"We the people have been cajoled, frightened, and bullied into surrendering our democracy and freedom." "This film is a rallying cry." "We must fight for our independence, for the right to determine ourselves the laws under which we live, and for the freedom to shape our own future." "This is the most important voting decision that any of us is going to make in our lifetime." "With general elections, it doesn't really matter who you vote for, Conservatives or Labor, because you know that in four years' time, you can change your mind." "This time you can't change your mind." "This time it's for keeps." "In this film, we'll see how the EU works." "It's like heaven for the politician or bureaucrat, because it's power without accountability." "It was devised to make sure that the great mass of the people could not control government, ever again." "The EU is turning into a dictatorship, and this is not overstating it." "We will see what the EU has done to Britain." "The EU has just obliterated the English fishing industry, all I've got." "The European policies that we face are really the single biggest threat to our competitiveness." "We'll see why Fortress Europe has been such a calamity for the European economy." "What we see is the EU bringing up the drawbridge." "The European Union has become an economic basket case." "Certainly it is not in our economic interest to remain within the European Union." "No way." "We will look at the risks of tying our fate to the failing EU." "Extremism at both ends is being fostered by the anti-democratic nature of the European Union." "Far from it's being safer for us to be in the EU, there are dangers that go along with our being members of the EU - being dragged into situations we don't want to get in." "And we'll look at how independence could transform Britain." "We have huge, huge... scope for creating vast numbers of new jobs." "Outside Europe, we could have..." "prosperity on a level that we can't even imagine now." "We are being asked to give up the right to govern ourselves." "What are we being offered in return that could possibly be worth it?" "Just shows utter contempt for what they think people are like, because they really do believe that these little trinkets are going to buy us off." "What really matters is that you should have the power to remove the people who govern you." "BREXIT THE MOVIE" "We are about to choose how we want to live our lives." "This is the single most important political decision any of us will make in our lifetimes." "It's been more than 40 years since we were last asked." "It could be a half century before we're asked again," "If we're asked at all." "I think this is the last chance that we'll be able to vote on EU membership when we still have a recognizable identity as Britons." "And what makes it scary is that if we go the wrong way, we're in it for... certainly my lifetime, probably my kids' lifetime." "I'm on my way to Brussels to better understand the deal that's on offer." "This is about our ability to say to ourselves that we are a genuinely democratic and free people." "That's how important this is." "In return for our democratic rights, we've been promised prosperity and security." "Are these promises convincing?" "The choice before us is all about democracy, and how highly we value it." "The word democracy comes from the ancient Greek." "The demos is the people." "The people are meant to be in charge, not politicians or bureaucrats." "They're meant to serve us, not rule us." "We have given them some power, but only temporarily." "And we can take it away from them if they displease us." "That's the theory." "The EU, please..." "Straight off, there's a snag." "On my quest to understand the EU, my first challenge is to find it." "There are over 90 EU buildings here in Brussels, and a load more in Strasbourg and Luxemburg." "As impressive as the modernist buildings is the number of directorates, councils, comissions and ministries which occupy them." "But here, the EU slips its first cog." "For a democracy to function," "There needs to be transparency." "We the people need to know how the system works." "HOW IT WORKS" "People might not understand exactly how the functions of the British constitution work, but they get the gist of it." "Once every five years, we go down the school hall or to a church, we put a cross in a ballot paper, they're all counted up, and the chap with the most votes wins." "We get that." "You try working out how a European Commissioner is appointed." "It's positively Kafka-esque." "You can't actually get your head around who does what, why, and who is answerable to whom." "The European Union, which imposes laws on 28 countries, is made up of 7 main institutions, which include the European Council, the Council of the European Union, the Court of Justice of the European Union, the European Commission and the European Parliament." "Do you know the difference between the European Council, the Council of the European Union and the Council of Europe?" "It's a very good question." "Tell me how many presidents are there in the European Union?" " How many presidents...?" " Yeah." "I'd guess at one." "There's two presidents, for goodness' sake." "I don't know what the difference between the two presidents is." " Four." " There's four presidents, you say?" "There are squads of committees and presidents of this and commissioners of that." "The expression I really hate is "pooled sovereignty"." "It's bollocks." "The people of Slovenia have no more idea than the people of the UK and the people in Sweden or the people of Spain what in fact is going on." "I wouldn't profess to understand the detail of how it all works, and I think part of that is deliberate." "One side knows, if one side is a priesthood and knows how it all works and the rest of us ordinary citizens don't know how it works, a massive transfer of power takes place." "It was devised to make sure that the great mass of the people could not control government, ever again." "WHO'S IN CHARGE?" "Problem #2:" "for a democracy to function, you need to know who's running it." "A democracy only works if you know who your representatives are." "David Cameron?" "Tough, tries to hide it, probably quite a nasty piece of work." "Tony Blair: oily." "If there's only room for one in the lifeboat:" "Tony Blair." "The ordinary voter, who's going to hand them all this power, can make up their mind whether they like them, dislike them, because they see them in the papers, they hear them on the radio, they watch them on the telly." "Do you recognise this man?" " No." " No." "Do you recognise that man?" "No..." "I challenge you to name almost any of them." " Do you recognize this guy?" " No." "Well, there's that chap Juncker." "Is he one of them?" "I didn't know whether it was just the British being a bit thick, so I thought I'd ask some folk in Brussels." "Ah yeah, uh, that's uh... oh..." "Martin..." "Martin?" " Martin..." " Martin Sch...." "Can you tell me who that is?" " No." " No?" "No" "Who are all these eurocrats?" "Who are they answerable to?" "Ah, but here we come to Problem #3." "PEOPLE POWER Accountability." "Would it help if you knew who they were?" "Because you have no power over them, so what's the point?" "In the EU there's a thing called a "parliament", but it's not a parliament as we know it." "In the EU, the parliament isn't in charge." "Have you ever known anyone [to] know who their MEP [Member of the European Parliament] is?" "Nobody does." "It's because we know that they're not actually being voted into a meaningful position of law making." "This is the only parliament the world's ever invented where you