Gordon Brown and the European Union have decided to continue their policy of exporting jobs out of Europe. No reason was given, but previously they said that companies should pay their fair share of tax and that European workers deserve a high level of social protection. This results in fewer jobs and less tax revenue. Less is more for Brown and the EU.
Brit Insurance (a Lloyds of London insurer) announced yesterday that it will move its headquarters to the Netherlands. In 2007 BI paid £36 million in taxes and believes that the move to Holland will reduce its bill to £6 million.
Brown’s persistent haziness about his plans for companies’ foreign profits has disastrous effects. It is feared that a change in those tax rules will result in a dramatic rise in taxes.
Shell, Hiscox, Beazley, Omega, Shire Pharmaceuticals, Experian, and Invesco all have escaped Brown’s British Dream. United Business Media, WPP, Astra Zeneca, Diageo, Amlin, Smith & Nephew, International Power, ITV, Aegis, and GlaxoSmithKline have either expressed concern or have threatened to leave. These lists are non-exhaustive.
Brown will not return to a competitive tax regime in the UK. Instead he wants to block the escape route to cheaper EU tax regimes such as Ireland and Luxembourg. According to Brussels’ lobbyists Brown is willing to drop traditional UK resistance to a European-wide corporation tax (FT 10 June 2008). A few months ago it was revealed that the EU would shelve its plans to unify corporation tax until after the re-run of the Irish referendum.
Never mind that Europe is not an island that can close itself off from world competition. A medium high pan-European corporation tax will simply replace the exodus from the UK to the EU by an exodus from the EU to the world.
If something can be overregulated, the EU will do it. Over the last twenty years the EU has introduced an ocean of new labour legislation. The Labour Party (and its special interest group of trade unions) are thrilled: Europe introduced social measures which would never have seen the light of day in the freedom minded UK. The flood of labour protection laws is firm Labour Party policy. I recently took part in a debate with a Labour MEP candidate who spent her entire allocated time lauding the Great Labour Law Achievements and in scaremongering that beastly Tories would scrap it all.
Again, the EU is not immune from world competition. It is strange that those who fight euroscepticism tell us it’s inspired by “Little Englanders” – what about “Little Europeans”? Millions of jobs have already been exported to countries like India and China.
Is it a deep-rooted hate of gainful employment in the private sector which fuels this madness? Surely it’s not Labour’s intent to create grateful welfare dependent voter banks?
And yes. We Tories should turn the tide. Make jobs not tax.
