Back the Norway escape.. . or see our PM begging in Brussels
IHAVE a nightmare. It goes like this. The Government abandons futile negotiations with an arrogant European Union and declares: ‘ Very well, we are going it alone!’ Many cheer at this demonstration of Churchillian toughness. And then the day comes for our departure, and there is chaos, because all the warnings come true – that without the Single Market almost all of our links with EU countries have no legal basis, and an impossible barrier of bureaucracy grounds planes, traps lorries and closes the Channel Tunnel.
The problem with this nightmare is that it is impossible to be sure that it will not happen at the end of March next year. Nobody really knows. What if it does happen? I will come to that.
Before anyone accuses me of spreading Remainer propaganda, I would like to point out that I have been urging a British departure from the EU since I visited Norway in June 2003. As I wrote here then: ‘Norway is prosperous, happy and free. Its countryside is neat and well husbanded, its towns and cities orderly and comfortable… it runs its own affairs, trading cheerfully with the EU.
‘Its fisheries and farms have not been wrecked or bankrupted, as ours have, by “Common” policies that suit France, Germany or Spain. Its supreme court is in Oslo, not Luxembourg, where ours is. Its monarchy is not menaced by a European president and its flag doesn’t have to fly alongside the EU’s yellow stars.’
Until then I had been vaguely hostile to the EU, but not actively in favour of quitting it.
After Norway, I wanted to leave, though most of those now noisily flourishing Union Jack sand demanding exit at all costs were either silent, bored, or actively in favour of staying. I still don’t know what’s come over them.
About the same time, I read the superb book, The Great Deception, by Christopher Booker and Richard North, by far the best account of the long story of shame and dishonesty which is Britain’s involvement in the EU. Both men, like me, want us to leave. I began to notice, after reading it, the pitiful level of knowledge of the subject in our political class, and in our media.
And that disastrous ignorance is still obvious in almost everything anyone says about it from either side. I doubt most people know the difference between the Single Market and the Customs Union. Well, Christopher Booker and Richard North do, and they, like me, are deeply worried that we may be about to walk blithely into national danger. We are in a small but growing group of Leavers who are urging that we follow the Norway option while there is still time.
This might mean postponing the day of our departure, but in general it would be extremely simple. We would stay in the Single Market, so avoiding the threatened chaos at our borders, but leave the Customs Union, so allowing us to trade freely around the world.
WE WOULD get back control of our farms and fishing grounds, dump the Luxembourg court, shake off three- quarters of EU interference i n our l aws, and significantly reduce our payments to the EU. We could also exploit a loophole allowing us much greater control of immigration than we have now.
Perfect? No. But perhaps best of all, it requires no lengthy negotiation. We stay in the European Economic Area (we already belong to it) and seek to return to the European Free Trade Association. The arrangement can be lifted off the shelf and will work. No crises, no lorries parked for miles on the M20.
Yet so many Leavers are against this. I don’t really see why.
For years people have said they were quite happy with a European free trade area ( which is what many think they voted for back in 1975) – they just didn’t want the political interference.
The Norway option gives us exactly that arrangement.
Do they really think that 40 years of close and intricate integration with the EU can simply be pulled out by the roots overnight? Do they think Britain is so big, so rich and so brilliant at exporting that it can suddenly launch itself out into the world without a backward glance, like a superpower?
What if our brave exit in March goes wrong ? What if the nightmare is real? I can, alas, see it now. The tottering Government, the closed factories and the queues at the shops, the snap Election.
And the new Prime Minister taking a rusty ferry to Ostend and then on to Brussels, there to beg to be allowed back, as smiling Eurocrats explain that, yes, we are welcome to return, but only if we abandon our own currency, our own legal system and become at last what they have always wanted us to be – truly, fully, horribly European.
Wouldn’t the Norway option be better than even the chance of that happening?