I just happened to stumble across something on Radio 4 the other day. It was in the wake of the CBI conference in Westminster, where some business leaders called for the referendum on Europe to be held as quickly as possible to stop all the upheaval caused by uncertainty.
People who know me will know that I consider myself European and I am quite passionate about us staying in the EU. Apart from UKIP, who must have some kind of agenda otherwise they really are just a bunch of racist ignoramuses, the only people who wouldn't mind us 'going it alone' are the heads of major businesses, because they'd be the only people who would benefit from us being outside of the EU.
Eurosceptics - answer this - you don't want us to be in Europe, that's fine, but how is us being in Europe directly affecting your life? This isn't a question to business leaders, because as I stated they would only benefit from us not being in the EU; this is a question to people who casually say, 'We should pull out of Europe; all that cost, all those bloody immigrants, all that child support flooding into Romania...' The sad truth is most people simply don't understand what the EU is for and because our right wing press and our infotainment providers do not wish to educate us, the myth is perpetuated and grows and becomes 'law'.
Walking round Sainsbury's last week, the first thing I noticed was the amount of fruit and veg that comes from non-EU countries. A little bit of research allowed me to discover that Egypt has a trade agreement with the EU; the UK doesn't, it benefits from the EU agreement and as a result you can buy 500g of green beans for £1.50, even if the food miles alone make that fact abhorrent. A little bit more research discovers that the EU has a trade agreement with Peru, that means we can have asparagus all year round for £2 a bundle rather than just May and June. The crazy thing about asparagus is that the stuff that has been flown halfway around the world is cheaper than the stuff grown down the road from you. To cost conscious hipsters and ignorant airheads (the kind who spout off about things they have little or no understanding of) this is great, they can have their asparagus and not bankrupt themselves in the process.
You can argue that being in the EU costs too much money, but the money it costs doesn't directly affect you, does it? If the UK pulled out of Europe then we'd have to renegotiate the trade deals with Egypt, Peru and every other non-EU country and do you really think that we're going to be able to negotiate a better price than we already have? No. As I've pointed out before, Norway buys capsicums from The Netherlands, the average cost of a pack of three multi-coloured peppers is about £5 as opposed to the £1.50 we pay over here. I dread to think what the cost of green beans from Egypt or asparagus from Peru costs in Oslo, or Tromso, or Svalbard...
The withdrawal of the UK from Europe - should a referendum vote that way - wouldn't just mean more expensive imports from the rest of the world; it would also mean more expensive imports from the EU. The Norway example would become the UK example - fruit and veg that is not sourced in this country would go through the roof (and there would be a quality issue - Norwegians are convinced Holland treats them worse than other importing EU countries). The same fruit and veg we buy from the EU would also be more expensive because we would no longer be part of that negotiated trade deal so would have to go it alone - without the collective bargaining power. it's not going to be cheaper is it? The Spanish are not going to say, "Oh it's the British, we'll do a better deal for them."
So, the cost of food will go up, but the cost of fuel might come down, especially if we align ourselves to Putin's Russia - so that's not going to happen. You could argue that pulling out of the EU will be good for our farmers, but as I mentioned in the opening sentence, I was listening to Radio 4 and it was a farmer who made the point that while he was a Tory voting agriculture specialist, pulling out of the EU would require a lot of things from those further up the food chain. Farms would lose the subsidies they get, but there would be extra pressure from supermarkets and punters for food prices to stay relatively stable - the supermarkets aren't going to want their shareholders to have less, so the onus would be placed squarely on the farmer and they simply wouldn't be able to afford it.
The farmer talking on R4 said as many as 30% of all farmers would go to the wall if the government didn't match the subsidies the EU gave them and we all know we live in a time when the last thing the government wants to do is subsidise anything. The coalition farming and fisheries representative said that farmers would have to diversify and produce more affordable seasonal crops - which sounded to me like Cameron telling them to stop whining.
