Boris Johnson grabbed most of the newspaper front pages this morning after announcing he will be campaigning for Britain to leave the EU.
The outgoing Mayor of London wrote a long article in the Telegraph explaining why he thinks Britain would be better off out of the union.
Did he pass the FactCheck test?
“According to the House of Commons library, anything between 15 and 50 per cent of UK legislation now comes from the EU.”
True. The House of Commons researchers published this authoritative study of how much UK law is made in the EU in 2010, and updated it here.
The percentage could be as low as 15 and as high as 50 because there is a big argument you need to have about whether to count all regulations (which can cover very trivial rules) as “laws”.
Boris has avoided using the very high percentages alleged by other Eurosceptics over the years, notably Ukip.
The party claimed 75 per cent of British laws were made in Brussels, but this was based on a mistaken interpretation of the words of a former European Parliament president. Ukip stuck with the bogus figure even when the mistake was pointed out to them.
“Sometimes these EU rules sound simply ludicrous, like the rule that you can’t recycle a teabag, or that children under eight cannot blow up balloons, or the limits on the power of vacuum cleaners…”
If they sound ludicrous, they usually turn out to be untrue, as Mr Johnson – the Telegraph’s former Brussels correspondent – knows better than most.
He alludes to his time in Brussels in today’s article, reminiscing about covering “euro-condoms and the great war against the British prawn cocktail flavour crisp”.
Both of these claims – that eurocrats were designing a standard-sized condom (too small, naturally, for the average British male) and wanted to ban prawn cocktail crisps – were enthusiastically reported in British newspapers despite being substantially untrue.
The “rule that you can’t recycle a teabag” appears to come from Cardiff council officials blaming Brussels for changes they brought in to try to prevent foot-and-mouth disease. The European Commission said it was up to member states to decide what to do with their tea bags.
Similarly, there is no ban on under-eights blowing up balloons, just a decades-old rule that they should come with a safety warning. The Commission says this is a well-intentioned attempt to stop small children choking to death.
At least there is some truth in the vacuum story. EU energy saving regulations have restricted the “input power” of vacuum cleaners (not the same as the sucking power).
Interestingly, celebrated hoover-improver Sir James Dyson wanted to pull out of the EU following this decision – because it didn’t go far enough in making life difficult for his less energy-efficient competitors.
“…Sometimes they can be truly infuriating – like the time I discovered, in 2013, that there was nothing we could do to bring in better-designed cab windows for trucks, to stop cyclists being crushed. It had to be done at a European level, and the French were opposed.”
This sounds like Boris, as London’s cycling-friendly mayor, wanted to redesign lorries to make them safer, only to be thwarted by the EU, and the French in particular. But this story doesn’t fit the facts.
In 2014, the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly to change the shape of lorry cabs to cut cyclist deaths, despite initial opposition from some national governments, including that of the UK.
We know this because one B Johnson was a big cheerleader for the EU-wide changes, and a critic of the Conservative-led government’s stance at the time.
He was quoted as saying: “If these amendments, supported by dozens of cities across Europe, can succeed, we can save literally hundreds of lives across the EU in years to come. I am deeply concerned at the position of the British government and urge them to embrace this vital issue.”
It’s true that the French and Swedish governments tried to delay implementing the changes for ten years, but they failed, and new regulations will come into force in 2019.
So it’s not true that “there was nothing we could do”. The European Parliament actually implemented the changes backed at the time by Boris himself. It’s hard to see why he’s criticising the EU over this now.
“Most of the evidence I have seen suggests that the Scots will vote on roughly the same lines as the English.”
We don’t know what evidence Boris has seen on this, but it goes against all the polling analysis we have seen.
A recent study by NatCen Social Research found Scots were significantly more likely to vote to stay in the EU than the English – 64 per cent compared to 52 per cent.
And this wasn’t a blip – Scotland’s pro-EU bias was visible over at least the last 15 years:
“Only 4 per cent of people running the Commission are UK nationals, when Britain contains 12 per cent of the EU population.”
True. The latest figures are here. Some 4.3 per cent of European Commission staff – 1,000 people – are UK nationals. More than 8 per cent are Germans, nearly 10 per cent are French, and more than 17 per cent are Belgian.
The number of British staff and the proportion have been falling for at least a decade, according to Foreign Office figures:
Almost everyone is concerned about this, but no one blames the European Commission for trying to freeze Brits out. The main problem is that young people are not applying for roles fast enough to replace British staff who retire.
This report from the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee notes that all candidates have to sit language exams, and young Britons are at a disadvantage: “In 2010 6 per cent of upper secondary students in the UK were learning two or more languages, compared to an EU average of 60 per cent.”
