Shall we stay or should we go now?

(With thanks to the Clash)
A free trade zone of 500million customers with no tariff barriers and still we import more from the EU than we sell in return.

And yet the Leave campaigners say that our trade will surge when we are able to sell freely to the whole world if we are outside the EU. So what will change to achieve this when we are not even selling competitively within our own European market?

Could it be the fact that Great Britain (as we still collectively like to think of ourselves) has a workforce that works longer hours and yet produces 20% less per hour than workers in Germany, France or the USA.

This is largely due to lower investment by British firms in modern technology and production techniques. In addition it is fostered by poor management practices and a lack of workforce training to make up for the low educational achievement of so many school leavers.

The only area where so many of our businesses excel is in the extortionate and many would say immoral, management salary and bonus structures. Added to this the essential Knighthoods awarded for outstanding effort (stripping the workforce pension scheme or exceptional tax avoidance).

The Brexiteers are loud in their condemnation of the Brussels gravy train, but they don't have to look far in their own backyard, be it MP's expenses or the highly questionable dealings of SIR Phillip Green. Can any of these issues be put at the door of our EU membership? No, so what if anything will improve if we leave and where will this great surge of world free trade come from given our track record and how long and painful will it be to achieve it?

It took us twenty years to claw our way into the European free Trade zone in the first place, whilst our economy stagnated. Those were the days when we could sell to the whole world and what a mess we made of it.

I remember those years and they were not the chintzy days of rose petals, cream tea and Agatha Christie as some oldsters would have you believe. They were decades of industrial and social unrest, appalling productivity, low wages, and low living standards and even worse management than we have now.

The name, British Leyland still makes me shudder as I recall some of the death trap vehicles they produced and always with large public subsidy. British Rail ran filthy trains (when they weren't on strike) and were incapable of providing a fresh sandwich. Had it not been for our dismal economic performance we would never have needed to join the EU in the first place.

Today, most of our successful companies are under foreign ownership and they brought in the people who introduced modern management techniques and to some degree blew away the choking paternalism of the old public school network that wrecked so many of our once proud industries. Banking and politics then became the refuge of choice for the public school elite which may explain our current national predicament.

Look at our national infrastructure for a comparison of how slow we are to accept change in the UK. Charles de Gaulle has four runways, Heathrow has two and a severe case of planning wilt. We have just embarked on HS2 whilst France has high speed rail links to twelve major cities and has had them for years.

In Victorian times we often led the way in engineering but in the Twentieth century were content to drift, late to electrify our railways, inspired by the French to build Concorde. The only engineering area we excelled at was in North Sea oil extraction because it gave us the easy life whilst we largely squandered the wealth it generated, unlike Norway which invested their share to create an outstanding sovereign wealth fund that its citizens enjoy today.

Another very worrying aspect of our situation is the UK's borrowing ratio in relation to other countries. According to the Daily Telegraph article on the 10/6/16 the UK has, "A level of debt coming due over the next twelve months of 755pc of the country's external receipts. This is the highest of all 131 sovereign states rated by Standard and Poor's (rating agency) this compares with 318pc for the US and 316pc for France, the next two states most exposed."

S&P say that the UK will face an immediate downgrade from our much coveted AAA credit rating immediately we vote for Brexit. This implies dearer borrowing for all and not just mortgages but credit cards as well. The UK borrows to spend rather than invest.

Our armed forces are top heavy in every sense of the word except for the essentials that we desperately need in terms of men and material actually on the ground, in the air or on the high seas.

We have more admirals than front line ships, more army and air force top brass and the size of the MOD is staggering when compared to other nations on a like for like basis. There is no cohesive strategy coming from the top as the competition between the services for resources is also at odds with the demands of the intelligence sector fighting a war, the like of which has never been seen before.

Add to this the predilection of recent Prime Ministers to carve their name on the headstone of posterity by bombing some poor foreign jonnies in the name of democracy and you have created the perfect scenario which deems it plausible to build two large aircraft carriers and not afford the aircraft to go on them. And all this of our own making with no interference from Brussels.

As a nation that thrives on warfare and always ready to toe the American line, I can't begin to imagine the sort of scrapes we will get ourselves into, cut loose from Europe, when we will need to punch twice as heavy above our weight to make our case to stay at the Top Table. Just hope we can afford it.
Looking at immigration, realistically we are unable to control illegal entry without the help and assistance of the French government at camp Calais.

French police fired over 200 gas grenades there the other day alone, according to today's news. Will they continue to do that if we leave? Much easier to sell them life jackets, inflatable boats and wave them off, surely.

We cannot shut ourselves off from either Europe or the rest of the world, all the more so when many of the reasons for this mass movement is down to our military meddling in other countries affairs, usually at the behest of the USA rather than the EU. In terms of EU migrants many problems lie at our own door. When Romania joined our government allowed immediate entry rights whereas Germany and many other states applied a seven year embargo. Tory governments love cheap labour so what price a few extra benefit claimants paid for by the tax payer when companies can keep their costs down instead of investing in modern equipment.

Finally, this debate cannot be concluded without talking about our national sovereignty and its dissipation under the rule of un-elected bureaucrats. I would have much greater sympathy for this argument if we ourselves lived in a truly democratic society.

There is much blathering by our politicians concerning our status as the Mother of Parliaments as though this confers special privilege and WE must be listened to. Unfortunately, having given birth to the concept, it has failed to move on much since the 18C. Although we have an Upper and Lower House, only one is elected, the other largely an old chum's gravy train where nine hundred peers share a House that seats two hundred and thirty.

Add to this picture of dismal immodernity the current 'first past the post' electoral system, that allows one party to assume government with far less than half the votes cast and it makes a mockery of so much of our democratic posturing on the world stage.

There is much wrong about the EU that needs to be reformed, but there is also much right about it. If we stay in we can have a voice in reforming it, but if we vote out we lose the opportunity and the consequences will largely be borne by our children and grandchildren, although it will impact upon our pensions as the stock markets plunge.

We have enjoyed over forty years of economic growth and prosperity, higher living standards, freedom in European travel and trade. Also peace. The additional names on our one hundred thousand plus, Cenotaphs and war memorials the length and breadth of the British Isles, are only those of wars that we chose to engage in, not those where we had to.

Choose wisely next week. Choose Remain.
Peter Morgan
15/06/16

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