Brexitwatch: Project Leap in the Dark - 3

The anti-Europeans claim we have ‘lost control’ of our country. In fact, about 87% of UK laws are made in the UK. If you do not like them, blame our politicians (and our people for electing them), not Europe.

But in some important areas, we are protected by EU laws. In the workplace, for example, they guarantee paid holidays, equal treatment for men and women, parental leave, rights for part-time workers, a safe working environment, and protection from discrimination or being made to work excessive hours.

In the environmental area, they protect the quality of our air and our water. Then there’s consumer legislation - ensuring the products we buy are safe. There is prevention of cruelty to animals, protection of bees etc etc.

What is the policy of Boris, Gove, Farage and co if they win? Will they keep these regulations, strengthen them, weaken them, abolish them? I have no idea. Have you? Have they? Though the anti ‘red tape’ comments we hear from the Brexiters suggest that if we leave Europe, we might all need to be a lot more careful in future when we’re going to work, shopping, swimming or breathing.

Brexit = Project Leap in the Dark.

The Brexit riddle

What is the difference between Boris Johnson and Winston Churchill? Churchill was prepared to sacrifice his career to save his country. Johnson is prepared to sacrifice his country to save his career.

Brexitwatch: Project Leap in the Dark - 2

The Brexiters have finally set out a ‘timetable’ for leaving the EU. It all looks terribly orderly and friendly, but as with all Brexit policies, it is based on the assumption that all foreigners will do exactly what Boris, Gove and Farage tell them.

Interestingly the Brexiters want to delay invoking article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon giving notice to leave Europe, for as long as possible (more of this below). Then they say our exit terms and a new trading relationship with Europe will be agreed by 2019 or 2020. Significantly, Gove has said we might still be in the EU at the time of the next general election.

The problem for the Leave Campaign is that none of this is in their gift. The UK government and Parliament may have a view, and Boris, Gove and Farage are not yet the government, though increasingly they behave as though they are.

But more important, it is the other 27 EU members who will decide on the timetable and what Britain is offered. We will be excluded from discussions on our exit terms, which have to be finalised in two years. This deadline can be extended only with the unanimous agreement of all 27 countries. So, in reality, when the two years are up, for Britain it will be take it or leave it time.

Negotiations for a new trading agreement would probably happen at the same time. As I said in my post of 13 June, any such agreement would require the unanimous agreement of all 27 EU governments, their parliaments and the European Parliament.

So the idea of some Brexiters (though bitterly opposed by others who just want to rip up all our trade agreements) that Britain will get some special sweetheart trade deal is cloud cuckoo land. The best we can hope for is that in return for continuing to allow free movement of people, to observe EU rules and to go on paying into the EU budget, we will continue to get access to the single market, though this, of course, is not guaranteed.

By then, Boris, Gove, Farage and co will be between the devil and the deep blue sea, with their supporters getting angrier by the day that they have been conned into voting Leave by a pack of lies. So some of the wilder Brexiters are suggesting we do not bother with the legal niceties and just start unilaterally withdrawing.

This would destroy any residual good will there might be among our European partners, so that we would be offered only the harshest exit terms, with no trade deal of any kind. It would also mean we were in breach of international law, with unknown consequences, particularly for the million plus British people working or living in, or retired to, Europe. Not that Boris and co have ever cared about them.  

So why do the Brexiters suddenly want to start dragging their feet on leaving Europe? Probably the awful realisation that they might win, and that, once invoked, article 50 cannot be uninvoked. Giving notice to leave the EU is irrevocable. Another factor may be growing nervousness over promises they have made that they know cannot be kept, and a third the bitter divisions on the Brexit side that are beginning to emerge.

Brexitwatch: Project Leap in the Dark - 1

The thing that has surprised me most about the UK's EU Referendum campaign is how the anti-Europeans have been allowed to get away with saying virtually nothing about what they will do if we vote to leave. In this series, I am going to highlight some of the crucial questions to which they have given no answer.

The Breixters now seem to be getting cold feet about leaving. Michael Gove said if we voted for Brexit, he would try to delay invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which we have to do in order to quit, and that Britain would still be in the EU in 2020, though he later tried to deny this. https://next.ft.com/content/b296fa42-2bd4-11e6-bf8d-26294ad519fc

At the moment, the anti-Europeans have no idea what they will ask for from the EU, never mind whether the EU will agree to it. Sometimes they want to be like Norway, or perhaps Switzerland (though plenty of commentators have said these options will not be viable - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/06/10/three-reasons-a-post-brexit-uk-cant-copy-norway-or-switzerland/) All right then, like Canada, or (Gove's favourite) Albania. Or maybe we don't try to get a deal at all.

It is sobering that some of the Brexiters have been plotting against the EU for decades, and yet they have not been able to sign up a single country to agree to a single one of their ideas.

At other times Gove, Boris and Farage and co have said: don't worry because German carmakers and French cheesemakers will force the rest of Europe to give us a really good deal. 

In fact, any deal with the EU has to be agreed by all 27 countries, their national parliaments, and the European Parliament. The car and cheesemakers are going to have their work cut out to twist the arms of that lot!

And a deal has to be reached within two years. If it is not, the deadline can only be extended with the agreement of all 27 EU countries. You can understand why Gove and co are in such a panic.

Brexit - the arguments for, or rather the lack of them

isn't this brilliant?

Europe: stay or leave? Focus on fact - 10

Today’s fact: My father and grandfather both had to go to war in Europe. My son and I have not had to go to war in Europe. I am very grateful.

The greatest achievement of the EU is surely that it has made war in most of Europe unthinkable. When you remember that more than 450,000 British people were killed in World War Two, and about 750,000 in World War One, while millions more were injured, and millions more lost their homes, it is odd that nobody seems to care about this.

Perhaps people in Britain now just take peace in Europe for granted. That is very, very foolish. The peaceful years since the founding of the EU are actually a glaring exception in Europe’s history. Before that, since the dawn of time, the continent’s history has been dominated by virtually unrelieved war.

What is particularly worrying about the anti-Europeans, is that they do not just want to leave the EU, they want to destroy the organisation and make everyone else leave too.

But even if that happened, in this day and age you could not get, say, ten years of war, with mass rape and murder, atrocities on all sides, hundreds of thousands driven from their homes, could you? No? Ever heard of Yugoslavia?

However much you hate immigration, is this a price worth paying to reduce it? War is hell. Keep it out of Europe. Vote Stay.

Europe: stay or leave. Focus on fact - 9

At the centre of the Brexit campaign is the claim that we will 'take control' of our borders it we leave Europe.

Today's fact: The UK will NOT take control of its borders if we leave Europe.

If we leave, the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic will then become the border between the UK and the EU, and the Brexiters have promised it will remain as open as it is today. 

So any EU citizen who wants to enter the UK will simply have to take a bus or a train, or drive, cycle or walk across the border from the Republic into Northern Ireland on one of the hundreds of roads that cross it. There will be no customs, no checkpoints, no border controls.