Prof. Tim CONGDON’s Latest eMail re: The EU!
Though what his opinion will be tommorow is anybody’s guess based on his track record of support and condemnation of UKIP!
It is hard to consider his comments as very reliable when one reads his first sentence, which would seem to contradict the first sentence of para. 2!
Then again anyone who believes that UKIP did well must be seen with some scepticism but I do suggest you overlook this idiocy and read on where he becomes a little more coherent!
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Hi,
just for the record and in case you are not on the mailing list of the academic theorist Prof. Tim Condon who has some interesting opinions on economics and a very variable view on UKIP – which seems to change on an almost daily basis on the one hand seeking to lead the party, despite very poor judgement of supporters and assistants!
Then we see the poor chap denouncing the party and its behaviour only to see him flip flop back within hours – Not a very reliable lead to follow!
All the same here is the most recent eMail I have received, from Tim Congdon:
From: Timothy Congdon [mailto:timcongdon@btconnect.com] Sent: 08 May 2012 10:01 Subject: Tim Congdon’s latest e-mail
Dear fellow members of UKIP (and others concerned about the UK’s relationship with the EU),
UKIP’s performance in last week’s local government elections was excellent news. Even better are the signs that the Conservative/LibDem coalition is fracturing and that Cast-Iron Cameron’s days as Prime Minister are numbered. Although a referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU has been inevitable for some time, the timing has been murky and uncertain. The signposts towards the referendum are now becoming easier to read through the political fog.
I don’t have much to say about UKIP’s success in the 2012 local government elections except “well done, all round”. In today’s e-mail I want to focus on developments in the Conservative/LibDem coalition, as they are likely to have huge implications for UKIP in the next three years.
Cameron has been unpopular with Conservative Party constituency associations, and traditional Conservative Party members and party activists, from day one of his premiership. He failed to score a 2010 general election win despite being faced by a wide open goal, with that goal wide open because of Labour’s disastrous handling of the economy. (George Osborne was one of the most pathetic Shadow Chancellors of all time.) But the Conservative Party is inherently very loyal, at least until it can see that the next general election will be lost under the current leadership. It then finds ways to dump the leader. The message from the local election results is that Cameron’s “modernization” of the Conservative Party has failed, because it has alienated a big bloc of the electorate, perhaps more than 10% of voters. UKIP’s near-15% score in those wards it contested is the clearest evidence of Cameron’s mistake.
Boris Johnson went to the same school as Cameron and they are personally on amicable terms. (I sat next to Boris at a dinner in September 2005 and let him know my contempt for Cameron, which already at that stage was well-developed. Boris defended him vigorously. [I had been a sporadic contributor to The Spectator for many years, and Boris was then still editor of The Spectator.]) But Boris is a politician, and politics is politics. The key event here was on 25th March, when the People’s Pledge announced that Boris had signed the document while campaigning in Romford with the very Eurosceptic Andrew Rosindell MP. (To remind, the People’s Pledge is a commitment to support a referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU.)
It is unclear whether Boris could quit the London Mayoralty (which in principle lasts four years), find an empty, recently vacated and safe Conservative seat before 2015 (not easy in present circumstances), and challenge Cameron and/or fight in a Conservative leadership contest. Sure, it is entirely plausible that the Coalition would be massacred in the 2015 general election if Cameron and Clegg were to stay “in charge” (in charge!) until then, and that Boris would then take over as Conservative leader. But, in all probability, Cameron and Clegg will be removed in the next year or two, and the problem is then to find a leader – possibly an interim leader – until Boris takes over. (Although once a new leader is there, Boris may not have a look in.)
