Below is the text of Sir John Major’s speech at Peterborough Cathedral on Friday 10 June 2016.
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
It is extraordinary that this is the 900th Anniversary of this great Cathedral.
Its foundations were laid over 50 years before the martyrdom of Thomas Beckett, and 100 years before Magna Carta opened a small chink towards democracy. In those days, one third of England was forest – and the Cathedral would have dominated the landscape.
Today, it sits in the middle of a city, and the forest has long gone: although part of its wood survives in the great ceiling above us in this Nave.
Nine hundred years ago our dinner – on a Friday – would, of course, have been fish: probably sole or eels. We would have shared a communal soup bowl and eaten from common plates of food, helping ourselves with – hopefully clean – fingers.
We would have had knives but no forks. We would have been discouraged from licking our fingers clean (very bad table manners), or taking too much food, or using bread to mop up morsels from the communal plate. And if we were wise, we would not have drunk the water. We would certainly have never imagined the future.
So much has happened since then and – today – events are moving faster than ever before. For many, it is a bewildering world, throwing up choices and decisions perhaps more complex than anything we have known in all our long history.
The role of the Cathedral has evolved over the centuries. Faith is more liberal now, more user-friendly, more open to accept different cultures – and more tolerant of those who have no faith at all.
Yet it remains massively important to its community. As part of the celebrations of this anniversary Peterborough 900 is raising funds for community purposes: a heritage and education centre, and a Music School, are projects that will benefit many people.
So will re pitching the Organ to enable the Cathedral to function as a concert venue with a new sound system. Some may say – is this the purpose of a Cathedral?
I would say, “Yes, it is”: in a secular – often too materialist – world, in a multi-cultural and multi-faith City, it must reach out and be seen as a relevant part of our way of living: if it were to become a mausoleum for only the committed to visit on Sunday it would surely wither.
Our country was once a collection of small towns and cities and tiny villages, and the Church was the heart and soul of the community: today, when so many are elderly, some lonely, and others possibly a little frightened at the pace and change of modern life, this role is as important as it has ever been.
For the sick at heart, it is a sanctuary: open to the good and the bad alike: a comfort zone for some when none other may exist. That is why in my view – though this is not shared by everyone in public life – it should use its pulpit to speak out more clearly on issues that affect the lives of everyday people.
Today, around the world, intolerance of minorities is on the rise. In country after country we see them scape-goated. Extreme politicians reach for power. Even in our own backyard of Europe, intolerant voices influence opinion. Here, in this bastion of faith, I invite the Church, and all faith groups, to speak out whilst intolerance can still be beaten back. It is important that they do – without fear and without reservation.
* * * * *
Some problems are eternal. Twenty five years ago, at the door of Downing Street, I set out my ambition for “a nation at ease with itself”. At the heart of this was my wish to tackle inequality.
That day I had the power, but the economy was failing and there was no money. By the time the economy was mended and I had the money, I lost the power. I made some progress – but not enough. Overall, I failed in my own objective.
With age comes reflection and, these days, I am more and more concerned about inequality. Sixty-five years ago, my family’s circumstances were not easy. And for many – in a country now immensely more wealthy – life is still not easy.
The global market is driving inequality – and the uncomfortable truth is that there is a gap between what our nation needs in social provision, and what the taxpayer is willing to pay.
For a long time, civil society has bridged much of this gap – helped, in recent years, by tax reliefs to encourage giving, and State funding to carry out statutory social work. The National Lottery, too, has now disbursed over £33 billion to good causes – mostly to provide facilities the State could not afford. Indeed, this Cathedral has benefited from some of them.
But, inevitably, there are gaps: as a country, we are one of the richest in the world – and yet some of our communities are amongst the poorest in all Northern Europe.
Even in areas that are recognised as wealthy, there are families or individuals who have fallen behind.
In communities where traditional jobs have gone, too many are on low incomes – or no income at all. A minority move elsewhere to find work. But the majority can’t: not through disinclination, but because – even if they have sufficient savings to do so – it is tough to uproot to find a job and a home. For the penniless, or for those with families or who act as carers, it can – literally – be impossible. They are effectively trapped.
And let us cast aside a common misconception. Everyone out of work is not an idler. Everyone in receipt of benefits is not a scrounger. Of course idlers and scroungers exist – and Governments are right to root out the cheats who rip off the taxpayer. But the focus must not only be on those who abuse the system; we need equal concentration on those who are failed by the system.
We have made progress. We can raise living standards: we have been doing so for a long time. At the turn of the 20th Century, millions struggled to eat. In London, one in three lived below the poverty line; in York, one in four ate less well than the unfortunate wretches in the poor house.
Over the decades, mass poverty has shrunk back. The quality of life has risen across all income groups – but much less evenly than is healthy. Politicians, and charities, and churches, and the free market, can all take a mini-bow for what has been achieved. But there is no cause for complacency: a hard core of relative poverty still remains.
A nation at ease with itself requires fairness.
370 years ago, in the Putney Debates, Colonel Rainsborough observed: “… the poorest he that is in England has a life to live, as [has] the greatest he…”. So had he, or she, then, and so has he, or she, now. We may never achieve a perfect society, but we can surely create a fairer one.
Of course we’re not all born equal: the raw ingredients of an impoverished life often start in childhood. As a boy, my family lived in two rooms in Brixton. Life was hard but for others it was worse. I saw poverty all around me – and have never forgotten that.
There is no security. No peace of mind. The pain of every day is the fear of what might happen tomorrow. It is terrifying – and the memory of it never leaves you.
We see poverty as a social evil – which, of course, it is: but it is far more than that. It is an economic evil. It wastes talent. It destroys ambition. It lowers national output. It cuts competitiveness. It creates dependency. It leaves families in despair and communities in decline.
And inequality – poverty amid plenty – is corrosive. It alienates and breeds resentment. It undermines national cohesion. The human spirit can endure great hardship: but inequality gives it a bitter edge.
Some think the solution is easy. Penalise the rich. Cut defence. End overseas aid to people who are far poorer than us – and living in conditions of squalor that we cannot even imagine. Then, borrow more and spend more. But this doesn’t work.
The arguments against such an approach are so comprehensive, so compelling, I won’t waste any time on them, except to note they have failed before and would do so again. Easy promises, with no practical policy to bring them about, are simply posturing.
And that is of no help to the poor. Good intentions don’t fill empty bellies, or provide shelter for the homeless, or jobs for the unemployed.
What does help is national wealth accompanied by national conscience. The richer we are as a nation, the more we can do. If the Good Samaritan is in debt, he can be of no help to others. That is why the health of our national economy is an essential preliminary to a nation at ease with itself.
* * * * * *
And that brings me to my final point. Ahead of us in a few days is a pivotal choice – to stay in the European Union or leave it. This arouses strong emotions among some people – and no doubt both sides of the argument are represented here tonight. I am no starry-eyed European. I was, after all, the Prime Minister who kept us out of the Euro and declined to join the Schengen zone on free movement of people.
But I am a realist. And unlike many in the present debate, I sat for seven years at Europe’s top table and saw it from the inside. I learned its intentions. I know its virtues, its faults and its frustrations at first hand, yet I have not a shred of doubt that it is in our present and long-term interest to remain in the EU. Inside we will be richer. We will be more influential. We can do more.
Our world has changed. We Britons are 65 million people in a world of 7,000 million. And it is a world that is drawing together in trade, in politics, in travel, and in facing common threats. It would be an extraordinary moment to suddenly cut ourselves adrift from the largest and richest free market in history.
I am a Briton, and an Englishman, and I believe our country is a benevolent influence in the world. I don’t want us to isolate ourselves. Overall, we are a force for good, for reason, for moderation. We have much to offer.
I hope everyone will think of that – and of the future, and the next generation – before they make up their minds. The decision we take is, quite literally, more relevant to our future then any General Election has or will be.
Below is the text of the speech made by Sir John Major in Northern Ireland on 9 June 2016.
Let me start by saying how pleased I am to be back in Northern Ireland, and with you this morning.
Tony and I are here to talk about the European referendum, and why it matters for you, for Northern Ireland, for Anglo-Irish relations,
…and for the future of our United Kingdom as a whole.
In a moment, Tony will talk specifically about Northern Ireland, but I want to take a step back and ask: what’s this referendum really all about?
First, it’s about the economy, jobs and the wellbeing of everyone in the UK.
Just like Prime Ministers before us and since, Tony and I fought hard to persuade our fellow European leaders to continue to build the Single Market: we did so because it is of huge benefit to Britain. It is the richest free market in the world and we have full access to it: that is enormously valuable for our prosperity.
To risk losing it – or reducing our access to it – seems to be pure folly.
Secondly, our security and strength on the world stage is also vital.
If we work with our partners in Europe we can achieve things in the British interest that we cannot do alone.
I know that immigration remains a concern for people – but, in my view, that would remain a contentious issue whether we were in or out of Europe.
It is a difficult and complex problem, but there are no simple answers to it, no magic bullets that solve it.
But – this morning – I want everyone here to understand something else – something that is critical in this debate – and for all our futures.
This referendum is also about the people in every part of the United Kingdom, and the union that we have built together over generations.
That’s important to all of us – it’s about the ties of friendship, family and affection that bind us together.
Men and women; friends and neighbours; workmates and classmates…
…all of us living together side-by-side in a union of four countries: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
And I say without a shadow of doubt in my mind, that the wrong outcome on June 23rd will affect our union; and will jeopardise that unity.
That means the unity of the United Kingdom itself is on the ballot paper in two weeks’ time.
Let me explain.
First, Scotland.
Two years ago, on the eve of the Scottish Referendum…
…thousands and thousands of people gathered in Trafalgar Square to wave Union Jacks and sing songs together – imploring the Scottish people not to vote for independence.
It was a last-ditch appeal, an emotional plea, from the English, the Welsh and the Northern Irish to stick together, to stay together – to preserve the most successful union in history.
Wisely, the Scots did so – against the advice of the SNP.
I believe that, with one qualification, the matter is now settled for a generation and beyond.
But it is a very big qualification.
Because if Scotland votes to stay in the European Union, but the UK as a whole chooses to leave, there is a serious risk of a new referendum…
not straight away, perhaps– but ultimately nationalist pressure for another shot at leaving the UK could prove to be uncontrollable and irresistible.
And in those circumstances – if the UK was outside the EU – I can well envisage a different result.
That is the risk … that a British exit from the EU could re-open the whole question, and tear apart the United Kingdom.
So I say to everyone who is undecided, everyone who is wavering: please understand the potential – even the likely – consequence of a vote to leave the EU.
Not just a shrunken economy, not just a diminished United Kingdom on the world stage; but a smaller country in a very real and literal sense.
The most successful union in world history would be broken apart for good.
That appalling outcome could follow the wrong choice on June 23rd.
But of course there is also the question of Northern Ireland – itself a vital part of the Union.
Tony and I know more than most how carefully the peace process was stitched together over many years.
We met the families of the victims, whose pain when their loved ones were murdered was raw and real – and, I imagine, still is.
We know about the stops and starts of that process; the setbacks; the compromises and the contradictions that are inherent in building a peace that can endure.
I think back to working with my friend, Albert Reynolds, and the breakthrough that was the Downing Street Declaration, sowing the seeds for the IRA ceasefire and then the chance – in time – for a negotiated and peaceful constitutional settlement. I carried this forward: Tony completed it.
Throughout my years as Prime Minister, no issue consumed my thoughts and my attention more than the goal of peace and stability here.
I was convinced that, however intractable the Troubles seemed…
…however routine the daily cycle of violence became…
…however deeply the hatred was felt….
…that a solution could and must be found.
That with patience, care and hard work, we could find a way. Many people, both well-known and unknown, helped in that endeavour.
I pay tribute to Tony for all that he did, to the Irish government…and to all parties here in Northern Ireland for having the strength and commitment to see the Process through. And to the communities, here and in the South, who were sick of violence and wanted a better future.
And it is an incredible achievement to see a successful power-sharing executive working in Northern Ireland – a dream thought impossible 30 years ago.
Indeed, it is a mark of the progress made in Northern Ireland that, today, elections are now conducted with more courtesy and good humour than many other campaigns I can think of.
