Matthew Elliott: Barroso's EU plans will enable Britain to change our relationship with Brussels

Matthew Elliott is Chief Executive of Business for Britain – over 750 business leaders calling for a new deal from the European Union. Follow Matthew on Twitter.

Today the eleventh President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, will deliver his fourth and final State of the Union address to Brussels before he steps down after the European elections next year.

We know already that he will say that the EU needs further economic and political integration. It is likely that he will start to expand on his vision of banking and fiscal union, welding the countries of the Eurozone ever closer together into a new highly-integrated economic bloc.

This should come as no surprise to anyone. The President of the European Council, Herman van Rompuy, set out proposals for deepening integration in his ‘Towards a genuine Economic and Monetary Union’ paper in 2012, and President Barroso floated the idea in his State of the Union address last year.

In fact, anyone who witnessed the debate about the single currency at the turn of this century would have seen commentators warning that the euro would not survive without a strong coordination of fiscal policy underpinned by a single pan-European banking system.

Matthew Elliott: Join Business for Britain and help us sketch a new deal from the EU

Matthew Elliott is Chief Executive of Business for Britain.

Ever since the PM delivered his landmark Bloomberg speech on the EU, there has been substantial interest and debate about what the business community in Britain thinks about the issue. Understandably, many people are looking to business people to assess what the impact of Britain’s membership of the EU has been on jobs, trade and growth, and how they would be personally affected by bringing back powers from the EU.

At Business for Britain, we now boast over 750 business leaders supporting our call for a change in Britain’s membership of the EU. We have started the process of consulting these supporters, as well as the wider business community, to produce what we feel will be the most comprehensive analysis of business opinion on our relationship with Brussels.

This document is not without precedent. In the late 1990s, when the media were portraying the business community as being strongly supportive of the Euro, Business for Sterling produced research that showed (a) that Business for Sterling represented vast swathes of business people in the UK opposed to joining the single currency; and (b) the members of business organisations such as the CBI were split on Euro membership.

Matthew Elliott: Five language rules for the Right

Matthew Elliott is Chief Executive of Business for Britain & Founder of the TaxPayers’ Alliance.

1. Avoid jargon  

The first language rule for the Right is to avoid jargon, especially when talking about the economy. Speeches are littered with terms which mean nothing to the average voter, terms like GDP per capita, incentives, marginal tax rates, fiscal policy, the Laffer Curve, and sharing the proceeds of growth. Margaret Thatcher was very good at talking about the economy in terms of a household budget. Phrases such as "You can't spend more than you earn" was a simple way to explain why the Government shouldn't run a deficit. And Gordon Brown was very clever to use the term “Investment” to describe his hike in public spending.  

2. Adopt the language of the Left

The second rule is that the Right should adopt the language of the Left, who have a virtual monopoly on some extremely powerful words and phrases such as "Social Justice", "Fairness" and "Equality". Another word the Left always uses is “Jobs”, whereas the Right talks about the economy in terms of taxation and regulation. So the Left talk about the ends (Jobs) and the Right talks about the means (a low tax, low regulation economy). In doing so, the Left appeals to people's Hearts and the Right appeals to people's Heads, which is less convincing because it doesn’t engage people emotionally 

3. Use international, outward-looking language

The third rule is to use international, outward-looking language when talking about the European Union, rather than using "Little Englander" language. Eurosceptics should talk much more about how Britain should position itself as a trading nation, not just looking to our immediate neighbours in Europe (which has low economic growth), but to high-growth countries outside the EU, such as Brazil, India & China. This language wins over floating voters, because it shows that the speaker isn't parochial, uncomfortable with the wider world, or – dare I say it – a "swivel eyed loon".

4. Learn how to rename policies to give them a bad name

A fourth rule, the Right needs to learn is how to rename policies to give them a bad name. Who remembers the Community Charge? Brilliantly rebranded the Poll Tax by the Left in the 1980s. Just as George Osborne's attempt to simplify VAT was renamed the "Pasty Tax" or the recent changes to welfare was called the "Bedroom Tax" by the Left. These are all great examples of policies which the Left has re-branded to frame the debate on their terms (and some have said that the fact that they dubbed it the “Bedroom Tax” is credit to the success of the TaxPayers’ Alliance). This is why Inheritance Tax is dubbed the "Death Tax" in the United States. And is why some people refer to the Licence Fee as the "BBC Tax".

