Will a Starmer government try to rejoin the EU?

I am among the first of those who would not trust Keir Starmer to put the interests of the UK before the rose-coloured spectacles view of the EU. He was a leader of those who sought a second referendum in defiance of the 2016 verdict of the people. He is, therefore, among those who know better than the people; in other words, no democrat.

There is a significant and influential body of thought that determinedly regards Brexit as a disaster, despite the absence of any evidence for that judgement. These people don’t need evidence; it would only tell them things they prefer not to know. It is enough, for them, that they wanted to stay in the EU and the people decided otherwise. They are resolutely blind to the facts: that the UK’s exports to the EU have already recovered to pre-Brexit levels, that the UK economy has grown faster than Germany since Brexit, and that we are attracting much of the foreign investment that might have been expected to flow to the EU, because we are less concerned to protect existing producers and their status quo methods from new technology and competition. In short, the effect of Brexit is too small to detect in the context of the aftermaths of Covid and Ukraine.

I suspect that Starmer might be emotionally akin to those recusants who still write tediously repetitive letters to The Times to explain (without evidence) that Brexit has failed, the editors who unaccountably continue to publish them, and those columnists who take the same view. I really only read this stuff to remind myself of the proverb about those who will not see. I really should change my newspaper, but I keep hoping they’ll grow out of this.

Fortunately, the facts will interpose between even the most rigid EU ideologue and the behaviour suggested by the questioner. There is, of course, no way back to the series of exemptions that had already made our position within the EU peripheral years before we decided to leave. The UK is now a third country, like any other, and would need to follow the protocol for new members.

The opinion polls that suggest there is majority public support for rejoining the EU take an enormous hit as soon as respondents are informed that joining as a new member means replacing the pound by the euro and accepting the EU’s ridiculous one-size-fits-all monetary policy.

The numbers take another hit when people are informed that free movement of people would be reinstituted.

And that the EU would be allowed to resume their destruction of British fish stocks.

And that we would have to undo all the bilateral and multilateral trade deals that we have achieved since Brexit and throw away the opportunities that they offer.

The UK would also have to reverse the repeal of 1,000 EU laws that it has already achieved and pass thousands of new ones that the EU has promulgated since we left. While leavers deplore the UK government’s lethargy in scrapping economically-damaging left-over EU legislation, from the EU’s point of view we have failed to keep up with their relentless passion for minutely-detailed regulation and bureaucracy and have become deplorably lax.

And do remember that the national veto has not existed in the vast bulk of policy areas since the Treaty of Lisbon, no matter what some EU enthusiasts seem to believe. If the EU passes a bad law, you still have to enact it unamended. In effect, our parliament is reduced to a rubber stamp.

But, of course, that means our mollycoddled politicians would be able to give up their pathetic attempts to think for themselves and resume the comfort blanket of blaming the EU for every badly-judged new rule instead. So we can’t say that nobody would benefit. The politicians would be paid to do nothing.

And you thought they were pretty good at that already? Well, you ain’t seen nothing yet!

The Long, Slow Decline of the EU

I have commented before on the failings of the Euro as a currency.  I have also mentioned protectionist trading and politicised economics, but in addition, I think if you put together:

1. The capture of the Commission by the big business lobbies,
2. Regulation by process rather than by outcome,
3. The precautionary regulatory principle to stifle innovation,

you have a fairly good recipe for long term relative decline.

Not so much an economy as a museum, still popular, but in the process of becoming a quaint antiquity. A bit like Rome in the 5th century AD, complete with a gradually shrinking empire.

Opinion Polls and EU Membership

The British, like many others, have a tendency to fall for the “post hoc ergo propter hoc” fallacy. That is, we tend to confuse A happening before B with A having caused B. Here’s the popular reasoning:

1. Fact: we left the EU.

2. Fact: we have subsequently suffered cost of living difficulties.

3. Conclusion, leaving the EU caused the cost of living problems.

Problem 1. Brexit did not cause either Covid or the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These two added together did, for a while, make us look like one of the ruins that Cromwell knocked about a bit.

Problem 2. The Eurozone economies fared even worse as a result of these problems, and none of them, by definition, had left the EU.

Problem 3. The EU responses to both Covid and Ukraine were a lot slower than the UK responses, and eventually they had to follow us, rather than vice versa.

Problem 4. The UK is increasingly attracting foreign investment that the EU’s over-regulatory system is driving away.

Better Conclusion: 

We are faster on our feet and more decisive as an independent nation. None of our current problems would have been eased by remaining in the EU. We would simply have added to the inevitable economic problems caused by world events beyond our control. How we proceed is now up to us to decide.

The EU, The Vaccine, and Exports

If the EU had gone down the UK route they would have financed both vaccine development and factory construction in their own countries with a capacity sufficient for their own needs. This is not a matter of the UK forcing it’s way to the front of the queue; the UK is creating the supply that others then queue up for!

