06/07/2014
An interesting new blog
here, called
Politics Satellite, draws a parallel between the Scottish and EU referendums, with the current campaign looking increasingly like a pilot production for the main event that might come in 2017.
There are many similarities that can be taken from the Scottish referendum campaign and overlaid on a potential EU "in-out" one, from the arguments used to the approaches both sides are utilising to win supporters.
The quintessential issue, though, is that Salmond does not have a detailed, fully worked-out exit plan and, as
PS illustrates, this is having a telling effect on the "out" campaign. People â and especially women voters - are asking questions about what might happen if Scotland leaves the Union, and they want answers.
That is the one big similarity that could be a lesson for Eurosceptics to learn, concerning how detail, or the lack of it, is being received by voters.
Says
PS, there needs to be a plan and there needs to be details so that when questioned the Eurosceptics can reassure voters that leaving the EU can be done without pain. We won't all be taking a giant leap into a great unknown. Otherwise it looks like, as in Scotland, the women will vote to stay where we are.
However, we are beginning to get to the stage where the anti-EU movement is troubled not by the absence of a plan, but a surfeit of them, with each little groupescule determinedly advocating their own little brainchild, with what looks like an equal determination to ignore other options.
That is one of the very strange things about the situation. If there is a debate about the merits of rival options, occurs largely in the Europhile communities. The "eurosceptic" factions each set up their stalls in isolation, and peddle their wares in grand isolation, each pretending no-one else exists.
Even this weekend, we thus have
Alan Murad, Acting Campaign Manager of Get Britain Out, blithely telling us that, "it is important Eurosceptics present viable alternatives to EU membership, something they are often criticised for failing to do".
Without even recognising that there are other workers in the field, he then goes on to promote his favourite little hobby-horse, the idea of "closer ties with the Commonwealth countries", as a substitute for EU membership, something which is very far from being a viable alternative to EU membership.
Then, engaged in his own personal battle on Twitter, is Campbell-Bannerman - now safely returned as a Tory MEP, after his brief sojourn as a UKIP MEP and his brush with Farage. He is still trying to flog his idea of an "EEA-lite", without the first idea of how that might pan out in the time-limited context of Article 50 negotiations.
As Con O'Neill decided more than forty years ago, when he took us into the Common Market as lead negotiator, the only way to maintain the momentum was to "swallow it whole" â to accept the treaties unchanged. The moment the treaties were put on the table for discussion, the fruits of hard-won compromise would unravel, and any chance of a swift resolution would evaporate.
Similarly, if we are to go to the table with the hope of agreeing a speedy exit plan based on continued participation in the EA Agreement, we need to "swallow it whole". Once we are out, we can then revisit the agreement, making "Brexit" a process rather than a single event.
That is, in fact, where
Flexcit takes us, a co-operative, online venture that concludes that no single "plan" is workable, thus requiring a flexible response, and then continuous development, probably over many decades.
Such candour is not for the likes of Hannan, though. Relentlessly beating
his own drum, he has seamlessly graduated from
Norway and EFTA to the Swiss option, without so much as a blush.
But in his typical, High Tory way, Hannan eschews any co-operative approach. His is the top-down down plan which is being looked at by "brilliant" lawyers and which will be revealed to us plebs when he's ready, for us to admire and adore. In his own way, Hannan is as centrist and authoritarian as the "colleagues" he would seek to replace.
Certainly, Hannan the dictator is no debater. His role is to descend from the mountain to hand down the tablets and instruct us mere mortals on the path to righteousness. He will never accept that there could be possibly any flaws in his grand design, a "Swiss option" that even the Swiss have been unable to make work and which the EU has already said (many times), it would not be prepared to repeat.
Whether he is the inspiration for
this in the
Telegraph remains to be seen, but despite the need to
break away from an EU-centric approach, all we get is an unnamed Tory. This source says: "We want to be in a position where we trade with the European Union and cooperate on the issues we choose to cooperate on. Basically the rest of Europe is then a European eurozone that wants deeper and closer union".
Thus we are told: "You end up with the two rings of Europe. The inner ring, which is euro-obsessed, and the next ring around which, although is not in the euro, are still in the European Union but have a looser arrangement".
Clearly, this man was not listening to Prodi last week, who averred of such an arrangement that, "you will not be in the core but the periphery". Prodi thus went on to say: "As you did with the euro, you can be out on the periphery ⦠if you are interested in a loser relationship with Brussels, you will get less and less power".
Altogether, what the eurosceptic community seems to be intent on doing is frittering away its energies on further and further fragmentation of effort, each faction determined to be the proud owners of their own unique plan, to add to those who believe we should not have a plan anyway.
Only the Europhiles,
it seems, think it necessary to work together. For us, there is not the slightest attempt even to consider a consensus view, or any thought as to why the europhiles have been so successful and euroscpeticism has been a consistent and dismal failure.
In the meantime, it comes as no great surprise to have
Andrew Stuttaford tell us that, for the immediate future, we can only expect a Cameron defeat at the polls next year, which will mean his replacement by a europhile Labour government, and a stake through Brexit.
That, in a way, is encouraging news. As I lurch from mild optimism to extreme pessimism, I am more and more convinced that a referendum campaign will see rival "out" groups vying for attention, with not one of them able to come up with a credible exit plan, leading us down a path of ego-driven perdition.
On that basis, the longer we can delay a referendum campaign, the longer we have before losing it.
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