Britain and the EU: In or Out - One Year On - Professor Vernon Bogdanor FBA CBE

ladies and gentlemen this time one year ago everything was different and I'm not talking about the weather Britain seemed firmly in the European Union David Cameron was Prime Minister and the Conservatives had an effective overall majority of 17 a great deal has happened in the past year confirming if confirmation were needed of the toxic nature of the European issue in British politics and perhaps the most prescient remark ever made about Britain and Europe was made nearly 70 years ago in 1950 by the then Labor foreign secretary Ernest Bevin when it's proposed that Britain joined the European Coal and Steel community which was a precursor of the European Union and Bevin said we shouldn't join because he said if you open that Pandora's box you never know what Trojan horses will jump out now the box was first opened by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in 1961 when Britain applied to join the European community as the EU then was but the British application was vetoed in 1963 and that veto was perhaps one of the factors which led to the conservative defeat in the 1964 general election the box was opened again by Edward Heath and Britain enter the European community in 1973 after a bitter parliamentary battle to ratify the Treaty of Accession but in February 1974 Heath was narrowly defeated in the general election when a government is narrowly defeated any of a host of issues can be held responsible but it seems plausible to suggest that hostility to Europe or one of them and the anti European cause was led by Enoch Powell a former Conservative Minister who now advocated a Labour vote since labour was proposing a referendum on our continued membership and that he said offered anti Europeans their chance the referendum Julia in 1975 and led to a two-to-one majority for staying in in the European community but in the eighties the 1980's the anti European calls gained strength in the labour party and in the 1973 manifesto labour proposed leaving the European community without a further referendum so closing the box but labour was heavily defeated in that election and nevertheless Europe was one of the issues which helped split the party and had led in 1981 to the formation of the new Social Democratic Party which eventually merged with liberals to form the Liberal Democrats now the box was opened even further in October 1990 when Britain joined the Exchange Rate Mechanism of the European monetary system which was a precursor to the euro that was against the wishes of the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and prefigured the end of her Premiership which came a month later following the resignation of her deputy so Jeffrey Howe on a European issue but the problems of Europe were by no means over under Margaret Thatcher's successor John Major Britain left the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992 under humiliating circumstances so legitimizing euro scepticism in the Conservative Party major then faced a problem in persuading his party to agree to ratification of the Maastricht Treaty even though he had achieved opt-outs for Britain including an opt-out from joining the Euro by 1997 the Conservatives were hopelessly split on Europe and that was one cause of a Labour landslide in October 2011 there was a petition for a referendum on the European Union which attracted over a million signatures and there was in a parliamentary motion calling for a referendum in which 81 Conservative MPs broke with the party whip to support it in January 2013 in his Bloomberg speech David Cameron proposed a referendum in June last year the referendum was held and in 2017 as you know Theresa May called an election in part to confirm the outcome of the referendum so Europe has had seismic effects on British politics dividing parties and destroying Prime Minister's and that of course is because it raises fundamental questions of sovereignty and nationhood and undermines our basic concept of parliamentary sovereignty a concept which has no counterpart in any other member state in the European Union now the movement towards European unity requires to answer a fundamental question are we or are we not politically part of the continent of Europe we've had to deal with this question for almost a whole of the post-war period and perhaps we have still not decided basically on what our answer should be now at a recent seminar held at King's College London a colleague of mine the professor of European law takest redeemeth said the referendum on 23rd of June last year was the most significant constitutional event in Britain since the Reformation of 1660 and he said that because the referendum showed or perhaps confirmed that on the issue of Europe the sovereignty of the people trumped the sovereignty of Parliament because in the referendum Britain voted against the wishes of Parliament and government to leave the European Union so brexit is coming about not because government or Parliament want it but because the people wanted for the first time in its history government and Parliament are being required to do something they do not wish to do there was a conflict between supposedly sovereign Parliament and a sovereign people and that is a situation without precedent in our long constitutional history the purpose of the recent general election were to resolve that conflict to replace the House of Commons elected in 2015 which had ceased to represent the people on the issue of Europe with a more representative House of Commons one committed to carrying through the verdict of the people in the referendum had that been achieved it is possible that the European issue would have been finally settled that the box would as it were have been closed but of course that purpose was not achieved and indeed the new House of Commons probably holds a larger percentage of MPs opposed to brexit than the old and in the cabinet 16 out of the 23 members voted four remain so the box remains open and indeed the outcome of the election reopens the whole European issue all the same the process of leaving the European Union was begun in March of this year when to resume activated article 50 of the European Union treaty by giving notification to Brussels that Britain intends to withdraw from the European Union the clock is ticking and under the provisions of article 50 Britain will automatically leave the European Union two years after it is activated that is in March 2019 unless the deadline is extended to extend the deadline there must be unanimous agreement amongst the 27 other member states now in a recent case which came to the Supreme Court the Gina Miller case both sides argued that the article 50 process once triggered was irrevocable now