So I believe it would be a dreadful mistake to do anything that has any risk of destabilising the complicated and multi-layered constitutional settlement that underpins stability in Northern Ireland.
But that is what a British exit from the EU would do: it would throw all of the pieces of the constitutional jigsaw into the air again, and no-one could say where they might land.
We can all be proud at what Northern Ireland has achieved … but we should never take the very good state of Anglo-Irish relations for granted.
Today, relations between the UK and Ireland have never been better.
And though I’ve no doubt – whatever happens – that they will remain cordial, I do worry about the prospect of a British exit, which would leave Ireland on the other side of the table in a new negotiation between Britain and 27 other EU countries.
I fear that would have a totally negative effect on the relationship between our two countries.
And there is also the severe economic damage that leaving would cause in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland alike.
And all of the issues that we thought were completely settled – like the Common Travel Area – would suddenly be thrown into real doubt.
In a moment, I will hand over to Tony to talk in more detail about Northern Ireland but, before I do so, let me end by saying this: here you have two former Prime Ministers from two different parties. Rivals on many occasions, but never over the Peace Process for Ireland; never on the unity of the UK; never on the importance of our relationship with Europe.
It’s not a coincidence that every living former Prime Minister, and the current Prime Minister, shares the same view about Europe.
We know, because we have sat at the top European table that despite its many frustrations, our membership of the EU magnifies Britain’s influence in the world, and significantly improves the living standards of the British people.
And we are in no doubt of this: our membership is also an absolutely vital part of our finely-tuned and carefully-preserved union.
Throw away the membership of Europe, and don’t be surprised if – in the end, as a consequence – we accidentally throw away our union as well.
Please don’t put that at risk.
Make a positive and patriotic choice to remain – choose to fight for the UK’s interest in Europe, and in so doing, safeguard the UK’s interests at home as well.
That’s the right choice for our country, and for our future.
In two weeks’ time, I hope it is the choice we will all make.
The text of Sir John Major’s interview on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show, broadcast on 5 June 2016.
ANDREW MARR:
So to the main event part one. Sir John Major, who’s struggled through every day of his premiership against rebellious anti-Brussels Tories. He’s described the Leave campaign as an ‘unforgiveable fraud’ on the British people. And he joins me now. Those are strong words, Sir John. Are you referring, when you talk about that and the deceit of the Leave campaign to Boris Johnson in particular?
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
Not particularly to Boris, no. I think it goes much wider than simply the leader. Of course, as the leader, Boris is in a position to stop it. But I felt that for several reasons. Firstly on the economy and what would happen if we actually left. The Leave campaign have said absolutely nothing to the British people, and what they have said about leaving is fundamentally dishonest and it’s dishonest about the cost of Europe. And on the subject that they’ve veered towards, having lost the economic argument, of immigration, I think their campaign is verging on the squalid, and I’ve said so before and I’m happy to say so again.
ANDREW MARR:
Is it not possible that these are thoroughly honourable men who have taken a big political risk, risked their own political reputations, their own political futures standing for something they fundamentally believe in, and which is agreed with by a huge number of British people? That these are the good guys in essence?
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
I’ve no doubt that there are many people in this country, including members of the Leave campaign, who thoroughly believe what they say. I’ve never questioned that. But I must say in Boris’s case it was a rather late conversion. I don’t know whether he had a day trip to Damascus and came back, but until the very last moment everyone thought he was in favour of staying. But he’s made up his mind and I respect that. But I think what they have done now they have begun the campaign is to feed out to the British people a whole galaxy of inaccurate and, frankly, untrue information. And what they have not done is tell us what would be the position if we were to vote to leave. I think it would be chaotic and damaging, and I think the people who would suffer most would be the ordinary everyday man and woman in the street. They need to tell us, if they wish us to leave, what it would be like and how they would then meet some of the objectives they’ve set out.
ANDREW MARR:
They say this morning an extra 300,000 jobs would be created because we’d be free to strike our own trade deals with America, Australia and China and other countries.
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
Well, it’s fantasy. Firstly, we have something like three million jobs connected – I’m not saying they’re wholly reliant – but connected to our present trade with Europe and essentially with the single market. I gather their current policy today is that they will leave the single market.
There would also be a socking great hole, according to every commentator, in our public finances. So these promises of expenditure on the national health service, or elsewhere, are frankly fatuous. They are a deceit.
We would lose a huge amount in terms of national income through trade, the small businesses who sell their goods to Europe, who would sell less because if we left the single market we would face a tariff barrier of probably around ten per cent. So we would sell less, people would lose their jobs, we would find ourselves in a much worse position. The Leave campaign can turn to no serious organisation who believes what they have said about the economy and about the future of Britain and the single market.
ANDREW MARR:
So to be clear, you’re saying this is a deceitful campaign? To call a spade a spade, are you saying that Boris Johnson is lying?
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
I’m not personalising this. Though I do find it very difficult to understand how Boris can justify the 350 million that he has on his battle bus, that he and Michael Gove in particular have defended time and again. You know, I know, the IFS knows, everyone knows, Boris knows, that the real net amount that we send to Europe is about one third of that. After the rebate and after the money paid back to our fishermen, to our farmers, to our researchers, the amount we send to Europe is about one third of the amount that they claim. Now, if they can’t be straightforward and honest on a clear cut matter of fact like that, upon what else can we trust them?
ANDREW MARR:
You keep using words like ‘straightforward’, ‘honest’, ‘deceitful,’ and yet you say you’re not personalising it. You are accusing people of lying.
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
I’m talking of the Leave campaign; I’m not necessarily talking of individuals. I’ll tell you exactly. I think throughout the whole of my political life people have regarded me as being guilty of understatement. I am angry at the way the British people are being misled.
This is much more important than a general election. This is going to affect people, their livelihoods, their future for a very long time to come. If they are given honest, straightforward facts and they decide to leave, then that is the decision the British people take. But if they decide to leave on the basis of inaccurate information, inaccurate information known to be inaccurate, then I regard that as deceitful. Now, I may be wrong, but that is how I see their campaign. This is so important for once I’m not prepared to give the benefit of the doubt to other people, I’m going to say exactly what I think, and I think this is a deceitful campaign. In terms of what they’re saying about immigration, a really depressing and awful campaign. They are misleading people to an extraordinary extent.
ANDREW MARR:
Well, let’s move to immigration if we could. When you were Prime Minister, I think when you left immigration was still below 50,000, around 48,000 something like that. It’s now a third of a million and rising fast. It’s not racist or xenophobic to be really worried about that, to be worried about the effect on all of us.
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
No, no, no. I’m worried about it. Everybody is worried about that.
ANDREW MARR:
But your side don’t seem to have an answer.
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
Well, I don’t think they have an answer. We’ll come directly to that if you wish. Let me take the immigration point absolutely head-on. Yes, immigration is very high, and yes, this causes great troubles for us. Not only for us, but all across Europe. Half the world is on the move at the moment because of what is happening in North Africa and the Middle East, because of fears about Russia in Eastern Europe, because of the economic difficulty within the eurozone, there are a lot of people on the move. They come here because we are a great and successful country. The nonsense we hear from Leave about let’s get our mojo back and be a great country, we are a great, successful country, that is why people are coming to us. Now, how long will this last? It is a serious problem, you are going to see a diminution as the eurozone recovers, and it is recovering, it’s now growing pretty much as fast as us, the eurozone. But it isn’t just us.
The point that really angers me is the utterly false suggestion, repeated more than once, not in a single offhand remark but in scripted, carefully prepared speeches, that we face the risk of 88 million Turks coming here. Firstly Turkey are not in the European Union. They’re unlikely to be in the European Union in the next decade or two. Even if by some chance they were, we are outside Schengen. In any event, is it seriously suggested, as they do, that all 88 million Turks would come here? Apparently for a higher national living wage. On the one hand they’re saying migrants are depressing wages, and on the other people are flooding in to get our higher national wage. It’s nonsense.
ANDREW MARR:
Let’s be clear, Sir John.
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
Nonsense on stilts.
ANDREW MARR:
The EU wants Turkey to join, the British government wants Turkey to join, the Prime Minister has said he’d pave the way from Brussels to Ankara. So this is not a complete fantasy, it’s quite possible. This choice in this election, this decision, could be with us for 20 or 30 or 50 years’ time.
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
The Turks have been negotiating for the best part of 30 years a whole series of different things that have to be negotiated. They’ve negotiated one of about 30. Even if they were able to reach agreement with the European Union, any one nation in the European Union could veto their joining. The French have already said they would have a referendum on that issue. The Germans almost certainly will follow suit. Turkey will not be in the European Union for a very, very long time, if ever, for a whole series of practical reasons. And the Leave campaign know that. That’s the point, they know that.
ANDREW MARR:
There are people watching this who will say, hold on a second, this is Sir John Major, this is the man who negotiated the Maastricht Treaty and at that time you got your opt-outs and so forth – I remember it very well, I was there at the time, in the rain, in the dark and so forth. But nonetheless we were being told at the time that the European Union was not going to evolve into a very centralised super-state and sprawl and spread. And actually your critics then were right, because that’s what’s happened.
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
No. No, it hasn’t. Firstly, you’re quite right, I did negotiate the opt-out of the single currency. I’m told by the Leave campaign I’m wrong on everything on Europe. Well, I certainly wasn’t wrong on that.
ANDREW MARR:
What about those other treaties which followed, which followed nonetheless, in a direction of travel?
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
Not under my premiership they didn’t. We were also out of Schengen because I declined to join it in 1996. Now, what happened, we negotiated at Maastricht a safeguard, the subsidiarity safeguard, which was then bypassed. David Cameron has now effectively reinstated that with his red card system. So it has been reinstated. Any more power in a treaty – now, this is very important – any more power in a treaty to Europe would have, by British law, now to be approved in a referendum. So if there is a grab towards a super-state, which they may integrate further inside the eurozone, but we’re not in the eurozone and we’re not going to integrate further.
ANDREW MARR:
Does that not live us a bit like a kind of rickety sidecar stapled to the side of a vast Mercedes going to a place we don’t want to go?
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
Only if you think we’re a little country. We’re not a little country, we’re a big country. We’re one of the biggest countries in the European Union. We are outside the eurozone, we are not responsible for their debts, we are not going to be responsible for their debts. We are not going to enter the eurozone. We’re staying in a wider Europe and we’re going to continue to trade with Europe if we are wise, but we are not involved in what is happening in the part of Europe that is in difficulty. But if we cut ourselves adrift, we will become a vastly diminished country.
ANDREW MARR:
We’re talking about the world after Brexit, if that’s what happens, and you’ll have seen a whole series of pledges now, about 100 million a week for the NHS, about an Australian-style points system, about new farming subsidies and much else. It’s beginning to look like another manifesto isn’t it?
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
Well, it’s certainly very ill thought-out. I mean, the concept that the people running the Brexit campaign would care for the national health service is a rather odd one. I seem to remember Michael Gove wanting to privatise it. Boris wanted to charge people for using it. And Iain Duncan Smith wanted a social insurance system. The NHS is about as safe with them as a pet hamster would be with a hungry python. So I don’t think that’s very wise. As far as immigration is concerned, what they’re planning is immensely difficult. Let us suppose that they win, let us suppose that for a moment and that’s possible, and their policies on immigration were implemented. Firstly, as you know, the Scots may hold another referendum. We might end up with Britain out of the European Union and Scotland out of the UK. If Scotland is out of the UK –
ANDREW MARR:
England alone?
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
Well, England and Wales. But you, Andrew, you will be a –
ANDREW MARR:
I’ll be sent back.
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
You’ll be a migrant.
ANDREW MARR:
I’ll be sent back over the border, I’m sure.
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
How are they going to reduce their numbers? There are more people coming into this country from outside the European Union than inside. Who are the people they’re going to send back? The 52,000 doctors in the national health services, doctors and nurses? The 80,000 care workers?
ANDREW MARR:
To be fair, they’re not talking about sending anybody back. Because of the Luxembourg Agreement, they can stay.