What else might be putting British candidates off, the committee wondered? One theory was that uncertainty over Britain’s continued membership of the EU was making the prospect of a career in the EU institutions less attractive.
boris has nothing whatsoever to offer anything to the majority of people in this country who live North of London; in fact I doubt whether he has ever visited any northern outpost except to visit fellow Bullingdon club members on their country estates.
Xenophobia seems to be a british disease. The UK will always struggle without international (European) trade and support. The Empire and control of the Commonwealth are long gone. The world will always move on, with or without the UK.
In the past, differences between people in the UK such as we have over the EU would have ended up in a war (ref. The English Civil War between Parliament and Crown etc.) or if in Europe a similar split would have ended up in a war (Thinks – Bosnia in the 1990s). We are having a referendum because we are part of an organisation that was set up to stop wars over such matters and settle them with a referendum. And people really want to leave it for the alternative? Really???
well one thing is for certain Mr Volkswagen and Mr BMW (as well as Mr Peugeot and Mr Citroen ) are going to fight tooth and claw to keep trade with Britain open as we are a huge market – I cant Merkel or Hollande saying “no you cant sell your cars to Britain [major manufacturer] ” can you ? All this free trade ending guff is nonsense no one is going to stop trading with a major IMPORTER of their products despite what they say. Look how hard they fought to keep Greece in the EU.
Bear in mind that Greece is a completely different scenario given that it’s a part of the euro.
Secondly, as far as I’m aware no credible source has claimed import and exports will stop between Europe and the UK. What would change however, is that they would then have to go through the customs checks etc due to us no longer being a part of the single market.
Obviously this will likely affect smaller buisnesses more than the big companies. Moving to a more speculative point (I don’t have time to do the research on this currently). Given the extra procedures imports and exports will have to go through, it seems plausible that the additional cost would (at least in part) be passed on to the consumer.
Prior to the Single Market we had the T2 forms. These were far less demanding than CMR notes and worked fine. If a company chose to use a shipping/clearing agent, there were fees payable. Nothing to stop companies doing it themselves though.
Now we have EU sales lists on the VAT 100 form and for those who do any volume of business with the Single Market, there is Intrastats and these things are a complete nightmare.
I reckon that if we went back to the old way, the costs would remain about the same, perhaps a bit less.
If the EU slapped tariffs on us, we would reciprocate. I estimate, based upon SMMT figures, that 10% of EU car production is sold in this country. That is an awful lot of money and the big players are France and Germany. You may rest assured that they will see to it that their interests are not harmed. Sweden, Spain and the Czech Republic would not be pleased either.
The French sell us loads of food and wine, as do the Italians and they too would not like to have their trade subjected to duties. The Spanish sell us back the fish they have over fished from our grounds but that would stop because we would reinstate the 200 mile limit or midway between coasts, whichever the lesser may be. At least the EU would no longer decimate the North and Irish Seas with their insane quota system that see millions of tons of fish discarded every year.
All regulations issued by the Commission are at the behest of the Council of Ministers that our Ministers attended, or from the European parliament as elected.
The word ‘directive’ is deceptive.
Look at their road signs and you’ll see that In most other States, ‘direction’ means ‘direction of travel’ and is not a command. Whereas in English the word ‘directive’ is understood as a command from above. Directives of the EU are the policies our governments have already agreed.
The central purpose of those regulations and directives is to help each country adopt commercial rules that are similar to each other. So that trading is easier.
Bit worried that the author of this article Patrick Worrall wrote “hoover improver”. Hoover is a brand name and should always have a capital “H”. Mr Dyson improves vacuum cleaners, not Hoovers.
Also fourth paragraph on the truck windows fact says “We knows this because one B Johnson was a big cheerleader for the EU-wide changes, and a critic of the Conservative-led government’s stance at the time.”
Dear me, if the grammar is that poor what hope for getting the important facts right?
Hoover *was* a brand name. However, unlike e.g. Google, they didn’t protect it when people started using it as a verb, so they lost the exclusive rights to the word (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericized_trademarks for more info). Personally I think one typo and one potentially debatable use of a lower case letter is hardly cause to assume the content of the article is questionable.
Not necessarily so. Hoover has become a generic trademark used to describe all vacuum cleaning machines, reflecting the fact Hoover had a dominant market share at one point. Capitalised it refers specifically to products made by the Hoover company, loweer case as a generic name for a vacuum cleaner. In this piece it is clear the writer was using the term as generic for all vacuum cleaners. So your hoover may be a Hoover brand or your hoover may be made by Electrolux or Panasonic. Likewise the verb hoovered as in ‘he hoovered up his dinner in five minutes flat’ is always lower case.
