Prof says . . .

Under the Lisbon Constitutional Treaty, apart from defence and foreign affairs, every major field, including agriculture, transport and energy, which a British government may wish to act on or legislate for independently is either an exclusive or a shared EU competence, which is subject to Qualified Majority Voting (QMV) in the Council of Ministers. This is the institution which makes binding laws on us. The UK has precisely 12.4% or about one eighth of the vote under the QMV procedure.

In place of the veto which we used to have in many fields, under Lisbon we can only block a proposal if we can put together an improbable coalition representing 35% of the population of the EU – which would need something like one other large country, plus 5-10 small countries like Hungary, Lithuania and Slovakia, countries with which we have no close connection and who would doubtless exact a price for their support. Renegotiation of the Treaty requires all 27 members to agree.

Binding ourselves into this cat’s-cradle of inter-country voting, regulations and directives cost us in direct payment around £10 billion gross in 2008 (allowing for the Thatcher refund), a payment which under the foolish Blair agreement in 2005 is due to rise by another £1 billion or so in 2013.

By contrast, in the United Nations, towards whose budget we pay around £120 million, we have direct influence over its operations, if necessary through our veto powers in the Security Council. Likewise through NATO we have maintained real influence over our security at a very modest price.

Britain’s membership of the EU is, like immigration and rebuilding our industrial economy, off limits for the LibLabCon parties, who just squabble about relatively trivial and improbable savings of one or two billion pounds out of the £170 billion we have to find in our internal accounts, and who ignore completely the £80 billion deficit in our external goods trade which has built up under their rule.

If people want to see a permanent end to mass immigration, our manufacturing industries rebuilt and an escape from the costly and distracting EU encumbrance, then they will have to vote for UKIP. Certainly the election of a UKIP MP will deliver a shock to LibLabCon such as they have never previously received – and real change will come very quickly after that.