The View from Durham Roundabout, by Godfrey Bloom MEP

We shall soon be asked to cast our vote on the Euro Elections, a mysterious organisation to most people who are largely bewildered as to membership implications.

Can they be blamed? Public sector broadcasting and the press, both extremely partisan never seem to bother to outline how it works or how it affects their lives.

Over 70% of our law now comes from Brussels. The only serious in depth study on Brussels and National Law was by the German Government who came to the figure of 80%. These estimates are broadly unchallenged by the Commission or Bureaucracy.

At election time some politicians try to spin it is 10% because the House of Commons only logs community law via a rather arcane assessment procedure. This is too absurd to go into here.

English Law is based on common law and statute law and can be traced, as a system, back to the time of Alfred the Great. Well before Magna Carta.

European Law, Corpus Juris or Napoleonic Code if you prefer is prescriptive. It tells you that which you may do rather than that which you may not. This means since joining the EU our system has been overtaken by the highly legalistic approach to government.

We now have had more law passed since 1997 than the entire period from the Bill of Rights of 1688/9 to the election of the Blair government. In the last 10 years I have seen about 2000 pieces of legislation a year go through the ‘parliament’ which is the amending chamber. Most of it is trivial.

Or is it? A few examples, novelty food ingredients, bottle shapes and sizes, tractor seats, tail gate lights and light filaments, the list is endless. Energy, food labelling, fishery, agriculture, employment policy all come from Brussels.

My desk in the last 10 years has been swamped with pleas from small businesses to vote against some piece of legislation. The effect of which would be to put them out of business. Three packaging companies, a bottling plant and a vending machine company to mention just a few.

The lawyer, regulator and civil servant love all this. Jobs for the boys.

Big businesses dislikes it but know that the unholy political alliance works in their favour. Small and medium size businesses account for nearly 80% of the UK economy and they are in despair.

The political rhetoric is less than helpful. Almost impossible to discern the truth and then translate it into the sound bite land of television.

‘3 million jobs depend on our membership’, an absurdity of infinite and obvious stupidity. The proposition that political union is essential to trade is economically illiterate on an awesome scale.

Over 40 countries now have completely free trade agreements with the EU without the baggage of petty regulation that spews forth from it.

Stand at the roundabout in Durham City and watch Hyundai’s, Kia’s, Subaru’s and Jeep’s shoot past. Our shops are stuffed with Chinese goods. Your vacuum cleaner was probably made in Malaysia.

The argument is to frighten the factory workers whose company has a European export market. Is it likely they will impose tariffs when we are massive net importers from Europe?

Will BMW, Mercedes and Volkswagen stand for tariffs? Of course not. Our trade grows exponentially with North America and the Far East. It continues to shrink with the EU.

Demographically and economically the EU is in decline. Addicted to welfarism, statism, bureaucracy and crony capitalism we are already entering the end game.

Youth unemployment is 50% in Greece, Southern Italy and the Iberian Peninsula. Averages 30% everywhere else with the exception of Germany (9%). This is unsustainable in any society.

Even Germany who bankrolls the EU has a debt ratio of 80% of GDP. It is owed £900 billion by the shadow banking system.

Like the rest of the world, government debt is beyond any hope of repayment and default or hyperinflation is the inevitable outcome. No it is not different this time.

So, whom do you vote for in the election?

The fiat currency debt Tsunami will actually make it irrelevant as the EU in five years time will not exist as it does now.

If you believe in the European dream, which is not incidentally an ignoble one, the honest vote is Liberal Democrat.

If you want self-government, or indeed even self-misgovernment, vote UKIP.