Mary Honeyball MEP: Making the business case for Europe – pragmatism over prejudice

The Labour MEP for London responds to the Nissan CEO’s comments last week

Last week’s comments by Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn expose the flaws of Euroscepticism. In terms of current government policy it is the tail that wags the dog.

Ghosn suggested Nissan’s Sunderland factory is European first and British second. He said his company would need to reconsider its “strategy and investments for the future” if Britain leaves the EU.

His words hit on an uneasy fault line within the Coalition government – between economic rhetoric which promises jobs and industrial investment, and social policy which is nationalist and populist in tone.

The former can only be achieved through global engagement; the latter relies on a sentimental vision of ‘Little England’.

With Tory backbenchers, led by Adam Afriyie, now pushing for an early EU referendum – a demand which is, by Afriyie’s own admission, driven by the short-term political goal of warding off UKIP – the gap between the two is becoming ever wider.

Last week’s disagreement between the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and Eurosceptic campaign group Business for Britain shows how the Europe issue comes down to a straight choice: pragmatism or prejudice.

The CBI, which represents 240,000 UK companies, describes the case for staying in Europe as “overwhelming”. It values the annual benefits of Britain’s EU membership at as much as £78bn – £3,000 a year for every family.

As CBI Director General John Cridland points out, EU membership provides a “springboard” for reaching 500 million Europeans and gives access to trade agreements worth £15 trillion. “We’d struggle to pull off deals of this scale on our own,” he says.

Cridland’s point is very clear: in the face of big global economic changes, our best chance of remaining economically relevant is through working with our neighbours.

Business for Britain’s approach, by contrast, illustrates how difficult it is to make economic sense of an argument which is at its core myopic and knee-jerk.

The group’s co-chair John Mills drew a blank when asked on the BBC’s Today Programme how redundancies at plants like Nissan tie in with the “job creation” EU withdrawal would supposedly bring. Even Mills’ own organisation’s polling cannot disguise the fact that big businesses – those most likely to generate large-scale employment – say the benefits of being in Europe outweigh the costs.

Everything about Business for Britain, from its emotive language to the sepia wistfulness of its website, emphasises nostalgia rather than logic.

The contrast between these two mindsets was summed up nicely by David Marquand last month, when he wrote that “Europhiles speak to the head, Europhobes speak to the heart”. For me these are two approaches which cannot be reconciled; yet by succumbing to backbenchers’ Euroscepticism, David Cameron has tried to let them coexist. He has strapped himself to two horses which will never run in the same direction. This is not just the case in terms of business, but also on issues like security, where isolationism threatens the UK’s ability to tackle organised crime.

With senior business figures continuing to speak out in favour of Europe, it is important that those on the progressive wing of politics are staunchly and unapologetically pro-European.

As the business case for the EU builds, the misty-eyed vision of times passed which sustains Euroscepticism (the “never-never land” spoken of by John Major) will be exposed.

Regardless of when or if there is a referendum, this is an issue which cannot be thrown into the long grass. Those of us who want a more prosperous Britain must seize the impetus on Europe and ally ourselves with the forces of reason.

Mary Honeyball is Labour MEP for London. She will be speaking at the Lansdowne Club’s In/Out debate on Europe on Wednesday 13 November