Gove: The Optimistic Case For Taking Back Control of Our Borders, Money and Democracy

Michael Gove’s optimistic, positive view of a Brexit is a refreshing change from Prime Minister, David Cameron’s negative campaign where scaremongering the populace was the aim.

There has been a definite positive reception from the public on Michael Gove’s message and the polls are reflecting this change in tempo in the EU referendum.

The positive points Gove makes bring forth forward-looking initiatives as opposed to Remain’s horrific visions of imprisonment within an EU system of enslavement.

Introducing a points-based immigration system, concentrating on our NHS, and supercharging the economy. The UK  does not need to send £19.1 Billion to Brussels each year after we Vote to Leave on June 23. We do not have to send £350 million per week for little in return. Our businesses will be freed from expensive EU regulations costing them £33.3 Billion per year.

The message is that Britain can break free, we can return to democratic governance once again, we can spend our money on our own priorities, we can control our borders, and ultimately we can break free from an EU that has no freedom or democracy costing the UK billions every year.

We Will Vote Leave on June 23.

There is already a crisis in the housing market which could be relieved if we Vote Leave.

The 2011 census showed that 1.1 million households were overcrowded.

The construction industry suggests that the UK is already ‘1 million homes short of the number it needs to meet its housing needs’.

If net migration continues at current levels, there is almost no chance of today’s overcrowding or undersupply being addressed. Shelter has already noted that: ‘Each year we build 100,000 fewer homes than we need, adding to a shortage that has been growing for decades’.

Turkey and four other countries are joining the EU. This will place a major burden on the NHS and housing.

The accession process is being accelerated. On 4 May 2016, the European Commission announced that: ‘The accession process will be re-energised, with Chapter 33 to be opened… and preparatory work on the opening of other chapters to continue at an accelerated pace’.

David Cameron strongly supports this. In 2010, Cameron said he was ‘angry’ at the slow pace of Turkish accession, that he was the ‘strongest possible advocate for EU membership’ for Turkey, and that ‘I want us to pave the road from Ankara to Brussels‘. In 2014, he said that: ‘In terms of Turkish membership of the EU, I very much support that. That’s a longstanding position of British foreign policy which I support’.

The Government admitted it supported Turkish accession last month. Last month, the Europe Minister, David Lidington, said: ‘The UK supports Turkey’s EU accession process‘.

The British public will not get a vote on the accession of Turkey to the EU. The European Union Act 2011 allows the Government to ratify EU accession treaties without a referendum. There was no referendum on the accession of Croatia to the EU in 2013 (European Union.

The Government opposes giving the British people a say. As the Minister for Europe, David Lidington, said in 2011: ‘A few years ago, 10 new member states joined the European Union at the same time. I believe that their combined population then was 73 million, which is slightly greater than Turkey’s population is now. I do not believe that anybody in this country argued at that time that a British referendum on those accessions was right’.

The UK is paying £2bn to help Turkey, Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia to join the EU. Turkey alone is set to receive over £1 billion of UK funds to help prepare it for membership.

There will be no staff shortages in the NHS if we Vote Leave: hiring skilled workers from abroad will become easier.

Leaving the EU would affect the UK’s ability to attract skilled migrants from the EU to work in the NHS.

11% of doctors are from the European Economic Area, whereas 25.7%, or 70,404 are from the rest of the world. This is despite the stringent restrictions that apply to migrants from outside the EU coming to the UK.

If we Vote Leave, we can prioritise those with the skills our NHS needs and we can end the open door to the rest of Europe.

The safer option for British steel is to Vote Leave.

The EU Treaties in principle prohibit ‘any aid granted by a Member State or through State resources in any form whatsoever which distorts or threatens to distort competition by favouring certain undertakings’, which might have an affect on trade between member states. Aid must be approved by the EU institutions to be lawful.

The European Commission‘s own guidelines on state aid are explicit. They provide that ‘the Commission considers that rescue aid and restructuring aid for firms in difficulty in the steel sector… are not compatible with the common market’. European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in January ‘EU state aid rules don’t allow public support for the rescue and restructuring of failing steelmakers‘.

Public procurement is controlled by EU law. It is illegal under EU law for the public sector to be required to purchase British steel.