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
How are they – we won’t be in the European Union if we leave. How are they going to reduce their numbers? Who are they going to stop coming in? The footballers who enchant us? I think we need some practical information and we’re not getting it. People are being invited to vote for a pig in a poke.
ANDREW MARR:
Two final thoughts just before we finish. Do you think this is about Boris Johnson’s personal ambition?
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
Well, I’ve no idea. I can’t see inside Boris’s mind, and I wouldn’t attempt to try and do so. But I would just offer this piece of friendly advice – I like Boris, I don’t know him well, but what I’ve seen of him I like.
ANDREW MARR:
Well you took him off the candidates list, didn’t you once a long time ago?
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
No, I did not. No, that’s utterly untrue. No, I did not. He’s a very engaging and charming court jester and a very engaging and charming public figure, and he’s very likeable and people like him. But I think I would offer him this piece of advice. If the Leave campaign led by Boris continue to divide the Conservative Party as they are doing at the present time, and if Boris has the laudable ambition, for it is a laudable ambition, to become Prime Minister, he will find if he achieves that that he will not have the loyalty of the party he divided. Iain Duncan Smith was serially disloyal in the 1990s. When he became leader he was surprised that no one was loyal to him. Now, Boris should learn from that. And I think Boris – all his instincts in the past have been those of a One Nation Tory, which is where I stand. He seems to have drifted away from that, with the way in which they’re approaching immigration and some of the other things. I’d like to see him get back, because if he gets back he is an engaging Conservative, important engaging Conservative figure.
ANDREW MARR:
Do you think the Conservative Party is in danger of dividing?
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
Well, we’ll have to wait and see. All I can say is that whether the Conservative Party divide or not is one thing we must look at in the future. But that is not as important as the decision that we have to make. This is not about political parties, it’s not about the elites, it’s about the everyday men and women in the street and their children and their grandchildren. It is their future that will play Russian roulette with if we leave the European Union.
ANDREW MARR:
My last question. Given what you’ve said about Boris Johnson today and in the past, do you think he’s fit to be Prime Minister?
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
I’m not making judgements about whether anybody is fit to be Prime Minister. That’s a matter for a much wider view than mine. It’s a matter for the Conservative Party, ultimately it’s a matter for a whole electorate. So I wouldn’t be so impertinent as to have a suggestion either way. I merely say that whether Boris is Prime Minister is no doubt a very important matter for Boris and many other people, it is less important than the decision we have to take in less than three weeks’ time. That is crucial. And I must say, if I may put it this way, of all the participants there is nobody on the Leave side of the campaign who has, as I have, sat at the top table in Europe for seven years, and I know from what I have seen inside the European Union that what they say about unelected elites is absolute hogwash. The Commission, for example, are answerable to David Cameron, Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande and the others. They’re appointed for a limited period of time, they’re told to produce legislation which then has to be approved by ministers, the European Parliament, the Westminster Parliament. The belief an unelected elite is running wild is yet another piece of copper-bottomed Leave nonsense.
ANDREW MARR:
Sir John Major, thank you very much for talking to us this morning.
The text of Sir John Major’s article on the UK’s membership of the EU which was published in the Sunday Mail on 29 May 2016.
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
We have less than one month to go before casting possibly the most important vote of our lifetime. The arguments upon whether to remain in or leave the EU are complex. The very least the British public should expect from our politicians is that they be accurate and truthful and focus on our long-term wellbeing.
The Remain campaign has doggedly tried to do this. Vote Leave consistently fails to do so: instead they offer a mixture of confused or distorted facts that mislead rather than inform.
Those who challenge statements that are flimsy or demonstrably untrue are either personally disparaged, or accused of being part of a mythical ‘Establishment plot’.
International bodies, such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, are told they are ‘wrong’, or stooges of the Prime Minister. The highly respected Institute for Fiscal Studies is told that it is a ‘paid-up propaganda arm’ of the EU. Friendly overseas governments are criticised for ‘interfering’.
Overseas investors in the UK receive the same crass response – even though they provide jobs for our people and taxes that pay for our public services.
The Governor of the Bank of England is castigated for warning of risks to the UK economy even though – if he failed to do so and the risks materialised – he would be accused of gross negligence.
So, too, would the Prime Minister and Chancellor, who are continually in the line of fire for presenting Government reports that warn of the risks of leaving Europe.
They have a responsibility to the British people to ensure all facts are before them, yet their statements are denounced with boorish monotony by Vote Leave, and with sneering asides from their acolytes, who taunt that those occupying No 10 ‘won’t be there for long’.
When Michael Heseltine voiced dismay over foolish and inflammatory references to Hitler, he was dismissed as being ‘from another era’, the clear implication being that, because of his age, his views don’t matter. On that basis, one can only assume that Vote Leave believes the arguments put forward by Michael’s contemporary, Nigel Lawson, don’t matter either.
Such playground name-calling is not only irrelevant but is offensive to millions of elderly voters who – although born in ‘another era’ – still have opinions, hopes and ambitions that matter very much indeed.
The tactics of Vote Leave are clear: to ignore the arguments and abuse their critics. But the British people deserve better than that as they search for the facts required to reach a balanced judgment before June 23.
I suspect the silent majority is irritated by, even contemptuous of, such evasion and political trickery. A couple of weeks ago, in a speech in Oxford, I sought to bring clarity to a number of issues where I believed the British people were being misled: notably, the cost of the EU, immigration and sovereignty. True to form, instead of addressing the argument, Vote Leave’s only response was that I have ‘always been wrong about Europe’.
This was an odd reply – especially since I kept the UK out of the euro and refused to sign up to the Schengen Agreement on open borders.
Nonetheless, their evasion met its purpose and, once again, diverted the debate from their own misinformation.
So now, as the referendum vote comes nearer, I again ask the senior figures of Vote Leave to correct the inaccuracies and falsehoods they are peddling to the British people.
First, we do not – I repeat not – pay £350 million a week (the equivalent of £18 billion a year) to the EU. Vote Leave knows this. Yet, despite being urged to stop repeating such an obvious untruth – not least by the UK Statistics Authority – they continue to do so.
The facts are simple and clear: during the past five years – after taking account of our rebate and money returned to the UK – our average net payment to the EU was £7.1 billion.
Last year, the figure fell to just over £6 billion after payments to our farmers, businesses, scientific research and for regional aid such as flood defences.
But there is a much bigger point: the Institute for Fiscal Studies says that even if we stopped paying anything into the EU, the economic damage caused by leaving it would blow a £40 billion black hole in the nation’s budget.
So, far from saving money if we left Europe, it would, in fact, cost us a very great deal more.
Even at this late stage, I hope Vote Leave will end their shameless distortion of the truth and admit, publicly and clearly, that the figures they use – on every piece of literature and every lick of paint on their battle bus – are wholly false. Their refusal to do so is simply breathtaking.
On the issue of immigration from Europe, again Vote Leave seems more focused on raising fears than setting out facts.
Their cavalier exaggeration of likely immigration flows has been the most distasteful aspect of this referendum campaign.
I understand very well the concern felt by many people about the current scale of immigration. This is an important issue. So let me turn again to it, in the hope of flushing out what Vote Leave’s plans for border control may mean for present and future migrants.
First, a statement of fact: we are not, as they warn, facing the risk of 88 million migrants from Turkey and the western Balkans: this fear-mongering is the worst sort of ‘dog whistle’ politics.
It is highly unlikely that Turkey will join the EU for many, many years (if ever). And Vote Leave knows this. As Boris Johnson himself said: ‘It is not remotely on the cards.’ Quite so. Yet Vote Leave persist in raising more scare stories. Even if – at some far distant date – Turkey did join, are we really to believe that every one of her citizens would up sticks and head for the United Kingdom? Of course not.
Vote Leave’s irresponsible and provocative oratory is intended purely to plant an entirely false image in people’s minds. It is fear over fact. Responsible politicians should know better.
The entry of any country to the EU is in our hands. We can say No. We – the British – have an absolute veto on the entry of any country to the EU if we wish to use it. Vote Leave knows this, so what were they thinking of last weekend when they stated the opposite?
As one migrant scare story falls apart, Vote Leave raises another. And, to add emotion to their mischief, they warn that European migrants will have a negative impact on the NHS. This is spectacular misdirection, for without the skills of European migrants, the NHS would be heavily understaffed.
There are 54,000 EU citizens working in our Health Service as doctors, nurses and ancillaries, and a further 80,000 caring for the sick in Social Welfare. How many of us have been cared for in hospital by European doctors and nurses?
Who keeps our public transport running? Who keeps our hotel industry staffed? Who greets us each morning across the counter in coffee shops up and down the country? Collectively, these and other workers contribute far more in taxes than they take in benefit or care costs. Of course, there is a temporary problem of numbers of migrants. I totally accept this. But please note the word ‘temporary’.
The growth of the eurozone economy – now clearly under way – will create more jobs across Europe which, in turn, should cut demand to come to the UK. But, in any event, a short-term migrancy flow from Europe should not be the issue that drives the UK out of an economic union that benefits our country immensely, and will continue to do so in the much longer term.
‘Let’s keep people out’ is an easy slogan with a murky history – but Vote Leave needs to explain who their policy would affect, and how they will implement it.
Specifically, I would welcome their responses to the following points:
– Have they considered how their plans to cut EU migrancy would affect the immigration status of EU citizens now working in the UK – more than 110,000 of them in the NHS and social care system?
– What would be the effect of their policy on our caring services, transport, commerce and industry?
– How would their policy on leaving the EU affect British citizens living or working in Europe?
When Vote Leave turns its attention to the Single Market, their disregard for truth turns into utter confusion. Not only have they failed to dent the economic case for remaining in the EU, they can’t even agree on their own case if we were to leave. Their heads are all over the place on this issue, and yet it is central to the quality of life for every individual and family in the UK.
Some in Vote Leave say the UK should leave the Single Market, lose all preferential access to it, and rely on World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules in future trade with Europe. It is hard to imagine any single event that would do more harm to our country’s well-being.
Outside the EU, we would have to renegotiate more than 50 free trade agreements, which could take many years to complete and, as the Director-General of the WTO has said, ‘leaving the EU would cost the UK many billions in trade tariffs’. The damage to our economic interests would be self-inflicted – and severe. Other Brexiteers disagree about leaving the Single Market. They say they would negotiate a different arrangement with the EU. Some want a Swiss arrangement; others a Norwegian arrangement; yet others an Albanian arrangement.
In the first two circumstances we would have to continue to pay into the EU budget and accept free movement of people. Not only that, but such a proposal would mean we would have to accept European rules and regulations, while having no say whatsoever in making them. In the third, we would have no access to the Single Market, which would do profound and long-lasting damage to our economy.
It’s an absolute mess. No wonder the British people are left baffled, bewildered and confused. They need to know what all this would mean for their future, but Vote Leave are in such a muddle themselves that none of them seems willing or able to explain it to others.
Moreover, for the UK to have to obey rules and regulations without any influence over them would be an absurd and undignified position for a nation like Britain. It would be an absolute negation of sovereignty on trade rules. Instead of sharing sovereignty (as we do now), we would be surrendering it. Far from ‘taking back control’ as the Brexiteers trumpet they wish to do, we would be throwing it away.
Vote Leave has consistently failed to tell us how they see the UK outside Europe. They have glib slogans, but no solid detail. They know what they are against, but have no agreed position on what they are for. Some of the leaders of Vote Leave are my fellow Conservatives. Others are experienced parliamentarians. I don’t doubt their patriotism, nor their commitment to their cause. But I am dismayed by the way in which they have conducted this campaign, which I believe to have been a fraud on the British people.
They have, knowingly, told untruths about the cost of Europe. They have promised negotiating gains that cannot – and will not – be delivered. They have hailed alleged advantages of leaving Europe, while ignoring even the most obvious obstacles and drawbacks. They have raised phantom fears that cannot be justified, puffing up their case with false statistics, unlikely scenarios and downright untruths. To mislead the British nation in this fashion – when its very future is at stake – is unforgivable.
We British are an open-hearted, open-minded, generous-spirited, compassionate people. The majority of us are decent and hard-working, wishing to do the right thing for our families, friends and communities. We have been an outward-looking, internationalist nation for centuries: Great Britons, not Little Englanders. We need to embrace Europe and the wider world, not exclude ourselves from it.
