Supporters

The Better Off Out campaign is supported by thousands of ordinary people, as well as some MPs, Lords, journalists and opinion formers. Below are some quotes from some of our renowned supporters on why they believe we would all be BETTER OFF OUT:

 

PATRONS:

“For many years the British have been assured they could have a sovereign homeland and full membership of the EU.  We were lied to.  It is now clear we can either go all the way with Brussels to the euro-megastate, or have a self-governing Great Britain, but under no circumstances can we have both.  They are now completely incompatible.  Only fools and fanatics go on denying it. You must make up your mind.  Which do you want?”  Frederick Forsyth CBE  Patron of BETTER OFF OUT

 

 

“From being a supporter of British membership of the Common Market in 1970 I have come to believe that the United Kingdom would be Better Off Out of the developing European Republic of the 21st century.  We British have a thousand year history of self-government.  We have been free and democratic longer than any other nation.  The European Union is too diverse, too bureaucratic, too corporatist and too centralist to be a functioning democracy.  We are happy to trade with our European friends and the rest of the world – but we would prefer to govern ourselves.”  The Rt. Hon. the Lord Tebbit of Chingford CH, PC  Patron of BETTER OFF OUT

 

SUPPORTERS:

Members of Parliament 

 

 

Our country built our prosperity as world traders.  Our future prosperity depends on us trading with China, India, the rest of the Commonwealth and across the globe.  It does not depend on being tied up in a backward-looking, inward-facing, protection racket designed to prop up inefficient continental farmers and businesses.  We want free trade with the EU, but we do not need to be members of it to have that.”  Philip Davies MP

 

“I support the Better Off Out Campaign because I believe that the European Union is fast moving towards Federalism and the creation of a European Superstate.  This will result in a further loss of British sovereignty, which will herald the end of our parliamentary democracy and curtail many of our hard won freedoms.”  Jeffrey Donaldson MP

 

“My reason for wanting to leave the EU is simple: Britain needs to regain control of its own destiny if it is to remain a sovereign nation. We can only do that by leaving the EU and forming bi-lateral trading arrangements with other countries, whether or not they are members of the EU.” Gordon Henderson MP

 

“Millions of British people have never had the chance to vote on whether or not to be in the EU.  In 2006, you have to be at least 49 years of age to have taken part in the last UK referendum on Europe.”  Philip Hollobone MP

 

 

“I have decided enough is enough and that Britain really is better off out. We should be part of a Free Trade Association not a Political Union.” Heather Wheeler MP

 

 

Lords

“Virtually every serious review of the costs and benefits of the EU show that Britain would be better off out of the organisation in most, if not all, respects but political elite in all political parties will simply not listen to the facts.  Those who believe that the European Union can be reformed from within are deluding themselves.  Its very nature demands that, ever more power must be conceded to the EU institutions and, consequently, that of the nations be reduced.  Britain would certainly be BETTER OFF OUT and the longer our country remains in, the more certain it is that we shall simply become a mere province in a “country called Europe”.”  The Lord Stoddart of Swindon 

 

“You have my admiration and support for this great cross-party initiative: pygmy political parties don’t matter – the future of our country does.”  The Lord Willoughby de Broke FRSA, FRGS

 

Members of the European Parliament

“

 

I have no hesitation in signing up to the Better Off Out Campaign!  As a Member of the European Parliament for UKIP, my belief that Britain should leave the EU is, I trust, self-evident.  I became actively involved in politics in 1992 when I joined the Anti-Federalist League (later to become the UK Independence Party), precisely on the basis that Britain should leave the European Union and  re-establish herself as a self-governing, independent nation.  I urge every United Kingdom Local Councillor, MP and MEP who believes that Britain should be a free country to sign-up to the Better Off Out Campaign.”  Gerard Batten MEP

“Better Off Out is one of the neatest and truest statements in British politics today. With EU membership costs surging towards £60 million a day in fees alone, not to mention the massive savings to be made from slashing red tape, there’s no better time to be better off out.” David Campbell Bannerman MEP

 

“The BETTER OFF OUT campaign has redefined euroscepticism in Britain.  Anybody not signed up to BETTER OFF OUT should not call themselves eurosceptics.”  Nigel Farage MEP – Leader of UKIP

 

“The EU is making us poorer, less democratic and less free.  I don’t see withdrawal as an end in itself, but as a means to an end – that end being a Britain which respects the principles of limited government and individual liberty.  I don’t want to take powers back from the EU only to let them fester in Whitehall; I want to pass them down to local communities and to private citizens.  I want 

decisions to be taken as closely as possible to the people they affect.  I want decision-makers to be answerable through the ballot box.  None of these things is possible as long as our laws are handed down by Brussels functionaries.”  Daniel Hannan MEP

 

“We’re winning the arguments, and the BOO campaign has played a huge part in that success.  Welcome to the new web-site”  Roger Helmer MEP

 

Academics and journalists

 

“It is in all our interests that the UK puts an end to the intolerable costs of our EU membership.”  Professor Patrick Minford CBE PhD

 

 

“We would be much better off without the restrictions and interventions of the EU.”  Tom Utley, Daily Mail Journalist

 

“

As Sr. Barroso pointed out recently the original justification for the move to European integration was to stop Germany invading France.  Again.  As Sr. Barroso also pointed out in the same Hugo Young Memorial Speech, this is now unthinkable.  Good, mission achieved so can we leave now so as to be free of the stultifying effects of excessive regulation, the absurd idiocies of CAP and the CFP and the strangulation of our trade by the quite insane beliefs in mercantilism?”  Tim Worstall, Writer

 

“

Time after time I have given the reformers the benefit of doubt, but no longer.  Labour will not reform the EU.  Don’t even ask the Liberal Democrats.  Now the Conservative Party, in its decision to abandon its plan to take Britain out of the Common Fisheries Policy, has shown it is not serious about change.  Reform is dead as a policy.  It is not credible or believable. We’d be better off out – and if it means a grass roots campaign to achieve it then that’s what we must do.” Brian Monteith