News
Over the weekend two of the most prominent pro-Brussels lobby groups published papers to support the 'Rejoin' campaign.
The report from ‘Best for Britain', which argued that the UK could rejoin the EU within a single Parliament, glossed over many problems. Here are just four.
First, despite what the report says, Finland’s fast-track accession process is not a useful model: the UK has a much larger economy, with many more potential sticking points - on both sides.
Second, the EU itself is busy trying to confront many other challenges, such as further enlargement, a much bigger budget, rising debt, increased regulation and protectionism, greater centralisation of power and the removal of vetoes - all against the backdrop of growing euroscepticism within the bloc. In short, the EU some want the UK to rejoin could be very different (even more undemocratic, divided, and badly run) than the one we left.
Third, the EU would need much stronger assurances that UK reaccession would stick rather than be reversed by a new UK government in the next parliament. The same applies to any significant realignment, including the so-called ‘UK–EU reset’.
Fourth, on another referendum, the Best for Britain report merely notes that there are no “hard and fast rules” and concludes that “it is therefore up to the government of the day to decide if and when a referendum is necessary”. That may be the strict constitutional position, but many would see disregarding the 2016 vote as a fundamental betrayal. Even the EU would probably insist on a new referendum (see point three!).
Many of the same points apply to the other report, from the European Movement, which proposed a 10-year plan to drag the UK back into the EU by 2036. A longer accession process might at least be more realistic than Best for Britain’s fast-track proposal. But it would, of course, prolong the political and economic uncertainty even more, and by 2036 the EU will surely have moved even further in the wrong direction.
