EU Referendum


EU Referendum: should have gone to Flexsavers


03/06/2015



000a specsavers-000.jpg

It is 2020 and the EU Referendum is behind us. Against all the odds, the "no" campaign actually won, although nobody is yet sure quite how or why. One theory is that the sense of outrage - after the leader of the "no" campaign, Matthew Elliott, switched sides mid-stream and joined the "yes" campaign - had driven people to vote against the government.

With the referendum held in October 2017, the 100th anniversary of the Russian revolution (even if the revolution was actually in November), it was the following year before a shocked Mr Cameron attended an emergency European Council in Brussels to discuss the consequences of the vote and the next moves.

Following a prolonged Parliamentary debate, and a round of meetings in the main European capitals, when Mr Cameron discussed with EU leaders their views on a UK exit settlement, the Prime Minister agreed to lodge of formal Article 50 notification in the following Spring, thus starting the clock on our exit negotiations.

Thus, in March 2019, after a series of scoping discussions, the parties met, as provided for by Article 50, to discuss the issues, the UK special representative and his team on one side of the table, and the Council President and his advisors on the other.

As expected, the first round of talks afforded nothing more than an opportunity for formal statements of position, following which a number of technical sub-committees were set up to discuss the specifics of the British proposals and the EU responses.

By the following year, 2020, the talks had totally stalled, primarily due to the British insistence on a series of Swiss-style bilateral agreements on trade and other matters, despite the spectacular failure in 2017 of the actual Swiss agreements, when the EU exercised its "guillotine" and ended trade relations with Switzerland, after the refusal to reinstate the freedom of movement agreement.

As the year dragged on, observers were recalling that the raft of agreements that had formed the Swiss "model" had taken 16 years to conclude, with the negotiations having started in 1994. Even optimists were suggesting that the Article 50 talks would have to go into extra time, with the earliest the UK could exit the EU predicted for 2025.

However, since an extension of time past the initial two years required unanimous agreement, the detailed exit talks had been suspended awaiting protracted negotiations with the parties to secure their agreement in principle to an extension, before a formal application was made.

Conducting the negotiations for the British were representatives of the newly-elected Labour government, following Mr Cameron's ejection from office in the general election of May 2020, after he failed to give a clear commitment to a date when the UK would actually leave the EU.

There had also been considerable disillusionment when the electorate - buoyed up by unrealistic promises of a bonfire of EU laws – had been told that there would be little change in the amount or nature of business regulation. There had been particular disappointment in the City, when it had been pointed out that most financial regulation was of international origin and would remain in place, largely untouched.

Other EU laws, such as the Reach Directive, limiting chemical products, supposedly imposing huge costs on manufacturers, were also kept in place. Manufacturers – most of them operating in the global market – found that the rules afforded them access to most non-EU countries, and lobbied for them to be kept. Their particular concern was to avoid the bureaucratic complications of a two-tier regulatory system.

Similarly, the new Clinical Trials Regulations were kept in place, after it was agreed that the revision was working well, and was needed to ensure access to the European market. And far from being disappointed, farmers were relieved to be told that the CAP would stay in place essentially unchanged. They were told it would stay in place for at least five years after we had left the EU, to give time for new policies to be developed. 

To the approval of the food processing industry, though, farmers were warned that policy changes would be minimal even after that period, to ensure regulatory convergence was maintained, which was the key to accessing the Single Market. The few minor changes that were conceded had largely been scheduled in the Government's ongoing "better regulation" programme and the European Commission's REFIT initiative.

All this was for the future, though, as for the time being – three years after the referendum - the UK was still a full member of the EU. It was taking part in all proceedings, except those which specifically dealt with the EU negotiating position on the UK withdrawal (a logical exclusion, otherwise the UK would, effectively, have a seat on both sides of the negotiating table).

Predictably, with the ongoing delay and no end in sight, business sentiment was being seriously damaged by the uncertainty. In anticipation of the possibility that the UK would automatically drop out of the EU without an agreement, after the elapse of two years, FDI had almost dried up and major companies were seriously considering relocation. A run on the pound had the Bank of England take emergency measures to protect sterling, and the Footsie 100 was crashing to new lows.

And, in an obscure blog once known as EU Referendum, written from some remote province of England, its author wrote a despairing piece headed, "should have gone to Flexsavers". But, as before, no one was listening.