There is no guarantee of the border between Gibraltar and Spain remaining open in the event of a vote to remain, as the pro-EU Government of Gibraltar has conceded.

The Chief Minister of Gibraltar, Fabian Picardo QC MP, has conceded that: ‘the European Commission has failed to act with the speed or with the clarity required to really show it is defending the treaty rights of persons crossing our frontier. The Commission has also failed to act decisively to enforce our rights to access the single sky aspects of the EU’. This directly contradicts the Foreign Secretary’s claim today that ‘Gibraltar’s future is clearly in the European Union’s single market’.

There is no certainty that the border will remain open in the event of a vote to remain in the EU. In August 2013, the European Commission stated that Spain was ‘obliged to carry out checks on persons and on goods’ when crossing the frontier.

Expelling British citizens from the EU would be illegal.

As the former Head of the EU Council’s Legal Service, Jean-Claude Piris, has said: ‘Those with permanent residency in EU states could stay’.

Article 19(1) of the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights states that: ‘collective expulsions are prohibited’.

The UK has no influence in the EU institutions which are unaccountable to the British public.

Every time the UK has voted against a measure in the Council of Ministers, it has been outvoted This is happening with increased frequency: of the UK’s 72 defeats, over half (40) have occurred in the last five years.

The UK’s representatives are often outvoted in the European Parliament as well. The majority of UK MEPs voted against 576 EU proposals between 2009 and 2014, but 485 still passed.

The UK has lost 101 cases in the European Court since it joined the then European Economic Community in 1973, a failure rate of 77.1%. The current Government has lost 16 out of 20 cases in the European Court, a failure rate of 80%.

The rogue European Court is keeping dangerous people in the UK.

Terrorists. In 2015, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission ruled the UK could not exclude ZZ from the UK because of EU law, despite the fact that he was a suspected terrorist. The Commission concluded that: ‘We are confident that the Appellant was actively involved in the GIA [Algerian Armed Islamic Group], and was so involved well into 1996. He had broad contacts with GIA extremists in Europe. His accounts as to his trips to Europe are untrue. We conclude that his trips to the Continent were as a GIA activist’.

Killers. EU law prevents us from removing serious criminals, such as violent killer Theresa Rafacz, a Polish national who killed her husband, including by kicking him in the face with a shod foot while he lay on the ground defenceless and drunk. Mr Justice Hart ruled the offence involved ‘gratuitous violence’. She was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. Nonetheless, Mr Justice Blake later ruled that EU law prevented her removal, stating that there was ‘no basis’ which could ‘justify her deportation on the grounds of public policy’.

Rapists. Mircea Gheorghiu, a Romanian national, entered the UK without leave in January 2007. In November 2007, he was convicted of driving a motor vehicle with excess alcohol, fined and disqualified from driving for 20 months. It later emerged that he had ‘a criminal record in Romania. In 1990 he was convicted of the offence of rape and sentenced to 6 years imprisonment. Between 2001 and March 2002 he was convicted on three occasions of forestry offences, cutting timber without a licence, and received custodial sentences on the last two occasions.’ The Secretary of State removed him from the UK in March 2015. Nonetheless, on 18 November 2015, Mr Justice Blake, sitting in the Upper Tribunal, decided this was unlawful under EU law, ruling Gheorghiu must be ‘reunited with his family as quickly as possible‘ and that he was ‘entitled to a permanent residence on his return and the residence card issued to him will reflect that’.

If we Vote Leave, we can cut VAT on fuel.

Charging VAT on energy bills imposes disproportionate costs on low income households, which must spend a greater proportion of their income on necessities such as heating and lighting. The lowest decile on average spends 9.1% of average household income on electricity, gas and other fuels. The average UK household spends 4.9% of its income on energy, while the top decile spends just 3.1% of its income on energy.

European Union law prevents the UK from cutting VAT on household energy bills. Article 102 of the 2006 EU Directive on the common system of VAT permits the UK to ‘apply a reduced rate to the supply of natural gas, electricity or district heating’. However, the Directive requires that the reduced rate must ‘not be less than 5 %‘. This means the UK cannot reduce VAT on household energy bills below 5%, its current level.