can not initiate legislation, propose legislation or even the repeal of legislation." "All of that comes from the unelected European Commissions." "So you can't propose a law and try to get it passed?" "No." "Absolutely not." "With parliamentary democracy, once every five years you can throw everything out the window and start again, with this, once something is European law, there is nothing through the democratic process the voter can do to change it." "The people whom we elect to go to Brussels have almost no power at all." "They do what they're told." "They've got even less power than the House of Lords, for goodness sake." "Our votes for these people are pointless." "They are fundamentally pointless." "The European Parliament's an irrelevance." "The European Union bureaucratic structures who are appointed, not elected, have all the real power." "The real power in the EU, including the power to legislate, resides not with the parliament but with EU officials." "They debate their laws in secret." "We are not allowed to hear or read their deliberations." "Do you know the name of Britain's European Commissioner?" "No" " Have you heard of Jonathan Hill?" " No." "No." "No." "Did you vote for him?" "Did I vote for him?" "No." "No." "The curious thing is, only last year we were celebrating the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, the founding charter of English freedom." "The history of democracy in Britain has been the history of taxpayers demanding the right to determine themselves how much tax should be taken from them and how it should be spent." "If I'm going to be asked to pay taxes, I want to be told where they're going, and if they're spent badly or stupidly, I want to be able to remove from power the people who are spending them." "What made Britain rather different from most other countries was that at an early stage we said no government could pass any law or impose any tax without first getting the authority of the British people." "So it's a major thing that we can be taxed by other people without our say." "We are now subjects of a vastly complex state machine, run by anonymous officials whom we didn't elect, but who have the power to impose laws on us, laws we haven't debated and have no democratic means of repealing." "People who say to you that the European Union is undemocratic fundamentally misunderstand the European Union:" "It is anti-democratic." "But to EU officials and politicians, it's like a warm bath." "It's like heaven for the politician or bureaucrat, because it's power without accountability." "The reason why all the major political parties are massively in favour of Europe is that when their careers are blown out of the water here - they're stumbling around here for a job - no commercial organization is going to hire them." "They know what a collection of shits they are." "There's only one place that will hire them." "They can get a job there which gives them the freedom not to have to face the electorate." "It's extremely well paid, it's more or less permanent, they don't have any constituents and they don't have any worry about being thrown out at elections." "So they say "Stay with the European Project." "I'll be making myself two, three hundred grand a year, it'll be fantastic, and at the end of it I get a peerage." "It's great.''" "Since they're not directly accountable to the taxpaying public," "EU politicians and bureaucrats have understandably been more than generous to themselves in pay and perks." "This is the much talked-about Brussels gravy train," "And here's my handy guide:" "MARTIN'S HANDY GUIDE TO THE EU GRAVY TRAIN - 50% OFF!" "This is the shopping centre." "But this is all for politicians and bureaucrats." "It's not for members of the public." "No" "So you get your own hair salon and your nail bar." " Get your nails done." " ... your nails done." " There's a sauna, there's a massage parlor as well..." " Yeah." "Why would they not want to stay here, living a life of luxury?" "There are a number of people here who are paid more than the British Prime Minister." "Ah, you might say, but how many?" "Four?" "Ten?" "A hundred?" "Ten thousand." "There are 10,000 people here paid more than David Cameron." "That's one in five of everyone who works for the EU." "If you are an EU official, there's the relocation allowance, the household allowance, the family allowance, the entertainment allowance, the private healthcare allowance, the private-education-for-your-kids allowance." "The healthcare allowance includes free Viagra." "You would have thought that would come under entertainment." "If you're a MEP [Member of European Parliament], you get an extra 250 pounds a day for being good enough to turn up, another 41,000 pounds a year on top of that to cover phone bills and computers," "and another 225,000 pounds a year on top of that to cover for staffing costs," "Which in years gone by often meant spouse or children." "To cap it all, they've decided to charge themselves a special low rate of tax." "But it's not just the officials and politicians who benefit." "The EU diverts great rivers of taxpayers' cash to the tax-consuming middle class intelligentsia in our sprawling publicly-funded establishment." "The European Union is very good at purchasing the loyalty of powerful and articulate interests in all member states." "When we hear great public institutions - quangos, museums and campaign groups - waxing lyrical about the EU, we have to remember, the EU gives them vast amounts of our money." "The EU gives shit loads of our money to local authorities and to universities and to arts groups and opera companies." "And that then provides this chorus of noise in favor of the European project." "Every charity over a certain size is getting money from Brussels, every NGO." "[Non-governmental organization]" "We see EU largesse effectively buying opinion." "You know, what we see here is really a racket." "It's become a... a very good way of taking money from the general population and handing it to people who are lucky enough to be working for the system." "The EU likes to advertise its generosity, here in the northeast, for example:" ""European Union investing in your future." Isn't that good of them!" "I wonder where they got the money..." "The SAGE arts centre at Gateshead, we're often reminded, was built with the help of EU money." "But what you're not told is that if you live in the northeast, for every one pound that comes from the EU, you have to pay the EU two pounds 30 in tax." "But that's not the only price the Geordies have paid for EU membership." "I'm heading down the river to the mouth of the Tyne." "CASE STUDY:" "FISH" "The reward for giving up our sovereignty, we're told, is greater influence in Europe." "To see how much influence we have, I've come to the place I grew up." "For centuries, fisherman's huts called Shields lined the River Tyne." "From them came the names of the towns that straddled the mouth of the river:" "North and South Shields." "The seas here are rough, but the water is rich in mackerel, haddock, salmon, herring, cod, skate and shrimp." "By the early 20th century, 14 000 tonnes of fish a year was being landed here at North Shields." "There is a daily fish auction here still, in a building part-funded by the EU." "24, 25, .. 25 pounds..." "In a corner of one of the halls sit fewer than a hundred boxes part filled with fish." "A dozen or so fishermen and merchants surround them." "26 pound, 27... 27 pound, 28... 28 pound, 29... 