Because the UK does not have the capacity to supply others at present, it licenses other countries to produce the AZ vaccine on condition that, like the UK, they produce and sell at cost. To look at physical exports and ignore this licensing programme is highly misleading.

The AZ vaccine exists because of the UK government. Philanthropic we may be, but we not unreasonably thought that, having paid for its development as well as its production, the UK taxpayers should get it first.

The UK actually brought AZ into production partnership with Oxford, where the vaccine was developed, precisely because of fears of vaccine nationalism. They reached a production understanding long before the vaccine passed its clinical trials, the government accepting all the risks involved.

Oddly enough, the anticipated nationalism was from Trump's USA, which was why the UK didn’t want Oxford going into partnership with a US firm as originally intended. Obviously, AZ is part Swedish and some of its production is in the EU. As it turns out, maybe we should have expected nationalism from the EU too.

At the same time the UK ordered several other vaccines from various different sources, including some in the EU, gambling that these vaccines would succeed. Any EU country or the EU Commission could have placed similar orders at the same time, but for whatever reasons they decided not to. Once those EU firms had accepted UK contracts they would not expect to be prevented from fulfilling them, any more than AZ expected the EU to try to prevent them fulfilling their contract with the UK.

The EU meanwhile spent a couple of months beating down AZ’s already cost-based price and finally placed its order, if I recall correctly, when the vaccine was already in third phase trials, nevertheless still forcing risk responsibility on to the firm. This meant they got a ‘best efforts’ contract because no company managers in their right mind would definitively guarantee supplies when they were bearing all the risk as well as not making a profit.

We are now witnessing the unedifying spectacle of the EU refusing to admit its own incompetence and seeking to deflect blame on to an external ‘enemy’ who happens to have produced the vaccine in the first place.

Some want to consider financing development of the Oxford vaccine ‘getting lucky’. That is up to them, I suppose. Some people would call it a sound investment of public funds. No risk, no reward. What prevented EU countries doing the same?

It should however be obvious even to an EU supporter that the UK’s involvement in the AZ vaccine is a lot more more than just a contractual arrangement. The UK would hardly have spent all that money in order to export the vaccine at cost before UK needs were met.

Is the EU supposed to have been unaware of this history? Did they not read the contract they signed with AZ? Did they not know that the UK plant had gone through the same production difficulties as the EU plant, just three months earlier?

I’m sorry, but the Commission are negligent, incompetent or both and behaving in their usual belligerent and litigious manner as soon as their failings are exposed. It would never, I suppose, occur to them to say, “I’m sorry, we screwed up, can you help us out?”

Why are we still talking about a 'no-deal' Brexit?

I find it interesting how the term ‘no-deal Brexit’ is being redefined. It originally meant the UK leaving the EU without a leaving deal.

Now that we have a leaving deal, this apparently does not count as a deal and the definition of ‘no deal’ has been switched to refer to a trade deal.

It is worth pointing out that the UK leaves the EU on January 31st. Despite arguably flouting the wording of Lisbon Article 50 by so doing, the EU declined to discuss trade relationships before the UK left. Therefore, under the trade agreement definition of ‘no-deal’, there was never any prospect of the UK leaving the EU any other way.

We are not leaving the EU on December 31st. This is the date of the expiry of the transition period, a euphemism for a period when, although outside the EU, the UK continues to observe all EU rules.

This period was originally scheduled to run from April 2018. The various parliamentary delays prevented the UK leaving the EU on schedule in March 2018, but did not extend the transition period. Hence there is less time for trade negotiations than was intended. This is arguably a good thing, but that’s beside the point.

Brexit means leaving the EU. It does not mean subsequently securing a trade deal with the EU. The UK cannot change its mind about leaving if a trade deal fails to materialise by December 31st because we shall by that time have been out of the EU for 11 months.

So whatever happens in December, it will not be a ‘no-deal Brexit’.

What About This EU Leaving Fee?

There are several ways of looking at the so-called EU divorce bill or leaving fee but, firstly, we should note that the sum of £39 billion was predicated upon a March departure. Since the UK is still paying its regular membership dues until October 31st, the residue will be about £33 billion (give or take a little for exchange rate variation).

The Lisbon Treaty says EU law ceases to apply to a leaving state on the day of its departure. A House of Lords report has suggested that on this basis the UK’s residual liability could be zero unless there is an agreement.

However, Mrs. May unilaterally guaranteed the UK’s annual contributions to the EU up to the end of the latter’s current financial planning period (2014-2020). The amount remaining to be paid under this heading as of 31 October will be around £12 billion (net). This sum would also be paid in the event of the UK remaining in the EU. It is less clear whether it has to be paid if the UK leaves without a deal.

