Blogger and debunker of various economic fallacies, Tim Worstall, points out something that tends to be forgotten in some of the angrier, gloomier commentary about the European Union and the recently ratified Lisbon Treaty. We – the UK that is – can leave if we wish to do so, and it will be a lot less complex than such a process can be made to appear. That surely is the 800 llb gorilla in the drawing room – we can get out pretty fast if the whole edifice becomes intolerable. And there is nothing that any EU bureaucrat or their political allies can do about it. How likely are they to ever use a military option? Hmmm.
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We can leave if we want toNovember 5th, 2009 |
 29 comments to We can leave if we want to |
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I agree with Jonathan. Why does no one ever mention that we can simply get our coat and leave?
Well yes we can, but we are then left with one of two alternatives. If we try and negotiate a free trade agreement, like Norway, we will end up making the same contributions and passing the same EU laws but just not having any say in any of it. Alternatively we can go back to WTO terms of trade. Much of UK industry, in particular the motor industry, only makes sense because of free trade access to the EU. Which would you prefer, export 20% of your production to the UK against a trade barrier or 80% against a barrier into the EU? The reality is that there are some big costs in getting out. It may still be worth it but don’t imagine that it won’t carry some pain.
Anyone who listened to Angela Merkel’s address to the US Congress this week, and saw the repeated standing ovations could see where the future is going to be. There is a “special relationship” as she kept repeating. It’s between the US and Europe. Whether we in the UK like it or not that is where the future is going to be.
Forlornhope obviously does not understand the relationship Norway has. Yes, if they wish to trade with the EU they have to comply with the EU’s trade rules – much the same as any country has to comply with the trade rules of the US when trading with that country – what Norway does not have to suffer is the political interference!
Back to the research, forlornhope!
And further to WitteringsfromWitney, Switzerland trades with ‘Europe’ very smoothly. Last time I travelled between Geneva and the Meribel I didn’t even have my passport checked.
What military option’s that, then? Oh.
They could try sending in the gunships if we tried to leave?
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSLR504888
Exiting the EU trade block would also mean our imports could be cheaper.
The reason we continue to be inside the EU is it makes the FCO’s job a doddle and makes Westminster’s job a doddle. All a bit of political theatre while the real decision making is done elsewhere by others, but with the performers continuing to get paid.
They do not represent us they represent the EU and we should be jumping up and down about it.
The economic strife is a beneficial crisis for Dave.
Who (what body) would make the decision to leave the E U?
How would that decison be made?
You can’t even get a referendum on something as trench-deepening as Lisbon.
But, it’s good for the ink-trade.
Gentlemen, please.
Norway is a member of the EEA, which means — as ForlornHope indicated — they have to pass EU law without having a say in it. A Norwegian president complained once it was a “Fax Diplomacy” — the fax rings, and in comes through the latest resolution they have to implement.
Swizerland however is the only remaining member of the EFTA — the European Free Trade Area — their relationship is far more like the one WitteringsfromWitney describes.
Lrn2Wikipedia
The most important economic advantage for the UK of being outside the EU would be the ability of reaching its own trade agreements with third parties.
And have you compared the size of the Norwegian economy (try removing the oil sectors to really get an indication) to that of the UK? The EU needs the UK as much, if not more, than the UK needs the EU, so they are hardly in any position to impose any laws on the UK that the UK are not inclined to accept. The UK is a global trading nation and without the deadening hand of Brussels (i.e. only our own domestic fucktards) to deal with, UK plc is likely to become more, not less, competitive vis a vis Europe with the rest of the world.
The EU is not where the world’s economic future lies and the sooner the UK returns to casting its eyes further afield, the better.
I agree with Perry. I believe the Anglosphere is what we should be cleaving to. The Anglosphere is governed by English Common Law. We all speak the same language.
James Bennett, who wrote ‘The Anglosphere’ thinks it should be a loose association, but I have always argued that we should formalise it.
BTW, I wouldn’t include marginal countries, like Pakistan, where their primary language is Urdu, in the Anglosphere. Only countries where English is the first language.
We should not forget the Hispanosphere, which will be looming over the horizon soon. I don’t know how many people Spain has, but there are around 700m Spanish speakers in Latin America, and, despite a couple of basket cases, this is becoming a wealthy part of the world. I understand that Chile is surging ahead at a rate of knots.
“We can leave if we want to”.
No we can’t – because “we” don’t want to. It’s as simple as that.
This goes to the myth of “The Rule Of Law”, i.e. the naive belief that the legal system is not in fact, merely the respectable-looking facade of the rule of political power.
The 1972 Act is now quite irrelevant – flagging it up as the key point to an exit strategy in the absence of that which may form the basis of political power is, to put it as sweetly as it can be put, daft.
There isn’t even much scope for throwing British Court spanners into the workings of EU law, since most of the important stuff (e.g. trade) completely overrides British law anyway.