29 pound, 30..." "The 74-year-old fish merchant John Ellis has been buying at this auction since the 1950s." "When I started working down here, there were about two hundred firms working on the quay." "There were haulage firms on the quay who had 30 and 40 wagons that used to ship the fish away." "And how many boxes would there be in the market then?" "In them days there'd be... 10, 12... and then you'd get also " "12...?" "Thousand." "12,000 boxes a day - so a different place." "Oh, heaven ex, man, you couldn't get moved." "Now this... well, I think the average for the year would just be about two hundred boxes a day, so it's quite nothing isn't it?" "When Britain joined the Common Market, it lost control of its fishing grounds." "When the quotas were imposed, several other European countries lobbied the EU for Britain's fishing rights to be divided up among them." "The British government was powerless to stop this." "The EU has just obliterated the English fishing industry altogether." "The quota system they've got now is just... it's just mad." "Local fishermen were now banned from fishing in waters they'd fished successfully for centuries." "Oh!" "Just beyond the pier over there." "In fact it might be there today, this great big Dutchman." "Well, that Dutchman's got 25% of the whole quota of all of England." "It's only three or four miles off the Tyne catching herring and mackerel." "The local fleet can not catch our own mackerel, and it's right on the doorstep." "There is still a prospering North Atlantic fishing industry, but only in countries that have retained their independence." "Well, look at the Icelandics and the Faroes and the Norwegians." "They sell millions of pounds worth of fish to us." "And they're outside the Common Market." "Well, you tell me a Common Market country that buys fish off us?" "But they've had the fishing boats in the North Sea, to catch our fish... it's just madness." "The EU has been paying British fishermen to destroy their boats." "They say to fishermen, "If you want to get out of the industry, we'll give you a lump sum."" "This here looks like an old boat that's been destroyed." "You just watch them with chainsaws, cutting the old wooden boats up and burning them." "The EU pays fishermen to leave an industry and destroy their boats?" "Yes, that's right." "While at the same time giving rights to people elsewhere to fish the same waters." "Ah, that's right, uh-huh." "For the fishermen here, being in the EU does not mean that Britain has greater influence over European affairs;" "it means that Europe has taken control of our affairs." "We have not gained power, we've lost it." "In the last couple decades, Britain has voted against 72 measures in the European Council, and been defeated 72 times." "How will you be voting in the referendum?" "Oh, definitely Out." "Definitely Out." "I've known that as soon as I got the chance, I'd vote Out." "For many in Britain, the EU sticks in the craw." "EU regulation seems absurd and intrusive." "We don't like being bossed around by a bunch of bureaucrats." "For Britain, it seems to go against the grain." "There is a huge cultural difference." "I've seen it for myself when I was in government." "When I went to meetings of the Council of Ministers, they thought I was from another planet." "There is still in many parts of the continent a notion that the way that society should be organised is to have a class of wise, experienced, public-spirited experts who will run things in the best interests of all." "The British historically have been deeply skeptical of this kind of approach." "Britain, I think, does stand out within Europe, and one of the odd things is why they want to keep us in the club given that they're always complaining about us." "Why are British the cussed ones in Europe?" "Why are we so attached to our independence and freedom?" "Why do we take so badly to regulation?" "Where does it all come from?" "The British freed themselves from the suffocating feudal regulation, centuries before the Europeans." "While serfdom still existed in large parts of Europe, the free British were carrying out the great commercial and industrial revolutions that gave birth to the modern world." "In the 19th century, unregulated Britain was the pioneer of global free trade, workshop of the world, dominating the world economy like a leviathan." "Even on the eve of the First World War, Britain was building around 60% of the world's commercial ships and owned almost half the world's cargo-carrying ocean-going steamers." "But the First World War changed everything." "New ministries were set up, as the government extended its control over every aspect of British life." "Industry became heavily regulated - first shipping, then the collieries, railways, canals and agriculture." "The Great War is in this as in many other aspects a great watershed in British history." "During the war, there's incredibly detailed state control of a whole range of industries." "By the end of the war, there's a feeling that there needs to be much more permanent regulation and control of society by the state." "A company was no longer private property, it was a national asset, to be directed from above." "The government increasingly thought that it should plan, it should control, it should regulate." "When the war was over, so was the excuse for government regulations, and many were scrapped, but not all of them, and not for long." "British governments sought deliberately to cartelise and control the major sectors of the British economy, basically checking the spirit of initiative and innovation that had been such a dominant feature of the British manufacturing sector in the 19th century." "With World War II, regulation increased still further." "War planning gave politicians and administrators unprecedented control over our lives." "And after the war, they were unwilling to hand back their power." "We won the war, so we think that governance must be pretty good, and as a result, everything is then planned:" "How we build houses, what the houses should look like, how they should be decorated, who should live in them, virtually every area of life." "We had boards of experts working out the best way to do things." "A young couple has dropped in for advice on 'set up home'." "First, they're shown how to avoid overcrowding a room." "Always allow at least 18 inches between chairs and other furniture." "Everything from heavy industry down to clothes, food and children's toys was regulated." ""If you didn't manage a doll at Christmas, this is probably why:" "All restrictions on toy-making have been lifted." "But export has the first claim."" "Britain became perhaps the most state-controlled and -regulated economy in Europe." "The regulation of business, trade, commerce of all kinds, was much, much greater than anywhere else." "Regulations, price-fixing, protectionism, supporting failed industries." "A heavily regulated economy ordered from above, the politicians assured us, would be a screaming success." "But the very opposite happened." "The purpose of regulation was to end wasteful competition." "But it was competition that had kept industry efficient and innovative." "Nimble entrepreneurs, who were rewarded for success and punished for failure, were now replaced by plodding bureaucrats, ticking boxes." "Productivity and output plummeted." "Shortages pushed up prices." "The buying power of the average wage, five to six pounds, has shrunk at an alarming rate, but first among offenders in increasing prices was the government itself." "Coal rose, affecting other industries." "Electricity charges went up." "As soon as we get more money, everything goes up, don't it?" "It must be this inflation they're all talking about." "For ordinary British consumers, life was grim." "Goods were