Monday’s CBI report on Britain’s membership of the European Union is a serious piece of work and could turn out to be a game-changer. Not just for the European debate but for Labour’s position in it, and for Labour’s relations with the business community.
It was almost buried in the coverage of the CBI conference on Monday but the CBI report, Our Global Role: The Business Vision for a Reformed EU, is a landmark document. Involving extensive research and a huge consultation exercise with its members, it concluded that it is overwhelmingly in Britain’s national interest to stay in the EU, with membership responsible for 4-5 per cent of UK gross domestic product, or £62-£78bn every year. That equates to £3,000 per household. The standout polling result was that 80 per cent of CBI members, including 77 per cent of SMEs, said they would vote for the UK to remain in the EU if a referendum was held tomorrow.
This confirms what we at Business for New Europe have known for a long time: the media caricature of business desperate for a referendum life-raft to escape a sea of Brussels red tape is wrong. British business wants to be at the heart of an open and competitive Europe, building alliances for reform of the EU institutions, and pursuing global opportunities such as the proposed EU-US free trade area, and tacking global challenges such as climate change. The EU is far from perfect and reform is certainly needed. That’s why is its essential to build cross-EU alliances for the reforms set out by the CBI, and in our own BNE Business Manifesto such as completion of the single market in services and digital, and streamlining the EU institutions so the European parliament doesn’t shuttle between Brussels and Strasbourg. The EU is changing, led by a resurgent Germany, and a progressive, open agenda for change will find a receptive audience in European capitals. But, as John Major found to his cost, we have no influence if we don’t engage.
There is a real opportunity for Labour too. Ed Balls, who can’t exactly be accused of being an unthinking Europhile, was quick to welcome the report, telling the same day’s CBI conference in London that ‘Europe needs reform, but to walk away from our EU membership would be reckless, foolish and deeply damaging.’
With every week that passes, David Cameron’s promise to hold a referendum no later than 2017 looks less and less likely to be the swing issue for voters in the 2014 European elections, still less the decider in the general election a year later. Labour’s excellent new shadow Europe minister, Gareth Thomas was right to point out on Monday that among voters it’s clear that jobs, economic growth and rising living standards are the priority: ‘the combination of access to the UK market and routes into to other European markets is a major part of why companies as diverse as Vodafone, Hitachi, Nissan, Honda, and BMW have invested in the UK’.
Labour will always have to work harder that the Conservatives to convince its shares the objectives of business leaders. But with a message of reform from within, not isolation and extremism, Labour, the wider Labour movement and business can find real common cause.
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Will Tanner is vice-chair of Business for New Europe. He tweets @WillTanner1
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Photo: CBI