If we Vote Leave, we will be able to scrap VAT on household energy bills, as the UK will have left the EU’s common system of VAT. Each household on average spends £25.80 per week on electricity, gas and other fuels, or £1,341.60 per year. Subtracting VAT of 5% would reduce this figure to £1,277.70, a saving of £63.89 per household.

Last year, 270,000 persons came to the UK from the EU, the equivalent of a city the size of Newcastle.

In 2015, 270,000 persons came to the UK from the EU. This is the equivalent of a city the size of Newcastle. This is up from 264,000 in 2014.

In 2015, net migration from the EU was 184,000. This is the equivalent of adding a city the size of Oxford to the UK population. This is up from 174,000 in 2014.

Total net migration in 2015 was 333,000, up from 313,000 in 2014.

The Prime Minister has categorically failed to reduce net migration to the tens of thousands as he repeatedly promised.

The 2010 Conservative Manifesto promised that ‘we will take steps to take net migration back to the levels of the 1990s – tens of thousands a year, not hundreds of thousands’.

In his 2014 conference speech, Cameron described: ‘Numbers that have increased faster than we in this country wanted at a level that was too much for our communities, for our labour markets. All of this has to change – and it will be at the very heart of my renegotiation strategy for Europe. Britain, I know you want this sorted so I will go to Brussels, I will not take no for an answer and when it comes to free movement – I will get what Britain needs’.

The 2015 Conservative Manifesto stated the Government would ‘keep our ambition of delivering annual net migration in the tens of thousands’.

In her speech to the 2015 Conservative Party conference in Manchester, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, said: ‘not all of the consequences can be managed, and doing so for many of them comes at a high price… But even if we could manage all the consequences of mass immigration, Britain does not need net migration in the hundreds of thousands every year… The evidence – from the OECD, the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee and many academics – shows that while there are benefits of selective and controlled immigration, at best the net economic and fiscal effect of high immigration is close to zero.  So there is no case, in the national interest, for immigration of the scale we have experienced over the last decade. Neither is it true that, in the modern world, immigration is no longer possible to control… The numbers coming from Europe are unsustainable and the rules have to change’.

The UK population is rapidly expanding as a result of migration from the EU. Over 1.25 million persons have been added to the UK population since 2004, more than the population of Birmingham.

Since 2004, 1,257,000 persons have been added to the UK population as a result of net migration from the EU.

This is bigger than the population of Birmingham.

Last year, 77,000 persons came from the EU looking for work.

In 2015, 77,000 persons came to the UK from the EU who were looking for work, without a definite job offer. This is up from 63,000 in 2014.

If this rate of migration of jobseekers continues for a decade, 777,000 jobseekers will come to the UK as a result. This is greater than the population of Glasgow.

The Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Home Secretary promised EU migrants should have to have a job offer to come to the UK.

In November 2014, the Prime Minister, David Cameron, promised that ‘we want EU jobseekers to have a job offer before they come here… So let’s be clear what all these changes taken together will mean. EU migrants should have a job offer before they come here’.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, has said: ‘What we’re going to address is this question of how freedom of movement operates in the 21st century. It was never envisaged that you would have such large numbers of people coming, people coming who don’t have job offers’.

The Home Secretary, Theresa May, has argued: ‘when it was first enshrined, free movement meant the freedom to move to a job, not the freedom to cross borders to look for work… we must take some big decisions, face down powerful interests and reinstate the original principle underlying free movement within the EU’.

The Prime Minister did not even ask for this as part of the renegotiation as it was illegal under EU law.

The renegotiation agreement notes that EU citizens are ‘entitled to reside… [in the UK] solely because of their job-search‘.

The demand that EU migrants must have a job offer was not contained in the Prime Minister’s letter to Donald Tusk of November 2015 or his Chatham House speech of the same day.

This is because it is illegal under EU law. As early as 1991, the European Court held that the ‘Treaty entails the right for nationals of Member States to move freely within the territory of the other Member States and to stay there for the purposes of seeking employment’.

