A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 22nd November 2000.

Mr Hoon may believe that there is no intention to decouple the United States from European security.  But what is one transient British politician’s “intention” worth besides the French governing classes’ 50-year-old objective to do exactly that?

Mr Hoon said on the radio that there would be “no Euro-badges, no Euro-flags, no anthems”.  Last Sunday saw the publication of one of two designs of Euro-badges being considered for the new Euro-force.  The only British declaration the continentals will ever pay serious heed to is when we give notice to withdraw from the EU and join Efta and Nafta instead.

A letter to the Editor of the Daily Telegraph which was published on 6th July 2000.

Your correspondents (July 3rd) are right to suspect that some foreign car industry owners are using spurious arguments about the strength of the pound as an excuse for closing UK plants or squeezing subsidies out of the UK taxpayer.  For instance, BMW’s claim that it was “losing” £750 million a year was more than double the whole wage bill at Longbridge.

In round terms, only about £3,000 of a £10,000 ex-works price of a car is accounted for by car makers themselves.  Allowing for the import content of bought-in materials and components means that only about 50-55 per cent of the ex-works cost of a UK car exported to Euroland is subject to the UK/euro exchange rate.

Since launch, the euro has declined 11 per cent against sterling, making an adverse euro price difference of about 5.5 per cent – hardly commensurate with the huge noise currently being generated.  Moreover, the Nissan Sunderland plant last year had a commendable 20 car per man-year output advantage over competitive Continental plants, which translates to an offsetting advantage of about three per cent on a £10,000 car.

Before we all get swept along by the current furore from the foreign car lobby (from which Honda is notably absent) we should remember that the biggest market for most British goods is right here in the United Kingdom where, in many cases, the decline in the euro/£ rate has meant a welcome 11 per cent reduction in input costs.

While the Government has no control over exchange rates, it could control the proposed fuel cost levy.

A letter to the Editor of the Daily Telegraph which was published on 25th November 1999.

If there are threats by Ford and BMW to withdraw from producing in Britain, it gives an opportunity to recover Rolls-Royce, Rover and Ford assets at knock-down prices, while making life difficult for hostile car companies to sell their products here.  It would also serve notice on assorted American and German bosses operating other assets here to keep out of British politics.

A letter to the Editor of the Daily Telegraph which was published on 7th September 1998.

The imminent closure of the Fujitsu semi-conductor factory in Durham, following the closure of the Siemens semi-conductor plant in the same area (report, Sept. 5th) should underline to the Government the folly of relying on foreign companies for such a large proportion of new manufacturing investment.

The chief benefit of foreign investment has, in fact, been to bring much needed expertise and modern quality standards to parts of British industry.  Yet at the same time it has exposed once again the near total failure of the British financial system to invest in British industry in anything like the amounts needed to sustain it as a viable entity.

The passing into foreign ownership of Rover and Rolls-Royce cars, Courtaulds and a wide range of well-respected smaller engineering companies (Crabtree, on Tyneside, is under bid now) will in due course expose more British workers to the brutal fact that when the chips are down and markets are shrinking, foreign owners will close British plants before they close their own.

Mr Blair may well be “saddened” by the Fujitsu factory’s closure, but such characteristic emotion is no substitute for the hard intellectual and managerial task of putting right, in the fact of enormous entrenched interests, our defective corporate financial system.  Fiddling with interest rates is no substitute either.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 30th May 1998.

Sir Leon Brittan may believe that, as he told a recent Tory Party fringe conference, “no-one in Europe wants a Federal Europe”, but this sentiment has to be set against what British politicians have said, and what has actually happened.

For instance – Sir Harold Wilson: “There was a threat of monetary union, and that has now been removed” (1975 Referendum leaflet); Mr Selwyn Gummer: Monetary Union “is not on the agenda” (Today Programme 1995); Mr Kenneth Clark (Today Programme 1996) brushed aside the issue of the transfer of Britain’s gold and foreign currency reserves to the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, when this is explicitly required by the Maastricht Treaty protocol (articles 30 and 42).

Most British people prefer to judge by what influential Continentals say about the EMU project, which is after all their baby – Hans Tietmeyer (Governor of Germany’s Bundesbank): “A European currency will lead to member-states transferring their sovereignty over financial and wages policy as well as financial affairs.  It is an illusion to think that states can hold on to their autonomy over taxation affairs”; Karl Lammers (Chancellor Kohl’s spokesman): “EMU is the central part of the project for European unification”; the Vice-President of the Bundesbank: “of course a country which merges its currency completely cannot remain independent politically” (Today Programme 1990).

As for currency stability, Sir Leon talks parochially as if European parities were the only ones that mattered.  Had we stayed in the ERM after 1992, the pound would have gone almost to two US dollars, a rate which would have bankrupted many British companies, such as Rolls Royce Aero Engines, with export sales priced in dollars.  Over the last four years, the German mark and the other currencies have devalued against the dollar by around 16%, helping their current economic recovery, while the pound has remained essentially stable against the dollar.  Currency parities are ultimately indicators of economies’ trading strengths.  Attempts to remove these indicators for all time are as vain, and dangerous, as removing a pressure gauge from a boiler.

A letter to the Editor of the Daily Telegraph which was published on 16th October 1997.