There will not be another referendum on Europe. This is it. The decision we take on June 23 will shape our country, our people and our livelihoods for generations to come. I have no doubt that the long-term positives of our country’s membership of the EU far outweigh the short-term frustrations of it.
That is why each and every vote is crucial, for our children and grandchildren will not easily forgive us if we get it wrong.
Below is the text of Sir John Major’s speech at the Oxford Union made on Friday 13 May 2016.
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
This is my first formal speech in the Referendum campaign, and it is appropriate that it is here – because it is your generation’s future that will be enhanced or diminished by whether we “remain” in or “leave” the EU.
I’ve no particular reason to be a supporter of the EU. It is far from perfect. A quarter of a century ago it bitterly divided my Party, and European disagreements wrecked many of the ambitions I had as Prime Minister. It opened disputes that linger yet. Nor am I an unquestioning European: I did, after all, say “No” to the Euro, and “No” to joining the Schengen Agreement on open borders.
Even so, I passionately believe we must remain in Europe and help shape its future: geography, trade and logic mean our futures are linked whether we wish it or not.
Tonight I want to explain why I believe that is so, and then cast a critical eye over the flawed – and misleading –arguments for Brexit.
What sort of country are we? For hundreds of years we’ve been a positive force in the world – a nation that looked outwards, and spread our ideas, our principles, our laws, our democracy, across the world.
But that world has changed. Today, we are 65 million people: less than 1% of a world of 7,000 million, forecast to become 9,000 million by the time your own children are at University.
And the global market is inexorably drawing that world together on a scale we could not have imagined even a few years ago. It is counter-intuitive to try to go it alone and, as our friends around the world tell us, a disastrously bad decision to do so.
Within the EU, we are a large and influential nation and – while we remain a part of a Union of 500 million people – we have serious political and diplomatic clout, as well as economic advantages. Some examples make this clear.
In Europe, we were able to impose sanctions on Russia to keep her in check, and deter further misbehaviour in Ukraine. We persuaded the EU to join America and impose sanctions on Iran, to bring about a deal that halts development of a nuclear weapon. We could not do this alone. If we were to leave, the world would consider us diminished. Departure would be a gratuitous act of self-harm.
The economic argument for Europe is overwhelming: it is nearly half our export market, and nearly five times bigger than all the 52 Commonwealth countries added together, or indeed, six times more than the sum total of trade with Brazil, Russia, India and China.
In the EU, we have unimpeded access to the richest trade market in the world – right here on our doorstep. Access to that market of 500 million people encourages a wealth of investment into our country. That’s not an abstract statistic –it’s people’s jobs, taxes, profits and overall quality of life.
Outside Europe, we would still have to comply with EU rules and regulations, unless we surrendered all access to the Single Market – which all reputable authorities, not least the IMF, OECD, NIESR and the Bank of England, regard as economically foolish.
And, once out – or “liberated” in the more emotive language of the “Leave” campaign – we could no longer protect ourselves against the impact of EU laws on the City of London, nor on our industry and service sectors.
Nominally, we would indeed be “free”, but – in practice – we would only be “free” to accept whatever the EU determined, with no power to argue against it. Is that “taking back control” – as the “Leave” campaign describes it? No it isn’t. And it’s not glorious sovereignty either. It is nothing other than reckless, imprudent folly. And the price for that would be paid by every British family.
It is not the only price. The NIESR warns of a collapse in the value of Sterling. The LSE warns of higher prices. The Bank of England fears higher interest rates and mortgages. All this and more – from independent bodies – is ignored and brushed aside by the “Leave” campaign.
Yet many people – not least in my own Party – wish to leave.
Their motives are many and variable: pride in our country, concern over sovereignty and immigration, and fear that we have no influence in Europe and are heading towards a federal structure.
We must address these instincts, these emotions, and debunk myths that are wrong, but sunk in our national consciousness. If we fail to do so, we may end up leaving Europe because absurd falsehoods are widely believed to be true.
One absurdity is that, subsumed in Europe, we would lose our traditions, our heritage, our individuality. We won’t: after sixty years of Europe are the French less French or the Germans less German? Of course not: and nor will we be less British.
In the search for voter support the “Leave” campaign repeatedly overstate their case: if they were to win, they risk a backlash from those who reasonably might say they were misled.
There is no shortage of such exaggerations. One clear example is the cost of Europe. Nigel Farage, Iain Duncan-Smith and Boris Johnson all put it at £20 billion a year; Michael Gove is more modest at £18 billion (£350 million a week), all of which, they tell us – if only we could be free of Europe – would be spent on the Health Service and our hospitals.
If only … if only…. but the truth is their figures are wrong by a factor of over three! During the last five years the average gross payment was £12.7 billion of which £5.6 billion was paid back to us. Last year, our gross payment was just over £11 billion, of which over £5 billion was paid back to our farmers, businesses, science, research and regional aid. This is not my calculation – it is the calculation of the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
So, to put £20 billion more into hospitals the “Leave” campaign would have to claw back all the money paid to some of our fellow countrymen and, on top of that, tax us all by an additional £10 billion. Those who make such false claims – and knowingly do so – need to apologise that they’ve got their figures badly wrong – and stop peddling a demonstrable untruth – as they have been repeatedly asked to do by the Chairman of the UK Statistics Authority.
The “Leave” campaign fret that we have surrendered our “sovereignty” to Europe. That is a very rum claim: and – if it were true – how could we offer our nation a Referendum? It is certainly true that we have shared sovereignty: we share ours and, in return, we gain a share of the sovereignty of 27 other nations.
But this is our choice – because it is in our own national interest. And, if it ever ceased to be, our Government can always commence withdrawal with Parliament support. So let me make the position on sovereignty absolutely clear: we share it within the EU only for as long as our British Parliament wishes us to do so.
And even that sharing is partial.
What say does the EU have over our economic policy? None.
Our education system? None.
Our NHS? None.
Our welfare system? None.
Our Armed Forces? None.
Our police? None
I could go on: 98% of government spending is entirely in the control of the British Parliament.
Like much we hear from the “Leave” campaign, the sovereignty argument is emotive but specious. In a global economy, no country truly has sovereignty – not even our mighty friend the US. And in our most crucial area – security – we have happily shared sovereignty within NATO for over 60 years.
Of course, we don’t always get our own way. Who does in any relationship of two – let alone one that numbers 27 other Member States? But we should not forget that – in well over 90% of the votes cast in Brussels – the UK wins. The caricature that we are repeatedly voted down in Europe is ill-informed nonsense.
Another cherished “Leave” mantra is that we will all be “dragged” into a “federal” Europe. It is their favourite horror story. But, yet again, it is fantasy.
Were we dragged into the Euro? No
Were we dragged into Schengen and open borders? No
Are we now exempt from “ever-closer union”? Yes, we are.
And if any new Treaty seeks more power, that Treaty would have to be put to the British nation in a Referendum and if – and only if – it were approved by us would it become law.
A final point on sovereignty: we have sovereignty in its purest and most potent form: we – the UK – can leave the EU at any time; nothing legally binds us to the EU forever. That is the fact and we should disregard the fiction.
As the “Leave” arguments implode one by one, some of the Brexit leaders morph into UKIP, and turn to their default position: immigration. This is their trump card. I urge them to take care: this is dangerous territory that – if handled carelessly – can open up long-term divisions in our society.
I grew up in Brixton in the 1950s – a time of massive West Indian immigration. As a boy, I played in local parks with the children of migrants. Some of these newcomers rented rooms in the same house as my family.
So, I can tell you, as a matter of fact, not fantasy, that those I knew then – and later – didn’t come here for our benefits: they came half-way across the world to give themselves and their families a better life.
But, at the time, fears were fanned by careless statements from political figures. That was a mistake then, and would be a mistake now.
Do not misunderstand me. Of course, it is legitimate to raise the issue of the sheer number of those wishing to enter our country. I wholly accept that. Nor do I wish to silence debate. We mustn’t overlook genuine concerns: but these should be expressed with care, honesty and balance. Not in a manner that can raise fears or fuel prejudice. The “Leave” campaign are crossing that boundary, and I caution them not to do so.
They attribute motives to new arrivals that are speculative and, frankly, offensive. They highlight – with grotesque exaggeration – the risk of mass migration from Turkey – which is unlikely to be joining the EU any time soon and indeed may never do so. And – even if she did – the terms of her accession would need to be agreed by every Member State.
So, when the “Leave” campaign warn of “opening our borders to 88 million” (meaning Turkey and the Western Balkans) they cross the boundaries of responsible comment. It is unlikely in the extreme that – I quote – “another 88 million people will soon be eligible for NHS care and school places for their children”.
I assume this distortion of reality was intended to lead the British people into believing that almost the entire population of possible new entrants will wish to relocate to the UK. If so, this is pure demagoguery. I hope that – when the heat of the Referendum is behind us – the proponents of such mischief making will be embarrassed and ashamed at how they have mis-used this issue.
They advance a second migration red herring – that the recent modest rise in our National Living Wage will be “irresistible” to would-be migrants.
This is very dubious. First of all, 40% of all migrants are under 25 and therefore ineligible.
Second, are people really motivated to cross an entire Continent to receive a few pence a week extra? I very much doubt it.
But even if they were – why would they choose the UK, when the minimum wage is higher, for example, in France; and wage levels higher in other countries that have no statutory minimum.
And what of the “numbers” argument?
There are various categories of immigrants. Commonwealth immigration is entirely unaffected by our membership of the EU.
Would-be migrants from around the world need skilled worker visas to enter: and these are under our control.
Refugees are dealt with on a case by case basis. Many of those applying for citizenship have lost everything, and we have always been a compassionate nation. But these decisions are under our control.
But there are clearly undesirables, who we can – and already do – exclude. This includes anyone where there is concern over national security, criminal activity or adverse immigration history. This, too, is already under our control.
But yes, if we were to leave Europe, we could exclude more EU citizens – such as the 54,000 EU migrants now working as Doctors, or Nurses or Ancilliaries in our Health Service, or the nearly 80,000 working in Social Care. We could exclude skilled workers like builders and plumbers – or unskilled labour that takes jobs that are unappealing to the British. In short, the people we could most easily keep out are the very people we most need.
A balanced approach would acknowledge the contribution of migrants to our national wellbeing. Without their contribution, the Health Service would not be able to cope – nor would our public transport system; and our hotels, restaurants and shops would be without staff to serve their customers. We would have a shortage of many skills for industry. This is the reality of what lies beneath the emotive language of those who seek to raise the drawbridge on our country.
This problem of numbers will not be forever. The growth of the Eurozone economy – now clearly underway – should cut demand to come here, as jobs grow elsewhere across Europe. And, in any event, a short term migrancy flow should not be the issue that drives the UK out of an economic union that already benefits our country immensely –and will continue to do so in the future.
I asked earlier: what sort of country are we? And what sort of people are we?
Under our undemonstrative exterior we are an essentially kind and benevolent nation, and more inclined to emotion than the age old caricature of stiff upper lip.
Show us charitable need and we dig deep.
Show us children in need, and we pay up happily.
Show us people starving in Africa, and we text our contributions by the million.
Show us a far away nation suffering from natural disaster, and we rush to help.
We do so because our emotions are touched. But we should not let those emotions be stirred by false fear: nor allow false fear to impair our judgement on the future of our country.
Over the next few weeks we – the British people – will decide the future direction of our country.
This is not a General Election which rolls around every five years: we can’t “suck it and see”. There will not be another Referendum on Europe. This is it.
So – whatever your view – register and vote. Because the decision you take on the 23rd of June will shape our country, our people, and our livelihoods for generations to come.
Below is the text of Sir John’s Interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme on 29 April 2016 on the UK’s membership of the EU.
INTRODUCTION BY JOHN HUMPHRYS
We’ve given Sir John the chance, as we did with Michael Gove for the Brexit campaign last week, to deliver his message without interruption.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
As Prime Minister I sat at Europe’s top table, and I know its faults better than most. I said ‘no’ to the Euro and ‘no’ to the Schengen Agreement to open our borders. So I’m no starry-eyed Europhile, but I have no doubt where our future lies.
