Blusterometer

Stretching the facts

Straying from the facts

Facts? What facts?

InFacts’ Blusterometer isn’t reserved exclusively for rating Boris Johnson’s blunders and Farage’s faulty facts. Michael Gove has been making misleading claims since the referendum campaign began. From the slightly sneaky to the woefully wrong, here’s a handy breakdown of where Gove is mistaken on the EU…

Economy

Fiction: “We can take back the £350 million we give to the EU every week”

Fiction: We are “on the hook to pay more in 2020”

Fiction: “Britain hasn’t been able to shape the single market in our interests”

Fiction: If we vote to leave the EU Britain will stay in the “European Free Trade Zone” which stretches “from Iceland to Turkey”

Fiction: EU “clear it wants more power over our taxes and our banks”

Fiction: “It wouldn’t be in [European countries’] interests to erect trade barriers, because…. there is a trade deficit” with EU

Fiction: Britain’s EU budget rebate is in danger

Fiction: The government “cannot remove or reduce VAT”

Industry

Fiction: “Rules like the EU clinical trials directive have slowed down the creation of new drugs to cure terrible diseases”

Fiction: The government is prevented by the EU from giving “support…(to) a steel plant through troubled times”

Migration

Fiction: Net migration from the EU could be 5 million between now and 2030 if we stay in the union

Fiction: “The ECJ can now control how all member states apply the crucial 1951 UN convention on asylum and refugees”

Red tape

Fiction: Outside the EU, we “wouldn’t have all the regulations which cost our economy £600 million every week”

Fiction: EU employment laws are “excessive” and should have been devolved to national control.

Fiction: “If we vote leave we can scrap the EU’s foolish rules on how Whitehall runs procurement processes, which add billions to the cost of government every year”

Fiction: EU rules dictate … the maximum size of containers in which olive oil may be sold (five litres)

Fiction: EU rules dictate … the distance houses have to be from heathland to prevent cats chasing birds (five kilometres)

Security

Fiction: As EU members we have to accept that “anyone, even someone with a criminal record, can breeze into Britain”

Fiction: ECJ stops UK deporting terrorists

Fiction: The ECJ “can determine how our intelligence services monitor suspected terrorists”

Fiction: EU judges are dictating “what our spies can do and whether we can be kept safe”



Fiction: “The European Court will decide whether we can deport Abu Hamza’s daughter-in-law”

Sovereignty

Fiction: Cameron gave up Britain’s veto on further integration

Fiction: “The other countries will know that until a deal which suits us is reached we still retain a veto over their plans. So that gives us all the cards.”

Fiction: Britain voting to leave will be the beginning of…”the democratic liberation of a whole Continent.”

Fiction: UK to pass emergency laws to “deal with” the European Court of Justice if we vote to quit the EU

Fiction: “The ECJ has now informed us that our opt-out (from) “the Charter of Fundamental Rights] was worthless”

Fiction: “The European Court … will decide the issue of whether convicted felons can vote and if so how far this right should be extended”

Fiction: The Court “has even used the Charter to increase the price of insurance for women”

Edited by Geert Linnebank