A former senior International Monetary Fund economist, Ashoka Mody has said the establishment’s view is fundamentally wrong. He is a visiting professor at Princeton University. He has said: ‘Consensus amongst economists quickly unravels. In April 1999, “Britain’s top academic economists” voted strongly in favour of switching from the pound to the euro. Mercifully, the government had better sense… economics is neutral on whether to leave or remain. The battle for Brexit must be fought on other grounds… he claim that Brexit will impose a huge cost rests on the twin beliefs that British trade with Germany will go down sharply and trade with the United States will not increase. Is that reasonable? First, British trade with Germany will not decline significantly. As economists have long known, trade is embedded in business and social networks into which partners invest enormous social capital. Studies repeatedly show that businesses make accommodations in profit margins to retain the benefits of trust and reliability. For this reason, all productive trading relationships will remain intact. For this reason too, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble’s threat that renegotiation of Britain’s trade arrangements with the EU would be “most difficult” and “poisonous” is bluster. Germans run a trade surplus with Britain. Mr Schaeuble can humiliate the IMF, but he dare not hurt the interests of his exporters (or his importers). And even if British trade with the EU falls, trade with other regions will undoubtedly increase’.

The OECD recommended British entry into the euro. This would have been a disaster for the economy and for jobs.

In 1999, the OECD stated: ‘The introduction of the euro delivers a number of benefits. These include reduced transaction costs associated with trade and financial interactions with other euro area countries, no intra euro area exchange rate risk, greater overall price stability and sharpened price transparency. Lower exchange rate risk also implies that interest rate risk premia should be small, and therefore lower borrowing costs in many countries. These benefits will complement the single market in goods and services and are likely to reinforce the long-run efficiencies associated with the single market. The European Commission estimated nine years ago that the direct static benefits of monetary union linked to lower transaction costs could be around 1/2 a per cent of EU GDP, equivalent to around $40 billion a year. Recent studies have estimated larger gains (up to 1 per cent of GDP). EMU is also likely to generate endogenous consequences such as more transparent prices unleashing stronger competitive forces, possibly fewer policy induced shocks compared with the past as a result of the stability-oriented macroeconomic policy framework and it may serve as a catalyst to speed-up structural changes’.

In 2000 it was reported that the OECD wanted the UK to join the euro: ‘Britain told: economy is ripe for euro… The government’s attempt to keep the lid on the debate over joining the euro until after the election was undermined yesterday by an independent report from the world’s top economic thinktank which said the British and core European economies were close to converging. In spite of strenuous efforts by the Treasury to delete mention of anything remotely contentious, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s regular healthcheck on the UK economy said that in some respects the UK would soon be more like Euroland than some of the new currency zone’s existing members’.

It was also reported that: ‘Britain is more suitable to join the euro single currency than many of its existing members as the difference in output and GDP growth rates are continually narrowing, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development said today’ (Evening Standard, 8 June 2000).

The author of the study, Vincent Koen, said: ‘If Greece is deemed fit to join, it would be strange if the UK wasn’t’.

The OECD said the Exchange Rate Mechanism would benefit Britain. It was a disaster.

In December 1990, the OECD said: ‘while the benefits are potentially great, ERM participation constitutes an ambitious strategy for the United Kingdom’ (Xinhua General News Service, 20 December 1990).

‘Pointing out the full members of the European Monetary System have an average inflation rate of slightly more than 4%, compared to 8.3% in Britain, OECD economists make clear their support for a quick decision by the British government on joining the exchange-rate mechanism of the system’ (The Financial Post, 30 June 1989, p. 7).

In October 1990, the UK joined the ERM. The ERM caused interest rates to rise to 15%, led to millions of households going into negative equity and unemployment reaching 2.9 million in 1993. The resulting ‘Black Wednesday’ debacle that resulted from Britain’s membership of the ERM cost the UK economy £3.3bn, according to HM Treasury analysis. The UK economy recovered rapidly after leaving the ERM.

The IMF has been consistently wrong about its forecasts for the UK economy. It is wrong now. The Government has previously condemned the IMF’s errors.

The IMF has tried to talk Britain’s economy down before – but its negative forecasts for the UK economy have been consistently wrong. In 2013 the IMF’s chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, warned that Britain’s growth prospects were very low. When challenged, the Chief Economist responded: ‘I am right and they are wrong’. His estimates turned out to be inaccurate and UK growth was much stronger than he predicted.