I do not share that view nor more importantly does Lord Kerr who as the diplomats of John Kerr helped draft article 50 in the 2008 Lisbon Treaty in my new article 50 initiates a negotiation and a member state can at any point decide that it does not wish to continue with the negotiation suppose that there were a clear indication as for example through a second referendum that that the British people had changed their mind the article itself has nothing to say on what happens in these circumstances but if a state were not able to revoke its notification when it had changed its mind the consequence would be that it would have to complete the withdrawal process sign a withdrawal agreement and then reapply to join under the provisions of article 49 of the treaty and that seems contrary to the spirit of article 50 because article 50 is intended to provide for a negotiation not for the expulsion of a member that wishes to remain in the European Union now it may be that the withdrawing state has no right to revoke article 50 but surely at the very least the other member states have the discretion to allow it to do so and would no doubt exercise that discretion were the withdrawing state be seen in good faith to have changed its mind but article 50 deals with the process by which a member state withdraws the actual act of withdrawal is not in my view the invoking of article 50 but the repeal by Parliament of the European communities act of 1972 and that was the act would ratify the Treaty of Accession and made Britain subject to the law of the European Union the Prime Minister's indicated in the Queen's Speech indeed today that the government were proposed to Parliament that the Act be repealed through what has been called a great repeal bill but if we simply repeal the European communities act we will leave a legal vacuum since there maybe many errors where we would like to see regulation which the EU has regulated and which could be unregulated what Parliament will do therefore is to incorporate the whole corpus of European law into our domestic law and then decide what of this vast corpus which has been passed during over 40 years of membership what of that is to be retained what we want to keep what we want to modify and what we want to repeal and that's similar to what India and perhaps other ex colonial states did when attaining independence when India became independent in 1947 she incorporated the whole corpus of British legislation and a parliament then decided which of these laws she wished to keep which she wished to modify and which she wish to repeal so really the great repeal bill might better be called a great incorporation bill now article 50 strictly speaking inaugurates a withdrawal process not an agreement on Britain's future relationship with the European Union withdrawal involves negotiating essentially technical issues they're very important ones such as the rights of British citizens in the European Union the rights of European Union citizens in Britain and the amount of money which Britain owes to the European Union but article 50 also provides in somewhat ambiguous language that the negotiations take account of the framework for a country's future relationship with the Union now the European Union has insisted that progress be made on the terms of withdrawal and the amount that the UK needs to pay to the European Union on leaving but these negotiations make progress before they will begin negotiations on the future relationship well British government at first protested against that and said these things should run in parallel but we have now broadly conceded the point and that is perhaps an indication of the fact that Britain is not in a particularly strong bargaining position indeed it may be that the government's view of the possibilities of negotiation are somewhat over optimistic and it seems to me though I hope I am wrong that Britain's position in these negotiations is not a very powerful one and this is so for three reasons first Britain is outnumbered by the 27 member states who have mandated the negotiators someone said it's like getting divorced from 27 ex-wives secondly the final deal has to be ratified by the European Parliament as well as the other as well as a majority other 27 and the European Parliament tends to be less friendly to Britain I think than the governments of the Member States it may also have to be ratified by national parliaments and by some regional Parliament's thirdly there is the time limit of two years there is apparently a Japanese saying to the effect that the shorter your timescale the deeper your wallet needs to be then Britain has very little leverage people complain that David Cameron did not secure enough in his negotiations perhaps he had little leverage but he could at least say if I don't get a good deal Britain might vote to leave the European Union what he was saying was as so many prime ministers have said give us a special deal or we believe the European Union that ploy is no longer available you cannot say give us a special deal or we will stay in the European Union or if I don't get a good deal we will stay in the European Union in Britain therefore is in the position of a supplicant of someone who is resigned from a club shall we say a Tennis Club because she doesn't want to pay the subscription and she doesn't like the rules but nevertheless wants to continue to play tennis we were in the same position fifty years ago when we were trying to get in the European Union and there was a rather tragic comic episode in 1967 when the then Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his rather volatile foreign secretary George Brown visited president de Gaulle in France to try and overcome his veto and the meeting didn't begin well because George Brown would call president de Gaulle Charlie which didn't please him much and George Brown got down to as it were brass tacks immediately and said that the problem of Europe had to be resolved and the gold said he didn't understand he said France was in the common market and had no problem but Britain was outside and wanted to get in and that was her problem and there is a view a strange view I think held that Britain it's an imperial reflex that Britain is at the center of the world and the obligation of other countries is to help Britain out of any difficulty she may be in and that view is held by the same people who before the referendum said we ought to leave the European Union because it was full of didn't ill intention foreigners who would determine to do us down these in intention foreigners have suddenly been transformed into a charitable institution which will help Britain out of her difficulties and this seems to me somewhat implausible now what is the future relationship likely to be the