I don’t know whether Mrs. May intended her guarantee to cover the anticipated transition period, when for all practical purposes the UK would have remained a non-voting member of the EU. Some people argue that if we leave without an agreement and hence without a transition period this amount is not payable. Other people say we should pay it anyway ex gratia. I expect the latter as the most likely outcome.

The remaining £20 billion mostly represents reste à liquider, which doesn't seem to translate very well into English. It is an amorphous block of EU undertakings, some of which may not even have started yet, and it is a controversial amount, not least because it represents an attempt to load part of the liabilities of a continuing organisation on to a departing member which is receiving no comparable share of the organisation’s assets and which is already being denied a share in various benefits acquired by use of these assets.

Now, rather in the sense that someday the national debt may theoretically be paid off, likewise someday the EU debt may theoretically be paid off, but nobody is expecting it any day soon. So it is not the case that most of this sum would have to be paid (at least in the foreseeable future) if the UK remained in the EU. To that extent, requiring a leaving member to pay what a remaining member would not pay may, I think, be considered a leaving fee.

It must be dubious whether there is any court in the world in which the EU could pursue a claim for this, although they might make a financial settlement a condition of any future trade deal. As I recall, it was only agreed in the first place in order to open up discussion of a trade deal that never happened because a separate leaving deal could not be agreed, so perhaps we shall eventually come full circle.

Will life be better after Brexit?

Lunch in Strasbourg

The decision to leave the EU was taken long ago, yet the sort of questions which were asked back then are still being repeated. The answer is the same. Those who didn’t accept it back then won’t accept it now, because no significant new evidence is available. If they want proof and won’t do anything until they get proof, then sadly they will be part of the problem, not the solution.

Having more control over our national life, because important tools are back in our own hands, does not necessarily make things economically better. It depends upon us. Life after Brexit is going to be more what we make of it and less what we rely on others to make of it for us. It will require all our best efforts.

How many great discoveries were made by people who might have enjoyed a perfectly comfortable life without rocking the boat but wanted better? By contrast, how many achievements fell to grumblers who sat back and waited for those embarking on a new path to fail, so they could scoff and say ‘I told you so’?

I hope I’m wrong, but I get the feeling some people would rather see their country fail than admit the possibility that it could be made a success outside the EU.

A world economy growing faster than the EU is out there, but we have to get out and compete in it. Prosperity won’t be handed to us on a plate. Like most worthwhile investments it will require hard work, risk-taking and short term sacrifice. If a substantial proportion of us sit back and wait for others to prove they can deliver, we shall inevitably neglect a substantial proportion of the new opportunities we might have taken.

The proverbial Five (or Six) Ps work backwards as well as forwards; not only Yea-sayers but Nay-sayers influence the future.

Why has no-one mentioned the enormous benefits of EU membership?

One of the most disappointing things about the 2016 Referendum campaign was the failure of Remainers to enlarge upon the alleged benefits of EU membership. Instead, the whole thrust of their campaign was negative- threats of cataclysm should the British electorate be foolish enough to vote to leave. Most of these dire predictions were patently absurd, apparently leaving even the PM embarrassed. Where the harmful consequences were real, they were insufficiently widely applicable for most voters to care.

It may be of some interest that the term ‘Project Fear’, used to describe this negative campaigning, had actually been coined two years earlier by Scottish nationalists to describe the unionist campaign during the independence referendum. In both cases the campaign against change took a negative form, leaving optimism almost entirely to the advocates of breaking away. In both cases the response to expressions of aspiration was yet more negativism: you’re lying, you’ll never be able to do that, etc. In both cases, the reaction of floating voters who might have been persuaded either way was to swing away from the negative campaign and towards the positive one. Essentially, it seems, British voters really don’t take kindly to threats.

When I observed the line the establishment, who were almost all Remainers, were taking in 2016, I couldn’t believe they were doing it again. Had they learned nothing the first time? Had they perhaps not noticed that negativism and threats had gone over like a lead balloon in Scotland? If they’d set out to maximise the vote against the status quo, they couldn’t have picked a better tactic. Moreover, given that the status quo wasn’t really available in a rapidly-integrating Europe where the UK needed opt-out after opt-out, the plan was even less intelligible second time around.

I am driven to the conclusion that the establishment has so little practice in explaining themselves positively because political correctness blocks all discussion of alternative views. Bien-pensants regard their own way of thinking as so obviously correct that they think even the dimmest fellow-citizen must necessarily see it too. They take their self-righteousness so completely for granted that they never have to produce reasons why they are right and their opponents are wrong. As J S Mill predicted, they have lost the art of crafting rational arguments. When they do finally encounter opposition, all they can do is hurl ad hominem abuse.

In short, the reason no-one mentioned the alleged enormous benefits of EU membership was that no-one in a position to influence the debate could remember what they were.

Which would damage Britain more, Brexit or a second referendum?

