On Monday, David Cameron, the de facto leader of the Remain campaign, wrote in the Daily Mirror how Brexit will hit the poor hardest in an renewed effort to win Labour voters.
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Unlike David Cameron, I grew up on a council estate in Manchester. My mum still lives in the same house today and my brother lives on the same street. That street is like thousands across the country where many people struggle to find work that pays a decent wage, struggle to pay ever increasing food and energy bills, struggle to pay rents, and struggle to get their children into a decent, local school.
Whilst I understand that you can’t choose who you are born to, David Cameron, does not and never will understand what it is like to be at the bottom of the economic ladder. So, as you can guess, his comments did stick in my throat a little.
The truth is that the European Union doesn’t understand the issues facing the working British man and woman today, nor does it care. EU membership over the past 40 years has weighed down the working class and rather than benefiting the poor, membership of the EU has done the very opposite.
The very idea that the EU works in the interests of the poor could not be further from the truth.
Take food prices for example. Over the the past 40 years the working class has seen steadily rising food costs. This is caused directly by EU policies on the Common Agricultural Policy that imposes tariffs on cheaper food products from the rest of the world. Ultimately, this hits the consumer. Brexit will reduce our food costs, a claim even supported by leading remain campaigner Paddy Ashdown.
Over the past 10 years, green taxes on energy bills, which have come from European Union directives have driven up energy prices for British consumers. According to the renewable energy foundation, green taxes have added £200 on to the average annual fuel bill. Those same taxes provide fantastic yearly incomes for those, like Mr Cameron’s father-in-law, who happens to own an estate home, to subsidised wind farms.
EU open borders have driven down wages of poor, working families. Only last week, we saw figures showing record high National Insurance registrations from the EU, which shows the true scale of EU migration into Britain. Much of this migration is low-skilled, which causes wage compression and job displacement for the lowest paid. With a £9 minimum wage to be introduced from 2020, acting as a significant pull factor, the scale of migration from the EU will only increase further. Only by controlling immigration into the UK can we actually put the interests of the British worker first.
A route out of poverty to a better life for many is starting up a new business or getting a great education. I was lucky to win a scholarship to an ex-grammar school that gave me the leg up I needed. For many others, starting a business is another.
Small and medium sized businesses in the UK are the backbone of the economy, yet the EU swamps start-ups with regulation, dragging them and their business opportunities down.
While large corporations can employ specialists to navigate this complicated system, small businesses don’t have the same resources. While some regulations are necessary, over-regulation from the EU is said to have a cost of over £30 billion to the UK economy.
The reality is that many under the age of 50 who can’t remember a Britain outside of the EU in one form or another have accepted the status quo as the best option.
Yes, getting rid of tariffs in Europe in the 1970s was a good thing. But that was 40 years ago and the world has moved on. We’ve been blinded by the EU and the political class in this country, who say that the EU is our only hope and that there is no viable alternative. Well, there is now. It’s called Brexit.
For the first time in my lifetime, the working class of this country don’t have to accept this anymore. They have the chance to vote for something different. A different choice, a choice of freedom, prosperity and security. To build on our long-term relationships with the Commonwealth, opening up our hearts and minds to the rest of the world rather than looking backwards to an increasingly out-of-date EU that is insular, inward-looking and filled with people without the imagination to strive for better.