5. Don’t use language which isolates the Left

The fifth rule is not to use language which isolates the Left. In the recent Referendum on changing Britain's voting system, the Yes2AV campaign made the mistake of not reaching out to people on the Right. They had the support of UKIP, but they ignored Nigel Farage. At No2AV, we purposefully reached out to the Labour Party, knowing that Labour voters were the swing vote in the Referendum. We set up Labour No2AV, ran a "Vote Labour, Vote No" campaign, and purposefully used arguments and language which wouldn't isolate the Left and Labour voters. That's how you turn round a referendum from being 2-1 behind, to winning with 68% of the vote. And it also shows the power of language in political debate. 

Matthew Elliott: For jobs and growth, Britain's relationship with the EU must change

Matthew Elliott is the Chief Executive of Business for Britain.

Last month 500 British business leaders, including the likes of Next boss Lord Wolfson, Ocado chief Sir Stuart Rose and Phones4u founder John Caudwell, announced that they were backing a campaign for ‘real change in the EU’ and urged ‘all political parties to join in committing themselves to a national drive to renegotiate the terms of Britain’s EU membership.’ Having received a warm welcome on these very pages, as well as elsewhere, Business for Britain set about changing the debate on how the EU impacts upon our home-grown industries.

Today a letter has appeared in the Independent, signed by Roland Rudd, Richard Branson, Martin Sorrell and others, which seeks to defend Britain’s membership of the European Union, offering up small changes to a relationship they see as providing more positives for Britain than negatives. The signatories are the same people who, back in January before the Prime Minister’s Bloomberg speech, were expressing concerns that any attempts to renegotiate our membership of the EU could create ‘damaging uncertainty’. They are the same people who, at the turn of the century, were urging Britain to join the Euro.

Matthew Elliott: A Single Income Tax would be fairer, more transparent and would spur economic growth

 

Matthew Elliott is Chief Executive of The TaxPayers' Alliance. This is the first in a series of articles based on the TPA's 2020 Tax Commission proposals. 

Ken Livingstone once wrote that everyone “should pay tax at the same rate on their earnings and all other income”. For all our differences, I agree. If you earn the same amount as a shareholder collecting a dividend or as a plumber fixing someone’s central heating you should pay the same amount in tax.  And apart from the personal allowance, so you can earn enough to cover the basics tax free, if you earn twice as much, you should pay twice as much in tax. Doesn’t that sound like a reasonable objective?

Right now the tax system doesn’t work that way at all. Most people pay tax repeatedly on their income, and it all adds up to an eye watering rate. If you earn your income as wages from an employer, Employers’ National Insurance is first taken out before the money even reaches your pay cheque. Then you pay Income Tax and Employees’ National Insurance. The basic rate isn’t really 20% at all. It’s over 40%.

If you earn income from shares, first Corporation Tax is taken out of the profits. Then you pay taxes on the dividends. Then because those profits drive up the share price you pay Capital Gains Tax as well.

Even before the money is saved or spent, most people pay a series of taxes that add up to a dreadfully high rate, but a minority are able to avoid some of those taxes. From dodgy contractors, paid cash in hand, to paragons of public sector respectability like executives at the BBC and the Department of Health, paid through limited companies.

Matthew Elliott: Make sure you vote NO today

Matthew Elliott is Campaign Director of No2AV.

Today is the UK’s first nation-wide referendum in 36 years, and it’s critical that people go out and vote to protect decades of democratic progress.

Recent polls have been promising but pre-election predictions are meaningless if people do not make the effort to get to the ballot box.  

Only a No vote today can protect Britain’s democracy, keeping our One Person, One Vote system.

The Alternative Vote would create a situation where some people get multiple votes counted while others get only their first preference counted.

Perversely, supporters of the least popular parties will be the most likely to get a second vote counted, while Labour and Conservative votes could only have one vote counted in nine out of ten seats.

This would give extremists disproportionate influence, as their second preferences would determine the outcome of tight races. 

And, of course, AV would give the Liberal Democrats an enormous boost. They would gain over a dozen of seats every election, leading to more hung parliaments where Nick Clegg gets to decide who forms the government.

No wonder Liberal Democrats have been so hysterical at the thought of a No vote. We shouldn't spend £250 million at a time of serious economic challenges just because it will benefit Chris Huhne.

We know that most people in the UK agree that AV would be a step backwards, but there is no turnout threshold on this referendum.

If people stay home and rely on others to carry the day, a Yes vote could sneak in amidst low turnout -- not to mention potentially differential turnout between UK regions.

It is critical that we avoid sleepwalking into the AV system, and that's why we will be doing everything we can today to ensure that people get out a vote No.