When I was a child, I lived with my parents. They always did their best for me and I was never hungry or shabby. When I grew up I decided I needed to make a life for myself away from home. I met a girl and we married. In the early days of our marriage, we were poorer than I had been when I lived with my parents, but we stuck at it and worked through various difficulties until we achieved a comfortable lifestyle, very considerably better than my parents had enjoyed. And because my parents were good parents they backed me throughout this struggle and were delighted with the outcome.

Now, bearing in mind that your parents may not live as long as you, tell me which is more damaging, to endure through the early difficult years of independence in order to make a good life for yourself, or to give up at the first hardship and go back to your parents’ home where it’s safe and secure in the short run?

There are some unfortunate people who, through no fault of their own, do not have an option. There are some people who choose the second option. But if everyone chose the second option, society would collapse, wouldn’t it?

Let us please remember that the 2016 Referendum was the UK electorate’s first opportunity for forty years to make a choice on the direction taken by the EU.

As it happens, I had read the fine print and voted ‘No’ in 1975. However, I blame no-one who was at that time under the impression that the EEC stood for free trade and nothing more. It’s no good now pointing to old documents, you really had to live through that campaign to know how much pressure was put upon a public that had only a couple of year’s experience of life on the inside and still saw an exciting prospect.

But to all those who now claim that changed circumstances within a scant two years necessitate another plebiscite to confirm our departure, may I politely enquire how vigorously you campaigned for a vote on the loss of sovereignty entailed by the formation of the EU at Maastricht? Were you satisfied with the opt-outs negotiated by Major or did you consider the UK was being marginalised within a determinedly integrating organisation? Not a change in circumstances worth a vote, eh?

How upset were you when the EU constitution, on which we had been promised a vote, was re-badged as the Lisbon Treaty and pushed through regardless of rejection by other countries? Did you worry at all about the erosion of the veto and the rise of majority voting? Did you care when the Eurozone members began meeting on their own to form a common position to put before the European Council, where they collectively outvoted the non-members? More huge changes, but again not worth a vote?

If none of these things caused you sufficient disquiet to call for a further referendum, then I respectfully suggest it is disingenuous to call for one now, when Brexit has not even been implemented and the only new information to hand is that negotiations turned out to be more difficult than expected. In that context, I invite you to bear in mind that prominent Remainers have publicly urged the EU to be tough on the UK in order to assist their campaign to reverse the decision to Leave. In other words, your own team has made a significant contribution to the difficulties of which you now complain.

The electorate gets one choice in forty years, the people make their choice and you think you can campaign with impunity for that choice to be overturned before it is even carried out? Seriously? You think that democracy in the UK will not be dreadfully damaged in the process? Two hundred years after Peterloo, has the establishment truly learned so very little?

Have you taken note of polls showing the low regard in which politicians are already held compared to other groups? In 2016 the government pledged to implement what the people decided. That pledge has not yet been met. If it is not met, then do not expect a restoration of trust in the political system within a generation.

Is it more important for Scotland to be in the EU or the UK?

The question begged here is more significant than the question asked, isn’t it? Could an independent Scotland get into the EU? There are several reasons why it might not, and all of these have been rehearsed ad nauseam. Is it worth going over them yet one more time? Probably not. It’s a complete dialogue of the deaf. Essentially it boils down to a disagreement between SNP supporters (who see no obstacle to anything) and unionists (who see obstacles to everything.)

Realistically, it seems far from certain that the option assumed in the question is actually available just for the choosing, especially in the short term. Pragmatically, an independent Scotland must be prepared for membership of neither union.

Perhaps we could look at the people involved instead of the economics. Scotland’s current residents include around 475,000 British nationals from other parts of the UK. Meanwhile, about 720,000 Scots live elsewhere in the UK. Intermarriage for 300 years has produced a very large number of people of mixed Scottish/other-British heritage and today’s British families (including my own) can comprise persons born on different sides of the border.

All of a sudden upon independence, a million and a quarter people would find they no-longer lived in their own country. One of them would be me. Personally, I find the prospect devastating.

Neither group of ‘exiles’ could be deprived of their present nationality against their will. An independent Scotland can offer Scottish nationality to non-Scots-born residents of Scotland, or possibly to Scots-born residents of the rest of the UK, but it cannot force it upon them.

In fact, it must be legally dubious whether a Scottish government could even force nationality change on Scots-born unionists. In the short term at least, a British passport is likely to be more valuable to travellers than a Scottish one.

It is therefore not beyond the bounds of possibility, in the event of a narrow vote in favour of independence, that the subsequent Scottish population would be almost equally divided between Scots and resident aliens.

We’ve recently had cause to notice how well the dividing of a population almost equally across passionately-felt identity lines has gone, I guess?

Tired old Propaganda

I studied economics at Oxford, taught it, helped introduce management science as a secondary school subject in Scotland and subsequently examined it.

