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EU Membership: Economic Benefits

I am sorry, but I am under pressure to finish.

I will say one final word, on the single market. It is often talked about as some arcane inner sanctum. It is simply the European market. It is like the American single market. We have no agreement with the American single market, and are not members of it; none the less, America is our biggest trading partner nationally in the world. The introduction of the single market consisted simply of standardising the product specification, so that instead of having to have 28 different ranges of refrigerator, lawn mower or whatever, we have one.

That is very sensible. It is also just as much of an advantage to an exporter from outside the EU exporting refrigerators or lawn mowers to it as it is to member states within it. In fact, others outside the EU have taken more advantage of it than we have, and their exports have gone up more than ours, perhaps because they have to bear the burden of EU regulations only on those aspects of their activities carried out within the EU, not on 100% of their firms. That is another aspect of the benefits we would get from leaving, along with our ability to negotiate free trade agreements with the fast growing but protected markets of the world on which our children’s futures will depend.