SIR – Mr Hobsbaum (T&A, May 21) suggests that leaving the EU would result in ‘erecting trade barriers’ with our European neighbours.
Quite apart from noting that the Euro Parliament election results would suggest that the UK is not the only country where the ‘wider and deeper’ Euro project is not exactly flavour of the month, I think he’s fallen for the rather overcooked Lib Dem and Labour chestnut that 3.5 million UK jobs would be at risk if we left.
The tall tale originates some 15 years ago from a study by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), when it was eagerly seized on by the “Britain in Europe” pressure group as support for its slogan “out of Europe, out of work”.
If we left the EU, we were told, millions of jobs would be lost. This was such a complete distortion of what the NIESR actually said – that withdrawal would have little effect long-term effect on employment – that its director called it “pure Goebbels… in many years of academic research, I cannot recall such a wilful distortion of the facts.”
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