Will ‘Brexit’ really mean the Brexit we voted for?
As everyone tries to puzzle out what our new Prime Minister means by her slogan “Brexit means Brexit”, we must remember that there will be two sides to these negotiations. Our attention, naturally, has been focused on the “Three Brexiteers” now chiefly responsible for the negotiations: Boris Johnson, David Davis and Liam Fox.
The main worry about these three is that they all suffer from the key problem which bedevilled the official Vote Leave campaign: showing little grasp of the tortuous technicalities involved, none of them are known to be “good on detail”. Each so far fondly imagines that we could negotiate a one-off trade deal, similar to that between the EU and Canada, which would allow us to continue trading freely with the single market, while also allowing us to “take control of our borders” in respect of further immigration from within the EU. They even suggest that we could rely just on the rules of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to achieve much the same end.
But those who have done their homework point out that this is dangerous wishful thinking. The Canada deal took seven years to negotiate, and would exclude us from significant aspects of the single market, not least crucial “passport” rights on financial services. As for relying on “WTO rules”, this could land us in the absurd situation where EU countries could continue exporting to us while we no longer had the EU paperwork needed to sell to them.
As is now being increasingly realised on the Continent, by far the simplest and most practical way for Britain to achieve what we want is to go for that off-the-shelf solution whereby we leave the EU but remain in the European Economic Area (EEA), where we already are, and join Norway in the European Free Trade Area. Contrary to common misunderstanding, this would in fact give us more influence over the shaping of single market rules than we have as members of the EU. Furthermore, under Article 112 of the EEA agreement, we could unilaterally insist on limited opt-outs from the EU’s “Four Freedoms”, including control of immigration, exercising a legal right which has already been used a dozen times.
The answer to this now being actively discussed in Brussels (which is desperately keen not to see us, or indeed any other country which might wish to follow our example, leave the EU) is to aim for a “two-tier Europe”, with the eurozone countries at its core, bent on greater political integration, and the rest, including Britain and Turkey, as “associate” or “outer ring” members.
On paper such a compromise might seem quite attractive. Indeed there are those who spoke privately to Mrs May before the referendum who think she might be among them. But even if we had escaped from some of the political elements of full EU membership, including the European Court of Justice, we would still belong to what is being called a “restructured Europe”, with Brussels at its gravitational centre. It is this we need to keep our eye on in the treacherous months ahead. Because it would definitely be very different from the “Brexit” we thought we were voting for on June 23.