety million people in Turkey and four Balkan countries are being lined up for free movement followed by EU membership.
Average earnings in Albania are only 13% of what they are in Britain - and less than a fifth of the £9 an hour that the National Living Wage will reach in 2020.
It’s a policy I support, but with uncontrolled migration it will make life worse for people on the lowest incomes.
If those countries join, EU migration is forecast to go over 400,000 a year by 2030, that is a city the size of Bristol every 12 months.
Meanwhile, control of our borders will ebb away to Brussels.
Unaccountable EU judges already stop us turning away criminals or people who come here without a job, despite Cameron saying he could win curbs to unrestricted freedom of movement.
The judges are now extending their power so they control immigration to Britain from outside the EU. The EU is deciding our asylum policy, including telling us who qualifies as a refugee.
I don’t want to shut the doors.
I am an immigrant who came to Britain from Germany in 1974 and I ended up an MP and a government minister.
But Britain’s openness is being tested as never before.
While we remain in the EU, noone can be held accountable for the shambles.
But when the British people take back control on June 23, we will design a migration system fit for our economy.
Regardless of where people have been born, we can then accept them on a points-based system that recognises the skills we need.
In an age of mass migration more than ever, we need to control our borders.
The decision on 23rd June will shape our future as a country for the next generation. It goes well beyond who might or might not be the next incumbent in No 10.
Let’s not just throw up our hands -- which is just about all we are allowed to do while we stay in the EU.
Let’s take back control and Vote Leave.
Michael Gove - The Risks of Remain - Security
The European Union was born of a desire to banish conflict from our continent. The ambition was noble.
And I admire the idealism of those in the post-war years who wished to see democracy secured in Europe.
I particularly admire those great pragmatists like Winston Churchill, Ludwig Erhard and Charles de Gaulle who recognised that peace and stability depended on a democratic culture taking root at the level of nation states.
But it is very hard to be idealistic about the reality of the European Union today. Far from entrenching democracy, it works to frustrate the democratic will of Europe's peoples while its own structures are unaccountable and anti-democratic.
And far from providing greater security, the institutions of the European Union are undermining our citizens' safety.
That's because Europe’s leaders have put the pursuit of ideology ahead of thinking pragmatically about our security.
They have pursued projects like the single currency and the borderless Schengen zone which have weakened our continent's resilience.
The euro has created economic weakness and an inability properly to increase funding for intelligence, policing and defence at a time of grave global danger.
The eurozone has also produced economic hardship and in the process fostered the growth of extremist parties and movements which have made the formation of stable governments more difficult - from Spain to Ireland.
The borderless Schengen zone, meanwhile, without proper passport checks, “abets terrorists”.
That isn’t just my view – but the view of Ronald Noble, Interpol’s secretary general from 2000 to 2014.
Schengen has weakened our guard against terrorists, drug smugglers, human traffickers and other criminals and still many of Europe’s leaders defend it – proving that for many of the continent’s political elite the drive to created a United States of Europe will always overcome common sense.
And don’t think for one moment that they have finished with their ambitions to create “more Europe".
If we vote to Remain then we will have signed up for the project's forward march. And the plans which have been held back during the renegotiation and referendum will be brought forward - without our now being able to escape.
As The Times has reported, a European army is the next big project.
Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, has said as much.
So have the German defence and foreign ministers.
It will not happen tomorrow but a European army should worry us for at least two big reasons.
One: it will be used as an excuse by nation states who already don’t spend enough on defence to spend even less.
Only Britain, Estonia, Greece and Poland - of NATO’s EU members - currently spend the NATO minimum target of 2% of GDP.
Setting up a rival to NATO is a risk we simply shouldn't take.
The North Atlantic alliance has underwritten our defence because the USA with its huge military might is a member.
We should be strengthening NATO, not seeking to set up an inferior alternative.
The risks to our security if we Remain are why so many distinguished veterans - from Sir Michael Rose to Colonel Richard Kemp, Major General Julian Thompson to Rear Admiral Chris Parry - believe we should vote to Leave.
But even more important than avoiding future dangers is countering those which are clear and present.
And that means freeing ourselves from the jurisdiction of the rogue European Court of Justice.
