07/10/2014
On 18 October, we're holding another of our Harrogate Agenda workshops, this one in Rotherham at the
Best Western Consort Hotel (pictured), just off the M1/M18.
Assembling at 10, we're testing a new format, with Neill Warry looking at the 1975 referendum and the lessons we can learn from it. Then we show the Norway Option video and, after a break for lunch, we go into a repeat of the successful "Flexcit" talk I gave in Dawlish, finishing off with an exploration of the Harrogate Agenda, and how it fits into the Flexcit scenario.
The format works with any number from about 10-30 people, although we prefer the higher number to cover costs. You can get more details by e-mailing
Niall Warry (click on the link), and we look forward to seeing some of you there.
What makes this workshop, and the many more to follow, so urgent and important, is the likes of
this from Andrew Lilico in the
Telegraph, where he has it that David Cameron is promising to withdraw Britain from the European Union.
This, of course, is nonsense â and obviously so. But then this is precisely the sort of nonsense one might expect from the chairman of the IEA "Shadow Monetary Policy Committee". Anyone associated with the IEA is not going to be altogether when it comes to the EU.
Lilico is misinterpreting (or over-interpreting) a statement by Mr Cameron in his conference speech, when he pledged to put migration at the very heart of his renegotiation strategy for Europe. He would, he said, go to Brussels, and would not take no for an answer when it comes to free movement.
Actually, all Mr Cameron has in mind was a codicil to any forthcoming accession treaty, limiting the movement of workers from any new joiner, until GDPs come within certain limits and the wealthier UK is less of a draw.
This does not even require any EU treaty negotiations. It can be built-in to the accession treaty whenever one comes up â and none are planned for at least five years. The UK could have done this with Bulgaria and Romania, for it had (and has) a veto and can block any treaties not to its liking.
But, despite that, Lilico spirals off into a soliloquy about the free movement of people within the European Union, arguing that "there is no doubt that Britain would not be in the European Union if free movement were abandoned and hence EU citizenship withdrawn for UK citizens".
In a convoluted piece of logic, Lilico then argues that, because of the link between free movement of goods and free movement of persons, restricting free movement of persons would, in substance, be withdrawing from the Single Market and hence in substance withdrawing from the EU.
The substantive question is unambiguous, he says. The only thing left to consider is the semantic question â whether withdrawing from free movement would be called "withdrawing from the EU" or not. Since the EU is the zone of EU citizenship and EU citizenship means free movement, the answer must be "Yes â the UK would not be in the EU", he says, though we might perhaps still be in some other form of "Europe".
What then particularly concerns us is that Lilico posits that many schemes for "withdrawing from the European Union" involve continuing to participate in some other form of "Europe" â e.g., the "Norway option" of continuing to be in the European Economic Area.
With regard to the "in-out" referendum, we then get the argument that "out" hasn't normally meant "no Europe", merely "exiting the European Union". But exiting the European Union is precisely what any form of restriction on the free movement of persons entails, by definition.
If I now understand Lilico correctly, he is telling us that restricted free movement of persons cannot be called "Being in the European Union", even if we then remain in the EU, and Cameron's promise to restrict the free movement of persons decides that point unambiguously. It's an ambiguous form of unambiguity, but I think he means in "Europe" but not in the EU - or the other way around. I'm not quite sure.
On the other hand, by inference, I think we are supposed to take it that, even if we leave the EU, via the Norway option, thus continuing with free movement of persons, we only getting out of the EU but remaining in "Europe", while Mr Cameron will take us out of "Europe", even if we remain in the EU.
It is this sort of confused thinking that we need to sort out, and that's why we're holding the Rotherham meeting and many more like it. Not least we need to lodge, face-to-face with a substantial constituency in the anti-EU movement, the full nature of the Flexcit plan, something which Mr Lilico clearly hasn't grasped.
In particular, we need to fix in the public mind that Flexcit is not the "Norway option". EFTA/EEA membership is simply an interim measure, enabling us to leave the EU. Only then do we start the real negotiations, with a view to building a genuine European single market, decoupled from the freedom of movement baggage. We aim to leave the EU and then create a new "Europe" as a community of equals.
On this, we found from the Dawlish experience that even people who had read Flexcit
online had not fully appreciated its depth and subtlety. But after the meeting, they had something Lilico will never have â an understanding of the plan.
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