The IMF later had to accept that it was wrong about its warnings for the UK. Christine Lagarde later admitted that she had ‘underestimated’ the strength of growth when the IMF assessed the UK economy in 2013.

The IMF has made other major errors of forecasting. In June 2013, the IMF was forced to admit it had issued ‘economic projections that were too optimistic‘ about its joint austerity programme with the EU in Greece.

Even the Head of the IN campaign has dismissed siren voices like the IMF’s. The Chairman of the IN campaign, Lord Rose of Monewden, has admitted that there are no short-term risks in voting to leave, stating: ‘Nothing is going to happen if we come out of Europe in the first five years … There will be absolutely no change … It’s not going to be a step change or somebody’s going to turn the lights out and we’re all suddenly going to find that we can’t go to France, it’s going to be a gentle process’.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer has previously been very critical of the IMF. In April 2014, the Chancellor made a speech to the American Enterprise Institute which was widely perceived to be a direct attack on the IMF for its previous negative forecasts about the British economy. Mr Osborne said: ‘pessimistic predictions that fiscal consolidation was incompatible with economic recovery have been proved comprehensively wrong by events… many of those same pessimists have now found new grounds to be gloomy about our future… I want to explain why I believe both of these predictions will be proved wrong too… I have a different prescription. My message today at the IMF is this. The pessimists said our plan would not deliver economic growth. Now they say economic growth will not deliver higher living standards. They were wrong about the past and they are now wrong about the future‘.

Other ‘experts’ have been disastrously wrong

65% of economists backed scrapping the pound.

World leaders do support leaving the EU.

The former Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, has said that Britain should leave the EU.

Wages will rise if we Vote Leave as the IN campaign has admitted.

The Chairman of the IN campaign, Lord Rose of Monewden, believes this claim. He has admitted that: ‘the price of labour will go up‘ in the event of a vote to leave (Evidence to Treasury Committee, March 2016, link).

A BlackRock report in February co-written by Rupert Harrison, a former close advisor to the Chancellor, said leaving the EU could mean ‘lower immigration [which] could make labour scarcer in the long run, pushing up wage costs’. The Bank of England has found that ‘the immigrant to native ratio has a small negative impact on average British wage’. The study found that ‘immigrants in recent years are most predominant in low-skill occupations’. The study concluded that: ‘the biggest effect is in the semi/unskilled services sector, where a 10 percentage point rise in the proportion of immigrants is associated with a 2 percent reduction in pay’.

Trade in cars will continue.

If we Vote Leave, we will strike a free trade deal with the EU, meaning jobs in the car industry will be protected. In 2014, the UK had a £26 billion trade deficit in road vehicles with the remaining 27 members of the EU.

The EU’s economic policies to date have had the opposite effect to that intended.

Academic studies show the EU’s austerity policies have had the reverse effect to what was intended,with Germany becoming more competitive and Greece becoming less competitive. Between 2007 and 2013, ‘the pattern of adjustment within the eurozone has been dramatically perverse, with Germany having improved competitiveness by 9 percent and with Greece’s having deteriorated by 9 percent’.

Economic policies in the Eurozone have caused severe problems for states in the Southern Mediterranean.

Youth unemployment in Greece is 51.9%. In Spain, it is 45.5%.

In 2015, public debt in Greece was 176.9% of GDP. In Italy, it was 132.7%.

The mean suicide rate in Greece rose by 35% between 2010 and 2012. Suicides in Spain have risen by 20 per cent since the start of the economic crisis.

Average net earnings for a single person without children in Greece fell by 17% between 2010 and 2015.

The UK does pay £350 million to the EU each week

The ONS says £19,107 million (or £367 million per week) is the UK’s ‘total debits’ in favour of the EU institutions.