In this context I find it fascinating that David Davis and John Redwood are reported – I assume reliably – to be working together on an “alternative Queen’s Speech”. The news has a double significance. First, the traditional “conservative” (small “c”), so-called “right-wing” elements in the party dominate the membership outside Parliament. Right-wing Eurosceptics are also in fact, despite their inarticulacy and ineffectiveness, a majority of Conservative MPs. They have become so angry that they are at last finding their voice. Secondly, collaboration between Davis and Redwood is a major surprise. These two have spent most of the last 15 years loathing each other and have been politically at cross-purposes. (I believe that Redwood voted for Cameron in the 2005 leadership election, although I am open to correction. Bill Cash – a staunch Eurosceptic – certainly did.)
No one can predict exactly how events will play out in the next three to five years. But – in my judgement – we now have greater clarity on
The likely toppling of Cameron (and Osborne presumably) by his own party, probably ahead of – and perhaps well ahead of – the 2015 general election, and
The virtual certainty that the British people will be consulted in a referendum on EU membership in a timeframe (say, the next five years) for which UKIP must start planning.
I should emphasize that these are only my personal assessments and in no way do they have any official status in UKIP. However, it is very much my view that UKIP must now think actively about what we can do to ensure that the referendum delivers the result in which every party member believes. In party political terms, the “no to the EU” referendum campaign must be driven and dominated by UKIP, by people who really believe what they are saying, not by Tories or the small number of dissident anti-EU Labour supporters.
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Now from the sublime to the humdrum. Attached are a couple of recent pieces of work, which may be of interest to party members. One is my latest column for Standpoint, on the Bradford West by-election result; the second is a contribution to the latest Campaign for a Referendum circular.
prof. Tim Congdon (economist) on British Jobs in The EU!!
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Hi,
frequently politicians lie to support their dishonest position or personal ambitions.
We have all heard politicians misquoting or outright lieing about the statistic that 3.5 million Britishjobs are dependent on our continued membership of The EU.This was a statistic first quoted by the IPPR report commissioned by The Labour Party of Tony Blair, which we all now know was all to happy to lie to achieve its aims!
The figure WAS 3.5 million but it went on to make very clear, in the report, that were Britain to leave The EU these jobs would not be lost but alter and in fact that within 6 months of leaving the EU it was likely there would be a net rise in the number of British jobs related to The EU.
To clarify the source of the lies it is worth noting that the figure of ‘jobs being dependent on the EU’ was from a report commissioned by The Labour Party and when Blair and others quoted it dishonestly out of context the director of The IPPR who produced the report was most outspoken and stated that ‘…never had he seen facts so dishonestly misquoted out of context’ and he resigned!Firstly the report made it clear that the jobs were dependent on The EU, NOT on membership of The EU, and it went on to make it very clear that leaving The EU would not only cause a probable INCREASE in jobs within 6 months but that our trader defecit with The EU would most probably greatly improve.
Further The EU Commission made it VERY clear that when we leave the EU there would be absolutely no consideration of any type of trade sanctions against our goods, services or peoples.
The director of the IPPR responsible for the report stated that he had NEVER known of a more dishonest misrepresentation of a report as that used to imply a catastrophic outcome in leaving The EU and he withdrew his name/support for the report.
Further it was made very clear by Neil Kinnock, at the time An EU Commissioner, that there would be no change in Britain’s relationship and trade if Britain left The EU. No loss of jobs, no snctions, no penalties.
The EU would continue to wish to trade with us – if for no other reason than that The EU needed Britain as an export market, for their goods and services, as they exported more to Britain than they imported from Britain.
There are in fact some 6 million jobs in The EU due to their relationship with Britain! The EU would not wish to jeopardise these jobs or the healthy trade inbalance in their favour with Britain.
You may find the following YouTube video from Prof. Tim Congdon of somer help in understanding these details – following the video is the text of his presentation:
This text has been mailed out by Tim Congdon and is fairly similar to the text of the video you have just watched:
Dear fellow members of UKIP (and others concerned about the UK’s relationship with the EU), British enthusiasts for the European Union have one favourite argument. They assert, time and again, that – if we leave the EU – three million jobs are “at risk”. The Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, made this claim on the Today programme on BBC Radio Four on 31st October last year. To quote,
“There are three million of our fellow citizens, men and women, in this country whose jobs rely directly on our participation and role and place in what is after all the world’s largest borderless single market with 500 million consumers right on our doorstep… isolation costs jobs, costs growth, costs people’s livelihood.”