However, there are considerably more eminent economists than me who support Brexit. Perhaps I might pray in aid the 2017 report by Patrick Minford, Professor of Economics at Cardiff University and Roger Bootle, Chairman of Capital Economics, Europe’s largest macroeconomics consultancy, among others. The group included six former economic advisers to government and eight university professors.

“Brexit could boost the UK economy by as much as £135 billion a year...it is time to abandon the gloomy forecasts of Project Fear and embrace Project Prosperity – the mounting evidence that quitting the protectionist EU will transform Britain’s prospects over the next decade.”

Now you may not agree with the distinguished authors of this report, but isn’t it about time to ditch the tired old propaganda campaign that Brexit is exclusively the province of the ignorant? Rational discussion is not aided by abusing those who don’t agree with you, nor by hysterical prophecies of cataclysm.

It simply is not the case that all the evidence points one way. As Spinoza pointed out, it depends on the colour of the glass through which you view it in the first place. In this case, also, there is a decision to be made on the balance of probabilities and of risk versus reward.

Even if majority opinion amongst certain groups did point one way it’s not much of a guarantee. I’ve been here before, being called a xenophobe and a fool almost two decades ago, when I was one of the relatively few economists who held that the UK should not join the Euro because it was unsoundly structured, would not work properly and would damage several European economies severely. Strangely enough, nowadays I find far more people who remember agreeing with me back then than I ever noticed at the time.

Free Trade versus Protectionism

Any set of circumstances will advantage some and disadvantage others, likewise any changes in circumstances. We can always find examples of those who are disadvantaged by change, but we do not, if we are wise, attempt to ban the development of motor cars in order to protect the livelihoods of stablemen and wagon builders.

Protectionism is in no-one’s long-term interest. Even when it is the collective protectionism of a number of advanced economies it is ultimately damaging to the optimum allocation of resources and hence to standards of living. Free trade with as much of the world as possible is in the UK’s best interest.

Right now the EU’s protectionism does temporarily benefit some producers but most of them are not in the UK. This is why, as a mainly service-based economy, we buy manufactures and agricultural products expensively from the EU instead of cheaply elsewhere and have a major trade deficit with the EU which does not reciprocate with a genuinely-free market in services.

Already the EU accounts for a rapidly diminishing minority of our trade. We enjoy a surplus in our growing trade with the rest of the world. The EU is slow-growing by world standards. Can anyone explain why it is sensible on a macroeconomic basis to remain tied to the shrinking, deficit-returning section of our trade to the disadvantage of the growing, surplus-returning section? President Trump, for example, has correctly highlighted the problems the Chequers proposals present for a trade agreement with the USA, our largest single market.

The point is that tariffs, in general, are not very important today as barriers to trade, though there are always specific exceptions to the rule of course. However non-tariff barriers are important and it is this which is at the heart of the EU’s protectionism. The EU rulebook is process-driven, not standards-driven. In other words, it is backward-looking and hostile to innovation. Such rulebooks can never keep up with technology and in the EU’s case are actively pressed to resist change by reactionary lobbyists.

The negotiations with the EU have long since passed the point where a deal could be mutually advantageous. It’s now all about preserving the EU by holding back the progress which the UK would be able to show once freed from the shackles. It is not in the UK’s interest to pursue the Chequers proposals or anything likely to flow from them.

Protectionism always has its advocates because it can yield temporary political gains to the protector. Free trade, by contrast, can yield mutual economic benefits to all participants. We will get good deals because it’s in the interests of other countries to give us good deals. It would even be in the interests of the EU, except that they prefer to protect their federalist agenda over their citizens’ welfare.

Remember that the UK is a service-based economy and the EU 27 are mostly not. The EU has been spectacularly unsuccessful in negotiating service trade deals, probably because its negotiators neither understand nor care what is needed. Switzerland etc. do perfectly well as standalone negotiators. This is because they do understand the needs of service-based economies, i.e. their own! The UK is the world’s sixth economy. Why can we not do what these other independent countries can do?

How About a Leave Folk Song?

(To the tune Ilkla Moor Baht 'At)

Tha’s bin an’ voted fer Remain.

What does tha use f’ra brain?

Tha’s bin an’ voted fer Remain.

Thar vote ‘as gone reyt down t’drain!

Cos all us voted Leave,

In UK we believe,

All us ‘oo voted Leave!

Tha wants ter stay in t’ single mart.

Tha knows that’s not too smart.

Tha wants ter stay in t’ single mart.

Tha’s got thy ‘orse afore thy cart!

Cos all us voted Leave,

In UK we believe,

All us ‘oo voted Leave!

Tha wants ter stay in t’ customs pot.

Protectin’ what we’ve got.

Tha wants ter stay in t’ customs pot.

When outside it t’ wide world’s got all t’ lot!

Cos all us voted Leave,

In UK we believe,

All us ‘oo voted Leave!

We that are island born and bred

Can’t lie in port no more ‘n lie in bed.

We that are island born and bred

Must look to t’open sea instead!