Even if Vauxhall now disowns the remarks of Mustafa Mohatarem, an American citizen and employee of General Motors (report, Oct. 15) that “a lot of manufacturing jobs that are tied to sales in Europe are tied to Britain joining EMU” there is still undoubtedly an orchestrated campaign by sectors of big business to push Britain into abolishing its own currency.

The remarks underline not only the deliberate eliding of the different concepts of common market and common currency, but also bring into sharp relief the practice of foreign businessmen interfering in British politics.

One wonders if Mr Mohatarem will now be sent to Canada to tell the Canadians they must abolish their currency so that General Motors will continue to manufacture cars there for the North American Common Market, or to Mexico where GM are busy building plants.

The fact is that all the major car manufacturers, including Ford and BMW whose UK chairmen have also been giving us the benefit of their “advice”, invest globally for global markets irrespective of currencies: car engines come from Brazil to Europe, and go from Britain to the rest of the world, not just Europe.

The bosses of the car companies know this perfectly well, but neither economics nor consistency have ever been corporate businessmen’s strong suit: a year or so ago their view was that the pound would be weak compared with the euro, now they are all afraid that the pound will be too strong.

In 1990 they were virtually unanimous that Britain should join the ERM: two years later they were delighted at the fall of the pound relative to the mark when Britain left the ERM.

In 1996 Sir Michael Perry, then chairman of Unilever, was asked by the House of Lords European Committee what action Unilever would take if Britain did not join the single currency.  He replied, “We operate throughout the world with governments and economic conditions which vary . . . we would not change anything we do”.  Car manufacturers will continue to do exactly the same, whether Britain is in or out of EMU.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 10th June 1997.

David Heathcoat-Amory is surely right in saying that the Conservative Party must commit itself to finding a different relationship with the EU (article, June 6).  But he fails to follow through his own analysis.

Only repeal of section II of the European Communities Act 1972 which establishes the superiority of European law over British law will make any real difference.  Such repeal would effectively signify our withdrawal from the EU as Mr Heathcoat-Amory would surely recognise: repeal of the Single European Act and the European Communities (Amendment) Act (Maastricht) would logically follow.

It is only from the vantage point of withdrawal that Britain can establish a “position of free trade and co-operation between sovereign states” which as Mr Heathcoat-Amory correctly says so many in the country are waiting for.

But until they abandon their wishful hankering for impossibilities and come out clearly for EU withdrawal, no one will ever again believe Conservative leaders and their vague talk of “new relationships”, “tougher stances”, etc.  What they want is simply not on offer.  There is no middle way between withdrawal and absorption.

A letter to the Editor of the Daily Telegraph which was published on 9th May 1997.

The announcement that a dedicated proponent of abolishing the pound sterling, Sir David Simon, is to be succeeded in his job as chairman of British Petroleum by Peter Sutherland – an Irishman, previously an EU commissioner (City Comment, May 8), brings into question the extent to which certain corporate businessmen are using their business positions to advance personal political objectives.

In the absence of any convincing economic or business arguments in favour of abolishing the pound, but with many against, nobody can seriously deny that the issue is overwhelmingly a political one – namely our continued existence as a self-governing country.

That being so the Confederation of British Industry – headed by another Irish citizen Niall Fitzgerald also chairman of Unilever, a predominantly British company – might wish to consider whether it and its member companies wish to be identified with a political viewpoint which, as shown in poll after poll, is overwhelmingly opposed by the British people.

That the Republic of Ireland is a supporter of this viewpoint is understandable, given the continued prominence in our affairs of certain of its citizens and the fact that Ireland receives around £2,000 per annum per family from the EU, about £400 of which comes from British families.  However these are not reasons, one would have thought, which grass roots members of the CBI support.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 16th April 1997.

You are right in saying that quota hopping (report, April 15) is a distraction from the real calamity.  The suggestion that Britain might “win” concessions on this issue at the Amsterdam Conference raises the question as to what concessions on supremely important issues such as immigration and border controls will be wrung out of a British Prime Minister as a quid pro quo.

The plain fact is that the EU has had stewardship of fishing in the bulk of our national waters since 1973, so the responsibility for over-fishing is entirely theirs.  It is right therefore that we should reclaim control over our waters for the benefit of the fish stocks and of our own fishing industry.

The EU’s objective of reducing catches of threatened species by 30% and our objective of stabilizing our fishing industry can both be met if foreign vessels are progressively excluded from our waters over the next five years to 2002.  Indeed some limited fishing by foreign vessels might be allowable beyond that date, but the key point is that it would be for us to decide.

Clearly transitional arrangements would need to be negotiated with other countries bordering the North Sea and the English Channel, but this would be on the basis of asserting our rights out to two hundred miles or the median line, whichever is closer – as agreed 30 years ago under international law.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 26th December 1996.

As we know, there are lies, damned lies and league tables, but if we can’t do much about the first two, we can get something useful from the third.  Your report on the results of the assessment of university research quality (Dec. 20th) was at variance with presentations elsewhere.

Out of 192 institutions, UMIST and Bath jostle for sixth place after Oxbridge and three London colleges, but out of four possible ways of calculating quality, UMIST is sixth in two and equal sixth in the third.

Listing of the universities by number of departments with top ratings, as in your edition, is as much a reflection of size, which is already known, as of quality, which was the purpose of this particular asessment to establish. That said, Teeside University’s spokesman has a point.

This assessment is to determine the distribution of research money which the Government provides: the way industry distributes its research money might well produce a different ranking.