If it were true that three million jobs would be endangered by our withdrawing from the EU, that would matter hugely. But in fact the Clegg proposition is untrue. The three-million-jobs-at-risk claim must be demolished; it is a myth and must be shown up as such.
Members of the UK Independence Party, and indeed everyone who wants to recover our country’s full independence, have the facts and figures at their fingertips on this subject. I have therefore prepared a Youtube video on the subject, with the link below. It is again conveyed as “a fireside chat”, with my remarks based on a Powerpoint presentation. The presentation is attached as a PDF file, as well as in both PPT and PPTX formats. (May I suggest that the best way to watch the video is to crosscheck with a printed version of the Powerpoint file? As before, I am hugely grateful to Alan and Marilyn Day for their magnificent help in producing and editing the Youtube video. There will be further “fireside chats” on economic themes for UKIP members in coming months.)
Roughly speaking, almost 30 million people are at work in the UK today and our exports to the EU are equal to about 10% of national output. That is how Clegg arrives at his “three million jobs at risk” notion. But he is talking rot. The central point is that, if we left the EU, we would continue to have exports to the EU equal to about 10% of output. Swiss and Norwegian exports to the EU are much more than 10% of their national outputs, but they are not EU members. If we left the EU, trade patterns might indeed change over time. Some (very small) reduction in the share of the EU in our exports would probably be offset by some (very small) increase in the share of the rest of the world, but the overall impact would be marginal.
The virtual certainty that existing trade patterns would continue, with little change, is the central point in demolishing the three-million-jobs-at-risk myth. However, I thought I might reinforce the pro-independence argument by looking at the data on employment in our country since we joined the “Common Market”/EEC/EU in 1973. The results of the exercise astonished me – and I think they will astonish you as well.
Three big facts emerged. First, employment in the UK was about one million lower in 1983 than it was in 1973, after a decade of Common Market membership. I do not generally believe in naïve post hoc propter hoc arguments. But – if the other side resorts to low-grade jibes (and they do) – then we may have the capacity to do the same. Crudely, if they say “leaving the EU will destroy jobs”, we can hit back and say “a million jobs were destroyed in the first decade of our Common Market/EU membership”. And that is fact from official statistics!
Secondly, the number of men of British birth in work in our country today is lower now than it was in 1972, before we joined the Common Market/EU. No jobs have been created for men by almost 40 years of our association with “the European construction”. (The number of women in employment has risen sharply, but that has nothing to do with the EU.)
Thirdly, in the last seven years the number of UK-born people in employment has fallen by about a million, whereas the number of foreign-born people at work here has risen by over a million. That jump in the number of foreigners in employment must have included a large element of East European workers who could participate in our labour market (and compete with our own people) only because we belonged to the EU.
The figures invite the conclusion that “EU membership allowed foreign workers to take away jobs from British workers”, even if they do not prove that conclusion. Certainly, the notion that “EU membership creates jobs” is bunkum. (I suspect the theft of UK jobs by lower-paid immigrants is part of the explanation for the Bradford West by-election result. Let me make clear that I loathe George Galloway.)
I will be writing up these points in pamphlets and articles in the next year or two. But please spread them around at public meetings, branch meetings, letters to the local papers, in leaflets and booklets, and so on. Clegg didn’t know what he was talking about. His remarks on the Today programme last October were claptrap. We have Claptrap Clegg as Deputy Prime Minister and Cast-Iron Cameron as Prime Minister. What a pair of expensively-educated drips.
With best wishes,
Tim
(Prof. Tim Congdon economist)
I trust this helps you in future to dispel the lie that 3.5 million British jobs would be lost when we leave The EU.
Greg Lance - Watkins (Greg_L-W)
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