Cos all us voted Leave,

In UK we believe,

All us ‘oo voted Leave!

Remain Campaign Is Really Quite A Pain

Unreconciled Remainers continue to campaign for further parliamentary votes on Brexit. They know parliament is, for historical party-political reasons, overwhelmingly dominated by Remainers and not representative of the popular will as demonstrated in the referendum. They hope MPs who stood for election in 2017 on a manifesto of implementing Brexit may yet renege.

By a series of scandals in recent years our parliamentarians have greatly lowered their standing in the eyes of the public. But things could get worse. Having themselves decided to put the Brexit issue to the people, if they now wrest back control because the people gave them the wrong answer they will damage parliament’s reputation and standing beyond recovery.

It’s easy to forget the roots of our democracy are shallow. The UK has not always been democratic; in fact we’re still in our first century of universal equal suffrage.

As it happens I myself, though quite well-stricken in years and despite having cast my vote on every occasion I was able, have never so much as helped elect a constituency MP. I share this distinction with many others, I’m sure, because the UK constitution does not require a majority vote to elect an MP or a government.

Since The Second World War, only the 2010-15 coalition government has ever achieved the degree of support at the polls achieved by ‘Leave’ in the 2016 referendum. Strangely enough the right of the other, inadequately-supported, governments to govern was not questioned. Yet the contempt expressed for the much more convincing Brexit vote recalls the horror with which the 19th century ruling elite responded to the first proposed expansions of the franchise.

Look, I taught philosophy for a couple of decades. I prided myself on being able to argue either side of any question, whichever was needed in order to counter the prejudices with which my students arrived in the classroom. My objective was to get them thinking rationally rather than simply asserting their viewpoint. Arguing for a side you don’t actually support is quite good practice in understanding other people.

Yet in respect of Brexit on Quora I’m constantly bombarded by belligerent, expletive-laden certainties of what is right for my country and wrong about my own views from people who admit not so much as a scintilla of personal doubt, let alone the possibility of a rational alternative. Disagreement is, it seems, simply unacceptable.

All I can say is, some people evidently possess the gifts of clairvoyance and prophecy. I don’t. I have to muddle along with an M.A. from Oxford University, the experience of working through a couple of U.N. General Assemblies and a few decades spent trying to make sense of economics. Maybe that doesn’t qualify me to form an opinion, but it seems to me not unreasonable that it should.

Any number of superficially-plausible reasons have been put forward to justify trying to overturn the referendum result, but in the end only one thing matters: such a precedent, once set, cannot be unset.

And the alternatives to democracy aren’t very nice.

United States of Europe?

A United States of Europe has been advocated for centuries as a means of preventing European War. Even after the US Civil War demonstrated that war between federated states was by no means impossible, prominent European figures continued to argue for such a project.

The devastating wars of the twentieth century gave fresh impetus to the idea, and in the 1940’s the federalists effectively gained the upper hand over those who favoured looser associations such as the Council of Europe and EFTA. Recognising however that their ideas were well ahead of European pubic opinion, they agreed to a step by step approach towards “ever closer union”. The most recent step was the Lisbon Treaty of 2007, which effectively reintroduced the previously down-voted European Constitution under another name. It is under Article 50 of this constitution that the UK is currently negotiating withdrawal from the EU. A number of notable politicians have endorsed a United States of Europe in recent years.

However recent years have also seen a significant push back against the centralising tendencies of the European Commission in particular. Heavily indebted members of the Eurozone have been forced to accept major deflationary measures despite consequent heavy unemployment and popular discontent. Migratory waves have placed the open borders Schengen system under intolerably heavy political strain. Nationalist political forces have grown stronger in various member states.

To all of this the Brussels answer is more Europe, not less. For example the single currency won’t work properly without a common fiscal policy and to save the single currency from the pressures it has come under we must therefore remove the individual fiscal freedom of member states. The absence of a popular will for this is not considered an obstacle.

To some, European federalism is yesterday’s answer to yesterday’s problems. Aloof, remote government is no longer acceptable to populations who, in the information age, are far more in touch with alternative thinking on how their needs may be met.

This is not to say that the ideal of fraternity is not a fine one. However, if fraternity is to be realised, ways need to be found of making it compatible with liberty and democracy.

Quora Question: Why did Britain vote to exit the EU?

EU organisation diagram

I must reduce the number of questions I answer on Quora. One of these days I need to write something somebody will pay for. But meanwhile:

I can’t speak for my country.

I personally think the proximate cause was the unwillingness of the EU during Cameron’s negotiations to offer even minimal gestures towards reforming those policy areas that raised concern in the UK. They did this in the full knowledge that Cameron needed a deal he could sell to the electorate. Instead, he was humiliated. After a widely-derided effort to suggest that he’d obtained worthwhile concessions, he effectively had to drop the whole subject of the supposed reforms from the referendum campaign.