Matthew Elliott: No2AV enters crucial final five days of the campaign

Yesterday the excellent Paul Goodman speculated on this very site that the referendum might be ‘over bar the shouting’. Pointing to the most recent polls, Paul suggested that if the trend in favour of a ‘no’ vote continues, the Yes to AV campaign could be heading for defeat.

While it is nice to have the momentum behind our campaign (and goodness knows I prefer the polls this way round!) you won't be seeing any slow-down or complacency from NO to AV.

We are sending out another 15 million leaflets in the coming days, have hundreds of street stalls across the UK planned and yesterday NO to AV launched our ‘Get Out the Vote’ Battle Bus Tour, taking the message ‘KEEP ONE PERSON ONE VOTE’ to the nine English regions.

Matthew Elliott: Clegg flounders as Yes Men falter

For those that missed it on Sunday, Andrew Neil skewered Nick Clegg on the Politics Show yesterday (available on the iplayer), and what Nick did (and didn't) say gave a good insight into the Yes campaign's increasing desperation. 

Early on, Nick repeated the claim that the David Cameron was selected via AV. As most ConHome readers will know, the Conservatives use a run-off system that enables voters to pause and consider between rounds. Yet the Yes campaign continue to repeat this completely incorrect soundbite. 

Then he claimed that we are having this referendum "because of the expenses crisis". Given Nick's role in the coalition negotiations, this is a frankly bizarre lie. We are having this referendum for the one and only reason that the Lib Dems demanded it - and to Gordon Brown he demanded it without a referendum! The truth that Clegg didn't want to admit is that in the coalition negotiations last May he sacrificed Lib Dem policies -- on student tuition fees; on nuclear power -- in favour of a self-serving referendum on AV. 

One of Neil's first questions was, if AV passes, when Nick expected to hold another referendum on proportional representation (PR). Nick -- like Charles Kennedy -- denied that AV was being used as a stepping stone to PR. That would, of course, be news to the Lib Dem party, Electoral Reform Society, and myriad other backers of the Yes campaign (Greens, Plaid Cymru, SNP), all of whom only support this "miserable little compromise" because they are hoping it will lead to PR in the future.     

Matthew Elliott: One Person, One Vote

Matthew Elliott is the Campaign Director of NO to AV - for more information please go to www.no2av.org.

Over the past three months, the NO to AV campaign has gone from strength to strength.

We’ve demonstrated how the Alternative Vote would be an expensive mistake, costing the taxpayer up to £250 million. We’ve also shown how AV is a politicians’ fix, bargained for by Nick Clegg last May, and enabling him - and not the voters - to choose the government.

This message has been supported by everyone from the Prime Minister, to the Shadow Cabinet and over half of the Parliamentary Labour Party, to independent academics like Professor Vernon Bogdanor; as well as over 25 respected historians including Niall Ferguson, Amanda Foreman, and David Starkey. And, while there is much more to do, the latest polls also show that support for a ‘no’ vote is on the rise.

This coming week, NO to AV will be launching the next phase of the campaign, urging people to go out and vote ‘no’ on 5 May to ‘Keep One Person, One Vote’. This message emphasises that not only is a ‘no’ vote about the huge cost of AV, and the political consequences of changing our voting system, it is also about the fundamental right of every citizen to cast an equal vote.

For centuries, generations of reformers were inspired by a simple principle. They believed that because each person is equal, they should each have an equal vote.

It took many years for that principle to become part of our politics. But today, that principle stands as the cornerstone of our democracy. We call it: one person, one vote.

Matthew Elliott: Are Yes to AV about to start attacking David Cameron?

Matthew Elliott is Campaign Director of No2AV.

If anyone has dipped into the debate on the Alternative Vote over the last three weeks, they will probably have picked up one thing: the No campaign say AV will cost £250 million, the Yes campaign disagree. 

Since our launch, NO to AV have embarked on a nationwide poster campaign - and have had several stories in the media - all pointing towards the huge cost of the voting system that no-one wants.

In his speech announcing the Conservative Party's support for NO to AV, the Prime Minister followed up our main line of attack, saying:

[AV] increases the cost of politics. A whole machinery of bureaucracy will have to be built to explain the system to people. You can imagine it already. A quango overseeing the whole process. Consultants drafted in to construct a message. Leaflets printed and advertising slots booked. A monumental waste of time, money and effort. And quite apart from all this, we may have to buy and install electronic voting machines to make sense of all the different outcomes and possibilities…

Yes to AV, who had been riding their nice-sounding but vacuous ‘make your MPs work harder’ line, suddenly found themselves in a debate about whether or not Britain would have to purchase electronic vote counting machines.

