“Referendum Street” - winning the argument on the Euro
This article first appeared in Grassroots Campaigner magazine, published by the Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors, ALDC, in October 2001.
In February our very own Lembit Öpik, and underwear manufacturer and Lib Dem Julia Gash took part in a BBC project to ‘try out’ a Euro referendum on one street in North London. Alongside a team of four other experts, over a weekend of intensive argument they managed to move a typical street – carefully chosen for its views on the Euro broadly reflecting those of the country as a whole – from just 34 % in favour (and 66% against) to 58% in favour – clearly a winning majority.
As part of its new push to inform and support party members and activists on European issues, the Lib Dem European Group invited Lembit and Julia to address a fringe meeting in Bournemouth on their experience.
The first and most important element of any attempt to persuade people of the benefits of the Euro is – as with almost any other political campaign – to make it both understandable and relevant to voters personally. It must be admitted that with the Euro, this is easier said than done! Around the time when the Liberal Democrats became the first major party to call for a referendum on it, Peter Riddell of the Times observed – with some justice – that of all the subjects to give to a referendum, the Euro was perhaps the worst – it is tedious, perceived (if at all) as irrelevant, and above all monumentally complicated. Nevertheless, it’s the subject we’ve got, and we have to do our best with it!
Experience has shown that to be successful, pro-Euro campaigners must not treat this as a free-standing economic issue. A clear lesson from, in particular, the Danish NO vote a year ago, was that people perceive it as a political issue, and campaigners need to address it as such. So in arguing for a YES vote in a Euro referendum, it’s as well to remind people why Britain should be engaged in the European project more generally. Put simply, we need to talk about why it is better for Britain to work with our neighbours rather than against them. France, Germany and the rest of Europe are there whether we like it or not, and it is in all our interests to find a way of relating to each other constructively and positively. Progressively doing that over the last fifty years and more has not only given us one of the longest periods of peace in western Europe in the last thousand years, but it has improved our prosperity.
You, I, and the voter on the doorstep are richer because of our membership of the European Union. For hundreds of years until the first half of the twentieth century, British Governments raised money and taxes primarily for one purpose: to wage war on our neighbours, and sent off a good many of our young men to die in the process. If it is this “thousand years of British history” which Euro-sceptics talk of losing, then good riddance to it!
Britain’s membership of the European Union has helped make us richer in other ways too. The so-called European “Single Market”, with common standards across the EU, is what makes trade between British companies and those on the continent far easier. And it came about largely because of Margaret Thatcher! And as Lembit and Julia pointed out, independent research has shown that more than 3 million British jobs depend on our place in Europe. Do voters really want to put those at risk?
And EU membership helps us in so many ways that we no longer realise – can you really now imagine before going on a short trip to France, or on holiday to Spain, having to go to London and apply to their embassy for a visa?
But does all this mean, as sceptics argue, giving up our British identity? Of course not – British culture is about a lot more than what the coins in our pockets are called. And – as the Sun editorial argued on the day of the 1975 referendum – inside Europe “are the French a soupçon less French, the Italians a pizza less Italian?”
So working together’s good. But many voters will say that the particular European Union that we have is not the best way to achieve it. And Liberal Democrats agree. We have long campaigned – and continue to do so – for the European Union to operate in a far more open and democratic fashion. But we also campaign for reform to Parliament and Government in Westminster – and nobody argues that we should opt out of that. The truth is that we can only hope to improve Europe if we are properly inside the club. And we have still have far more to gain inside it than outside. Britain today is a modern, vibrant thriving country – but it doesn’t hide the fact that in a modern globalised world increasingly made up of continental trading blocs, we are a modest country off the northern coast of Europe.
These arguments about the importance of Europe are crucial to winning over voters towards an eventual YES vote. But of course we should also not be afraid to say “Join the Euro because it will make you richer”. As Lembit and Julia pointed out, an easy illustration is mortgages. Inside the Euro, mortgages will be cheaper. Quite simply, interest rates, and therefore mortgage rates in Euro countries are several points cheaper than here in the UK.
Any Briton who goes on holiday to Spain also finds it easy to understand the advantages of not having to change money – and not having to pay commission at the Bureau de Change you have to pay commission – and we’d all welcome the chance not to have to do that. And people find it easy to understand that if individuals will save money this way, then the costs to big business must be huge. And money they are spending on that is money they are not spending on employing more people, or on cutting prices. And it’s not just not having to pay commission – on a basket of goods Julia and Lembit showed us, Britons pay an average of 25% more than our French neighbours. With one currency, such differences in price become immediately clear and unjustifiable. So lower prices too, and an end to “rip-off Britain”.
Business is important here too – and what any exporting business craves is stability, so that they can plan for the future. Any exporter, like Julia’s business, has had its export strategy wrecked over the last few years by the great rise of the pound. Removing that fluctuation, by fixing exchange rates together, would give business a far more stable environment. They would save money (currently needed for “hedging”) – money which comes back to us all as more investment and jobs, or lower prices.
What about the argument that a “one size fits all” monetary policy can’t possibly work? Well, it’s difficult to give too full an answer without getting lost in optimal currency zone theory, but essentially all countries – existing currency zones – are made up of different parts with different economic circumstances, and continue to function. It’s not always without pain.Within the UK we hear constant complaints that interest rates are set only for the South East of England. But the economy of any part of the UK has as much in common with similar parts of, say, France, Austria or Italy as it does with other parts of the UK.
The Eurosceptic newspapers have done a very good job of conveying the message that the Euro has “failed” because it has fallen in value. Well, Julia runs a business, and the rise of the pound over the same time has made exporting what she produces far more difficult. She would hardly say that the pound had “succeeded”. The truth is that currencies fluctuate all the time, and its “strength” is not some sort of a silly virility symbol, but the result of a complex interplay of economic factors.
We are not yet at a referendum on the Euro. It is often not top of our list of priorities for local campaigning. But as we all know, voters do have that irritating habit of raising issues that they want to talk about, not only the ones we do. Fortunately there is now an increasing amount of briefing, rebuttal and other material available – from LDEG: www.ldeg.org, as well as from www.britainineurope.org.uk and www.yes-campaign.com
If we are to win the campaign we need to start to be properly briefed now. Joining LDEG and getting the briefing from them and other organisations is a great way to start.