In respect of immigration, the critical issue was the way the economically-unsound idea of free movement of people had quietly replaced the economically-sound idea of free movement of workers in EU treaties. The latter is about allowing factors of production to move to areas of gainful employment; the former only makes sense as part of a political project and throws intolerable burdens on to the public and social services of richer member countries. It’s worth noting that other members subsequently adopted restrictions they’d refused to Cameron.

Let us also for a moment consider the alternative to the UK leaving. Remainers argue their position was the status quo; it was not. The EU has two major projects that define its objectives; these are the Schengen Agreement on open borders and the Euro single currency. The UK had already decided to opt out of both. We had no influence on these two central issues. Hence we could only ever have been a fringe member going forward.

In particular the Eurozone members collectively outvote the non-members in the EU. They meet together, without the non-members, in order to agree a common position before EU Council meetings. One Eurozone meeting even decided to commit EU funds to a bailout scheme despite the UK, a major contributor to EU funds, not being present at the table.

In summary, I rather think the EU left the UK.

Quora Question: Should there be a second EU referendum in the UK?

Advocates of a second referendum seem to hold simultaneously two incompatible propositions:

1) The issues involved in the first referendum were too complex for the masses to understand.

2) The complex terms of an eventual exit deal can be put to the electorate in the form of a simple yes / no question.

Among the grounds for holding a second referendum is a claim that only one side misrepresented the facts in the first referendum. It seems we have forgotten Project Fear, with its immediate recession, emergency punishment budget, World War Three etc.

As a general rule I am not an enthusiast for referenda. Experience shows them to be socially divisive blunt instruments, splitting families and communities, reducing complex shades of grey to simple black and white and arousing passions that are not easy to quell after the event. General elections, by contrast,  give almost every voter some sort of stake in the outcome; few are left utterly without representation. A referendum is winner takes all, however small the majority.

However, the EU Referendum eventually became necessary because all the major political parties of the UK supported membership and selected parliamentarians to reflect that policy.  For forty years opponents had no opportunity to vote against a process that steadily eroded the sovereignty of their country. I suspect a majority of voters might still support membership of the sort of Common Market that we were told we were joining in 1973, but not of an inexorably advancing European superstate, To rage against the result of the first popular vote on this issue in four decades carries more than a whiff of anti-democratic elitism.

Inevitably the ordinary citizen, who has his own life to live, is not an expert. That doesn’t make him ignorant of how his own life is affected by the issues. The failing of our modern system of representative democracy has been the emergence of a class of professional politicians with no experience of the normal world in which their constituents live. In consequence three quarters of parliament were Remainers but the country as a whole voted Leave.

Given that almost all the political, commercial and financial elite spent months predicting chaos, it is a tribute to the resilience of the UK's economic system that the immediate aftermath of the Referendum was not vastly greater instability than in fact occurred.

Just as in the Scottish Referendum, the losers are immediately enthusiastic for a re-run. Economically speaking, nothing could be worse than the prolongation of uncertainty. It damages business, deters inward investment and is a self-inflicted wound which the country can do without. Business can adjust to in or out but not to an eternal argument.

Because the truth is, a second referendum will by no means show a clear and settled popular will. Is it not far more likely the national mood will swing periodically against the status quo just as it tends to do in general elections? How many referenda will be a sufficient number? I very much doubt that agitation for a re-run will ever be quelled if we once start along this road.

Let us instead look for the opportunities of a potential worldwide future rather than hankering after a primarily EU past.

Enemies at Home and Friends Abroad

Setting Sail

One might have hoped the UK's  triggering of  Lisbon Article 50 would at least put a stop to Cassandra-like prophecies of doom at home. Surely the country would come together to make the best of the situation, like it or not?

Too much to hope for, I fear. The Scottish Government still wants to undermine the UK's negotiators with plaintive noises off, while many Remainers seem far more anxious to be proved right than they are for the country's wellbeing.

It might help if Remainers remembered the referendum campaign featured a dodgy prospectus on both sides and that Leavers weren't all ignorant and gullible; in fact we included several high-powered economists. The surging exports and solid economic growth since last June don't really resemble the catastrophe Remainers predicted, nor was a punishment budget required.

Moreover it would make more sense complaining about the Brexiteers' failure to deliver if the Brexiteers actually controlled the government, which they don't.  When did Theresa May promise loads of money for the NHS?

Let us consider the two biggest projects of the EU. (Since we opted out of both of these, we could only ever have been peripheral members henceforward anyway.)

• The Euro is an economic disaster which can't be admitted because of the political fallout that would result, so they just let it cause thirty percent unemployment and chronic financial crisis in southern Europe instead. If we lived in Greece we might learn what it really means to have something to feel pessimistic about.

• The Schengen Agreement is collapsing under the weight of uncontrolled migration and frontier fences have gone up all over Eastern Europe.

