04/05/2014
Following on from
Dick Taverne's take on the putative referendum, we now have Hannan
pitching in with the message that we should go Tory if we want a referendum.
What both Hannan and Taverne have in common, of course, is that they both believe that an "out" campaign could prevail, whereas this is very far from being a certainty. In fact, the balance of evidence suggests that we would be more likely to lose the referendum, even if Mr Cameron came back from Brussels with empty hands.
Let us suppose, though, that Mr Cameron reneges on his commitment to a
substantial rewriting of the treaty, and gives us this hitherto mythical referendum, Hannan does at least admit to worries.
Specifically, his concern is that the campaign might be dominated by UKIP, and focused on immigration, in which case we could lose. He doesn't blame UKIP for galvanising its vote; but almost nothing it says appeals to voters who are undecided on EU membership.
Hence does Hannan note the paradox where, the better UKIP fares in the polls, the lower support for EU withdrawal. The case for independence, he says, needs to be warm, optimistic, internationalist. We need, says Hannan, to explain why the EU has been made redundant by technological advance, why it no longer makes sense to be trapped in a declining customs union.
It's not that UKIP is wrong about immigration, says Hannan. Obviously we shouldn't exclude highly skilled professionals from outside the EU so as to free up space for unskilled migrants from inside. But that can't be the main message.
In the view of Hannan, we need a campaign that appeals to voters of Left, Right and Centre, to children of immigrants, to Scots, to white collar public sector workers, to students. We need, he thus says, to conjure the vision of a global Britain, interested and involved in the affairs of every continent, including Europe.
And all of this, in that airy, superior way in which Hannan excels, sounds so plausible, except that he misses what is probably the single most important facet of the campaign â that we should have a credible, workable exit plan.
What we have all seen over the past year and more is a torrent of FUD, and it is quite evident that campaign supporting continued EU membership will rely heavily on the fear factor. Crucially, as did recently the studies by
The City UK, the europhiles will show that none of the recognised exit plans are workable.
Unfortunately for Hannan, that includes his
pet plan, where he believes that we should "aim for a Swiss model, based on bilateral accords". So unrealistic is this that it has already been demolished by the opposition.
That actually makes Hannan, in his own way, as much part of the problem as UKIP. In many ways, he is part of a much bigger problem. Thus, when he writes, "Eurosceptics are in danger of losing everything", he is closer to the truth than he imagines.
The bigger problem is that, given that we could be facing a life-or-death referendum in just over three years, we are not ready. And there is no prospect of us being ready.
As it stands, the anti-EU movement is not so much split as completely fragmented. At one extreme, we have groups who regard even the prospect of sitting down to negotiate with the EU as "treachery". We also have those who regard Article 50 as a "trap", most of whom want an immediate repeal of the ECA.
In Article 50 territory, we have those who want the Norway option, the Swiss option, those who rely on stronger relations with the Commonwealth, those who want us to join NAFTA, the EFTA joiners and those who just want to rely on the WTO.
To fight an effective campaign, all the groupuscules are going to have to unite under a single banner, only then to find that unity alone will not be sufficient. Backing the wrong plan, even if there is total support for it, is no better than fragmentation: divided we fall, united we fail.
And there is the real danger for the "eurosceptics". Only with supreme effort do I see some of the groups uniting behind one or other plan, but it will not be the right one. The right one
is not yet finished but, even when it is, it is going to be studiously ignored by the likes of the oh-so-superior Hannan â as he is doing already. These people claim to support free markets, but the do not believe in a free market for ideas.
Already I can see some problems for me personally. As we've seen with calls to support UKIP, there will be huge pressure to support "the" campaign and get behind they "approved" narrative, whatever that might be. This will leave me (and our readers) in a quandary.
We then have the choice of supporting a campaign destined to fail, and become associated with its failure, or of standing aside and watching it fail, then to be blamed because we refused support. The other alternative is for us to mount our own independent campaign, in the hope of compensating for the defects of the "unifiers", and thereby be blamed for causing "splits".
It is there that the Europhiles have the inbuilt advantage. All they have to do is argue for staying in the EU â and there is only one EU. We, their opposition, have to unite behind a single, workable plan, offering a vision of Britain outside the EU. But there are possibly as many "visions" as there are groups, and that's before UKIP gets stuck in and ruins the efforts of us all. The chance of unity is next to nil.
To some extent, therefore, this could be a re-run of the 1975 referendum campaign, where different groups refused even to have their speakers share the same platforms. And if, this time, the same thing starts happening, the outcome could be the same. So, in that one respect, Hannan has got it right: we are indeed in danger of losing everything.
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