Following CULC’s 9-6 decision last week to affiliate to the Labour In campaign, I spoke to one of the party’s most prominent eurosceptics: Vauxhall MP Kate Hoey.

I began by asking her about the latest story from Britain Stronger in Europe, which had appeared in the papers that morning; Karren Brady had said that leaving the EU would be “devastating” for British football. Hoey, a former Minister for Sport, chuckled.

“I have to say, I find that one the most ridiculous. It’s the sort of story that will actually back-fire… It will only help to show that the Remain campaign has got very little argument. We find that when we do debate with them, they come out with the same three or four things – it’s all doom and gloom, it’s all depressing – they’re the fear campaign. Everything they want to say is about fear.”

One particular fear I asked her about was the fear of harm to the economy from leaving. She noted that the EU market is “shrinking practically by the week. It’s the emerging economies of Asia and South America where the growth is; we have a huge opportunity as a country which has our language so widely spoken to sign our own trade deals… If Iceland can have its own trade deals with China and India, the idea that somehow we would suddenly be isolated and have no one to trade with is nonsense. We would first of all get our seat back on the World Trade Organisation which is crucially important, instead of having someone from Belgium represent the whole 28 countries of the EU… We maintain that leaving would actually lead to more jobs – and the EU countries which depend on selling to us aren’t going to stop selling to us.”
Emphasising the costs of membership to our economy, she continued:

“It’s hugely expensive: it really is worth repeating – £50 million a day, £350 million a week, £19 billion a year – and we get back something like £11 billion of that, but how that money is spent is all decided by unelected commissioners… You have to ask anyone who’s speaking up for the Remain campaign at a senior level ‘what are your links with the EU?’, and of course universities are a classic example: the idea that somehow all the universities are going to fold because they get this great support from the EU – but it’s just our money back.”

This dislike of EU bureaucracy, she tells me, is informed by her time as a Minister, during which she had to work with Brussels.

“I found the wheeling and dealing very undemocratic. And also the whole paraphernalia of Brussels; it’s clearly done by people who have nobody to be accountable to. They don’t really care about spending other people’s money. Their accounts aren’t even properly audited. Whatever you say about MPs, at least we have a constituency to elect us, and who can kick us out.”

She went on to quote renowned Eurosceptic Tony Benn.

“If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system”, before adding: “I want to see the U.K. be a free country again, where we can co-operate with the rest of the world, be internationalist, and get away from this little EU clique which is full of people who are more interested in working with global corporations than with working people” – adding that the EU’s instability makes leaving the safer option.

We turned, then, to discuss the ‘Britain Stronger in Europe’ campaign, and she told me that its name was in itself a bugbear.

“It is a deliberate ploy to call it ‘Europe’ – that anyone who votes to leave is leaving Europe, as if we’re going to somehow drift away. That’s the idea of it – to link the whole continent, which of course we’re going to stay a part of, with the 27 other countries out of something like 56 or 57 in Europe.” She laments, too, claims by some Europhiles “that somehow anyone who speaks up for us to be an independent, democratic country again is some kind of ‘Little Englander’ stroke racist – which is the other thing which gets thrown at people… There’s a real feeling around that this is going to be a battle with the cosy cliques of the leadership of all of the main political parties, the establishment, in terms of banking and some of the media – and that will actually count in our favour… And I’ll have very different reasons for coming out from someone like John Redwood, who’s on the right of the Tory party. There is a very credible left wing argument.”

And, Hoey tells me, this is now gaining traction at events by Labour Leave and other campaigns with which they work.

“It’s just so interesting… particularly with younger people who’ve only ever grown up hearing how wonderful the EU is – it’s only really beginning to dawn on them that it’s not this great supporter of workers’ rights and equality – it’s actually much more about supporting global corporations.”

It strikes me that if any case for a Leave vote has a chance of winning over students en masse, it’s the one Kate Hoey is making.