PRESS RELEASE : BSE campaign is talking down Britain
The press release issued by Vote Leave on 29 October 2015.
The flagging BSE campaign, the campaign to keep us in the EU, was at it again this morning, talking down Britain and suggesting that the world would end if we left the EU.
Lucy Thomas and former Home Office Minister Damian Green walked round the parliamentary press lobby at 9am this morning (when most journalists weren’t there) with a new ‘attack document’.
It is a ‘report’ that continually talks down Britain and is intended to stoke up fears of what life outside the EU would be like. It warns of the ‘risks’ if we Vote Leave, that Britain would be ‘weaker’, and that leaving the EU would ‘cost Britain dear’. We would expect nothing less from a campaign funded by the EU.
We believe that the UK will be able to negotiate its own deal with the EU when we Vote Leave. Trying to claim otherwise is doing Britain down. Suggesting that we would have to accept the same deal as Norway or Turkey misunderstands the importance of the UK to the rest of the EU.
Mandelson, Clegg and Roland Rudd all claimed the world would end if we didn’t join the euro. They were wrong then and they are wrong now. The BSE campaign – egged on by former Government strategist Andrew Cooper – want to run Project Fear II. They want to scare people into staying in the EU. This is a dangerous game to play with the British people who will not respond well to such threats.
The problem for the BSE campaign is that their own Chairman doesn’t agree with them. As Lord Rose has said: ‘Nothing is going to happen if we come out of Europe’.
People are much more likely to agree with captains of industry such as Graeme Macdonald, JCB’s chief executive who said that if we left the EU ‘I really don’t think it would make a blind bit of difference to trade with Europe. There has been far too much scaremongering about things like jobs. I don’t think it’s in anyone’s interest to stop trade. I don’t think we or Brussels will put up trade barriers.’
Jeff Immelt from GE has said: ‘It’s important the UK has good relationships around the world, but I don’t really think that its place in the European Union makes that much difference.’
Tim Tozer from Vauxhall said: ‘If this country would vote to leave the EU, would that trouble or concern us? There my answer is no because I don’t think that in that event there would not be a trade agreement with what was left of the EU.’
We do not want a Norway option. We want to secure the best possible deal for the UK. This means stopping sending £350 million each week to the EU; regaining the ability to make our own trade deals; ending the supremacy of EU law and taking our seat on world bodies.
We are confident about Britain’s place in the world and our clout as a country. We believe in Britain and its ability to negotiate a good deal with the rest of the EU when we Vote Leave. We are positive about the future of our country and the growth we could secure by taking back our place on the global stage.
Unfortunately, the BSE campaign has nothing positive to offer and is instead resorting to talking Britain down. They know their launch was a flop and that Number 10 are already openly speculating about replacing Will Straw and Stuart Rose. This new attack is not going to help – trying to scare people will backfire on them.