The upshot is that the retailers would have to go back to Europe to import basics such as eggs and milk because these can be produced much cheaper in Europe - cheaper for them, not for us. So, while pulling out of Europe should at least create an environment where we're educated to be reliant on seasonal and locally produced goods, the consumer doesn't want this. The consumer doesn't want unusual shaped British apples, they want anodyne South African apples with no taste, but all the same size. The consumer doesn't want deformed British grown beans, they want uniform Egyptian ones, because...
The Tories (and UKIP to a certain degree) want to be in Europe but they want to be in charge and set the rules and pick and choose what suits us (them) best. Altruistically this is an admirable thing if they were doing it for the betterment of us, but they do it to line their own pockets and to ensure they get away with things they shouldn't. Pulling out of Europe would allow the right wing to abolish the human rights act and make it impossible to protect yourself from the system. They claim this is down to the growing threat of terrorism, but it is just a gagging ploy because the Internet has allowed people to see things that no government wants us to see, even if most people dismiss the memes and propaganda as scaremongering lies created by people with vested interests.
Pulling out of Europe will vastly change the average person's life. The cost of living would, for at least the first five years, be disproportionately higher than ever before. It would plunge an estimated 5 million more people into food and energy poverty - that's almost 7% of the population would be drastically worse off and something like 70% of the population would simply be worse off than they were the day before they opted to pull out.
Obviously, it would allow us to close our borders and not spend all of that time and money in Strasbourg so that would suit all the xenophobes and racists out there. Except, it wouldn't.
When interviewed about not being in the EU, a Norwegian trade minister said that while they had no say in Europe, they still spent as much time in negotiations and meetings as their EU counterparts and they spend almost as much money just being there as they would have if they were full members.
Norway also has one of the worst poverty to rich ratios in Europe. A country that is oil and gas rich but does not use that money to subsidise the country in reduced taxes or costs. The owners of these companies do not pay enough back into the country to stop its poor from being desperately poor in a country with the highest standard of living costs (apart from Finland) in all of Europe.
Norway also has approx 1 million immigrants or 15% of their overall population - these are mainly from Eastern European countries or children born of foreign parents - and because Norway is part of the European Economic Area (which allows them some discounts on trade deals), all EU member residents have free access to move in and out of Norway. The Norwegian government is quite happy about this because immigrants do the jobs no Norwegian wants to do and for considerably less money. So pulling out of Europe won't necessarily spell the end to a flow of immigrants, we'd probably end up with more from outside of the EU, because that has been Norway's biggest issue with foreigners.
As an amusing aside - the UK features much higher than Norway on the occasionally spurious chart that measures a country's overall happiness. Speak to a Norwegian and he'll tell you that £10 for a pint of beer is not unheard of and while they earn considerably more than we do, everything there is mega expensive apart from fish. The main issue among your average Norwegian isn't the immigration problem, it isn't banks and tax evasion, it's simply the cost of living.
If there is a cost of living crisis in the UK, which there obviously is taking into consideration the amount of people using food banks, imagine what it would be like if you had to take a loan out to buy a bag of food?
There is also another important factor that people are completely ignorant of. If we closed our borders to 'foreigners' we'd end up with even higher priced trade deals, or none at all because countries would class us as xenophobic and racist and wouldn't want to do business with us - maybe not all, but many. Plus, if we kicked out anyone who wasn't British born and bred how would we deal with the kids born here of immigrant families, or who would we get to clean the shit up or do all the jobs that the Brits don't want to do? And don't say force them to do these jobs if they're unemployed because that is just ignorance and idiotic thinking - simply put, you give a job to someone who doesn't want to do it and they'll do a substandard job. If you start penalising them for being unhappy then you start getting into totalitarian government and we all know how happy these are.
The simple truth of pulling out of Europe is it will cost us all a lot of money and considerable hardship (and all the immigrants would still be here).
What we need is for the infotainment channels to educate us about the harsh realities not just shove Farage on screen with a pint and a fag while bemoaning about us losing our Britishness. That just enhances the xenophobia at a time when we really need to be seen as an inclusive and caring country.
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