Book review - "Ten Years on - Britain without the European Union" by Dr Lee Rotherham

Dr Rotherham starts by taking us to 2020 and paints a picture of Britain outside the EU. Britain is better off, less regulated and trading with the EU but not subject to its laws. Meanwhile the EU goes from bad to worse with more and more regulation. He then offers an historical scenario of how independence came about. The Tories win the next election as Labour implodes. Cameron, having promised rather half-heartedly that “he would not let matters rest” after ducking out of a referendum, agrees to do a cost/benefit analysis of Britain’s EU membership. No surprise, it shows that being in the EU costs us an awful lot. The media go mad, one thing leads to another and by the end of 2010, a referendum seeking a mandate to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the EU produces an overwhelming “Yes” Vote. With Cameron having pledged to renegotiate part of the Lisbon treaty anyway, the tide for withdrawal becomes unstoppable.

It’s great stuff, and well before the end of the book, the reader is longing to see this fiction become reality. What makes it such a good read is that it offers such a positive vision. The withdrawalist movement has sometimes been accused of being very negative, but here is a message that many can rally round – life would be so much better for Britain without the encumbrance of EU membership.

There is clearly a very coded message for David Cameron – the EU is not going to go away as an issue. If, as Dr Rotherham, predicts, the Tories win, it will be at grass roots level a very different party from the last days of John Major’s regime. Some MPs, MEPs and a good number of ordinary activists now openly support British withdrawal – a unique situation for a party in government in any member state. With a number of withdrawalist parties likely to be snapping at the Tories’ heels in the run-up to polling day, we can expect a more Eurosceptic tone to emerge from Conservative Central Office in the coming months if, as seems likely their standing in the polls starts to decline in favour of these parties .

This in turn means that if elected, they will have to deliver on any promises relating to the EU or else a split in the Tory party will be inevitable.

Perhaps another interesting feature to emerge from this book and the cinema advertising campaign is that it is now clear that withdrawalism can do very well without UKIP’s Nigel Farage having to front everything. Dr Rotherham may not yet be as well known as a speaker, but he is a very persuasive writer who has marshalled a far stronger argument together than Farage’s soundbytes.

All in all, this book makes one believe that withdrawal can and will happen. It remains to be seen how accurate a prophecy of events it proves to be, but with the Taxpayers’ Alliance clearly having a few more tricks up their sleeve, we are in for interesting and possibly quite exciting times in the coming months and years          

Ten Years on – Britain without the European Union is published by the Taxpayers’ Alliance, 83 Victoria Street London SW1H 0HW. ISBN 978-0-95639-200-8. It costs £5.99