London Banter - View Single Post - Will Brexit lead to the abandonment of Crossrail2 and Turning SouthLondon Orange?

Robin9 · July 15th 16, 09:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeremy Double

bob wrote:
Mark Goodge wrote:
On Thu, 14 Jul 2016 10:01:53 +0100, "tim..." put
finger to keyboard and typed:

"Recliner" wrote in message
...

So, with Brexit, the first vote should have been to choose between several
(legally possible, viable, rather than fantasy Boris-style) alternative
scenarios. There are at least three, and the population could have chosen
whether they preferred immigration control over the single market, etc.

In the second round, the most popular of these would then have been
compared with remaining an EU member. That way, everyone voting to leave
would know exactly which option they were mandating the government to
seek.

The problem with this approach is, what happens if the EU won't offer us the
preferred alternative, after we have committed to leave?

There are, broadly speaking, three post-EU options:

1. Membership of the EEA and EFTA (the "Norway" model).
2. Membership of EFTA, but not the EEA (the "Switzerland" model).
3. No European trade bloc membership at all.

Obviously, all of those have different sub-options, and there are more
variants to option 2 than option 1 and many more variants to option 3 than
options 2 and 1. But they do represent three distinct scenarios which could
usefully be voted on.

What also makes them viable as voting choices is that the EU cannot deny us
any of them. EEA membership is available to any member of either the EU or
EFTA. So if we join EFTA, the EU cannot exclude us from the EEA if that's
what we want. The other EFTA members could, theoretically, veto an
application to join them. But that is vanishingly unlikely to happen. The
UK was actually a founder member of EFTA, but subsequently left when we
joined the then EEC. Returning is unlikely to be a problem (in real life,
we have already been told we are welcome to rejoin; that assurance could
easily have been obtained prior to the vote if necessary). And, obviously,
if we choose to remain entirely unaffiliated, then there's nothing the EU
could do about that either.

In real life, I think it's likely we will end up as members of EFTA. The
benefits are useful, and the downsides of belonging are minimal (membership
carries far fewer obligations than EU membership). Whether we then go for
EEA membership will depend, I think, on whether or not we can negotiate a
suitable set of Swiss-style bilateral treaties with the EU or whether the
only way to get what we want is to join the EEA.

The difficulty is both EEA and EFTA involve paying money to the EU and
accepting free movement of people. An awful lot of people who voted "leave"
we're under the impression these were the things they were voting to get
rid of, and will be pretty miffed if they are retained.

On the other hand, you only need a few of those who voted leave to be in
favour of EEA or EFTA membership to give an overall majority in favour of
such membership (given the reasonable assumption that those who voted
remain would be in favour of EEA or EFTA membership as the next best thing
to EU membership).

In any case, when they discover the realities of what can really be
negotiated with the EU and other countries (as opposed to the delusional
picture painted by the leave campaigners) a lot of people who voted leave
will be miffed anyway...

--
Jeremy Double

If, and unfortunately it's a big "if" with our new Prime Minister
and Chancellor Of The Exchequer, we take no free movement
combined with WTO tariffs, only the small number of free
movement fanatics will be miffed.

If, as I fear, Mrs. May is willing to accept free movement
in exchange for free access, a very large number of people
will be annoyed. In that situation, Mrs. May's career will
depend mainly on the Labour Party's complete lack of credibility.

Her choices are limited. As the SNP will try to block Brexit in
Parliament, and will receive much support from the Liberal
Democrats and many Labour MPs, at some stage Mrs. May
will have to repeal the Fixed Term Parliament Act and call a
general election. She will then have a commanding majority in
The House but most of her back-benchers will be strongly
opposed to free movement. She is unlikely to be able to
ignore them.