either unavailable, unaffordable or heavily rationed." "Good news came with a sticky end to sweet rationing." "For nine years, mouths had watered for this great day, and it was too much of a tummy ache for the country's economy, and soon personal points came back." "GERMANY The Economic Miracle" "Over in Germany, it was a different story." "The war had left Germany little more than smoking rubble." "West Germany would receive some Marshall aid, but only less than half the amount sent to Britain." "At the end of the Second World War, Germany was a ruin." "If you see the old footage – it was absolutely flattened." "Germany needed a miracle, and this was the man who performed it." "In the first free elections after the war, Ludwig Erhard, the son of a shopkeeper, became Minister for the Economy, a post he held until 1963." "Ludwig Erhard began the Wirtschaftwunder - the economic miracle - by completely scrapping all of the controls that he'd inherited from the Third Reich, and he did this against the strong advice from his British "superiors"," "you might say, in the occupied zone." "Erhard revolutionised the German economy, because he just got rid of regulations on a massive scale." "He got rid of production controls, price controls." "He got rid of trade barriers." "They are happy to have open and free trade, a deregulated economy." "They want to see industries stand on their own two feet, and those that can't must make way for those that can." "Germany was open to the world, there was much more free and easy entry into business and commerce and the professions in Germany, and the result was that the German economy became much more dynamic, much more innovative" "and ultimately much, much more successful." "Just look how quickly Germany pulled itself off the floor." "Industrial production soared." "In Britain, there were shortages and rising prices." "In Germany, goods were abundant and wages rose steeply." "The result for the ordinary person in Germany was sensational, because the production of all consumer goods rose;" "the prices came down." "Britain, who won the war, was still rationed for year after year after year, whereas in Germany, who lost the war, rationing was abolished." "Before you know it, just a decade or two of this approach, and it's a powerhouse of Europe." "Contemporaries described it as a miracle." "By the time Erhard left office, he had transformed Germany from a pile of smoking ruins to the third biggest economic power in the world." "ENTER THE EU..." "Then came something called the Common Market." ""In the greatest free-trade experiment of modern times, the barriers are going up between six European countries." "Barriers up, tariffs down." "That is the meaning of the Common Market, formed by France, Italy, Western Germany with Holland, Belgium and Luxemburg." "They will reduce and eventually abolish trade barriers between themselves and at the same time maintain a common tariff against the world outside."" "Joining the EEC seemed like a great idea." "It meant escaping the dismal, dreary confines of gloomy post-war Britain." "In the 70s, we had terrible problems." "We had double-digit inflation, the three-day week, prices and incomes policies." "And we looked across the Channel and we thought, "These chaps are doing something right"." "At that time, Britain was a very centralised place, a very over-bureaucratic and regulated place." "Europe was a much more competitive and free-trading place, and looked like "the future"." "Europe was the future." "Europe meant sun and wine and fancy food, like pasta." "It meant going out into the world and opening up, and hopefully becoming more like powerhouse Germany." "But the architect of the EEC was not German." "He was French." "Jean Monnet was steeped in the French bureaucratic big-state tradition." "Indeed, he had spent the Second World War in Britain, helping to create the very regulations which all but destroyed the post-war British economy." "When Britain joined in 1973, we should have seen what was coming." "When the documentation was was brought in for signing, it took two strong men to carry it." ""...of a new and a greater united Europe."" "It soon became clear that the Common Market was so much more than a trade deal." "Shiny new buildings kept appearing, the administration grew, and the price of membership kept going up, as the EU assumed greater powers and demanded more money from member states." "Inevitably, this burgeoning bureaucratic machine reflected the values of the university-educated people who ran it and who benefited from it generous funding." "Staying in the EU is the right kind of thing, because it's what civilised, sophisticated people do." "If you believe in the EU, you believe in the arts and in arts funding." "I think there is a mind-set amongst the cultural and the political elite that their role on the planet is to direct the lives of the rest of us." "They think that ordinary people need to be controlled and looked after." "They think the world needs to be ordered from above and that they should be the ones doing the ordering." "There is a tremendous snobbery built into the whole project, the idea that you are part of the elite which should decide how the little people live their lives." "These people up here, the intellectuals, are looking down on the plebs, and saying you aren't bright enough to decide the future of your country." "As the EU's power steadily increased, so did the number of regulators, and the volume of regulation." "The bureaucratic class can find no area of human life that they don't want to write a rulebook about, what vacuum cleaner you've got , where you get your hair cut, what kind of size your shoes are." "And those rule books stack up one on top of the other, such that no reasonable human being could now possibly have an understanding of all the rules they need to obey." "You've got thousands and thousands of bureaucrats, civil servants and administrators, and their job is to push paper, write on paper, have rules on paper, pile up more and more paper." "You just get a mass of growing telephone-directory-sized rules and regulations, one after the other, ceaselessly, endlessly." "That is actually what the bureaucracy sees itself as [being] there to do." "If the list of EU rules could be put into one document today, it would take more than two men to carry it on." "Such a document would reach as high as Nelson's Column." "Regulation is so vast and complex, even the EU is unable to tell us how many laws there are covering different areas of our lives." "So we've used some helpful EU databases to make the best estimate we can." "Here is a regulated EU man, waking from his regulated slumber to start his regulated day." "You wouldn't think you'd need a law for pillowcases, but the EU has five." "But that's nothing:" "The pillow inside is subject to 109 different EU laws." "As far as we can tell, there are only 11 EU laws pertaining to radio alarm clocks." "There's around 400 governing the other stuff on Joe Citizen's bedside table." "You can't be too careful with duvets and sheets, so there's around 50 laws governing those." "There are 65 laws covering bathrooms, but that doesn't include the contents." "How they managed to think up 31 laws for toothbrushes is beyond me, but let's face it, toothpaste is a bit weird, so 47 laws sounds about right." "Mirrors have been known to crack and get dirty, so they're covered by 172 laws." "As for the shower - well, we've all seen Psycho - murdering girls like that is now strictly prohibited." "Shampoo can get in your eyes and cause discomfort - 118 laws." "EU bureaucrats seem terrified by towels for some