Ed Miliband is ignoring British people – they want to leave the EU

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/20/ed-miliband-british-people-eu

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We're not "sleepwalking towards exit from the EU", Ed Miliband. We've weighed the options and come to a decision. The most recent opinion poll, published in the Observer two days ago, suggests that 56% of British voters want to leave the EU while 30% want to stay in. That finding is broadly in line with surveys over the past decade. To adapt the late John Smith on the issue of Scottish devolution, withdrawal is now "the settled will of the British people".

The Labour leader, in his choice of words, unwittingly reveals the contempt that the political class, on both sides of the Channel, displays towards voters on this issue. It is the same mentality that led the French, Dutch and Irish governments to swat aside "No" votes in their referendums on closer integration. Whenever people vote the "wrong" way, my colleagues in Brussels have an agonised debate about how to educate the masses. It never occurs to them to treat public opinion as a reason to change direction rather than an obstacle to overcome. As Bertolt Brecht put it: "Wouldn't it be easier to dissolve the people, and elect another in their place?"

British voters are responding rationally to altered economic circumstances. When we joined the EEC 40 years ago, we thought we were becoming part of a large and prosperous market. In fact, our timing could hardly have been worse. Western Europe had indeed spectacularly outperformed Britain and the Commonwealth between 1945 and 1973, the year we joined. That growth came to an end with the oil shock of 1974, and never properly got going again.

In 1973, western Europe accounted for 38% of world GDP. Today that figure is 24%, and in 2020 it will be 15%, according to the US Department for Agriculture. Meanwhile, the markets from which we stood aside have surged. According to the IMF, the Commonwealth will grow at 7.3% per year for the next five years while the eurozone, accelerating all the policies that caused the crisis in the first place, barely grows at all. In the three months to July, our exports to the EU fell by 7.3%, while our exports to the rest of the world rose by 13.8%.

It's disappointing to see a Labour leader lining up with the corporates against the people. For, make no mistake, the CBI, his audience, represents multinationals and professional associations rather than entrepreneurs. Most businesses in my constituency know that the central economic fact of this century is the growth of a consumer class in what we still think of as developing countries.

The whole purpose of a market, after all, is to swap on the back of differences. It never made much sense for Britain to abandon a genuinely mixed market, which included producers of commodities and food as well as industrialised states, for a club of similar developed economies. In the 1970s, it was still possible to argue that the future lay with regional blocs. But the internet has made geographical proximity irrelevant.

The basis on which we joined the EU has been falsified. Instead of making its peoples get on better, it has stoked national antagonisms. Instead of leading to more prosperity, it has become a racket, forcing working people to support a privileged caste of Eurocrats and financiers. Ponder the astonishing fact that our net budget contributions in 2011 were more than the savings made by all the government's domestic spending cuts put together. Every penny squeezed out of our austerity programme is being sent to Brussels.

We didn't join a growing market; we confined ourselves in a cramped and dwindling customs union. The country as a whole has seen it. It's the political leaders, in all parties, who are lagging behind.