Goodbye EU, Goodbye Austerity Britain
Comment of the Day

September 29 2016

Commentary by David Fuller

Goodbye EU, Goodbye Austerity Britain

The era of so-called austerity economics was characterised by modest increases in overall public spending, some unpleasant individual cuts to welfare and huge increases in tax revenues. The rise and rise of our gross and net contributions to the EU aggravated the balance of payments deficit and forced us to borrow more money to meet the demands of Brussels. The sooner we are out of the EU, the sooner we can cancel the contributions. The need for large tax revenues sometimes encouraged the imposition of high taxes that damaged growth and hit jobs. Sometimes raising the rates acutely reduced the tax take. Higher stamp duties hit the property market, while income tax from the rich went up when the rate was brought down a bit.

Leaving the EU is a sovereign decision by a newly sovereign people. It is not something to negotiate with Germany. Offer to continue tariff-free trade, send them the letter and then leave. It should not take two years and does not need to. The rest of the EU are likely to want to carry on with tariff-free trade as they have more to lose from tariffs than us. All services are tariff-free whatever happens, under world rules.

Of course, after we leave we need to continue payments to farmers, universities and others who did get a bit of our EU money back, though most of it did not come home. We can now spend it on our own priorities. But we should not simply use the savings to cut the deficit. We need to get that down by promoting growth. Growth slashes the gap between spending and tax revenues by cutting the need for benefit top-ups as people get jobs and pay rises while boosting the tax revenues as people earn and spend more.

David Fuller's view

The paragraph above which I have emboldened says it all.  

Here is a PDF of John Redwood's article.

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