reason, slightly more relaxed about radiators." "There are 1246 laws relating to bread, but just 52 covering the crazy anarchic toaster." "Just 84 laws covering fridges, but an impressive 12 000 laws cover milk - after all, it might go off." "Bowl, 99 laws, spoon, more than 200 laws, same for orange juice." "But the coffee?" "Whoa, stand back, grandma!" "This toxic jungle juice can keep you up all night." "The best dog in Britain is unaware of the odourless fog of canine legislation, but careful, Ruby, ignorance is no excuse." "Our regulated man leaves his regulated house." "There are only 92 laws about pavements." "After all, they're just pavements." "But you get the idea." "EU regulation surrounds us like invisible barbed wire." "When we're frustrated in our daily lives by needless stupid EU laws, it's infuriating, but it's much worse than infuriating if you're thinking of starting a new business." "It's like entering a legal minefield." "For small and medium-sized businesses and start-ups, it's perilous." "Complying with regulation imposes huge costs, and falling foul of regulation can put you out of business." "Big established firms don't mind regulation so much." "For a start, it means less competition." "Big corporate interests tend to love the EU - it suits their purposes perfectly." "All the corporations love the European Union because of what it does: it creates the regulations which destroy their smaller rivals." "Big business loves regulation – don't forget that!" "Big companies can lobby in Brussels - the amount of money they spend there is staggeringly large." "One of the first things that stuns you is the number of invitations on your desk, for lunch, breakfast, dinner, champagne receptions;" "and invariably, they come from lobby groups." "There are people who make their entire livelihoods out of being professional lobbyists in Brussels." "This is where a lot of the lobbying goes on." "So you will see the lobbyists from different companies, from NGOs." "The returns they get by stifling competition and framing regulations in a way which suits them and keeps other people out is very, very striking." "It used to be called a rich man's club, and that is, by and large, what it is." "But regulation doesn't just stifle competition at home." "To illustrate this, let us imagine a less-than-efficient European manufacturer." "This firm was great back in the day, but over the years they've let things slip a bit." "The factory's a bit shabby, but its homey, and they like to do things the traditional way." "What they lack in efficiency and new ideas, they make up for in old-world charm." "Oh crikey, what's this?" "A pesky new rival firm somewhere in Asia." "They've got lab coats, and just look how good he is at maths." "His mate too, not quite as good." "And they're checking all the products, the big swots." "At our Euro firm, the products haven't changed much in a while." "And what's the point of a fancy new machine, when you can give customers the hands-on personal touch?" "It seems to have worked all right in the past." "Ow, but look at the Asian fellas." "Their umbrellas have clever sci-fi buttons to make them open." "Oh, what?" "The buttons make them come down, too!" "How do they even do that?" "Our Euro firm faces a tough choice." "Do they tidy up the factory, buy some lab coats and give everyone calculators?" "Or..." "Do they get the next train to Brussels?" "Over at the EU Directorate of External Relations Commission Council, a sympathetic official hears the problem." "These blasted Asian brollies are better and cheaper." "Aha!" "This is just the kind of abuse the EU was set up to tackle." "The official comes up with three brilliant solutions:" "1) Tariffs." "Let's slap a tax on all those fancy Oriental brollies." "2) Quotas." "Let's limit the number of Asian brollies coming in." "3) Complex and cleverly drafted regulations saying you have to wear braces and eat spaghetti to make brollies." "BUREAUCRACY" "With protectionism, you are basically trying to protect industries that otherwise wouldn't do very well in a competitive environment." "Otherwise, you wouldn't bother to protect them." "You only create a trade barrier because someone else has got a better, cheaper product." "Otherwise, why would you create a barrier?" "What we have here is something that portrays itself as a free trade area, but is actually erecting barriers and walls to the rest of the world." "Our inefficient manufacturer is delighted, but how about the rest of us?" "If you are propping up and sustaining inefficient ways of doing business, then the people who suffer are the customers." "You are preventing your citizens from accessing better, cheaper products." "You name it, TVs, laptops , sofas – EU regulation and trade barriers push up the price of everything." "The cost of living goes up, Europeans get poorer." "But it wasn't just manufacturers who sought protection." "Farmers like it when food prices are high." "So when a French farmer, say, finds that African farmers are beginning to sell their produce in Europe, he's not happy." "Our EU commissioner knows the routine:" "Tariffs, quotas, regulations saying you need to wear berets and drink Ricard to grow food." "This is particularly pernicious for African producers of food who find that they face a big tariff barrier when trying to export to Europe." "Now, that's bad for them because they can't earn money , and it's bad for British consumers because their food costs more." "But not content with trade barriers, farmers wanted the EU to drive food prices still higher." "To that end, the EU bought gigantic amounts of agricultural produce and simply allowed it to rot, creating an artificial shortage which pushed up prices." "These were the famous wine lakes and butter mountains." "In Northern France, part of the so-called butter mountain." "The British say that heaps of butter like this are indefensible follies." "The French say they're necessary and completely sensible." "It didn't take long for people to wise up to the absurdity of it - and not just its absurdity, its immorality, quite frankly." "All this is rotten for us as consumers:" "because of the EU, for decades, food and drink has cost far more than it should." "It adds between 10 and 20% to the cost of food." "But it gets worse." "Let's look at protectionism and the steel industry." "If you're a steel producer, you don't like the idea of cheap steel coming in from America or Asia." "You'd much rather that the EU shove up some trade barriers." "Great for steel producers, but what if you're a steel consumer?" "Suppose you make bridges or railway lines or cranes or robots or ships or trains or cars or space shuttles or other things made of steel." "You now have to pay more for your steel than your competitors in, say, South Korea or Brazil." "Protecting one producer has raised costs for other producers." "The disease spreads." "Instead of one uncompetitive industry, we now have many." "To see how this works in practice, I've come to the Tate  Lyle sugar refinery in London." "For centuries, raw sugar has been coming into the Thames in huge quantities to be refined in factories like this." "In the raw sugar shed, over 60 000 tons of raw cane sugar stands ready for processing." "Outside is Tate  Lyle's own dock." "In years gone by, this was crowded with boats from countries like Brazil and Australia and India, queueing up to offload their cargo." "The European Union is the biggest drag on the competitiveness of our business." "And what precisely are they doing which is the problem?" "Well, you can see behind me on the jetty today that there's no boat there with raw sugar, and