The European Court of Justice is not a normal court, as we in Britain understand and have understood courts for centuries. It is not overseen by independent judges who seek to interpret and enforce laws agreed by a democratically-elected legislature.
It is a court with a fundamentally political agenda - to further the cause of European integration no matter what democratically elected legislatures think. Indeed the ECJ can over-rule Parliament and strike down our laws, forcing us to accept its rulings.
On 101 occasions since we joined the then European Economic Community in 1973 we have lost cases before the Court.
That will not change if we Remain – if anything it will accelerate.
As the former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, has pointed out, European judges threaten our security on at least three fronts.
They have consistently thwarted efforts by successive Home Secretaries to deport criminals and terrorists who endanger Britain.
They consistently take a fundamentalist view of freedom of movement so that even outside the Schengen arrangement we are constrained in deciding who can and cannot enter or stay in Britain.
With a significant number of terrorists, who have been training and fighting alongside Isis, now back in Europe and able to move freely across much of the continent that issue could hardly be more live.
And European judges are also attempting to have a say on the kind of data we can share with our key intelligence allies in America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Indeed if Britain votes to remain, European judges may begin to expand their remit over our security and intelligence agencies - the drive to erode national autonomy is at the heart of the Court's project. But as General Mike Hayden, the former head of the CIA has pointed out, national security is best enhanced by intelligence being handled by nation states.
With the risks of Remaining so clear I am confident that the British people will vote to take back control on June 23, they will vote to take back control of our borders, of national security and of the laws which can keep criminals and terrorists out of our country.
Boris Johnson - The Risks of Remain - Democracy
The biggest myth in this whole debate is that there is some clear division between the arguments about democracy, and the arguments about economics.
We are invited to believe that there are two ways of measuring the question of EU membership for Britain; two sets of scales; two units of calibration.
For instance there are many reasonable people on the Remain side who are willing to accept that the EU suffers from what has for a long time been acknowledged to be a democratic deficit.
If pushed, they would admit that there are legitimate concerns about the accountability of the Commission, about the popular legitimacy of the European parliament, and about the increasingly wayward judgments of the European court of justice.
They would accept – when they are being reasonable – that there is something troubling about the sheer volume of EU law, and the way it now contributes 60 per cent of the law passing through parliament.
They would acknowledge that this vast corpus of EU law is generated by the Brussels commission; and that it is now extremely worrying that only 3.6 per cent of EU Commission officials actually come from this country.
They would accept that it is disturbing, to say the least, that the UK is now outvoted more and more often – 72 times in the last 20 years.
They would in their sober moments accept that there is a serious and growing democratic problem, and that on the question of democracy it is this side – the Leave side - that holds the high cards.
But they argue that this sacrifice is worth it, because of the economic advantages of being in the EU. I think I am fair to their argument.
I also believe that argument to be both morally disturbing and practically wrong.
On the contrary, it is the very absence of democratic control that is having all sorts of disastrous economic consequences, both for Britain and for the EU.
1… We are currently unable to exercise democratic control over such basic economic matters as our tax rates – so that we cannot cut the price of fuel for elderly people; we cannot cut the cost of motoring; and despite the pleas of the Chancellor we cannot even cut the tampon tax.
2… We cannot exercise democratic control over the energy costs of our steel firms, even when those costs are far higher than in other EU countries – so that companies in this country are going to the wall because of our slavish adherence to EU rules.
3…We cannot do anything to stop the torrent of EU legislation, coming at a rate of 2,500 a year, and imposing costs of £600m per week on UK business.
4…We cannot control the EU budget, not just in the sense that we send £350m a week gross to Brussels, much of which we never see again, but also because we can be asked to pay more – without warning – if the UK is deemed to have performed better than other EU countries.
5…We can neither stop other countries going ahead with ill-advised plans to create an economic government of Europe – since we explicitly gave up our veto in February – and nor can we protect the UK taxpayer from the demands of the eurozone countries for bail-out funds; nor can we protect the UK economy from the impact of further single market measures – on company law and property and many other areas, as set out in the Five Presidents report.
6…Above all, we can do nothing to protect this country from the biggest economic change we have seen for a century or more – the very rapid growth in population that is largely a function of immigration, which is in turn a function of the euro crisis. I repeat my challenge to the Remain campaign: what is their vision for Britain, with our population set to climb so rapidly? Where do they intend to build the houses? How will the health service cope?