The EU helped free Spain, Portugal and Greece from fascism. It helped rebuild the Balkans after war. It offered a new future to countries once imprisoned in the Soviet empire. Across Europe old enemies, who for centuries fought against each other, now live and work beside each other.
It has increased our prosperity, once the sick man of Europe we are now on course to be the biggest economy in Europe. The UK sells five times as much to Europe as to all the other 52 nations of the Commonwealth added together. We face no tariffs and no hidden barriers to our exports.
In the UK a better life depends on jobs for our people, profits for our companies and taxes to support our public services. For that, we need overseas investment. What is more likely to attract that investment, the UK in a European market of 500 million people or outside with a domestic market of 65 million? The answer is obvious.
If we go it alone, we’ll lose free trade agreements with over fifty countries. It would take many years to renegotiate them all and we would never get as good a deal as we now have as part of Europe.
Before us all is a fateful choice. If we leave Europe, both Europe and the UK would be weakened. Our relationship with America would wither. America needs an ally inside the European Union and it could no longer be us. And at home, Scotland may choose to leave the UK. Each day Brexit uses the same emotive mantra, ‘we want our country back’, they tell us ‘we’re held hostage by a corrupt organisation’.
What nonsense that is. To listen to them you’d think we were entrapped in the clutches of an evil empire, not in a democratic partnership with our European neighbours whose sunshine and pavement cafes we enjoy on summer breaks. And far from taking back control, yet another mantra of theirs, we would lose control. The British people don’t need mindless sound bites and faux patriotism. What they do need is a clear explanation, based on fact and not fantasy, of what Brexit would mean for them.
Painting Britain as a victim of Europe is simply ludicrous. We gain more than we give, we win more than we lose. We should remain in Europe to help shape its, and our, future. Walking away has never been in our national character. And to walk away from Europe now is most definitely not in our national interest.
JOHN HUMPHRYS
Good morning to you.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Good morning John.
JOHN HUMPHRYS
Can I pick you up first on that idea of mindless sound bites and faux patriotism? To many people that might be quite insulting, because for them, and for many people in this country, sovereignty goes to the heart of this debate.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Let me deal with the mindless sound-bites first. I think you’ve had them every day when you’ve had people on your programme arguing for Brexit. I gave a couple of examples and there are many others. Everyone listening to this programme knows them.
JOHN HUMPHRYS
You’ve had it from both sides?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
No, you haven’t had it from both sides to the same extent, I don’t accept that for a moment.
Day after day you’ve had the Brexit people producing sound-bites that are either offensive, inaccurate, or just plain silly. And they’ve also said a great deal which is just frankly not so. As far as faux patriotism is concerned, it isn’t for them to assume patriotism only for their side of the argument. Everybody in this country loves this country, I certainly do. I find it offensive myself when they apply to themselves the feeling they are the patriotic side because they are arguing for splendid isolation. That is most certainly not the case and I do not believe that it’s patriotic to argue for a case that will make this country weaker and the well-being of this country less certain in the future.
JOHN HUMPHRYS
The point that they’re making is that EU law, in many respects, is sovereign and they do not want that. They want us to get back those powers that we have arrogated to the European Union.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Let us deal with that point of sovereignty. This county is sovereign. We can vote to repeal the Accession Act of the European Union at any time. That is sovereignty in its purest form. If you want undiluted sovereignty in the modern age, when everybody is inter-connected, then go to North Korea because that’s where you’ll get it. It is certainly true that we share sovereignty, we take some sovereignty from other people and they take some of ours, we haven’t surrendered it because at the end of the day, the House of Commons – our representatives, can say we won’t have this, we will leave the European Union.
In the modern world and in the modern economy that now exists you have to share sovereignty or you find yourself isolated and weaker. Our prime concern must surely be the economic well-being of our country and the political and diplomatic clout that our country has. Both of those, in my judgement, are better within the European Union and working with our partners than in walking away from them.
JOHN HUMPHRYS
A lot of people who say that go to North Korea is a bit of a silly notion.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I didn’t say that, don’t talk nonsense.
JOHN HUMPHRYS
Why did you bring North Korea into the debate?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
If they want undiluted sovereignty, then that it is where you will find it.
JOHN HUMPHRYS
Let’s deal with the reality, articles 2 and 3 of the European Communities Act entrench EU sovereignty, the European Court of Justice has the final say on many of our laws.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
The European Court is there is interpret the law and it often interprets the law in our favour and it isn’t always interpreted against us. We would be damaged if we didn’t, and let me give you an example. You and I will both remember the terrible events of the BSE crisis in the 1990s. Our beef was banned. When the crisis was over, France continued the ban. The European Court, in our interests, told them to lift it and France wouldn’t. The European Court threatened huge fines on France until they lifted the ban, and they lifted it. If they hadn’t our beef might have been banned for many years. So the European Court often works in our favour.
JOHN HUMPHRYS
The point is that we don’t have the final say. Sir Francis Jacobs, former Advocate General, spelt it out on this programme. European law would always prevail over national law, that is what people don’t like. That’s why they say we need to get our sovereignty back.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
It doesn’t always prevail. It doesn’t prevail over intelligence matters or services, the ECJ has never interfered with that. It doesn’t apply over national security and that’s specifically outside European law. So, it doesn’t apply everywhere.
There is a shared sovereignty, of course, I can see there’s a shared sovereignty and I said so quite distinctly. But we have to weigh that against the economic advantages we have and the fact that that shared sovereignty often works in our favour such as in the example I just gave you.
JOHN HUMPHRYS
The fact is that since records began this country has voted against 72 laws in the Council of Ministers and it has been out-voted every single time.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
We’re on the winning side in over 90% of the votes inside the European Union. If you share sovereignty with other countries because it is in your economic and national advantage to do so, then of course there are going to be times when you don’t win. If you’re in an argument with two people, you don’t always win. Of course not, that’s the world in which we have to live.
JOHN HUMPHRYS
72-0
SIR JOHN MAJOR
It’s not 72-0. There are 72 examples but in 90% of votes the UK is on the winning side, so let’s have some balance.
JOHN HUMPHRYS
The fact is that the European Union that you advocate today is going to be a very different body in five, ten, fifteen years time. It’s moving relentlessly towards federalism. We know that, are you happy with that?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I’m glad you mentioned that. Firstly, we now have exemption from ever closer union, something that the Prime Minister has achieved that everybody in the leave campaign said was impossible and he wouldn’t get it, and he did get it.
JOHN HUMPHRYS
It’s meaningless.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Of course it isn’t meaningless. Is the law we passed in 2011 meaningless? If there’s a new Treaty law produced in Europe it has to be approved by a referendum of the British people. That is something that the Prime Minister has produced. There are two areas where we have a specific and exclusive position within the European Union. So they may well integrate further, and in terms of the Euro-zone they may well integrate further and if the Euro-zone recovers economically that might be helpful for us, but we are not going to be part of that. The Prime Minister has determined, and Parliamentary legislation has determined, that we will not.
JOHN HUMPHRYS
The fact is that we’ll be joining an organisation which is becoming increasingly integrated and we will be standing on the outside of that. What, therefore, is the point in joining that institution?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I will tell you some of the points. 44% of our exports go to that area and we have very large economic advantages because it goes there. That creates a great deal of well-being in this country and it supports a great deal of jobs in this country. The fact that we are the access point to a market of 500 million people produces a great deal of investment in this country that would not happen. The fact that we are actually in Europe gives us economic and diplomatic clout that we wouldn’t otherwise have.
We wouldn’t have been able, alone, to impose sanctions on Russia or sanctions on Iran, with the part we played in the recent nuclear agreement. If I may give you another example from my own years, you may remember that at the end of the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein was murdering Kurds in Northern Iraq. We conceived in Downing Street the idea of safe havens for the Kurds. I went to Europe and I achieved the agreement of Mitterrand, Kohl and other European leaders. With that we obtained the agreement of the Commonwealth and that persuaded America to join in, which they had previously been reluctant to do, and the lives of tens of thousands of Kurds were saved. That was diplomatic power and pressure that we would not have had if we not been members of the European Union.
These matters are important to us.
JOHN HUMPHRYS
I don’t know whether you’ve seen the European Parliament’s visitors centre. There is a projection on the wall which is a quote from Lord Lothian, Philip Kerr as he was, from way back admittedly in 1939.
“National sovereignty is the root cause of the most crying evils of our times and the steady march of humanity back to tragic disaster and barbarism. The only final remedy for this evil”, I’m quoting, “is the federal union of the peoples”. That is what the European Union is all about and a lot of people are saying we don’t want to be a part of that.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Firstly, it’s interesting what he has to say about undiluted national sovereignty, but we are not part of the federal element within the Eurozone. We have got a specific exclusion from it, as I have mentioned several times this morning, but despite those exclusions we still have all of the economic advantages, important for this generation and the next generation and their economic well-being. That’s not something that you can just brush aside.
If you consider what some of the members of the Leave Campaign, such as Professor Minford, giving evidence to the House of Commons. A very distinguished economics professor, he wants us to leave because of the sovereignty point that you raise and I know that some people feel very strongly about that. But he also conceded that if we left manufacturing would be eliminated and 2.5 million jobs and he thought on that basis we could run down the car industry. Those are the choices that people are going to have to make in some form or another.
I’ll tell you what my choice is, my choice is the well-being of this generation and the next. To share sovereignty given that we have all sorts of protections, now some of them legislative, others agreed with the European Union, that prevent us being dragged into the melee of a federal Europe.
JOHN HUMPHRYS
A quick thought about the future of David Cameron. As you know, Ken Clarke has said that the Prime Minister wouldn’t last thirty seconds if he lost the referendum. Do you agree with Ken Clarke?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
The Prime Minister has made his position very clear. You’re not going to drag me into that.
JOHN HUMPHRYS
I thought I wouldn’t but it’s worth a try. The serious point here is that it’s going to be terribly difficult, the most important decision of our generation and indeed many would say the last fifty years, and if this happens here we are turning against the Prime Minister. If we reject what he wants, it would be incredibly difficult for him to run the country?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
John, you’ve very skilled, but you’re not getting me down the ‘what if’ route. The Prime Minister has made his position clear, I shall work and he will work to win this referendum. The most important thing before us is the determination of this referendum because it is not something that is going to be repeated. If we leave, we leave. We can’t leave, decide its uncomfortable, and then go back. If we leave we are out of Europe.
The most important decision for a very long time is to make sure that we make the right decision, not just for you and I John, it’s the next generation that would really be affected.
The text of Sir John Major’s speech in Hong Kong made on Thursday 7 April 2016.
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
During the last few days in Hong Kong I have been asked repeatedly whether the UK will leave the European Union.
Almost without exception, the questioners – often investors in the UK – believe it is a bad idea. I will not quote their warnings given to me in private, but let the public remarks of Hong Kong’s Li Ka Shing, a large investor in the UK, speak for many:
“If Brexit really happens”, he said on Bloomberg, “we will surely decrease our investments.”.
Mr Li is not alone. As we move towards the referendum in June, the UK has been warned against exit by – amongst others – China, Japan, America, New Zealand and Australia; by the G20; the Governor of the Bank of England; our military leaders; our leading academics and scientists; and a majority of large and small businesses.
In response, the advocates of Brexit accuse all these sources of “interfering” if they are foreign; or “scaremongering” if they are British.
The “Out” campaign label such warnings – even from distinguished friends of the UK – as “Project Fear”. I disagree. In truth, it is Project Reality – and the British people have a right to be told what is likely to happen if the UK were to leave the EU.
Let me set out my own position.
As Prime Minister I refused to join the Euro currency. I believed it to be premature and risky. I also opted out of the Social Chapter since, at the time, it seemed to give rights to those in work, at the expense of denying work to the millions who were not. And – when it was first introduced – I refused to enter the Schengen agreement on open borders.
I am, therefore, no starry-eyed European enthusiast. Yet I have not a shred of doubt that the UK should remain a Member of the EU.
