Remember the wine lakes and butter mountains?

You are in business.  Along comes the Government and says, “we’re going to take £10 off you. Then we will give you £6 back.  And the other £4 we will give to your competitors.” You would, not unjustifiably, think your leg was being pulled.  But it’s not.

A bit of history.  Back in the good old days of 1962 the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was adopted by the six founding Member States. The six member states (not including the UK because they wouldn't let us in) individually strongly intervened in their agricultural sectors, in particular with regard to what was produced, maintaining prices for goods and how farming was organised.  Hardly free trade.

Some members, particularly France, and all farming professional organisations wanted to maintain strong state intervention in agriculture.  That could not only be achieved unless policies were harmonised and transferred to the European Community level.  And what happened under such state control?  Butter mountains.  Grain mountains.  Wine lakes.  And you and I the taxpayer paid for it.

Now there was good reasons back in the early 60’s for some sort of supporting subsidy.  It still wasn’t that long since the dark days of the 2nd world war and the impoverished 50’s.  But these days are long gone now.  Those who shout “austerity” clearly haven’t looked at their history books to see what austerity really looks like.

But back to our puzzle of the £10.  Let’s call that the amount we put into the EU CAP pot.  It’s a big pot.  It makes up 40% of all the EU spending.  That is 40% of 142.6 billion euros.  That’s a lot of money. And it's a pot that is used against our farmers.

So given we get only £6 back of what we put in, why not just say, "know what, let’s not send the ten pounds in the first place just to have six of it sent back.  Let’s just use the six to help our agriculture.  And not give our money away to competitors who then undercut us in the market place". 

Unless of course, you still believe that the EU knows best.