I have said before that political will is not enough to support a project to link so many economies by a common currency. The fudging of membership criteria did not begin with Greece, it goes right back to the foundation of the single currency when Italy's debt was almost twice the permitted percentage of GDP and France only qualified for the fiscal deficit criterion by a one-off privatisation of Thomson.

The point politicians failed to appreciate then and now is that the Eurozone membership criteria were not mere inconveniences to be circumvented but genuine economic convergence indicators. If you link divergent economies by a single currency you deprive weaker economies of the disequilibrium-corrective possibilities offered by the balance of payments and by currency devaluation, leaving only rising unemployment to provide a quite inadequate escape valve.

This is why it is not just Greece that has experienced severe dislocation but also Cyprus, Italy, Spain, Ireland etc. Even France has suffered. Although Germany has seen benefit from an undervalued currency it is now paying the price in terms of ever-increasing transfers to the hopelessly indebted zone members.

Does anyone really think the EU will return to being an economic powerhouse anytime soon? On the other hand outside the EU we have huge potential to develop new trading relationships with parts of the world that are enjoying rapid growth. The UK is not trying to make enemies or wishing ill to the continuing EU. We are simply seeking a wider circle of friends.

Though peevish voices in Europe may declare the UK must suffer 'pour encourager les autres' it is to be hoped that economic sanity will be allowed to prevail over political pique. Beggar your neighbour is not a good strategy for a continent that needs all the boost from trade it can get. 

And really - can they think of no better arguments for membership of the EU than to show how horrible they can make it for those who want to leave?

So what's a Customs Union when it's at home, eh?

Journalists who have suddenly discovered the term customs union and who seem to think it differs from the single market have taken to asking politicians whether we can remain in one but not the other.

For those who may be confused:

(1) A Free Trade Area is a number of countries which sell each other goods without imposing tariffs, quotas or other restrictions on such transactions.

(2) A Customs Union combines a Free Trade Area with a Common External Tariff, effectively discriminating in favour of other members and against non-members.

(3) The EU Single Market combines both of the above with a common regulatory and standards regime enforced by the European Court of Justice.

Not only is there no advantage to system (2) over system (1), it is disadvantageous because it prevents members doing separate, advantageous deals with non-members.

The reason for having (2) tends to be the price you have to pay to get (1), since various individual members may want protection against specific non-members or their products. Rather than a complicated mishmash of bilateral deals you end up with the same external tariff against all outsiders.

Therefore the question at issue is not 'Can we manage to stay in the Customs Union?' but 'Might we be forced to stay in the Customs Union as the price of keeping free trade with The EU?'

True, The EU is at present our largest trading partner, but it is also a sclerotic low-growth market with a moribund single currency permanently on the point of collapse, to which threat the only reply to date has been more and more debilitating austerity.

On top of this the single market regulations stifle innovation and investment in cutting-edge technologies which is the true remedy to stagnation.

The only thing we should want from The EU is free trade (in services as well as goods.) Having the government pay to get this (out of taxpayers' money) is futile; you might as well let the taxpayers pay tariffs directly.

Being cut off from the ability to strike deals with non-members defeats the whole objective of leaving the EU. It guarantees a worse position than we had before Brexit.

But as I've pointed out before, we already have free trade with the EU. We are not going to start a tariff war, since it's not in our interest. It's not in their interest either but they might still do it out of pique. Nobody would accuse the Present EU administration of acting sensibly. If and when they do raise tariffs, we decide how to respond.

Note to all those demanding a plan - You just read the only sensible plan. Until the EU decides what, if any, tariffs it will impose, NOTHING WHATSOEVER needs to be done or indeed can be done in response.

Listen to Ben

"We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid."  -  Benjamin Franklin

Since the introduction of the Euro in 1999, of  the main Eurozone economies Germany and France have grown by less than a quarter, while the economy of Italy has barely grown at all. Meanwhile the economy of the UK, outside the Eurozone, has grown by more than one third.

As a consequence of the Eurozone's sluggish performance, its unemployment rate remains almost 10% and youth unemployment is very much higher.

Since the EU's common currency has caused this economic meltdown, it is ironic to hear the continuing chorus from the Brussels elite that the solution is more Europe, not less.

It is doubly ironic that UK Remoaners are engaged in a last ditch battle to overturn the result of the Referendum so that our country can continue to be shackled to a moribund system.

Utterly failing to understand the popular vote, they continue to claim the majority were ill-informed and worse-advised. Leave voters didn't know what they were doing, poor things, and really need to be protected from their own folly by right-thinking people who truly understand these matters.

The best course now, they claim, is to hang on to an inferior version of EU membership rather than boldly turning our eyes towards the great opportunities outside Europe.

To that end every effort must be made to sabotage the government's negotiating position by placing it all before parliament first. It's only fair, after all, to put your cards face up on the table, otherwise how would your opponent know whether to raise or fold?

One more time please, Ben.