The case for remaining is most often seen in economic terms. But it is far wider than that. The outcome of the UK Referendum will decide what sort of country we are – and what our wider contribution to the world will be.
When the UK joined the then Common Market our economy was the “sick man” of Europe: today, as a result of our domestic reforms, together with our membership of the European Single Market, we have the best performing economy in Europe.
Within the next 20 years – on present policies and, crucially, with continuing full access to the Single Market – the UK is likely – not certain, but likely – to be the biggest economy in Europe: bigger than Germany.
On issues such as the environment, climate change, internet costs and consumer protection, the UK can best progress – or sometimes, only progress – in unity with our fellow Europeans.
The underlying mantra of the “Out” campaign is – and I use their words – “I want my country back”. It is an emotional appeal, but a bogus one.
If emotion triumphs over reality, then all four British nations will lose out: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. We will lose power, prestige, security and some of our future economic well-being.
At present, our world is very disturbed. Uncertain. Across Europe, the scales have fallen from our eyes over President Putin. We see Russia threatening her neighbours with trade embargoes, cyber attacks, energy cut-offs, and encouraging pro-Russian minorities to ferment trouble.
I am not, and never have been, a Cold War warrior, but we ignore what Russia is doing at our peril.
A united Europe can help penalise and deter her: a disunited, shrivelled Europe cannot.
The faults and frustrations of the EU are widely publicised in the UK: its achievements, less so. But they should be. Across Europe, ancient enemies of many years no longer fight against each other – they work alongside each other.
The EU was the magnet that helped Spain, Portugal and Greece free themselves from fascist dictatorships. It helped the political climate that brought about the Northern Ireland Peace Process.
It helped re-build and heal the Balkans after a terrible conflict. And enlargement of the EU has brought a new future to countries once imprisoned within the Soviet Empire. So, when we criticise the shortcomings of the EU, we should also remember its considerable successes.
If the UK leaves the EU, the impact will be felt widely – and negatively – not only in the UK but across the EU.
If the UK departs, the EU will lose:
– its fastest growing economy;
– one of only two nuclear powers; and
– the country with the longest and deepest foreign policy reach.
As a result, the EU would be gravely weakened, especially when set against the power of the US and China. Europe – the cradle of modern civilisation – would bow out of super-power influence.
Does the UK really wish to be the cause of that? Does she really wish to abdicate her role in European and global influence? I truly think not – but many enthusiasts for exit either cannot see the danger – or are prepared to run that risk.
The point is this: a UK departure would not only be a huge setback for my own country, but for many other nations too. It would have widespread repercussions – and no-one can be sure what they will be.
For Europe, already facing internal and external crises, it could be one crisis too many.
There are hard questions for the UK too, and it is more appropriate for me to raise these in detail at home, rather than overseas. But some are directly relevant to our global trading partners.
Would external investors – China, Japan, America, be more or less likely to invest in the UK if she shrunk to a domestic market of under 65 million, rather than remaining inside a Europe-wide market of over 500 million?
That is not a difficult question to answer. The UK would lose investment and jobs. How much, how many, and how soon is difficult to say – but there is no doubt that would happen.
In the referendum debate, the advocates of leaving claim they can negotiate an arrangement to protect our trade relationship with the EU. After all, they say, the EU needs us because they – the EU – export more to the UK than the UK exports to them. It’s a beguiling soundbite, but they are deceiving themselves.
Their argument is, to put it kindly, disingenuous: more accurately, it turns the truth on its head.
UK exports to Europe are between 40-45% of all our exports: 14% of our overall wealth. On average, across the EU, the other 27 Members States only send 7% of their total exports to us: 2½% of their overall wealth.
In the game of who needs who the most, the answer is clear. If the UK exits the EU, our partners will not be the demandeur in any negotiations on our future access to the single market – the UK will be.
Moreover, it is blithe optimism on a Panglossian scale for the “Out” campaign to assume our partners – having been rebuffed, deserted and weakened – will still feel so well disposed toward the UK that they will be eager to accede to our demands.
I fear the reverse will be true. A divorce, at the behest of one partner, is rarely harmonious – or cheap. Such a broken relationship is more likely to be full of rancour.
The UK will have chosen to leave and, by so doing, will have gravely weakened the whole EU. Some countries will see fifty years of ambition imperilled – and our partners will hardly wish to reward us for that.
Any trade deal the EU might eventually do with us would certainly not be a sweetheart deal: and it may be harder and harsher than the optimists believe.
And if we wished such a deal to include services (and we do – since they represent 80% of the UK economy) – or the removal of hidden non-tariff barriers – it may be a long time coming, not least since it would need the approval of 27 other Member States – many of them angry and disappointed at our departure.
And, of course, the UK would have to accept free movement of people. If we refuse that – there will be no trade deal at all – as Germany, for one, has already made clear.
The UK will face another dilemma with its international trade.
By leaving the EU, we would be withdrawing from Free Trade Agreements with 53 countries negotiated by the EU on behalf of all their Member States. These cover 60% of all UK trade.
They will all need re-negotiation: a tough – and almost certainly lengthy – process. It is pure self-deception to believe that less than 65 million Britons will get the same favourable terms as 500 million Europeans.
Nor will bilateral renegotiations of these Free Trade Agreements be a priority for other nations – as America, for one, has made clear.
Our partners are more concerned with multilateral trade agreements, and will see the UK’s need for a speedy bilateral deal as a self-imposed own goal: we may well have to wait our turn to have any new deals agreed – and it could take many years.
To brush aside such realities is to play Russian roulette with the economic future of the UK.
The battle now joined over Europe has – on one side – the romantic nostalgia of an “Out” campaign that aches for a past that has long gone, in a world that has moved on.
On the other side those – like me – who wish to remain are not European dreamers: we are realists who see an edgy, uncomfortable world, and believe that the UK is safer, more secure and better off remaining with our partners in Europe.
In the Referendum, the easiest slogans inevitably lie with the “Out” campaign, and repudiating their often foolish and extreme claims is for a UK audience. Suffice to say, the “Out” advocates, whether in enthusiasm or ignorance, lace their argument with false statistics and unlikely scenarios.
They promise negotiating gains that cannot – and will not – be delivered. They hail the purported gains of leaving Europe, whilst ignoring even the most obvious obstacles and drawbacks.
Nor can they tell us how they actually see the UK outside of Europe. This is simply astonishing, not least since some of them – for over a quarter of a century – have made a career out of wishing to leave the EU. Yet now they have the opportunity to do so they seem bereft of any real detail.
Some wish to have no relationship at all with the Single Market. Others can’t – or won’t – say what relationship they favour: 25 years of planning, and they still have no idea. Instead, they engage in shrill denunciation of what we have, with no indication of what would replace it.
I understand the frustration that fuels the “Out” campaign, but have no doubt that an exit from the EU would harm our nation, now and in the future. We must not let an emotional spasm of faux-patriotism overcome the realities of the modern world and spin us out of Europe.
We would soon regret it. And our children and grandchildren would regret it even more.
That is why – between now and June – I will be doing all I can to persuade the British people that the consequences of our leaving the EU would be bad for the UK, bad for Europe, and bad for the wider world.
I hope and believe that – on 23 June – good sense will prevail, and we can finally lay this particular ghost to rest. I have no doubt that, once it is, our international investors will breathe a large sigh of relief … as most definitely will I.
The text of Sir John Major’s article on the economy, published by The Sunday Telegraph on Sunday 19 March 2016.
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
This June, the UK will vote upon whether to leave or remain in the EU. This vote will be momentous. It will decide Britain’s place in the world for generations to come.
There are many positive reasons for membership.
When we joined the EU we were the “sick man” of Europe: today, as a result of our domestic reforms and membership of the European Single Market, we have the best performing economy in Europe.
Within the next 20 years – on present policies, and with continuing full access to the Single Market – the UK is likely to be the biggest economy in Europe.
And surely – in a global market drawing ever closer together – it is verging on the reckless for us to seek divorce from the world’s pre-eminent trading bloc?
On issues such as the environment, climate change, internet costs and consumer protection, the UK can best progress – or sometimes only progress – in unity with our fellow Europeans.
In an uncertain world the UK, as part of the EU, is better able to face up to the aggressive policies of hostile nations. We are safer, because the EU has brought together former enemies to face common perils. In the last thousand years of history, no previous generation has been so fortunate.
It would be sheer folly to put this all at risk.
Beyond the positive advantages of membership, we have protection from many aspects of the EU that we dislike: we are not in the Eurozone – because I kept us out of it over 20 years ago; we are not part of Schengen (and thus have control of our borders); and we have opted out of “ever closer union”. We can veto any Treaty that enhances EU powers.
We are the only nation within the EU which has managed to secure these concessions. It would surely be perverse to turn our back on these advantages, and replace them with serious risks that alarm our international friends and repel the inward investments that boost our jobs and living standards.
Suppose we left? What are the risks? They are many and real – and simply cannot be brushed aside with flippant slogans such as “Project Fear”.
Consider this: as a Member State, the UK can (and does) influence European policies – often to our advantage, and sometimes simply to minimise damage to our own domestic interests. Outside, we would not be able to influence them at all. And yet, if – as a non-Member – we wish to retain access to the Single Market, we will be compelled to follow EU rules, over which we would have no influence at all. This is not only demeaning, it is a recipe for economic self-harm.
The “leave” campaign blandly assumes that once they have undermined – if not wrecked – the power of the EU by leaving it, they can simply re-negotiate all the advantages of membership with pliant Europeans eager for our trade. This is self-deception to the point of delusion. Their argument is that the EU needs the UK market more than we need theirs, on the basis that – overall – the EU exports more to the UK than we export to them. This is, at best, disingenuous. More bluntly, it is fantasy.
UK exports to Europe are nearly 45 per cent of our total exports. On average – across the EU – the other 27 Member States send only 7% of their total exports to us. In the game of who needs who the most, the answer is clear. Our European partners will not be the demandeur in any negotiations on the Single Market – we will be.
Moreover, if we left, it is blithe optimism on a Panglossian scale for the “leave” campaign to assume that our partners – having been re-buffed and deserted in an EU diminished by our departure – will be well disposed and eager to accede to our demands.
I fear the reverse will be true. Resentment will be deep. The broken relationship is more likely to be poisonous than harmonious. The UK will have chosen to leave and, by so doing, will have gravely weakened the whole of the EU. Our partners will not wish to reward us for that – indeed, they may well be more inclined to resist our demands to discourage other nations from leaving it.
In time, the EU will no doubt do a trade deal with us – but it will certainly not be a sweetheart deal: and negotiating it is likely to be harder and harsher than the optimists believe. And if we wish such a deal to include services (such as banking and insurance), or to prevent hidden non-tariff barriers – which we do since both are crucial to our wellbeing – it may be a long time coming.
Of course – and “leave” campaigners please note – the price of any deal with significant access to the Single Market is that we will be forced to accept free movement of people, and pay into the EU budget. Without that, as Germany’s Finance Minister has made clear, there will be no deal. These are realities that the “leave” campaign must face up to and address, so that the British people are able to reach their decision based on facts. Instead, they ignore – even obscure – the facts, to hide the weakness of their case.
“Give us our country back” is an emotional appeal that warms the heart of all those who love our country, as I do. But it is a meaningless soundbite. An illusion. A prelude to disappointment. And what country, exactly, will we “get back”? Will Scotland remain part of the UK? As a Unionist, I hope so – but no-one should ignore the threat that if the UK-wide vote is to leave, Scotland may demand another referendum on independence. The UK out of the EU and Scotland out of the UK would be a truly awful outcome.
Let everyone be clear, no-one can be certain of the scale of the fallout from leaving the EU. But there are many legitimate risks, and not even the most optimistic “leave” advocate can wave them away. We have been warned against exit – by America, China, Japan: are all these large investors in the UK to be ignored? Should we also ignore the G20? The Governor of the Bank of England? Our military leaders? Our leading scientists and academics?
A majority of large and small businesses? Are they really all guilty of “interfering”, “scaremongering”, or being part of one enormous plot being orchestrated by Number 10? Such a notion is absurd.
