What does Brexit look like? Nobody knows
• The question they can’t answer: What does ‘leave’ mean?
Here’s a question for you. Would you move home without knowing what your next home looks like? No, me neither.
But that’s what those campaigning for Britain to leave the EU are expecting you to do – vote to end our membership of the EU without knowing what we’d have instead.
The problem LEAVERS have is that they simply don’t know, and for sure they can’t agree.
As a result, two rival, irreconcilable ‘leave’ campaigns have been launched. UKIP’s leader, Nigel Farage, supports one (Leave.EU) and UKIP’s only MP, Douglas Carswell, supports the other (Vote Leave).
(*Update: and now there is yet another ‘Leave’ campaign called Grass Roots Out – more proof that the ‘Leavers’ cannot agree on their vision(s) of Britain after Brexit)
And as confirmed by the Financial Times, the ‘leave’ campaigns are in disarray.
On the one hand, Mr Farage wants to curtail immigration and stop EU migrants coming to Britain. On the other, Mr Carswell wants to promote a Singapore-style model for Britain, open to capital and migration.
Instead of Britain leaving the EU, these two prominent members of UKIP seem to be putting the case for leaving each other.
Or as the Financial Times put it this weekend;
“It is not just a matter of discordant personalities. Out campaigners have struggled to unite around a single vision of what Britain’s post-Brexit trading arrangements would look like.”
And this is the core problem for the LEAVERS – their Achilles heel. Explained the FT:
“They have also failed to provide a convincing explanation of how leaving the EU would give the British greater control over their destiny and improved economic prospects. This is not surprising because none of the models that is mooted for a future outside the EU is convincing.”
Some Eurosceptics are proposing the same model for Britain as Norway – but to participate in the EU internal market, Norway has to agree to EU rules, without any say in them.
Another option favoured by some Eurosceptics is for Britain to strike trade deals on a country-by-country basis. But, as the FT points out, that would mean British businesses having to pay higher tariffs to trade internationally.
As the Financial Times asserted:
“When it comes to these models – and others – the problem is that Britain moves from being a rule-maker to rule-taker.”
If Eurosceptics can’t even agree among themselves what it would mean for Britain to leave the European Union, it seems a bit rich to expect that voters will know. They don’t know, because the LEAVERS don’t know.
On this basis, I can’t recommend anyone to vote to leave. Our membership of the EU is not that bad; and the options for leaving (whichever one you might choose) are not that good.
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Other stories by Jon Danzig:
- My vote for Europe
- The end of free movement to and from Europe?
- Wrong answers on Question Time
- List of the latest articles by Jon Danzig
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— Jon Danzig (@Jon_Danzig) February 7, 2016
Then we will have to wait. We can only hope that truth prevails in the end.
The German prosecutor general has labelled these reports nonsense Jon, do keep up.
Yes, more data is now available. Only three out of 58 men arrested in Cologne over mass sex attacks on New Year’s Eve were refugees from Syria or Iraq. The majority of the suspects are of Algerian, Tunisian or Moroccan descent and none had recently arrived in Germany, according to police reports. We need to await the outcome of court trials to obtain a fuller picture.
As an investigative journalist Jon I am sure you are near completion on your promised piece concerning the mass sexual assaults that occurred in Cologne and other European cities on New Years Eve.
When can we expect this?
I understood you were waiting for the data. That now appears available, so no doubt it will be forthcoming.
I can’t wait.
Point 2 I don’t understand.
In the event of Brexit, the current PM is finished, so whoever is negotiating Article 50 will presumably be amongst the more than 100 MPs from the Governing party who will be campaigning for Brexit.
That’s a pretty wide choice, it will not be a PM who has endorsed remaining within the EU, that’s a certainty.
Whoever it is they could perhaps have a chat with the Leader of the Opposition or Shadow Chancellor, both have a history of voting against the EU on every given opportunity.
You do know the Leader of the Labour Party is on first name terms with Dougals Carswell, having met him on numerous occasions voting against the EU in the Lobbies against his party, whilst he appointed a Shadow Minister he had never actually spoken to.
The Labour Leader, his shadow Chancelor and many of his team are avowedly Eurosceptic, they understand Tony Benns 5 Rules of Governance, a shame his son doesn’t.
On point one, I understand that those wishing to pledge blind fealty to unelected institutions would like to move the debate beyond the failures of the EU onto conflicts within those campaigning for Brexit. I have to tell you I am not sure the public who will be casting their vote are that concerned.
Rather they are looking in fear and utter bewilderment as the Schengen Zone collapses, millions enter Europe without paperwork but seemingly with a misplaced sense of entitlement, and hundreds of European women are sexually assaulted on the streets of European cities, I think that might be grabbing their attention.
Soon they will be aware that the Euro zone is facing another financial crisis, some of us have already noticed the collapsing share price of banks across Europe, and those who have already understand that this is only the beginning, it’s going to get much worse. And this time the rotten core lives in Germany, not Greece.
The EU is a busted flush Jon, it’s nearly over now, dragged down by incompetence, riddled with corruption and ultimately due to be destroyed by its own sense of hubris, history is replete with Empires that end in this manner.
From my point of view an orderly Brexit can be planned for and managed, being amongst the wreckage of the EU as it implodes is considerably more of a risk.
But you carry on campaigning for that which you believe in Jon, standing proudly beside Blair, Mandelson, Goldman Sachs, the CBI, the Financial Times and all the ghastly neo Liberal accomplices to their deeds.
I would feel deeply ashamed to be doing so, but you obviously feel differently.
That’s the problem, Roy, you can only imagine what Brexit might look like. Those who support ‘Leave’ have two problems:
1. The Leavers cannot agree on what Brexit will mean.
2. Even if the Leavers could agree, they are not in power to deliver.
In other words, the Leavers can imagine, hope and dream, but they cannot promise.
My feeling is that the European Union is not bad enough, and the alternatives are not good enough, to vote LEAVE. I will be voting for the UK to REMAIN a member of the European Union.
I am surprised Jon that you extensively quote the FT in this article, at a point where we (the majority) are increasingly framing this debate between the citizen and the establishment.
Perhaps you could also start quoting Goldman Sachs, Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson or the CBI next.
Suits me.
I imagine Jon it would look like a Parliament whereby the elected MPs and Government would be held responsible for their actions as they would be held wholly responsible for them.
I imagine that a point based immigration system would be imposed whereby skilled workers from across the globe would be welcomed equally, but unskilled Labour would be allowed where required on short term working visas, as we had prior to the EU free movement policy.
I imagine that as the UK represents the largest single export market to EU manufacturers, two years of negotiations as laid out in Article 50 would easily suffice to provide mutually beneficial trade deal.
I imagine that retaking our seat within the WTO would allow us to speed up and complete trade deals with growing nations and trading blocks, whilst Europe continues to shrivel up, only Europe has diminishing growth.
I would suggest that as the EU is grappling with two major self inflicted wounds, the Euro debacle and mass third world immigration whilst unemployment is running at double that of the UK and US, most sensible people would look at the EU and come to the conclusion that far more uncertainty resides in staying within it.
The polling suggests i am right.
Never mind, Eddie Izzard has signed up to the remain campaign, a cock in a frock will doubtless sway opinion to suit the Establishment.