The Great EU Lie.

The three-million-jobs-at risk lie

Supporters of greater EU integration, such as the deputy prime minister, Nicholas Clegg, have claimed repeatedly – on the basis of a 1999 report from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research – that at least three million jobs would be at risk if the UK withdrew from the EU. (The Institute’s director, Martin Weale, repudiated that claim and described it as ‘pure Goebbels’.) The claim rests on a misunderstanding. Three million British people are involved in exporting products to the EU, but their jobs depend on the continuation of trade, not on continued EU membership. Outside the EU Britain – like any other country in the world – would be able to sell goods and services to EU member states. Millions of jobs in China ‘depend on exports to the EU’, but no one has suggested that China must become an EU member. The three-million-jobs-at-risk lie is ‘Euro-centrism gone mad’. (Professor Tim Congdon.)