It is wrong to say this figure is misleading. The Chair of the UK Statistics Authority, Sir Andrew Dilnot, has said that ‘The UK’s gross contributions to the EU in 2014 were £19.1 billion, according to the latest official statistics available’. The Head of the Statistics Authority, Sir Andrew Dilnot CBE, has said: ‘Yes, the £19.1 billion figure is a legitimate figure for gross contributions… the official statistics are the £19.1 billion‘.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer has made clear the rebate is a discretionary grant which is subject to annual renegotiation: ‘It is not a unilateral decision of the British Treasury or the British Government to just say, “This is our rebate. We are entitled to it. Pay up”. The way this works and has always worked is there is a negotiation with the European Commission’.

The rebate has no basis in the Treaties. It’s only existence is in article 5 of Council Decision 2014/335/EU. This expires in 2021, so the rebate could be abolished entirely in the event of a vote to stay.

We pay over £10 billion which we never see again. The UK’s net contribution to the EU was £10.6 million in 2015.

The UK has no control over the money the EU spends in the UK. The European Commission itself states that ‘funding is managed according to strict rules to ensure there is tight control over how funds are used’. EU funding also costs money which could be saved. For example, since 2005, England has incurred £642 million in ‘disallowance’ penalties from the European Commission for failing to properly implement the common agricultural policy. This waste could be eliminated entirely if we spent our money ourselves.

JPMorgan is a major donor to the IN campaign, called the euro wrong and spends millions lobbying Brussels.

JPMorgan has donated a sum of £500,000 to the pro-EU Britain Stronger in Europe campaign.

The Vice Chairman, Investment Banking at JPMorgan, Lord Renwick of Clifton was a member of the Council of Britain in Europe, the failed campaign to scrap the pound and to ratify the European Constitution.

JPMorgan warned the UK could be left ‘isolated’ outside the ‘single currency’: ‘This time round, as the investment bank JP Morgan noted yesterday: “A ‘yes’ vote could leave the UK isolated as the only one of the 15 European Union members without a clear timetable for entry’… As the JP Morgan analysis notes, if that happened: “Investors are unlikely to react positively to the rejection of the single currency by a country that has been a member of the EU for 27 years, with a fixed exchange rate for 18 years’.

JPMorgan claimed that staying out of the ‘single currency’ would lead to banks relocating to the rest of the EU: ‘Despite all this, JPMorgan does not see “Project 1992” as the real threat to London. Potentially more dangerous is the distant prospect of a single currency and central bank. JP Morgan argues that financial business would be likely to gravitate to the place where such a central bank operated, although policy-making could be split from the operations – as the US Federal Reserve is divided between Washington and New York. At least JP Morgan reckons London has a fair claim to be the operating centre’ (Independent, 20 September 1988).

In 2015, JPMorgan spent between €1,250,000 and €1,499,999 lobbying the European Commission.

It has been noted that: ‘JP Morgan Chase says its lobbying costs in Brussels went up from €50,000 in 2013 to between €1,250,000 and €1,499,999 in 2014 – a 30-fold increase’.

JPMorgan was a major cause of the global financial crisis and had to pay out $13 billion for its wrongdoing.

In November 2013, JPMorgan reached a $13 billion settlement with the Department of Justice ‘for Misleading Investors About Securities Containing Toxic Mortgages‘. ‘As part of the settlement, JPMorgan acknowledged it made serious misrepresentations to the public’.

The United States Attorney General Eric Holder said: ‘the conduct uncovered in this investigation helped sow the seeds of the mortgage meltdown‘, and said JPMorgan had ‘knowingly bundle[d] toxic loans and [sold] them to unsuspecting investors’.

Associate Attorney General Tony West said the bank ‘helped create a financial storm‘ and that ‘the conduct JPMorgan has acknowledged – packaging risky home loans into securities, then selling them without disclosing their low quality to investors – contributed to the wreckage of the financial crisis’.

Jamie Dimon is paid $27 million a year, eighteen times his basic salary. His remuneration above his basic salary could buy three more Border Force cutters.

Jamie Dimon was paid $27 million in 2015, a 35% pay rise. His basic salary is $1.5 million, one eighteenth of his total pay package.

Mr Dimon’s remuneration above his basic salary is $25.5 million or £16.7 million. This could pay for an additional three border force cutters: the cost of procuring a border force cutter is £4.3 million..

JPMorgan pays for advice from pro-EU lobbyist Tony Blair.

Blair has been paid around £2 million per year as a part time adviser to JP Morgan.