The possibilities for a legal solution, short of the sort of democratic miracle that UKIP members must dream about, are already exhausted.
The only other avenues left for resisting Napoleon’s ghost are making the things that the EU finds more difficult to rule more important (e.g. the internet) and making it more difficult for the EU to actually enforce its rule (e.g. civil disobedience).
Unfortunately, that’s about all that’s left – except of course for the Russian option.
This is something I’ve been pointing out for days now. Of course we can.
Let’s not forget about the inevitability of collapse — the EU and its constituent national governments are unsustainable.
The EU is by far the world’s largest fossil fuel importer, in a world of finite fossil fuel supplies. Most of the EU governments have Ponzi-type pension schemes which will collapse, along with unsustainable government debt. Even poster-girl Germany’s trade surpluses are unsustainable in the long term; when the customers collapse (or switch to Chinese goods), Germany too will be in the pit along with the rest of the EU.
But the collapse of the EU will not be the end of European history. Libertarians should be focusing on how to make sure that what emerges from the inevitable collapse are societies based on individual liberty, not the bunch of totalitarian warlords which the last thousand years of bloody European history would lead us to expect.
As an American it irritates me more that the EU gets 2 votes in the UN Security Counsel and multiple votes in every other international body.
The EU gets to play by 2 different sets of rules whenever it wants to. If it wants, the EU gets to be treated like X separate countries. Alternatively, the EU gets to claim to be a US/China-sized single country.
At what point (Lisbon Constitution) is the rest of the world going to ask the EU to permanently pick one set of rules or the other.?
Who gives a fuck? Hopefully at some point France will be the only nuclear power in the EU once the UK (or just England) gets out.
Of course we can get out, all it needs is the guts and the will, who will provide that of course… well dont look to the Tory party of Cameron, but one with Hague as leader, maybe.
Dont forget the EU sells more stuff to us than we do to them, so the balance of trade is in our favour.
France and germany will be mighty pissed off and will cut up rough, but way short of armed force. What would they use? The French and Germans are deployed in Iraq and the Stan, but are to fuckin scared to go outside the wire!
RAB – Cameron’s sleazy BluLabour. I agree about Hague, although the socialists would jeer because of his last time round, when he was horrendously advised to try to compete with the sleazy Blairs on trendiness.
Another contender, photogenic, highly articulate, well-tailored and tri-lingual is Daniel Hannan.
They would both be superb. As would, I believe, be John Redwood, but not under the current circumstances.
The Conservatives are never going to recover under Cameron, a weak, self-serving man.
Yes I agree Verity.
Hague when leader, couldn’t get arrested let alone elected. It was too soon. The Tories were so out of favour even solid sense cut no ice with the electorate, so in thrall of the Blairite bullshit of “I’m a a pretty straight kind of guy”.
Now over half the population wants to impeach him.
As a tip for the future, perhaps this guy, and he hasn’t even been elected yet, though he will be. I know little of him, but bleeding hell! what a CV at 36.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/6475289/Rory-Stewart-A-new-kind-of-Tory.html
“But the collapse of the EU will not be the end of European history. Libertarians should be focusing on how to make sure that what emerges from the inevitable collapse are societies based on individual liberty, not the bunch of totalitarian warlords which the last thousand years of bloody European history would lead us to expect.”
Agreed.
Leon Louw published empirical evidence a few years ago indicating that what he calls “the integrity of the legal system” (but which I prefer to think of as the clarity and predictability of a legal system – “integrity” seems to connote a moral component to existing legal systems which I think is of dubious value) is the single largest predictor of many other positive outcomes (economic growth, low crime etc). Brian Micklethwait did an excellent podcast with Mr Louw back in 2006.
If that’s true, then it seems to me that both the EU and the US have a serious problem since both contain raucous political factions competing for control over State legislative chambers and courts. Nationalists and islamists in the EU (not to mention the socialist mish-mush in the middle), conservatives and socialists (I refuse the socialists the name they wrongly claim for themselves) in the US.
I think it would take a really, really long time of continued trade, cheap holidays, and baklava on toast with a side of fried tomatoes – what another four or five decades? (who could even guess?) – before a politically integrated Europe under a unified and predictable legal system would even be possible. There are simply too many people holding incompatible weltanschauung trying to gain control over the various national and pan European State apparati for true integration to work. Disintegration is almost certainly what is going to happen – whether under pan European totalitarian destruction or otherwise.
The core of the problem lies with this word “weltanschauung” – the confluence of unreason in culture, economics and politics in the psychology of the individual. There is no way out of this fight except through a long and hard fought process of continuously creating alternatives to the State until there is no longer any need to do so.
Unless we end up going Russian.
RAB,
The bloke is the pick of the Guardian classes? Don’t forget – John McCain was the pick of the New York Times.
What is the point of choosing people the enemy is relaxed about?