Would we remain such a pre-eminent ally of the United States if we no longer had influence in the EU? Close, yes – because of trade; important, yes – because history matters; but outside the EU, part of our influence would wane. In our absence, the US would need a powerful friend within the EU – and it could no longer be us.
Our departure would not only weaken the UK but Europe, too. If the UK leaves, the EU will lose:
– the fastest growing economy in the EU;
– one of only two nuclear powers;
– a country with the longest and deepest foreign policy reach.
As a result of a UK exit, the political influence of the EU would be diminished – especially when considered against the power of the United States or China. Without the UK, Europe – the cradle of modern civilisation – would fall to a lower significance. I cannot believe that any sensible Briton wishes to divide Europe, and thus divide the West: only our enemies could gain from that, as Senator McCain has made clear in recent days. No doubt the “leave” campaign will accuse him of “scaremongering” too.
The Referendum decision on 23 June is not a prelude to further negotiation. It will be final. Our nation can either decide to be true to our history – and remain outward-looking internationalists on the world stage – or shrink to lower prominence.
It will be a fateful choice: Great Britain or Little Britain.
As our children and grandchildren look back at this pivotal moment in our history, I hope they can be proud that, in a world of uncertainties – of Daesh, of Syria, of Putin’s Russia – our country did not turn its back on Europe and cripple its authority, but chose to remain in it, reform it, and play our part in maximising British influence and European power for the common good.
The text of Sir John Major’s interview on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show, broadcast on BBC1 on 20 December 2015.
ANDREW MARR:
Now then, it’s 25 years since in the most dramatic circumstances Sir John Major became leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister, and you could say the Tories have never really resolved the issue which ultimately led to his predecessor Margaret Thatcher’s fall from power – namely the party’s attitude to the European Union. Sir John wrestled with it during his premiership. He also had to deal with war in the Middle East, a recession, global economic uncertainty. It sounds just a tad familiar, Sir John. Thanks for coming in.
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
My pleasure.
ANDREW MARR:
Let’s start talking a little bit about the economy and so forth. I remember when I was a very young reporter and you were a very young Prime Minister, there was a kind of asset bubble thing going on and then interest rates ticked up and we had all sorts of problems with negative equity and so forth. Now interest rates are clearly on the move up again, led by the Fed. We have a very, very problematic asset bubble in terms of house prices in the UK, which is leading to inequality as we were talking about. I’m just wondering on your reflections. Twenty-five odd years on from that, how do you see that problem?
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
I don’t think we’re going to get rapidly rising interest rates at all. In the 1990s we were on the back of a huge inflationary bubble. I mean people forget on the day I became Prime Minister, we were heading into a recession. We had interest rates at 14 per cent and we had inflation at nearly 10.
ANDREW MARR:
Fourteen per cent? A totally different world, yes.
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
Fourteen per cent. So a totally different background. Now the Fed have just ticked up interest rates a little and I think this will be a very slow process. I don’t think we’re suddenly going to see a huge spiral in interest rates. I know many mortgage owners in particular will be concerned about that. I very much doubt that is going to happen. But I think there are some problems that we can foresee ahead. In a curious way the very low price of oil is likely to be a problem because many of the countries that have invested, often overseas, are going to be much shorter of cash than they were. I think three large economies will probably be in difficulty next year – Russia, Brazil and China will slow a little – but overall I think we’ll see the world economy growing a little faster and Europe will be growing a little faster as well.
ANDREW MARR:
You came in as the Brixton boy from a cash poor family in your background and so forth. How worried are you about inequality now?
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
Well I was worried and I am worried. I mean it was a great frustration to me that I had to deal with other things – the European splits in the party and getting the economy right – and I was never able to do for inequality what I would have wished to do and that is a lasting regret. But it exists and it’s not the fault of this government or the immediate past governments; it has grown up over 40 or 50 years and it is extraordinary that here we are. We are the fifth biggest economy in the world, we’re growing, and yet we have 7 out of the 10 poorest regions in Northern Europe. Now that cannot be right.
ANDREW MARR:
It’s wrong, but what can be done about it?
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
Well I think some of it is starting to be done, but there’s a great deal more to do be done. The Chancellor’s concept of a Northern powerhouse is exactly right. We need to spread the wealth in this country more evenly than previously it has been spread and that means necessarily large-scale capital investment outside London – in the West Country, for example, to open that up to investment, in the Midlands and in the North – and that is a long job but it is necessary.
ANDREW MARR:
But you can’t talk about redistribution, you can’t talk about taxing the people at the top more without howls of outrage from all round the place. It has become completely impossible to discuss.
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
Well I wasn’t talking about taxing people more because if you tax people more, you’re just going to make us a less competitive economy. What I was saying is that we should spread our investment more wisely and we should have perhaps more incentives to encourage people to invest outside the regions that typically have attracted investment – into the Midlands, into the North – and it is vitally important that we do it.
ANDREW MARR:
So a more interventionist government strategy really?
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
I think we’ve always had a form of intervention. It depends on how much. I don’t welcome intervention into detail, but I do welcome intervention in encouraging people to invest in our country and particularly in the parts of our country where people are falling behind. It isn’t acceptable if you have the degree of inequality that has built up over so long and I’m delighted that we now have a Chancellor who’s seeking to reverse that.
ANDREW MARR:
Now you must have had a bit of déjà vu over the last few days watching David Cameron with I don’t know how many shirts he was carrying with him for those negotiations. It wasn’t Maastricht, but it wasn’t very far away – it was in Brussels and so on. Do you think this is a negotiation which is in a sense too trivial or, as some people on the Eurosceptic side of the argument are saying, almost meaningless?
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
Well isn’t it curious? I mean Eurosceptics say this is meaningless and it’s trivial, and in fact it embraces many of the things they’ve been asking for for a very long time. Consider what the Prime Minister’s trying to negotiate. He’s trying to negotiate an end to our commitment to ever closer union. I think he will succeed in that. Is that trivial? If it is, why have the Eurosceptics been asking for it for the last twenty years? He’s trying to negotiate more competitiveness, set out very clearly in his letter to Donald Tusk. He’s trying to negotiate a whole range of things that matter to us on migrancy, on … I sense you seeking to intervene. Do so now if you wish!
ANDREW MARR:
Thank you so much. The big problem is going to be this very specific promise that he was going to end in-work benefits for four years for EU migrants coming here to work and that seems to be something that people like well certainly the Poles and many other countries are determined that we will not get. And in a sense has he not created a problem for himself by saying I am going to get this; this is going to be my big sticking point? If he doesn’t then get it, it may not be the most important issue but that’s what he’ll be crucified over.
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
Well it’s a sub-set of the general migrancy issue of course. Now whether he will get exactly four years, I can’t say, but the whole ethos of the European Union is compromise. The European Union are not going to wish Britain to leave. They’re not going to wish Britain to leave because we tend to look here at what our position is. Consider Europe’s position were we to leave the European Union? What would Europe lose? Forget what we would lose for the moment. What would the European Union lose?
ANDREW MARR:
The export market for a start?
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
Well that’s not quite as true an argument as you may think, but let me deal with the points I was going to raise. Firstly they will lose the best performing economy in Europe. They will lose the economy that in twenty years is likely to be the biggest economy in Europe. They will lose the country with the longest and most historic foreign policy reach. They will lose one of only two countries with a military capability and a nuclear capacity. Now if Europe was formed, as it was, to look America and China and the big countries of the world in the eye as equals, if Britain comes out that ambition has gone.
ANDREW MARR:
So they have to give them something substantial?
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
They will be immensely diminished, and they know that and so they will negotiate. Everybody’s setting out positions. It’s a classic European situation. On both sides they are setting out positions. And they will meet and a compromise will be reached and the compromise won’t just deal with trivial issues. Subsidiarity, for example, isn’t a trivial issue, we had that in the Maastricht Treaty. Germany and Britain put it in meaning that things were only done at the European level if they couldn’t be done at the national level. And that was agreed at Maastricht and then bypassed by the then Commission. Well if it’s reinserted again, it will be reinserted in a way that they will not be able to bypass.
ANDREW MARR:
That’s essential?
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
It’s very important. And that’s one of the things that has caused so much frustration with the European Union, and there is frustration right the way through the country.
ANDREW MARR:
So on the other side people say but in the end they’re not going to change their spots. Charles Moore – I’m not sure that he’s your favourite columnist, but he said something very interesting this week I was just quoting. He said two things are going to happen. One is the Prime Minister will come back with something he’s able to say this is a successful renegotiation, look what I’ve got. But the second thing he said is that this will not fundamentally change either the direction of the EU or our relationship with the EU. On the fundamentals it remains the same.
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
But the European Union has already changed with the advent of the Eurozone. What we’re heading towards is a European Union that has a Eurozone and non-Eurozone members and one of the things the Prime Minister’s seeking to negotiate is to protect us from paying for the policies of the Eurozone members. Now that is significantly different. Ally that to an end to ever closer union and you do begin to see a rather different relationship. Add to that subsidiarity and you have a very different relationship. So the argument that the Eurosceptics have been advancing since before the Prime Minister set out his aims that it would be trivial is a good negotiating, a good arguing point for them, but it is essentially bogus when you look at the detail of what is actually being discussed.
ANDREW MARR:
Sticking with a bit of that detail, this business of transitional benefits, in-work benefits for people coming into this country, the big problem for the Prime Minister is discrimination between one citizen of the EU and another citizen of the EU. Do you think that could be overcome?
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
Well it’s an interesting word ‘discrimination’, isn’t it? We’re saying there’s discrimination if people don’t get exactly the same benefits. You could equally argue that it’s a discrimination that people who are watching this programme have been paying into our national insurance system for forty years and someone arriving on day one gets exactly the same benefits. I think that’s an equal form of discrimination and I think we’re going to have to recognise that and I don’t know what the outcome will be, but I think there will be a compromise.
ANDREW MARR:
There will be some kind of compromise?
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
I think so.
ANDREW MARR:
What about the other great issue I suppose at the moment, which is open borders? I mean this has produced probably an existential crisis, an overused word – Private Eye will start an existential crisis column quite soon – but nonetheless a very, very big crisis for Europe, this Europe of open borders, the Schengen Europe, people able to move from one country to another very quickly. Liam Fox has raised the question of terrorists as well being able to use this and this does worry an awful lot of people watching this programme.
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
Indeed it does, and of course they’re right to worry about that. The question is whether we would be able to stop that in anything we did. Now if we actually look at the question of freedom of movement, there are several things to say about it. Firstly, freedom of movement is said to be sacrosanct because it is one of the four European freedoms. That is a totally phoney argument. Another of the four European freedoms is freedom of movement of goods and services, yet Germany and France and other countries block our banking, block our insurance, block our technology services. So the belief that that is absolutely fundamental is unchanging.
ANDREW MARR:
You’re beginning to sound like Liam Fox at this point, Sir John.
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
No well they do, they do, and that’s the sort of thing we’re going to have to change. The bigger issues are why I’m absolutely convinced we need to stay in for our future, but that means on the question of the sheer flow of people coming here, here is a matter where we should move away from rigid positions and look at the reality. It is not commonsense to sweep into countries more people than we can provide for if they are sick than we can house or we can educate and we need a commonsense position.
Let us accept the principle of free movement, but it has to be mitigated to deal with the number of people that can be accepted in any given period and that again is a piece of commonsense negotiation that ought to be acceptable to our partners.
ANDREW MARR:
If we left, we would get control of our borders back period?
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
Well, consider what that means. Half our immigration at the moment doesn’t come from the European area. It comes from the old commonwealth and elsewhere.
ANDREW MARR:
But we would have control over that.
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
Just a moment. We have been been letting more people in than most of the people objecting to us being in Europe would like, but without them we wouldn’t have a transport system, we probably wouldn’t … we certainly wouldn’t have a National Health system. So let’s not assume that immigration per se is a bad thing. It isn’t. And neither is it per se a bad thing from Europe. It’s the sheer total of it.
Now if we had control of our own borders, I wonder what would happen with all the people who had got into Calais, to France. Would the French keep them there or would they say well this is no longer our problem, Britain’s outside the European Union; we’re no longer going to do, as David Cameron agreed with us that we would, which is hold them at Calais? Do we want that sort of situation to arise? Do we really believe that in an open world that we have at the moment that we can suddenly opt out and become a closed nation? I tell you, Andrew, it’s a fantasy.
