If I may add this, official demographic projections suggest that within a few years’ time, because of the declining population of Germany and the increasing population of the UK, this country will be the largest in Europe in population terms. Even now, the Americans are interested in a free trade agreement with the EU, and I hope that this happens. Even today, before we are as big as we are likely to become, exports from the rest of the EU to the UK are even greater than exports from the rest of the EU to the United States. We are an even more important market than it is, so to compare us with Norway is ludicrous.
Another argument which has been raised is that we should not have a referendum. The noble Lord, Lord Thomas, was very much against referenda. In most cases, that is a perfectly valid argument, but not in this case. I recall my maiden speech in your Lordships’ House some 20 years ago. The subject on which I made it was an amendment proposed by Lord Blake calling for a referendum on the Maastricht treaty. Lord Blake was a distinguished political historian and a very eminent constitutional authority. He was an old friend of mine. When I was an undergraduate at Oxford his were among the very few lectures I bothered to go to. He set out with constitutional propriety why this was the kind of issue on which it was appropriate to have a referendum.
Noble Lords ask why now, as there has been no specific change. There has been a huge change, a sea change, in the nature of the European Union since the 1975 referendum. It is not just the passage of time. I agree with noble Lords who think that that alone is not a reason for having a referendum, but the people of this country want a referendum and they are right because of the huge change that has come about following the creation of the European monetary union and the political consequences of that decision. This is fundamental. People say there is now no specific event which would trigger a referendum. The fact is that a major and fundamental change, even if it is incremental, is still major and fundamental. There does not need to be some specific event to warrant a referendum on the issue.
Some 25 years ago, when I was Chancellor, I warned in a speech at Chatham House how fundamental it would be were the countries of Europe, who were thinking about it, to move to a monetary union and what the enormous political consequences would be. That has happened, and it has been disastrous, but there it is. However, there are consequences not just for those countries which are members of the eurozone. It has changed fundamentally the nature of the relationship between this country, which rightly decided not to join the common currency, and those countries that are part of the eurozone. That is a fundamental change. This divergence is going to increase. There is no way that we can stop that unless we are prepared to embrace the common currency, which I do not think any of us, or very few of us, with the exception of the noble Lord, Lord Davies, wishes to do.
We are now in a position where a referendum is called for. Indeed, I have reached the careful conclusion that we would be considerably better off outside the European Union. I wrote this in a long article in the Times in May last year. I was reassured to see that that article was followed by a column in the Financial Times by its most perceptive European columnist, the German Wolfgang Münchau. He wrote his article under the excellent heading, “Lord Lawson is right”. I commend it to the House.
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