Which ignores the geography for a start off, oh and the labour costs, oh and the land costs, oh and the infrastructure and logistics costs....
The entire reason we joined the EEC in the first place was because our historical trade links with the former colonies were producing ever decreasing exports, as the World market overtook us. We were increasing trading with our nearest neighbours (common sense) and thus our ****ed up economy joined the EEC.
Thanks to Thatcher our manufacturing industry was decimated, our tertiary economy relies on global business using us as a manufacturing base for the EU market, and our services industry also is reliant on the EU mainland.
Name 3 manufacturers of decent scale that are based in the UK are still British owned and who aren't catering primarily for the EU market?
What Thatcher didn't destroy, the EU enticed to the mainland with a fair contribution from our money...And before anyone bothers, I've seen the rebuttals, as well as the responses to them.
Cadbury moved factory to Poland 2011.
Jaguar Land Rover has recently agreed to build a new plant in Slovakia owned by Tata, the same company who have trashed our steel works and emptied the workers pension funds.
Peugeot closed its Ryton (was Rootes Group) plant and moved production to Slovakia.
Ford Transit moved to Turkey 2013.
British Army’s new Ajax fighting vehicles to be built in SPAIN using SWEDISH steel at the request of the EU to support jobs in Spain rather than Wales.
Dyson gone to Malaysia.
Crown Closures, Bournemouth (Was METAL BOX), gone to Poland with EU grant, once employed 1,200.
M&S manufacturing gone to far east.
Texas Instruments Greenock gone to Germany.
Indesit at Bodelwyddan Wales gone.
Sekisui Alveo said production at its Merthyr Tydfil Industrial Park foam plant will relocate production to Roermond in the Netherlands.
Hoover Merthyr factory moved out of UK to Czech Republic and the Far East by Italian company Candy.
Hornby models gone. In fact all toys and models now gone from UK along with the patents.
ICI integration into Holland’s AkzoNobel with EU bank loan and within days of the merger, several factories in the UK, were closed, eliminating 3,500 jobs
Boots sold to Italians Stefano Pessina who have based their HQ in Switzerland to avoid tax to the tune of £80 million a year.
UK airports are owned by a Spanish company.
Scottish Power is owned by a Spanish company.
Most London buses are run by Spanish and German companies.
The Hinkley Point C nuclear power station to be built by French company EDF, part owned by the French government, using cheap Chinese steel that has catastrophically failed in other nuclear installations. Now EDF say the costs will be double or more and it will be very late even if it does come online.
The Mini cars that Cameron stood in front of as an example of British engineering, are built by BMW mostly in Holland and Austria. His campaign bus was made in Germany even though we have Plaxton, Optare, Bluebird, Dennis etc., in the UK. The bicycle for the Greens was made in the far east, not by Raleigh UK but then they are probably going to move to the Netherlands too as they have said recently.