In the period 1980–83 the clear commitment was to withdraw. We are now committed to withdraw as an option. That is important. Personally, I would withdraw from the Common Market tomorrow, as would the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow). I do not decide what Government will decide in four years time when the Labour party will be elected. I am speaking of my personal view. For that period, and certainly at the last election, our commitment was to withdraw. In the face of such Opposition, if the Government cannot win concessions from the Common Market, when will they? That is a straightforward question. The Government show no prospect of achieving concessions.

At the end of their abysmal record the Government are preparing to abdicate on the one negotiating power, the one lever and one spanner in the works that they have—the ability to wreck the system to produce fundamental change by the budget crisis. Already they are abdicating that power.

The Government are accepting that we remain modest net contributors. It is ludicrous to accept that disastrous burden. The Government are accepting that we shall increase the so-called own resources on two impossible conditions: first, a lasting solution to the budget problem—when there can be no such solution given the importance of the CAP—and secondly, that there be strict budgetary control, which cannot happen in that organisation.

On the basis of two conditions, both of which are almost certain to be fudged by an organisation which is a past-master at the art of fudging, the Government are preparing to abdicate the power to produce fundamental change. An increase in own resources, beguiling as it may sound, is a betrayal. It is rather like playing a bad record. It is not improved by turning up the volume because that makes the bad record worse. There is no guarantee that if we agree to an own resources increase other funds will develop.

It has been said by the President, Mr. Thorn, that other funds would have to be cut to make way for agriculture. That is the most appalling statement that I have heard in a long time. Agriculture is insatiable. Not only will other funds not increase, but agriculture will continue to be the drain that it has always been. With the certainty of more money automatically being generated, it will take an increasing share of funds.

There is no prospect of the Government's conditions being fulfilled. It is ludicrous that two thirds of the budget goes on the CAP and only one eighth on measures which grapple with unemployment. It is ludicrous because the Common Market supports 8 million farmers and 13 million unemployed. What a ridiculous Division of budgetary resources that is. Resources are being used to support wealthy farmers, almost as if Hinduism has become the religion of the Common Market and the sacred cow was free to wander the streets of Brussels.

The only way out is to allow the crisis to bust the bank and to force reform. We must do that by an adamant refusal to increase own resources and then use the situation to redress terms which were inadequate at the start and which have remained disastrous. My hope is that the whole thing breaks up, but here is a heaven-sent opportunity to change a situation which every Government have said that they want to change but about which no Government have done anything. If we do not change, our future is one of a declining periphery, with development siphoned away to the golden triangle and an increasing tide of manufactured imports destroying jobs in the United Kingdom.

The Common Market is not strong enough to help us, but it is strong enough to do positive harm to us. The distortion machine that has become part of the Community's way of life is one of the reasons for the prevailing alienation of politics. The gobbledegook and Goebbels-isation of British life, produced by attempts to explain membership of an institution which fundamentally does not and cannot suit us, is one of the main distortions.

That explanation and distortion has been carried on at our expense by the Commission's fifth column which has put over a totally inaccurate view of what is happening. It tries to tell us that decline is improvement; that black is white; that ruining our manufacturing industry is actually a benefit; that the burden of high food prices is an advantage; and that the budget to which we contribute on a large scale gives us access to opportunities which are not there. All these distortions have produced what I can only describe as the Goebbels-isation of British life.

It is, therefore, the duty of Opposition Members to put backbone into what has emerged, for all their brave talk, as a weak, nervous, grovelling and deferential Government who are on the point of abdicating the one weapon to have come into our hands in the EEC from 12 years of a disastrous relationship. They should use that weapon, abandon public relations and stand up for Britain and British interests. Perhaps I could offer the Government a slogan which, though it was not used all that successfully on the first occasion, has great potential in the Common Market. They should take up the slogan "Can't pay, won't pay."