that's precisely our problem." "The boats that deliver our raw sugar here to London, the sugar on them, the cost of that is inflated by the fact that the European Union restricts who we can buy that sugar from." "And on much of the sugar, they also charge us import tariffs." "When inefficient European beet sugar producers asked the EU for protective barriers against cane sugar producers around the world, it was a blow to refiners like Tate  Lyle." "On some of the boats of sugar we bring in, we can be paying anywhere between 2 and 3.5 million euros in extra costs, because of the European policies." "As costs have risen, so has the price of sugar for consumers, while Tate  Lyle's turnover and profits have been hit." "It threatens the 850 jobs here in East London, and it's meant that we've had to downsize the refinery by about 50% since 2009." "How strong is the feeling against the EU at the moment here?" "Walk around the refinery, talk to the people here." "They absolutely know that no matter how hard they work, no matter how productive they are, the regulations that the European Union can set can still crush us." "Protecting inefficient producers ends up dragging down good producers." "Whereas up to 2009, we were exporting 300 000 tonnes of sugar, because the European regulations have made us uncompetitive, not only have we stopped exporting that sugar, but we also now face around 250 thousand tonnes of imports into the UK to compete with as well," "so it's a double whammy, if you like." "And we estimate that probably costs the UK economy something like 80 to 90 million euros a year, just for this one factory." "Instead of looking out to the whole world, what we see is the EU bringing up the drawbridge." "The EU has slid from free trade into crony capitalism and protectionism." "Protection hurts consumers, who have to pay more for inferior products." "It hurts industries, whose costs are forced higher." "In the end, it even hurts the firms who are protected." "Protecting a firm from competition does not make it more competitive." "Suddenly, you can relax and put the kettle on." "Competition forces you to be sharp and buck up your ideas." "Remove that, and it's like pulling the plug out." "By protecting more and more industries year after year," "Europe has ended up with a moribund, ailing economy." "If you prop up failing, antiquated businesses that can't naturally compete, you get stagnation in the economy, not growth." "Protectionism impoverishes all of Europe." "It makes all of us worse off." "Then the shock came, when the World Trade Organisation, or WTO, was set up." "The walls of Fortress Europe began to crumble." ""From the developed world to the developing world, the tariff reductions are expected to sow the seeds of global economic growth."" "The World Trade Organisation, where both we and the European Union are members, has made huge progress in sweeping away tariffs and other barriers." "We have begun to see an opening up of the markets, thanks largely to The World Trade Organisation." "Every major country in the world is now bound by its rules." "Tariffs and other trade barriers were shredded - as you can see." "The World Trade Organisation has driven down most of the tariffs." "In the EU, the average tariff on agricultural products has fallen to 12%, and on manufactured goods, just 4%." "Europe's industries now face the challenge of international competition." "I think the European Union is learning a very hard lesson, but if you're insulated from competition decade after decade, it comes as a bit of a shock when it arrives." "Growth in the EU, already feeble, has more or less ground to a halt, with youth unemployment reaching staggering proportions." "The EU badly needs its own post-war German-style economic miracle." "But far from slashing regulation, the mountainous burden keeps growing." "It constantly wants to achieve growth through harmonisation, top-down control and central direction, and we know those don't work." "It militates against precisely the kind of individual initiative and innovation that is at the heart of economic growth." "Regulation is the enemy of competition, and competition is the engine of growth." "Therefore it is no surprise that the European Union has become an economic basket case." "Every continent now is outgrowing Europe." "When you think of the growth rates in China, and then you look at the growth rate in the European Union, that tells me that we are in the wrong place." "We joined the European Union, and it's become the world's only declining trade block." "Far from hitching our wagon to a dynamic economic locomotive, we've shackled ourselves to a corpse." "The people have never given a bigger vote of "no confidence" in Brussels." "Today, world markets were nervously watching..." "the stock markets have not been reassured." "What the EU has become in the 21st Century is what Britain was when it was "the sick man of Europe"." "Despite decades of economic decline, the EU elite carry on regardless." "They are unmoved by criticism, untroubled by popular discontent." "But the frustration of ordinary people is beginning to show." "We now have to focus on constructing a firewall to prevent contagion within the Eurozone." "What you can see everywhere is a conflict between the visions of a rather narrow kind of professional middle class, which is dominant in European politics, and the reaction against it by the larger bulk of the European population." "Eventually if you stuff dictatorship down the throats of people who don't want it, they will rebel." "[European rallies] Unfortunately, in many places, it's taking a very unpleasant form of right-wing populist nationalism." "Extremism at both ends is being fostered by the anti-democratic nature of the European Union." "What do we see?" "Far-right parties, ultra-nationalist parties." "We don't know what the future of Europe is going to look like, but at the moment, it's not looking good." "We don't know what political forces are going to rise in the future." "We don't know what conflicts we might be dragged into...." "Far from it's being safer for us to be in the EU, there are dangers that go along with our being members of the EU, being dragged into situations we don't want to get in." "Marine Le Pen's far-right party came first, winning 25% of the vote." "Given the shocking lack of growth in the EU, the promises of prosperity and security seem empty." "CAN WE COPE?" "But if we left, could we cope?" "Are we too small?" "If we're outside the EU, will anyone trade with us?" "To find out, I'm heading to a European country which has steadfastly refused to join the EU:" "SWITZERLAND" "It's very pleasant arriving in Zurich - the station's lovely, the bit round it's lovely - in fact, everything's lovely." "But then, this is the wealthiest city in the world, ranked as having the highest quality of life in the world." "All the clichés are true: everything is so neat and efficient, the people are so polite and obliging, and the buildings are beautiful." "This place is wealthy, and it's obviously been wealthy for centuries." "I want to know how the Swiss are managing to cope without the glorious benefits of EU membership." "So I've come to one of Zurich's many lovely coffee houses to meet the veteran Swiss economist and writer Beat Kappeler." "So Switzerland is not in the European Union - is that a problem for you?" "No, because Switzerland has free trade agreements with many countries in the rest of the world - with Japan, China, Latin America." "We're told we need to be in the EU for trade, but Swiss exports per head are five times higher than ours - in fact, they're about