14/08/2016
Having been writing for so long about how complex and involved the process of extracting ourselves will be â taking in the process a great deal of flak from a wide range of leavers â I do find is vaguely offensive to find the likes of
Simon Nixon telling us: "What is becoming clear is that the UK is much more entangled with the EU than Brexiters realised or understood...".
This is a man who has quite evidently given the process of Brexit no more than a
few nanoseconds of thought, remaining
years behind the curve, yet somehow feels qualified to lecture us about leaving the EU. If anything, though, he's typical of his ilk, feeding off the intellectual desert that comprises the London bubble, in which the paucity of ideas makes anyone with anything approaching sentience look like a genius.
However, at least Booker is
banging the drum for the Efta/EEA option, noting that one of the few glimmers of light in the murky fog which now surrounds our leaving of the EU was the news last week that David Davis, our lead negotiator, may soon be visiting Norway.
Until now, Booker writes, Davis and his fellow lead "Brexiteers" have poured scorn on the only sensible and practical way for us to leave, which is to go for the off-the-shelf solution whereby we remain in the European Economic Area and apply to join Norway in the European Free Trade Area.
All other suggested alternatives, we are told, are out of the question, because only this can ensure that we can continue to trade with the single market just as we do now - which is what the vast majority of British people want, including most of the 48 percent who voted for us to remain in the EU.
Concludes Booker, we can only hope that, as advised by his more clued-up civil servants and by our seemingly sensible new Prime Minister Theresa May, it is precisely this which Mr Davis will be discussing with the Norwegians.
In due course, when they've finally got to grips with that concept, we can gently tutor them in the Liechtenstein/EEA solution, and then introduce them to the idea that continued EEA membership is only an interim option.
At some stage, we then have to feed into the system a clearer picture of what the end game for trade and cooperation in Europe should look like, although they are probably not ready for ideas on re-orientating the EU's Single Market and turning it into a genuine, Europe-wide single market, based on inter-governmental cooperation.
Then, of course, we have to look at the global situation, and break away from the sterile obsession with negotiating free trade agreements with our global trading partners. We need a much more sophisticated understanding of the options available to us â which will form the core of Monograph 7. This is under preparation.
Currently, I'm rather intrigued with a possibilities afforded by multi-stage coordinated unilateralism â which is actually driving some of the trade liberalisation in China. But there are many other mechanisms which need to be used, all of which make the idea of free trade areas somewhat old hat. No doubt, though, as we develop the ideas, we will always have the likes of Simon Nixon ready to tell us all how complicated it all is, and how lucky we are to have him tell us so.
