Europe: stay or leave. Focus on fact - 7

Vote Leave, get Stay - on worse terms. Why Brexit is doomed to failure even if the anti-Europeans win the referendum.

Today's fact: Any trading agreement that the UK makes with Europe post-Brexit requires the agreement of the 27 EU countries.

Boris, Gove and co claim that because German car makers and French cheese and wine makers will want to go on selling goods to us, they will give us whatever we want. Even if that is true, and there is no evidence, there is no evidence that they can compel their own governments, let alone those of another 25 countries to agree.

Boris Johnson's own newspaper, the pro-Brexit Daily Telegraph, has to admit that the best we will be offered is membership of the EEA - the same deal as Norway - having to allow free movement of people from the EU, paying into the EU budget (rather more per person than we do now), and having to obey EU rules. The only difference being that we will no longer have any say on what those rules are:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/19/the-eu-will-play-hardball-with-post-brexit-britain/

*Because of the urgent task of getting some facts into the UK's Europe referendum debate, for the next couple of weeks I am going to be concentrating on that issue on this blog. Normal disaster history service will be resumed after June 23.