The irony is that the Yes campaign are big supporters of the introduction of electronic counting machines. After these very same machines malfunctioned at the last Scottish Parliamentary elections, costing the taxpayer an extra £9 million, the Scottish Director of the Electoral Reform Society defended electronic counting saying ‘elections shouldn’t be run on the cheap’.

Matthew Elliott: AV, expenses and the anti-politician message

Matthew Elliott is Campaign Director of NO to AV.

When I started as Campaign Director of NO to AV last September, my friends started sending me literature from the Yes campaign. “Make MPs work harder!” claimed one leaflet. “Stop the expenses scandal!” claimed another. “Shouldn’t the founder of the TaxPayers’ Alliance be working for the other side?” they teased. 

From reading the Yes to AV literature, you would be forgiven for thinking that it was the Electoral Reform Society rather than the TaxPayers’ Alliance who campaigned against excessive MP’s expenses. And that the Independent broke the scandal, rather than the Telegraph.

Here’s a bit of free advice for the Yes campaign – the Great Pretenders of this referendum. Stop pretending to have any claim at all to the anti-politician message. It isn’t your message, it never has been: it isn’t what you mean or what you want or what your campaign is all about. If you are going to claim to be fearless fighters for open politics, you really need the battle scars to prove it.

It would also help if you weren’t running a campaign for a voting system that would actually undermine open politics. Here’s how Oxford Professor Vernon Bogdanor described the potential effect of the Alternative Vote in the Guardian two weeks ago: “Westminster is in danger of becoming a house without windows, dominated by political maneuvering which excites the political class but alienates the voter.” Surely that’s the last thing this country wants. Alienated voters? The political classes hustling for their own advantage? That’s the exact opposite of creating a new open politics.

The Yes campaign’s anti-politician stance is also undermined by the fact that this referendum is the product of the horse trading that Professor Bogdanor warns of. The Alternative Vote system wasn’t in the manifestos of either the two political parties that are now in coalition, and virtually nobody in Britain had anything good to say about it before last May. Instead the people who are now campaigning for AV were pretty rude about it: Pam Giddy, who runs the Yes campaign, described it as “a politicians fix”. The Electoral Reform Society, who are financing the Yes campaign, wrote that AV is “not proportional and not suitable for the election of a…parliament”. And Nick Clegg, who opted for this referendum rather than keeping his promise on tuition fees, described it as “a miserable little compromise”.

The problem with the Yes campaign’s anti-politician pretence is that it is founded on a voting system that is being proposed, fought for and financed by one political party – the Liberal Democrats – for their own political gain. And one that betrays the beliefs and principles of everyone in the Yes Campaign, because instead of fighting for Proportional Representation, their brief is to fight for a system which Roy Jenkins said is even less proportional than the system we already have.

So, it is about time we ask: Where are the real reformers? Whose side are they on in the AV debate? As someone who has always wanted and fought for more transparency and honesty from our elected officials, I believe our country cannot afford a political system conducted behind closed doors, excluding the voter and benefiting one party.

Matthew Elliott: The Australian AV experience

 Matthew Elliott is Campaign Director of No2AV.

Happy Australia Day to any Aussie readers! 

While it might seem strange to drag the issue of the UK's forthcoming referendum on the Alternative Vote into the national day of our friends Down Under, Australia's experience of AV has become a regular talking point for both the NO and Yes to AV campaigns. 

The Yes camp's use of Oz as an example of a mainstream country using AV is understandable given that their only other options are Fiji and Papua New Guinea. But the reasons for the NO to AV campaign referring to the Australia experience are not so immediately obvious.

So here are 8 facts about the impact of the Alternative Vote on the Australian political system which demonstrates that AV is an unfair system promoted by politicians rather than the people:

1. Six out of ten Australians want to return to First Past the Post.

According to a poll conducted by the Australian Institute of Public Affairs, a pro-AV campaign would get a drubbing if the British referendum question were posed to the Australian people tomorrow. 57% of Australians want to return to First Past the Post, while only 37% want to keep AV (Sydney Morning Herald, “Poll shows support for electoral reform”, 15 October 2010

Matthew Elliott: United against AV

Matthew Elliott is Campaign Director of No2AV.

During the Christmas holidays, the cross-party NO to AV campaign announced the names of over 100 Labour MPs – almost half of the Parliamentary Labour Party – who will be voting no to the Alternative Vote at the referendum in May.