the most successful exporting nation in the world." "Then we're told we need to be in the EU for jobs." "We have a very high labour market participation - 83% of all people of working age work." "That's much higher than the rest of Europe." "Switzerland has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the world, lower than any country in the EU." "Don't be fooled by the mountains, the cows and the cuckoo clocks" "(which are German, by the way)." "Switzerland is an industrial giant." "You might have heard of Nestlé and Novartis and Roche, the mining firm Glencore, Liebherr Cranes, the high-tech engineering firm ABB, and of course every posh watch firm you can think of, from Rolex and Omega and Tag Heuer, to Patek Philippe and Zenith and Breitling." "These are all world-beating giants." "Just look at the most valuable companies in Europe:" "Novartis, Roche, Nestlé... they're all Swiss." "Yup, Europe's biggest companies aren't even in the EU." "Zurich is also one of the world's largest financial centres, despite having a population of less than 2 million, with global firms like UBS and Credit Suisse." "Per million of inhabitants, Switzerland has more multinationals than, I think, all other countries." "No surprise, then, that Switzerland is about the richest country in the world, with a GDP per head around twice as high as ours." "To make the point that if we left the EU, we'd be just like another Switzerland, I think is totally bizarre." "It is one of the most prosperous countries in the world." "Switzerland doesn't just do a bit better than us;" "it does fantastically better than us." "Needless to say, the Swiss are better paid than us, with the average wages, again, around twice as high as ours." "What's more, there is far greater income equality here." "Labour incomes are about as equally distributed as in Scandinavia." "If you think high tax rates lead to equality, look at Switzerland." "They have far lower tax rates than we do, but very high levels of income equality." "So, without the EU's help, the Swiss seem to be scraping along just fine." "But how do we account for Switzerland's truly staggering success?" "I have come to the offices of the Swiss magazine "Die Weltwoche", or "The World this Week"." "The reason why Switzerland is successful economically is that Switzerland is not a member of the European Union." "In the EU, it's politicians and bureaucrats determining what the people have got to do." "I mean, it's a top-down system in the EU, and Switzerland is, I would say, is the epitome of a bottom-up system." "Switzerland is the perfect opposite of the European Union's crumbling model." "Switzerland is a kind of super-democracy:" "far more democratic than Britain, let alone the EU." "Switzerland has one of the oldest constitutions in the world, and it's one of the most democratic." "It's not up to the Prime Minister whether a referendum should be held – it's up to the people." "You get 50,000 signatures, and they have to hold one." "The people in Switzerland decide everything." "It's very different from the elite conception of politics, where an "enlightened elite" decides and knows better." "Here, the people know better, and politicians have to conform." "Why is the Swiss state successful?" "Because our politicians are forced to fulfill the interests of the people." "The key to their success is the fact that their class of bureaucrats and politicians, if you will, is kept on a much tighter rein, a much greater control by the public." "You simply cannot get away with the kind of grandiose plans that you find, say, in France." "In Switzerland, the Swiss public simply will not tolerate that." "The Swiss economy ranks as one of the least regulated in the world, and according to the EU itself, Swiss industry is also Europe's most innovative." "Too much regulation stifles innovation, limits creativity, and so we think this should be the foremost endeavour of politicians:" "to eliminate regulations and not to create them." "Switzerland is one of the least regulated economies in the world, and it's also one of the richest countries in the world." "This is no coincidence." "Do it like the Swiss - have some arrangements with Europe, but be independent and look to the world." "Ah, being like Switzerland... that sounds good." "But is it that simple?" "To trade with Europe, won't we need a trade deal?" "No, there's so much nonsense talked about trade agreements." "The EU is a trade deal, and it's very bad for us." "TRADE DEALS" "There's an old-fashioned view among politicians that trade is something that politicians organise." "It's not!" "Trade was all about the great and the good from one country, signing a treaty with the great and the good of another country." "But real life is starting to leave that behind." "I've headed back to South Shields to visit John Mills, one of the Labour Party's biggest donors." "His company, JML, has hundreds of products manufactured for them in countries all around the world, and exports thousands of container-loads of goods every year to every corner of the planet." "This business is truly global." "Well, we export to about 85 countries at the last count." "The majority of these countries are not in the European Union." "But it's actually no more difficult for us to sell to the United States or to Australia or even China, than it is to sell to the EU." "The idea that you have to be in the European Union to trade with the European Union is a total absurdity." "Wander into any shop in Britain and you'll find goods from all over the world - cameras and TVs from Japan, computers and phones from America." "But we have no trade deals with these countries." "You don't need a trade deal with a country to be able to trade with it." "If you go shopping, what do you do?" "Well, you buy Chinese goods, you buy Korean goods, you buy American goods, and yet none of those countries is part of the European Union." "China doesn't have a trade deal with the European Union, nor does the United States, nor does India." "You don't need trade deals." "Trade involves having a product or a service which other people are prepared to buy at whatever price you can produce it for." "Though we don't need a trade deal to deal with Europe, it's highly likely they will want one, for one simple reason:" "The EU is desperate to keep its goods flowing into the UK." "You go outside, you count – don't take my word for it – go count the number of Audis, BMWs, Mercedes, Volkswagens." "You'll find it's over 30% of our market." "The Germans biggest industry needs us to the tune of 16 billion plus every year." "We are actually the biggest market for the rest of the European Union." "We are not a supplicant; we need a bit of self-belief and a bit of self-confidence." "Even though we're EU members, since the turn of the century, the proportion of British trade with the EU has been in steep decline, while trade with the rest of the world has been rising sharply." "There's no trade deal at the moment with China, the EU does not have one." "But if you look at Anglo-Chinese trade over the last ten years, say, that has been growing several times faster than Anglo-EU trade, where, of course, there is a trade deal." "Our percentage of trade with the EU is falling virtually by the minute," "I mean, it's tumbling even as we conduct this interview." "Every single year that goes by, the percentage of British overseas business that is done outside the EU grows at double the rate of the business we do inside the EU." "They need us more than we need them." "Ah, but what if the EU proposes a trade deal which forces on us open borders, and other stuff we don't like?" "If