A former Tory politician known for her affair with John Major, upsetting the British egg industry and her exploits on I’m a Celebrity visited Chester at the weekend to promote the pro-EU cause.
Edwina Currie joined Conservative activists at a stall in Town Hall Square where she handed out leaflets headed ‘In Europe for the North West’ ahead of the June 23 in-out referendum.
Just around the corner in Eastgate Street members of the Vote Leave campaign were putting the other side of the debate.
Later Mrs Currie hosted ‘an audience with’ style event at City Road Church Hall where she talked about Britain’s place within the European Union.
Speaking to wavering members of the public on a hot summer's day, she argued leaving the EU would mean tariff barriers on goods and services traded between the UK and the continent making it tougher for business to compete.
She said: “If barriers are put on it’s going to be harder. It follows. You don’t have to have a huge economics degree to figure that out.”
Conversely, she said: “Whenever you take barriers away there are lots and lots of gains; gains overall.”
Mrs Currie was speaking before her ex-lover John Major launched a savage attack on Brexit campaigners Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Iain Duncan Smith on The Andrew Marr Show, revealing the deep splits over Europe within the Conservative Party. And this rift within her party was raised by Chester residents.
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But the former Tory health minister is clear which side of the divide she sits in wholeheartedly backing the ‘Remain’ side and she tackled the notion the UK was a model of democracy while Europe was not. Her stance on the unelected House of Lords is the same as many people hold about the European Commission.
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“That’s my feeling about the House of Lords, 800 of them. Shoot the lot of them!’ she said, in jest.
“We should be careful about making that criticism. The commission started off having all the power and has seen a lot of that eroded by the parliament. There never used to be a parliament, now there is, and it wasn’t elected, now it is.
“And one of the reasons is that in the years after the war people trusted civil servants and judges more than they trusted elected politicians so that’s a cultural thing, but gradually that’s changed.”
But wouldn’t Britain have greater control of its borders if we left the EU given concerns over the number of immigrants who have entered the UK from the former Eastern bloc?
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“The strange thing is we have control over our borders for non-Europeans and there are more of them coming in than Europeans, consistently – a lot of South Africans, New Zealanders today – people coming in, not tourists, people living and working here.”
But she is steadfast in believing Britain needs an influx of young foreign workers to support the growing economy.
“We need them. My feeling is, as long as people are coming here to work they are welcome and I don’t care where you come from.”