Other generic trademarks that are now almost inevitability written lower case are aspirin, lino, tannoy, trampoline & escalator.
Ben – thanks for pointing out the typo. See comments above re “hoover”.
Anyone who thinks leaving the EU won’t disrupt trade is deluded! Over 10,000 jobs at the Nissan plant in Sunderland and their suppliers (who all have to be based with 3 miles of the plant) are at risk. UK comes out of EU and Nissan will simply switch production to their Germany plant where there is no trade restrictions. Car manufacturing is worth £70 billion a year to the UK and we want to risk it all on the false assumption we will get a better deal if we leave without any evidence of this!? Just look what happened to our currency yesterday when Boris announced he would be backing the no campaign!? If one mans opinion can do that imagine how much our currency will devalue if we actually leave – kiss good bye to cheap holidays in the sun. We pay £16 billion a year to be in Europe but get back £9 billion a year in subsidies, so it only really costs us £9 billion and when we compare to the £70 billion a year we get from car manufacturing alone, it pretty obvious staying in the EU is a no brainier!
The pro-EU bias in this is rather astonishing. Fact check? More like EU spin.
Take the claims that Boris was making it up on the lorry designs. He wasn’t. The French and Swedes *did* successfully lobby to delay the introduction
http://www.politico.eu/article/safer-lorry-design-approved-by-meps/
“The start date is far later than MEPs and environmental campaigners had wanted. The Parliament adopted a position last year backing the Commission proposal, which set a start date of 2017. However, the member states came under pressure from manufacturers who do not plan on designing new vehicles for several years, and feared they would be put at a disadvantage if their competitors were allowed to use the new designs earlier. France and Sweden came under particular pressure from Volvo and Renault, and the member states called for a start date of 2025.
In December, the two sides agreed on a compromise start date. The new design rules will be adopted by member states by 2019, but there will be a three-year moratorium on their use.”
It was in fact because the EU mandated that the truck cabins could not be longer that we had the absurd situation in the first place.
And this is not only a good example of how the EU is all about horse trading and not doing what’s right, but the enormous effort, expense and delay of getting an agreement involving thousands of EU bureaucrats, MPs and council members.
Fact check? What a joke.
It is a shame but no surprise that the EU has just beuracratic moster primarily serving the personal interests of individuals. Our home grown polticians are the same and we struggle to limit this dispite regular elections.
It is impossible to control the EU and foolish to think the monster suddenly stop focusing on their on personal and countrys interest and start admitting when they get it wrong and do tge right thing.
We ALL want a united Europe but we have to accept it IS NOT WORKING!!
and the current monster cannot change becouse it is not in the personal interests of the people who run it.
The UK politicians are corrupt but not in the leauge of the majority of EU its a known FACT they have NEVER!! Yes NEVER published audited accounts of how it spends its money.
Germany of course loves the EU they have fought two Wars trying to take over Europe and failled. By creating a federal EU which they have the major influence on policy will in effect achieve the main objective of the wars.
Germany and France is of course not the only country determined to keep the EU together. This is however based primarily if not purely on their politicians believe that it in their own interest.
If suddenly it changes and is works better for other people/countries than them they will soon change their position. Look how quick Germany retreated from their “all migrants welcome” position. It is also now well known that the bail out of Greece was more about protecting German Banks with the majority of the money given to Greece by the whole of the EU was then passed straight back to German banks to cover outstanding loan interest.!!
One last ‘rant’ Mr Cameron so called fan of the EU??? I think not as mentioned previously EU like UK politicians look after number one and are prepared to destroy their only country to do son
Cameron is now preaching how important it is that we stay in the EU and hoe it would be a disaster for the EU to leave?????
So why oh why did make it a manifesto promise to have a referendun on this?
Answer: Personal interest over the country. “The public my vote to leave which I truely believe will be disasterous for the UK, but hey, as long as I win the elections nothing else matters”
If he really cared more about the country than himself and truely believed what he says he believes Why did he offer the referendum for votes where other parties stuck with their believe and let the potential votes go?
We need to leave the EU and focus on electing better uk government. Something we could influence in the Uk but could through voting but can never influence in the EU if for no other reason than we never have the opportunity to vote on an EU manifesto.
I’m for staying precisely because the EU protects us from the excesses of politicians like Boris Johnson. If we do leave, how long before employment rights such as the 37-hour week and maternity/paternity leave are sacrificed in the name of “maintaining competitiveness in an increasingly global economy”?