07/04/2015
Now up on the
the CER website, the
Independent is running a story based on a report from the Centre for European Reform.
This tells us that a British exit from the European Union would hurt the poorest regions of the country hardest because they are more dependent on manufacturing exports â all based on the premise that UK manufactured goods would be hit by EU tariffs unless a free trade deal is agreed.
According to CER, the regions with the most to lose economically are the West Midlands and the North-east, but also hard hit would be Northern Ireland, followed by the East Midlands and West Midlands. The least affected area would be London, where the financial hit from tariffs would represent just 0.11 percent of output.
In the North-east alone, the cost is £197 million on export tariffs, mostly in the car manufacturing sector, equating to 0.43 percent of the region's output.
Such a scenario, of course, could easily be avoided by the simple expedient of adopting the "Norway Option", thereby protecting the UK's participation in the Single Market. However, the so-called "WTO Option" is precisely what is on offer from the likes of Ruth Lea, Global Britain and Ukip.
Thus we see in the North-east's
Chronicle, a lamentable effort by Ukip's Jonathan Arnott, who can only assert that the idea of leaving the EU costing us trade is "nonsense", asserting that, "like Switzerland and Iceland we could develop our global trade links and create jobs".
If that is the best Ukip has to offer, keeping its spokesmen well away from any referendum campaign becomes an urgent necessity. If they can't deal with the easy issues, such as how to avoid the imposition of tariffs following our exit, then we are better off without their "help".
At this stage, the anti-EU "movement" should have its arguments in place, and not be struggling to find answers to the simplest of CER propaganda. The "tariff" meme should be dead and buried, so much so that the Europhiles don't even dare raise it.
Instead, we get CER's John Springford burbling that: "Many eurosceptics claim that it would be easy to sign a free trade agreement with the EU, to stop tariffs being applied to British goods".
"In fact", he says, "the EU would have the upper hand in trade negotiations. The EU buys 45 percent of Britain's exports, while the UK only buys seven percent of the EU's, so the EU would be able to dictate terms".
Then we get the old saws: "Any free trade agreement would require Britain to accept the free movement of workers and most of the EU's rules â just as Switzerland must. Politically, this would be worse than EU membership, since Britain would not be able to limit immigration and would have even less control over EU regulations".
There's only one thing worse than such weak arguments, and that's a weaker opposition that can't deal with them.