There is one answer to all these economic problems, and that is to take back control – so that we make our laws and our trade policy and our immigration policy to suit the needs of the UK economy.
The benefits of being in the single market have been wildly overstated – look at the far greater success that countries OUTSIDE the EU have had, in exporting INTO the EU, than we have.
It is a myth and a delusion to think that we can somehow gain greater prosperity by bartering away our freedom and our democracy. In fact, we can see at every stage how the loss of democratic control is turning into an economic disaster.
There is nowhere else that is engaged in anything like this experiment, of trying to fuse countries into a giant political entity; and in its centralising tendencies the European project is going against the tide of events and history.
The risks of remaining in this over-centralising, over-regulating job-destroying machine are becoming more and more obvious, which is why I believe we are winning the arguments today.
It is time to take back control, and speak for freedom in Britain and around the whole of the EU.
John Longworth - The Risks of Remain - The economy
If we want economic risk we should remain in the European Union.
That's because the EU can only develop in one of two ways.
Firstly, to try and safeguard the future of the single currency, the eurozone will need to consolidate into what looks very like a single state; financial, economic, legal and political integration. The plans have already been sketched out in some detail.
It will be driven by a mercantilist Germany benefiting greatly from the euro, which means its exports are significantly underpriced. This has come at the expense of other eurozone members, especially in southern Europe. It has "beggared its neighbours".
If we in the UK, remain as part of that setup, we will be on the margins, paying the bills, burdened by the regulations, with no say and, most importantly, no freedom to control our own economy.
Alternatively, as Mervyn King, the former governor of the Bank of England has predicted, the second possibility is that the eurozone will explode and, believe me, we don't want to be in the same room when that bomb goes off, inevitably paying to clear up the wreckage and with no freedom to act.
That is the double jeopardy of Remain.
When the British people take back control on June 23, we will be free of this huge uncertainty and able to manage our own destiny.
As Gisela pointed out, immigration and the economy are one and the same thing.
As long as we remain tied to the eurozone crisis and to countries in the EU that have far lower wages than Britain, low cost workers will come here in large numbers.
This will continue to push us down the path of a low-wage, low-productivity, low-skill economy.
With no incentive to invest or train for skills we have a national scandal of over half a million unemployed under twenty fives.
At this point in the economic cycle, wages should be rising naturally, but they are not. That is because uncontrolled mass migration has been a disaster for working people in this country.
And, on top of this, there is little incentive to invest in productivity improvement, again condemning workers to a low wage future.
Ironically, we also suffer from skills shortages as migration of skilled workers from outside the EU is restricted, a further break on productivity growth.
When we take back control we can boost productivity and wages and make sure we train our young people for work.
And we will be free to intervene when we need to to safeguard our foundation industries like: steel, basic chemicals, metals and high energy use industries, all of which are at risk as they face unfair competition, a regulatory straight jacket and inflated costs, all as a consequence of the EU. And it is the EU straightjacket that stops helping, at great cost to our economy and the communities who depend on these industries.
If we stay in the EU we will carry on paying ever more from our taxes and see ever more regulations holding back our businesses from growing and competing in the world.
The majority of businesses who are the backbone of the economy, now believe that the EU is bad for them.
Taking back control will mean we can design a system of business regulation that suits the British economy, not the current Avalanche of bureaucracy that is an attempt to harmonise 28 very different economies.
That’s the reality of what the Single Market is, it’s a protectionist customs union backed by the Brussels regulation machine, and we are better off out of it, trading freely with the world, including our European neighbours, under our own laws.
Taking back control means reclaiming our net contribution to the EU of £10 billion a year. It is already planned to rise and the EU is threatening further increases. Coupled with just a tenth of the EU regulatory cost, worth another £12.5 billion a year, this combined would add a whopping 1.1% to GDP.
We will also save ourselves the massive cost of tax refunds to multinationals imposed by the European Court of Justice’s rulings that set aside our tax laws. This could reach £43bn by 2021.
This all adds up to our businesses and the economy being more productive.
Jobs will be safer, our infrastructure will be better and our public services better funded.
Britain will be the best place in the world to do business.
Taking back control on June 23 will be the way to reach our potential and be sure of our future prosperity.
