EU Referendum


EU Referendum: back where they started


19/02/2015



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David Cameron, we are told, has downplayed the chance of an early referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union and said he needs time to renegotiate the best deal.

The Prime Minister says that calling a snap vote on membership risked forcing the electorate to choose between two "unappetising" options. A "better choice" would be to hold a vote by the end of 2017 after having had a chance to convince other allies to reform the EU and give the UK more freedoms.

And so, ten days after the Sunday Times set the hare running, and the Express made a fool of itself, we are back where we started, with 2017 remaining the preferred date for a referendum.

Getting back to where we started has very much been the theme for the week, with the IEA l;ast Monday rehearsing the same old block of exit options that have been floating around for decades. More an exercise in nostalgia than forward thinking, the Institute even dredged back into its own archives to resuscitate a 14-year-old-idea that didn't even have much going for it when it first appeared.

All this was in the pretence of promoting debate on "the best way" of leaving the EU, and so unsuccessful has been this endeavour been that, after killing debate stone dead after its abortive competition last year, the best the IEA was able to manage was an article in the Telegraph telling us that there are four paths that the UK can take out of the EU … and they're all bad.

Along with the IEA in its original Brexit competition, Telegraph writer Ben Wright simply cannot grasp the idea that leaving the EU cannot be a single event. It must be a multi-stage process, probably unrolled over a several decades, on the premise that undoing forty years of economic and political integration cannot be achieved with any speed.

This was what the idea that the IEA peremptorily rejected last year, although it is now published online as the Flexcit plan, offering far more than the totality of the IEA offering. Yet one of the IEA authors - who hadn't troubled himself to make a submission to the original competition, had the nerve to tell us that, "the debate has been far too myopic".

For "myopia", though, we have to turn to Campbell Bannerman's continued efforts to sell his aptly-named "EEA-lite" option, so lightweight that it almost completely lacks substance. The only forward-looking glimpse allowed during a seminar held in Europe House yesterday was a video recording from Owen Paterson telling us that a "spectacular future" awaits us outside the EU.

This moved the Express to remark that: "Convincing those who are undecided that Britain would be better off out of the EU is a vital way of strengthening the campaign for an exit". The paper adds: "Articulating a positive vision of a free Britain is central to achieving that", even if this is the paper – like so many – which has made no effort whatsoever to break out into the sunlit uplands and articulate such a vision.

At least this week we've seen some solid work from the Democracy Movement, in association with Global Britain, debunking the "three million jobs" meme. This is the unglamorous end of the campaign, doing work that must be done if we are to build a solid case for exit.

That is all the more necessary with Hannan, completely misreading Mr Cameron's "renegotiation" strategy, so much so that Peter Wilding, of British Influence, believes that in any referendum the case for staying in would "triumph". If it was left to the likes of Hannan, Wilding is not wrong. It would be a walkover.

Nevertheless, with Civitas also having produced its new paper on the Norway option, and the new edition of Flexcit having been published, it has been a busy time on the eurosceptic front. The only absentee from the debate, it seems, has been Ukip.

This is perhaps just as well, as it does look as if that referendum is getting closer. Rafael Behr in the Guardian notes that here is palpable confidence in the Tory party that David Cameron will still be prime minister after the general election. It flows, he says, not from any surge in public enthusiasm for the idea of Conservative government, but from a lack of evidence that voters are ready to trust Ed Miliband with power.

The subsequent referendum, Behr believes, will be a nightmare for Britain. But it will be a bigger nightmare for us if we lose. Yet, the bulk of the activity we have seen this week has brought us no closer to victory. Happily, though, not everything is on the media map. While most are back where they started, some of us crossed the start line - of which more will be revealed in good time.