The military option may seem unlikely now, but given time it will become more of a possibility. Just look at the United States (plural), in 1776. I don’t suppose any of these original states thought that they couldn’t leave the Union. But give it a hundred years, and then we have Lincoln being responsible for more American deaths than any other US President, before or since, forcing the Union to stay together to create the United States (singular).
We should get out of the EU and get out now, while we still can. But if the Stupid Party doesn’t even possess the cojones to run a feeble referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, what current political mechanism exists to get us out?
Even full-blooded war failed for the Southern states to escape Lincoln’s straitjacket.
But, I think the tide of history will run in a secessionary wave, eventually. When the United States economy collapses soon, who knows whether Texas or Alaska might secede, once the dollar has imploded and the federal monster of Mordor-on-the-Potomac runs out of the means to keep them in, falling to the same level of power as Moscow did in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
History teaches us that the more socialised a society becomes, the feebler it becomes.
But the old Roman Empire lasted several hundred years before it finally collapsed under the weight of taxation, regulation, and inflation. The new Roman Empire of the EU may be similarly long-lasting.
Which is why we need to get out now.
Jack,
“But the old Roman Empire lasted several hundred years before it finally collapsed under the weight of taxation, regulation, and inflation. The new Roman Empire of the EU may be similarly long-lasting.”
But you forget that the Roman Empire was incredibly disciplined, militaristic, truly powerful and extraordinarily well integrated in order to expand and those conditions helped to persist for those hundreds of years. Citizens of the empire generally felt themselves to be “Roman”.
As soon as the first two of those things began to give way, the rot set in and it collapsed because it could defend itself from outside threats – the threat was not internal dissent (or not really).
Contrast this with the EU: It is not disciplined or militaristic or evenly vaguely well integrated. Citizens of the member states do not remotely think of themselves as “EUropean”.
The primary threats to the EU are internal not external – there are not hoardes of barbarians bearing down on Brussels, happy though that image may be.
This is the bizarre thing – the 800lb Gorilla: the EU could not sustain a good strong shove from anyone. If the UK were to stand up and “enough” and repeal ECA1972, I suspect that it is fairly likely that the EU would collapse remarkably quickly. That would not necessarily mean a descent into Europe-wide totalitarianism so long as it done soon enough that the (albeit hollowed out) nation state institutions still exist.
RAB – Yes, I agree with you. It was too soon for Hague. But the Tories themselves shot their own man in the foot with – I’m guessing, but it seems obvious to me – their image makers tried to counter Blair’s baffling appeal by presenting Hague as something he wasn’t.
Hague is not the type of man to wear a baseball cap. He even looked uneasy in it. It was obvious that some moronic style guru thought it made him look modern and Blairesque. Worse, they photographed him and Fion at the ghastly Nottinghill Carnival, where, I daresay, very few Tories venture. And other things I can’t remember now, but remembering shuddering at at the time.
In other words, they created a totally false image of William Hague, instead of presenting him as himself, a clever, quick-witted, self-confident, down-to-earth Conservative.
I still think his day will come.
Verity, if you saw the pathetic dissembling William Hague on Newsnight, the other day, defending the indefensible, then you may have thought, like me, that his day has come, it has been, and it has gone, just like the ten pints he used to drink each day delivering beer.
It was like watching a spineless spavined nag twitching in the abbatoir.
As I understand it, the Lisbon Treaty, unlike earlier EU treaties since Mass-trick, includes a specific mechanism for secession, unlike the USA for example.
This is important. The mere existence of a peaceful option for leaving reduces the chances of a Yugoslav scenario and would surely have some mitigating effect: if Germany can leave, you’d better believe that the Commission will pay more attention to German government interests.
As for the UK, the failure of our institutions should not be confused with the EU: it’s the fault of the British constitution that we don’t have a mechanism for a public demand for a referendum.
However, No2ID has effectively killed identity cards by mobilising, largely online. I think that a similar campaign for a European secession referendum could succeed.
Note: I don’t believe that exit is an automatic ticket to more freedom, IMHO, it’s as likely to put the Labour Party’s new think tank (the BNP) in charge as anything else.
Of course we can get out if we’re prepared for a short period of ‘no gain without pain’ and…as RAB says…testicular endurance.
The ‘treaty’ is non-negotiable to all intents & purposes so forget any vapid talk of ‘clawing back’ sovereignty.
We are now part of the EU
We are in because, quite simply, we, with consummate apathy, allowed our traitorous ruling elite to do the evil deed….Shame, shame on us!
Abrogation, secession, repudiation…call it what you will is always an option.
As things now stand we will meekly go along with the newly established status quo…and paying billions which we do not have for the privilege.
Meanwhile, Islam continues its reproductive takeover & over the pond, the tragedy of Fort Hood should be a horrendous lesson for all those who whine about profiling.
Greenland has left the E.U.
The United Kingdom should leave the E.U.
All nations should leave the E.U. – as it is another layer of government and also subverts national administrative structures.