Sir John Major has said it is wrong to flirt with leaving the European Union at a time when the world is coming together.
The former prime minister’s remarks might be taken as a warning to David Cameron not to push too hard the threat to leave the EU when he attends a two-day summit in Brussels at which Britain will press its renegotiated terms for staying in the bloc.
But Major said he was not giving advice to Cameron and thought it was right to hold a referendum to clear the air and “end this long-running and tiresome debate”.
Major’s view that the UK must stay in Europe slightly undercuts Cameron’s negotiating hand as EU leaders contemplate how much ground they need to concede. Major said the summit should not be seen as high noon but instead as part of a process of negotiation. The crunch would not come until next year, he claimed.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “For the UK to break off and head into splendid isolation does not seem to to me to be in our interests now or perhaps more important in our children and grandchildren.”
Major said he was “very sceptical of a great deal of European Union policy” and was no starry eyed European, but “flirting with leaving at a time when the world is coming together seems to me is very dangerous and against our national interest”. He pointed out the US and Japan, for example, were building a transatlantic partnership, and he said the UK could not prosper alone.
Like many other people, he said, he found the EU “frustrating as hell, with bankrupt slogans and an inability to confront problems”. But he said: “If the UK would leave there is a high probability that Scotland will hold another referendum and leave the UK, and as a result the UK would be fractured with the result that our prestige would suffer.”
He said many of the promises of greater national sovereignty outside the EU were illusory. He said the UK “would have to pay at least half if not more of the current UK net contributions to the EU as the price for access to the EU single market. If we leave the EU it will not be a friendly departure, it will be very acrimonious. Negotiations with an irate ex-partner could be very difficult. We may get a substandard deal to enter the single market.”
Major challenged those who say the UK outside the EU could control Britain’s borders and have no immigration. “I don’t think that is so. In or out, we cannot keep the world at bay. If we were out, would France be holding so many immigrants at Calais or would they not. And if not they would be heading here.”
He added: “We are told our parliament will be sovereign – that is total nonsense. In order to trade with the EU we would have to accept their regulations, we would have no possibility of an input into those regulations or say in changing them. The prime minister would have to go the UK parliament and say: ‘Here are some regulations passed by the EU. We must pass them without change or we cannot change with Europe.’ So much for parliamentary sovereignty.”
