EU: UK Membership

Lord Robertson of Port Ellen Excerpts

Tuesday 25th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Robertson of Port Ellen (Lab)]

My Lords, I am glad that my noble friend Lord Liddle has brought this debate before us. It is a debate that will dominate our politics for the next few months and perhaps for the next few years. Apart from the argument that has just taken place in Scotland, this is perhaps the most important debate of our generation.

My position is clear: I believe that leaving the European Union would be disastrous. Some of us have just spent the last two and a half years in the referendum campaign in Scotland, alongside Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, arguing against Scotland leaving the union that is the United Kingdom. We all did so in spite of our totally different politics. We did so with passion, commitment and sincerity against a well funded, well organised and highly emotional separatist campaign. At the end of the day, we won the debate and the referendum. The three parties which believed in the union campaigned—occasionally uncomfortably—together.

What did we all say during that whole campaign? “We are better together”. That was our slogan and our powerful case to the people of Scotland. We spoke of years of successful integration in a union that works for all of us. We all argued about the costs of breaking up and going it alone in a complex, multilayered and interdependent world. We all warned about creating new barriers and borders when our single market was so integrated. During the referendum campaign, we all echoed the statements made by small and large companies across the land attacking the break-up of the union and the effects it would have on jobs in Scotland which depend on the big market of our neighbour. During the campaign we all said that we had the best of both worlds—decision-making in all key areas at home but part of a bigger unit where we had an equal voice. We repeated that separatism would leave our country outside, isolated, when all the big decisions were taken elsewhere. These decisions affect our citizens—their companies, their jobs and their future.

Together, we used all of these arguments relentlessly, though some of us had never really agreed on anything else before. We all of us denounced and derided the nationalists who said that the European Union was essential but that our union should be destroyed. We made all these arguments consistently and constructively, with passion and effect, and every one of them applies to the European Union that we are part of today. Because we took the argument out, despite the fact that we were campaigning for a no vote we avoided the negativism that would automatically come from arguing for no. Very few people who heard Gordon Brown’s speech in the last stages of the referendum, and very few of the millions who watched it on YouTube afterwards, could fail to see the passion for this union.

Maybe there is not the same degree of passion about the European Union and maybe there is a disenchantment creeping in sometimes with something as big as that, yet the arguments remain the same. Those arguments succeeded in Scotland against the nationalist bandwagon and persuaded people to come out in a campaign where 97% of those eligible registered to vote and where the turnout was 84% across Scotland but over 95% in some areas. Those arguments penetrated into people’s minds and, despite the ocean of yes posters and the near hysteria of the yes campaign, people listened carefully to our constructive arguments for the union that we are in and that we benefit from.

If we make the arguments for the European Union cogently enough and face people with the alternatives to what we are in at the moment, I have no doubt that the British people will come to the same conclusion as the Scots.