Their decision seems to have caused some confusion. The Labour Party manifesto in May promised a referendum on the subject of AV, but did not commit the Labour Party one way or the other. To accuse these MPs of hypocrisy, as some have done – most notably the so-called Labour Yes camp led somewhat surprisingly by Ben Bradshaw who, as Jonathan reported, seems to have undergone a damascene conversion on the Alternative Vote – is to misrepresent the original manifesto commitment. In fact, it is no different to David Cameron promising this referendum in May and placing his full support behind a ‘no’ vote – which is what he has done.

This impressive show of support for a ‘no’ vote from Labour brings together senior figures from every wing of the party and plenty of its new generation, including many MPs elected for the first time in 2010. I’m sure they feel a little strange to find themselves on the same side as the Conservative Party, which will be campaigning for a ‘no’ vote – but it’s right that an issue as important as this should rise above party politics.

Constitutional reform should be about what’s best for the country, not one particular party or special interest group. Sadly, some people can’t seem to put partisan instincts to one side – as this report commissioned by the Yes campaign just before Christmas showed - you may also like to read this blog from the very same author who, a year ago, wisely said: “At a time of economic crisis, when people are calling for clear leadership and direction, it would be foolish to abolish a [voting] system that carries out these functions.”

The truth is, both Labour and the Conservatives might sometimes win more seats under AV – it would have inflated Tony Blair’s already large majorities in 1997 and 2001, for instance, and given Margaret Thatcher even more seats in the 1980s – but it would have done so by exacerbating the swings against the other parties. Is that really the ‘reform’ the Yes campaign want to see? I certainly find it very odd to hear them claim that the first-past-the-post voting system ‘gave us the Iraq war’ and then prescribe a change which would have given Tony Blair an even larger majority…

Conservative Home's expert panel previews the Budget

In advance of today's Budget, ConservativeHome assembled an expert panel of political figures and commentators to outline what they hope to see from today's Budget in their area of interest or expertise. Their thoughts are below and once Alistair Darling has delivered the Budget, we will post their reactions here on Platform later this afternoon.

Andrew Lilico, Managing Director of Europe Economics, on Growth

The Budget should be realistic about the growth situation - planning against a recession at least as bad as the early 1980s and a material fall in the sustainable growth rate of the economy (to perhaps just 2-2.25%), cutting our spending cloth accordingly.  The Government should admit that on a recession that bad its previous plans would take spending above 50% of GDP, and that this is unacceptable. 

To keep down the growth of spending as a proportion of GDP, it should immediately announce a £50bn reduction in growth in spending between 2008-9 to 2010-11 (e.g., by freezing the cash budget of most departments), with a commitment to seek further reductions of up to £50bn, if necessary, for later years.

In addition, the annual inflation targeting regime should be replaced with a target of average inflation at 3% annually between now and 2015 - with the inflation measure changed to include housing costs.

Matthew Elliott reviews Jesse Norman's Compassionate Economics

Matthew Elliott is Chief Executive and Co-Founder of the TaxPayers’ Alliance.

Compassionate Economics: The social foundations of economic prosperity by Jesse Norman (Policy Exchange/University of Buckingham Press, 2008)  is available on Amazon.co.uk or can be downloaded free of charge through www.compassionateeconomics.com.

Jesse himself outlined the book's main themes on ConHome's Platform last week.

Over the summer, when the Conservatives had a steady double-digit poll lead and Labour was flirting with regicide, public affairs companies across London started printing glossy brochures forecasting what a Cameron Government would do. Most of these brochures were a load of tosh, with “exclusive insights” cribbed from ConservativeHome and “in-depth analysis” which could have read directly at the Spectator’s Coffee House blog. Now we are officially in recession, people wishing to spend their money more wisely and gain a real insight into David Cameron’s Conservatives should read Compassionate Economics by Jesse Norman.

The main objective of the book is to reclaim economics as a discipline which recognises the wider social context in which people operate. Traditionally, economists recognised this. As well as writing the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith also wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which highlighted “pity and compassion” as key drivers of individuals. As Friedrich Hayek – himself a lawyer and political philosopher as well as a Nobel Prize winning economist – once remarked, nobody can be a great economist who is only an economist. This is why Jesse Norman turns his fire on modern, mathematics-obsessed economists.

The third chapter of Compassionate Economics opens with a wonderful quote from Kenneth E. Boulding: “Mathematics brought rigour to Economics. Unfortunately, it also brought mortis.” Traditionally, economists used the notion that people were perfectly rational utility-maximisers operating under perfect information as simply an assumption with useful predictive powers. The problems started, according to Jesse Norman, when it was transformed from an assumption into a description of how people operate in the real world.