EU Referendum


Brexit: danger either way


06/07/2016




With the first round of the Conservative Party leadership contest out of the way, we see Theresa May emerge with what should be an unassailable lead of 165, taking votes from exactly half of the 330 Conservative MPs.

Leadsom trailed badly with a mere 66 votes but beat Gove, with only 48 votes, to second place. Crabb took fourth place with 34 votes and Fox brought up the rear with a mere 16. These two have now pulled out, pledging their support to Mrs May for the next round, to be held on Thursday.

On the face of it, this should give Mrs May a commanding lead, but leave Leadsom still in the race, with the final decision to be put to the constituency members. Struck down by the "curse of the Tory frontrunner", we could then see Leadsom take the crown – and the keys to No 10.

However, we are dealing with what is slated to be one of the most sophisticated electorates in the world. In a bid to strengthen May's position out in the country, her supporters could transfer enough votes to Gove to assure him the second place, reducing to run-off to a contest between May and Gove the "Boris killer". In that scenario, May wins convincingly.

Should the more likely scenario arise, with a final contest between May and Leadsom, and Leadsom wins, we are faced with the great danger of having a woman as prime minister who has little understanding of what it takes to negotiate a successful withdrawal from the EU, and no capacity to develop that understanding.

On the other hand, if May is elected, we are faced with a danger just as great, in having a prime minister who brokers an exit plan which is so successful that we end up stuck with it, and in a position far worse than we are at present.

If this sounds perverse, it is. What we are seeing from the "remains" is a sudden enthusiasm for the Efta/EEA or "Norway option", an option which, prior to the referendum, they had all been falling over themselves to demolish.

This, as readers here well know, we support as an interim option, acknowledging that it would be completely untenable for the United Kingdom in the longer term. We thus look for a different end game, which then takes us out of the EEA – with other Efta members – leaving the Agreement to collapse.

Unfortunately, the opposition is wise to the flaws of the EEA option and, from the Robert Schuman Foundation, the intellectual heart of the EU, we see proposals to modify the EEA to such an extent that it will soften some of the worst features of the EEA, and thus weaken the pressure to move on.

What they have in mind are changes to Part VII of the EEA Agreement, addressing "the inability of the EEA States" (they mean Efta states) to take part in the vote over the internal market rules.

Instead of the Council of the European Union (formerly the Council of Ministers) taking the dominant role, the EEA Council would be the body charged with approving Single Market legislation, thereby giving Efta members some "say" in how the rules were made.

These decision-making powers might also be extended to the Union’s programmes in which the Efta states had chosen to participate, such as the research framework.

Similarly, the Foundation argues, it might be possible for the mixed EEA parliamentary committee to be transformed to include all Union parliamentarians and "European Members of Parliament" appointed by the non-EU EEA States. These EMPs would meet in Brussels and be able to take part in co-decision in the same way as the EEA Council.

As to freedom of movement, the Foundation acknowledges that it would continue to apply. But it notes that "the EEA Agreement provides safeguard mechanisms that can be activated unilaterally". Thus, far from trying to conceal or argue against the Liechtenstein solution, it seems possible that the UK could be offered this as a way out of the free movement impasse

The changes proposed, if implemented - plus the application of the Liechtenstein solution (which would perhaps involve some reciprocal restrictions) - would effectively formalise the creation of a multi-speed Europe. The UK would become part of the "outer circle" of a construct dominated by the eurozone, the result little different from the "associate membership" expected of a new treaty.

By this means, we could be on the way to becoming a "second-class citizen", locked in a Greater Europe whose appetite for the creation of a United States of Europe would be entirely undiminished. The only difference is that it would be disguised as membership of an enhanced EEA, possibly termed the "EEA-plus". We would be "out" but still in.

In the choice between May and Leadsom, therefore, we could find ourselves wedged between two undesirable outcomes – a choice between second-class membership in an enhanced EEA, or the chaos of a world outside the Single Market with no coherent replacement. In these choices, there is danger either way.

The obvious antidote is to create a third way, the idea set out in Flexcit, where the third phase offers the opportunity of creating a genuine Europe-wide single market, freed from the grip of Brussels. For that, we will probably have to look not to either of the leadership contender front runners, but to Parliament, which has the power to shape the exit settlement, if it chooses to use that power.

To that effect, as Flexcit nears 100,000 downloads, we have published a new edition, Version 7. This is the first written specifically for the post-referendum period. It is marginally shorter, despite additions which cover border issues in Ireland, EU budget contributions and the Liechtenstein solution, omitting some of the arguments relevant only to the referendum campaign.

Progressively, we will reshape the contents to put more emphasis on the end game, rather than on the mechanics of leaving the EU, in the hope of influencing the final outcome. For the moment, though, we must watch the ghastly charade of the leadership election, knowing that neither candidate is ideal, and that there is danger either way, irrespective of who is elected.