The 23rd of June was not Independence Day for Britain. It was the day the UK shot itself in the foot.
The Vote Leave claims, of red tape from the EU costing British businesses £600m a week, are utter nonsense. I have not built Cobra Beer from scratch over the last 26 years worrying about red rape. If anything, it is our own – home-grown – regulations and barriers, such as our ever-increasing tax regulations – increasing in both complexity and size – our planning laws and our housing laws.
And then there was the biggest lie of them all - the £350 million that we give to the EU every week, emblazoned on the Vote Leave battle-bus, and that this would be saved by leaving the EU and put into the NHS to improve its services.
The Vote Leave advertising film was, quite frankly, not just misleading but shocking and should have been taken down by the Advertising Standards Authority.
In reality, this £350 million per week is a gross contribution. We receive a rebate of almost £200 million, which equates to a net contribution per annum of £8 billion.
And what no one has mentioned during this whole campaign is putting this £8 billion per year into context; according to HM Treasury data, that makes barely one per cent of our annual government expenditure per annum of over £770 billion. This £8 billion is barely going to shift the needle, let alone save the NHS!
To further put this into context, we send over £12 billion of aid per year around the world; this is more than 50 per cent higher than our net contribution to the EU! I would pay the £8 billion every year to the EU just for the peace and stability that the EU, along with NATO, has brought to Europe that the UK has benefited from for the past seven decades.
I predicted that a Brexit would create huge uncertainty. Britain relies enormously on inward investment. Britain has acted as a gateway to Europe by countries like India and, in fact, 60 per cent of companies from all over the world outside of the EU have their European headquarters in the UK according to Deloitte.
EY research shows that the UK is the second largest recipient of inward investment in the world and the highest in the EU by miles. Is this going to carry on after leaving the EU? Already credit rating agencies are talking about downgrading Britain’s coveted AAA rating and the pound has plummeted to a level not seen since the 1980s.
This reminds me of the time when I came as a 19 year-old student from India to a Britain that was the sick man of Europe, a country with a glass ceiling, a country where entrepreneurship was looked down upon.
Today, Britain is a country of aspiration and opportunity, where people can get as far as they want to regardless of race, religion and background, where entrepreneurship is celebrated. Do we want to wind the clock back to being the sick man of Europe again?
The uncertainties will continue for years to come with the protracted negotiations with the EU. All this will hamper inward investment, create uncertainty in business and hugely damage our economy, our businesses, our citizens, our stability and our standing in the world.