a proposed trade deal is unacceptable to us, whether it's the EU or anybody else, we just don't sign it." "It's true that British companies who export to the EU will have to comply with EU regulations, but it's also true that EU companies wanting to export to Britain will have to comply with ours." "Germans who export to America must abide by American regulations, likewise for American exporters to China, and Chinese exporters to Brazil, and Brazil to the EU." "Every exporting company in the world has to comply with the laws of the place they're exporting to." "Trade deals make no difference." "One of the arguments put by the "In" crowd – the "Remainers" - is "Oh, well, you know, it takes a long time for Europe to come up with a free trade agreement." "It's taken 9 years to come up with a free trade agreement with Canada."" "Well, that's a very good reason to leave." "In the globalised 21st century, you don't need a trade deal to trade, and yet, they're still useful." "The question is: are we more likely to have bigger and better trade deals inside the EU, or outside?" "Let's add up the GDP of all the countries that have trade deals with the EU:" "It comes to 5 trillion pounds." "Golly, that sounds a lot!" "But look at Switzerland: 29 trillion." "And what about tiny Singapore?" "They've got trade deals worth 7 times as much as the EU's." "And South Korea?" "Nine times!" "Chile, population 8 million:" "It's got 50 trillion..." "Unbelievable!" "But let's cheat:" "let's add to the EU pile the value of its own internal market, as if it had a trade deal with itself." "It's still rubbish!" "You can't throw a shipping container without hitting a country with better trade deals than the EU." "In fact if you're trying to avoid trade deals, joining the EU is probably the best thing you can do." "The EU has got no trade agreement with China or India or Russia or the United States." "I mean, it's staggering that they haven't managed to achieve that." "Of Britain's top 10 non-EU trading partners, the EU has trade agreements in place with only two." "As far as trade deals go, being part of the EU cuts you off from the rest of the world." "Our history is a trading, buccaneering history - back to Drake and beyond, and that's what we're good at." "At the moment, our hands are shackled by being in the European Union." "We've got a much, much better opportunity, really, for striking good trade deals if we're outside the EU than if we're inside." "If we left the European Union, we could very quickly establish free trade deals with the most dynamic parts of the world economy." "Today, Europe doesn't look like the future." "The future consists of nations in Asia and America and Africa." "Getting stuck in Fortress Europe is the worst thing that could happen to us." "The idea that we have to stay in the EU for our prosperity is wrong-headed." "Why do we need to attach ourselves to the one part of the world that is doing really badly?" "Within Europe we know what our future's going to be to some extent – it's going to be pretty stagnant, while the rest of the world roars ahead." "We have huge scope, huge scope for creating vast numbers of new jobs." "Being obsessed with just this corner of the world is being a "little European"." "Outside Europe, we could have prosperity on a level that we can't even imagine now." "Escaping Fortress Europe could be a new start for Britain;" "a return at last to the global commercial and trading giant we were in the 19th century." "If we embrace free trade and escape the stultifying restrictions of EU over-regulation, there's the potential for an extraordinary economic renaissance." "Britain is a great country." "I think our economy is poised for much greater things." "I think in the last two or three decades, something really interesting's happened in this country." "We've changed, we've embraced entrepreneurism, young people now want to go it alone, they want to run their own businesses, they want to be self-employed." "They don't want to work for these big multinationals any more; they want to build their own multinationals." "But to restore this level of prosperity, we must take back the right to govern ourselves." "We're being asked to trade in our freedom - and look what we're offered in return." "It is about bread and circuses, isn't it?" "Bread and circuses for the little people." "The political class say to us, "You needn't worry about sovereignty or any of that stuff." "You're going to get better mobile phone rates, and that's the good news." "And you're going to get slightly cheaper holidays." "And those are the things that really matter to you, aren't they?" "Because you're one of the little people."" "I mean, would you really trade in your national identity for cheaper mobile phone calls when you're abroad?" "They're treating us like natives in the 18th century, when Captain Cook lands on the shore and he starts handing out these..." "these beads and trinkets, and we're going to be happy with that, and we're going to sell them our country for them." "It just shows utter contempt for what they think people are like, because they really do believe that these little trinkets are going to buy us off." "In the referendum, we will be asked to choose." "Do we want to be governed by an organisation which we don't understand, run by people we don't know and haven't elected, who have the power to impose on us laws that we haven't debated," "and have little or no chance of blocking or repealing?" "We need to regain the right for British people to make British laws." "If people believe that the best way to strengthen the United Kingdom is to hand over every year more money, and more power, to an unaccountable bureaucratic elite in Brussels, then what they should do is campaign to stay in the European Union." "It comes down to the essential issue, the working man and woman of this country against people who think," ""We have a better plan and a better mind than you, and if you don't like it, what are you going to do?"" "And the answer is:" "We're going to vote:" "Leave." "So...." "There are a number of issues where I believe that we should be leaving." "This is people vs. the establishment, people vs. the elite." "I just hope that the mass of people who may not go around being interviewed much, may never get a look in on any of the media or television, come June the 23rd will be out there saying, "This is our chance to get our own back." ""Give us back control of our own country."" "With general elections, it doesn't really matter who you vote for, Conservative or Labour, because you know that in four years' time you can change your mind." "This time, you can't change your mind." "This time, it's for keeps." "This referendum is the most important political act that has happened in my lifetime - this is about our future, our freedom, our democracy - our right to govern ourselves." "What really matters is that you should have the power to remove the people who govern you." "The reason why the suffragettes went to all that trouble to get the vote was because they wanted to, they themselves, be treated as grownups and decide their own destiny." "If I was told I would be stewing grass to feed my own family in five years' time if we left the European Union - I would still do it!" "It's time to regain our freedom and independence, the right to decide ourselves how we live our lives." "There is a lot at stake here." "What we want is democracy." "We the people should determine our own destiny." "We have the capacity to shape our own futures." "So my question is:" "What price freedom?" "Revised and corrected by Andres Rohr" "Best viewed by Atlas Subtitler"