ANDREW MARR:
Is it? Well I mean a lot of people would say, first of all, that the French are allowing many of those migrants to go to Dunkirk and other places and they are coming into the country; but, second, if we had a hard border of our own, we could stop them coming in.
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
Do you really think that is so?
ANDREW MARR:
Well I’ve no idea, but …
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
Do you really think that is so and do you really think all the implications of that would necessarily be right in terms of our international reputation, our international trade and all the things that go with it? I don’t think that is the case and I think we are better able to deal with this problem collectively rather than siphoning ourselves off, cutting ourselves away from the biggest single market in the world and seeking to negotiate a new arrangement with that single market, which would be less convenient and less good for us.
ANDREW MARR:
Though of course they are selling us much more in goods than we are selling them.
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
You see there’s a fallacy in that argument. Many of the things that they sell to us, they would continue selling them to us because it’s covered by wider treaties than simply the European treaties. The converse would be that the things we want to sell to them – services and other things – can be blocked by the Europeans, so it would be very much to our overall disadvantage. Added to which of course there are 27 of them, there are one of us, so I think the belief that Europe’s going to collapse if it loses the UK market is a bit wide of the mark.
ANDREW MARR:
One final question on this. I mean you have intervened in this argument today. How big an argument is it for the country? Alan Johnson, who’s leading the Labour campaign to stay in Europe, was on the programme a couple of weeks ago and he said that he thought it was a once in a lifetime, possibly thirty or forty year kind of decision. Do you take the same view?
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
I think it’s a long-term decision. I mean the argument that we can have a referendum, say no and then go back and renegotiate is just a fallacy. If we come out, we are out, that’s it. It’s not politically credible to go back and say we’ve reconsidered, let’s have another referendum. If we vote to stay out, then we are out and we will have to get on with it and face the consequences, which will be many and varied. Of course we will survive – we’re a big and a powerful nation, of course we will. That’s not the point. The point is would we be as safe? No. Would we be as well off? No. Would we be as influential? No. So that is the point that is really at issue.
ANDREW MARR:
Very clear. Sir John, for now thank you very much indeed for joining us.
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
Thank you.
………………..
Later in the same programme:
ANDREW MARR:
Sir John, we’ve now got potentially three members of the Cabinet who want to campaign alongside Liam Fox for Brexit. Should they be allowed to stay in the Cabinet and disagree with the Prime Minister while doing so?
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
I spent the best part of seven years trying to keep a party at civil war over Europe together. I think that it would be extraordinary if anybody decided to campaign against Cabinet policy, at least until the negotiations are completed. When the negotiations are completed I would very much hope that they would not wish to campaign against the Cabinet position.
ANDREW MARR:
But if they did?
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
I think that’s a big if, and if is the longest preposition in the English language, and I’m now getting drawn on that this morning. But certainly between now and the end of the negotiations, absolutely not. I would hope afterwards that they would not wish to. The unity of the argument, for the sake of the country – this is bigger that the Conservative Party, is very important and people deserve to hear a clear-cut argument and not an internecine piece of strife.
ANDREW MARR:
If he can’t persuade his Cabinet he won’t be able to persuade the country?
SIR JOHN MAJOR:
I personally believe he will come back with a satisfactory deal and he will be able to convince the country.
The trouble with the European debate, ever since it began, is that it is often conducted at the extremes. People who will never really be persuaded that we should be in and people who are utterly convinced that we should not leave. In the midst of that is the rest of us, and it is the rest of us – the great mass of the British people, whom David Cameron will have to convince that it is better for our future, their children and their children, and our international influence that we should stay in a world that is drawing together, rather than exclude ourselves, and become an offshore island, a big and a powerful one admittedly, but an offshore island off the biggest continent and market in the world.
The text of Sir John’s Interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme on 16 December 2015.
JAMES NAUGHTIE
The Prime Minister reaches an important point in his promised EU renegotiation in Brussels tomorrow when a summit of all the leaders reveals whether he’s made headway in the argument for change that he’s been making for months in almost every European Union capital.
It’s going to be difficult as critics at home, particularly Conservative Euro-sceptics, say that he is already backing away from his pledge to make people coming into Britain from the rest of the EU wait for four years before qualifying for in-work benefits or social housing, and that was something that he put at the heart of his reform plan.
This is the latest chapter in a story in which every Prime Minister has played a part over the last two generations or so, grappling with the tortuous and emotional question of this country’s relationship with the rest of Europe. Throughout much of the 1990s it was the issue that defined the character of John Major’s Conservative Government and the state of his party, riven by the fundamental disagreements over Europe that had never been healed in the era of Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher.
Sir John joins us now.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Good morning James.
JAMES NAUGHTIE
Do you think that David Cameron should decide his attitude to EU membership on the basis of this renegotiation?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I think it’s clearly important that there are changes made in the European Union and that’s what he’s seeking to do. What does concern me a little is that everybody is regarding Thursday and Friday as though it were high noon and that everything will be decided then. Unless I’ve very much missed the mark, I don’t think it will be.
It’s a process and there will be discussions that are aimed at an agreement. That discussion will take place and everyone will leave and state their own positions. Underneath that there will be a movement either towards an agreement or against and we won’t really know about that until they actually come to the crunch some time next year.
JAMES NAUGHTIE
That was a very elegant off-drive Sir John but it avoided the question. The reason I asked it is that people around Downing Street are saying, don’t doubt it, if the Prime Minister isn’t happy with what he gets in this renegotiation effort then he is quite prepared to argue for Britain to leave the EU. I simply want to know whether you believe that this renegotiation should decide David Cameron’s view as to whether Britain is in or out?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I can’t put myself inside David Cameron’s mind. I can tell you what my view is – my view is that this renegotiation is important but that it shouldn’t decide whether or not we remain inside the European Union because of the importance of the issue. I have no means of knowing whether that’s the Prime Minister’s mind and that’s a question you really need to address to him.
JAMES NAUGHTIE
You’ve said something very interesting there, from your perspective, whatever comes out of this renegotiation, you still believe that it is overwhelmingly in the national interest to be in full stop?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Let me put it to you this way. You mentioned the troubles I had in the 1990s with my own party and with others. If there is anyone in the United Kingdom who really ought to be anti-European and thoroughly frustrated with them, then perhaps it ought to be me. I am not a starry-eyed European. I did after all say no to the Euro currency in the early 1990s, I said no to the Single Market and in 1996 I said no to joining Schengen when it began. I am sceptical of a great deal of European Union policy. But flirting with leaving, at a moment when the whole world is coming together, seems to me to be very dangerous and against our long-term interests.
We see American, Japan and other countries forming a trans-Pacific partnership. Of course that’s trade, but it’s also common standards and it’s bringing people together. The whole world is coming together, and for the United Kingdom, 67 million out of a world population of 7 billion, to break off and head off into splendid isolation doesn’t seem to me to be in our interests now, or perhaps more important in the interests of our children, our grand-children and future generations.
Whatever the frustrations are, and whatever comes out of these negotiations, we are going to be able to continue to try and influence the European Union while we are in it. One point that some people do not seem to realise is that once this issue has been determined by the modern generation of Britons, if they decide that we should stay in, and there will be those who never accept it of course.
[connection problem – interview continued slightly later in the programme]
JAMES NAUGHTIE
We have Sir John Major back on the phone. Looking back 21 years it’s as though the technology when you were Prime Minister, and I started with you on the World at One with Maastricht, was a bit better then.
You were talking about splendid isolation, and that was your phrase, for what would happen if we left the EU. You know the argument on the other side, very passionately held by many in your party although not just in your party, who say that this would be independence and it would give the country the right to govern itself in a proper way which is something they believe has been ceded over the years to a supranational body. They think that this independence could work in the interests of people in this country. Why do you believe that it wouldn’t?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
Let me point out some of the realities of what would happen if we left the European Union. Let me say firstly, like many other people, I find the European Union often as frustrating as hell as sometimes there is an inability to confront problems which is very maddening. But I think we are better off, we are safer, we are going to be more prosperous in rather than out and flirting with leaving is dangerous.
Let me address the particular points which you make. If we left there must be a higher probability that Scotland would have another referendum and leave the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom would be fractured and that would be very damaging and our international prestige would suffer.
Many of the things we are told we can achieve with a regaining of sovereignty are illusory. People can say that we can save all our net contributions. Not true – we would have to pay at least half, and possibly more, simply for entry to the Single Market.
They say we can easily negotiate entry to the Single Market. That’s very disingenuous as if we leave the European Union it won’t be a friendly departure, it’ll be very acrimonious, negotiations with an irate ex-partner could be very difficult. We may get a very sub-standard deal to enter the Single Market.
They say that we can control our borders and that we’ll have no immigration. I don’t think that’s so, as in or out we can’t keep the world at bay. If we were out one question arises. In present circumstances would France would be holding so many immigrants at Calais or would they not? If not, they would be heading here.
We’re told our Parliament would be sovereign. That, of course, is total nonsense. In order to trade with the European Union we would have to accept their regulations. We would have no input into those negotiations or be able to change them. The Prime Minister would have to go to Parliament and say ‘here are some regulations which the European Union have passed, we must pass them without change or we cannot trade with Europe’.
So much for Parliamentary sovereignty. I could stretch those arguments but I think the point is made.
JAMES NAUGHTIE
Are you surprised that those around David Cameron are saying, that coming from a political and ideological position that’s not very different from your own, that he could contemplate coming out given what you think are the simple facts of the case? If he is contemplating a decision to say ‘let’s leave’, it must be that he, as one of your successors, does not accept the case that you have just made?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
You must ask David Cameron that, I can’t answer what is in his mind. I have sat in his chair and in the European chair and I know the difficult position which he is in and how he has to negotiate the British national interest and cope with all shades of domestic opinion as well. I have to say James in my experience of being in his chair advice, particularly from someone who has sat in that chair, is not usually very helpful.
So if you’re trying to tempt me into giving David Cameron advice, or alternatively judge what is in his mind, then I’m afraid that it will be fruitless.
JAMES NAUGHTIE
You’ve had experience of back seat driving.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
I’ve had a great deal of experience of it, yes.
JAMES NAUGHTIE
If we are to believe opinions polls and surveys, and the campaign in a genuine sense hasn’t begun yet, it looks like an even split across the country. Do you believe that this is the position now and do you believe that there is a greater chance of a vote to leave than there has been in your political lifetime?
SIR JOHN MAJOR
There is a lot of frustration with the European Union at the moment and much of that frustration is entirely justified and I share the frustrations that many people have.
When people truly engage and when they look at the long-term implications of where Britain would be if it were not in the European Union, and examine what it would mean for our future, our children’s future and our grand-children’s future then people will move back to realising that in a world that is as inter-connected, in a world that is moving together as we are, that we are better off and safer inside the European Union rather than outside. That is what I believe people will finally conclude, but it is their decision.
David Cameron has decided to ask people in a referendum for their view, and I think because of this long-running and tiresome debate that he’s entirely right to do so, and for the public to decide. When the facts are before them of what it means, especially in the long-term, I believe that they would be advised to stay inside the European Union and that is what I believe they will vote to do.
JAMES NAUGHTIE
Sir John Major, thank you very much.
SIR JOHN MAJOR
If I may, one thing before you go. This is your last morning and like millions of other people I have found you and John Humphrys my daily diet for a very long time. If I may grab the airways for a moment, I’d like to say that I’ll miss you, and I think a lot of other people will in the morning.
I will do so as I believe, generally, you’ve asked the right questions, mostly, you’ve listened to the answers and you’ve done it in an extraordinarily professional way. So I hope as you leave you are proud of what you’ve done. Whatever you do now, good luck with it and I hope our paths will cross.
JAMES NAUGHTIE
There is going to be a lot of reporting still going on, some of it on this programme, there will be constitutional matters to be looked at so Sir John, I’m glad to say that our paths will undoubtedly cross before long.
JOHN HUMPHRYS
It’s not often allowed on this programme to say that I agree with that politician, but I agree with that, the last bit anyway!