European Union comprises three elements first a free trade area second a customs union that is an area with a common trade policy and a common external tariff against outsiders and thirdly a single market that is a market in which non-tariff barriers to trade regulations standards and the like are harmonized so those transferability of standards and services professional qualifications and the like an article 50 leaves open the question of whether Britain seeks to continue to remain part of part of any or all of these elements now what Britain to seek to remain in the internal market it would be natural for her to seek to emulate Norway and join the European Economic Area the EEA now the EEA comprises the member states of the European Union together with Norway Liechtenstein and Iceland which outside and EEA members are not subject to the Common Agricultural Policy nor the Common Fisheries Policy they are not part of the customs union and so membership of that would leave Britain free to negotiate trade deals with other countries but it means that Britain would be subject to the European Union's common external tariff and so that for example Norwegian fish exports to the European Union are subject to a tariff and now what the EEA does is to extend the European Union's internal market to the EEA countries together with the free movement of goods services capital and people the Four Freedoms so Britain would have become part of the EEA she would have to continue to accept freedom of movement she could not limit immigration from Europe and that would disappoint many people who voted for brexit because after all one of the main motivations was precisely to limit immigration to Europe now there is and some people have made a lot of this there's an emergency brake mechanism allowing for restrictions on immigration on the part of the EEA burrs article 112 of the EEA agreement allows such restrictions in exceptional situations and some have suggested this could be used by Britain to limit immigration I do not believe this to be the case what article 112 says is that a country can limit immigration if it faces and I quote serious economic societal or environmental difficulties of a sectoral or regional nature that are liable to persist and these restrictions must be restricted themselves with regard to their scope and duration to what is strictly necessary in order to remedy the situation and these criteria seem to be very specific and limited and they cannot in my view be used to secure exemption from the free movement principle as a matter of policy so far indeed the European Union has not granted membership of the internal market to any country which has not accepted the principle of freedom of movement and Norway in recent years has taken more european immigrants per head of population than britain now although members of the EEA are not part of the European Union they are never less required in practice to adopt EU legislation on employment environmental policy social policy and competition they are on an obligation to adopt not only current European Union legislation in these areas but also all future European Union legislation and they are subject to judicial review not by the European Court of Justice but by the court of the European free trade area but that Court has to follow the case law of the European Court of Justice ie a members are also required to contribute to the European Union budget Norway currently pays around eighty three percent per head of the British contribution although that includes a contribution to the Schengen area to which Britain does not and would not belong but all this could cause difficulties for a British government because as I said one important motivation the referendum vote was to restrict immigration from the European Union another was to end the supremacy of European law and supervision by European Court and another was to end contributions to the EU budget eea membership achieved none of these in fact membership of the EEA mimics European membership and the EEA was set up for countries which the EU hoped would enter the Union not for countries which were about to leave and it the worst thing for Britain it would require Britain to comply with much of the so-called a key that is the laws and regulations of the European Union in exchange for access to the market but Britain will be unable to influence those laws so it would be subject to European Union regulation without representation we'd have to rely on other countries such as France or Germany to protect our interests perhaps the Norwegian option is suitable for a small country prepared to accept rules made by others but not suitable for large countries such as Britain more accustomed to be a rule maker it would mean for Britain a kind of colonial status in which she would be dependent on others to look after her interests as children depend on adults to look after their interests or as the Americans in the 18th century had to depend on the British Parliament to look after their interests a situation they were not very happy about and these difficulties were well thumbed up by one political leader a year ago who said this the reality is we do not know on what terms we would win access to the single market we do know that in negotiation we would have to make concessions in order to access it these concessions could well be about accepting EU regulations over which we would have no say making financial contributions just as we do now accepting free movements just as we do now or quite possibly all three combined it is not clear why other member states would give Britain a better deal than they themselves enjoy that speaker was Teresa now some have suggested that Britain could secure a similar arrangement of that of Switzerland that is a sectoral arrangement Switzerland has about 120 bilateral agreements with the European Union which it took them some 20 years to negotiate and these agreements need continual renegotiation to take account of changing economic circumstances and that's a cumbrous and unwieldy arrangement broadly the agreements provide for free trade in industrial goods but not in agriculture and Swiss financial institutions enjoy only limited access to the European Union but they do not enjoy so-called pass sporting rights and that is why a number of branches of Swiss banks are located in European Union member states including Britain to sell services to European Union customers the Swiss contribute to the European Union around 40 percent per head of the British contribution but as with Norway Swiss goods being exported to the EU faced tariffs and border costs so prevent third countries from using Switzerland or Norway as backdoors to avoid the e use common external tariff Switzerland like Norway seemed to have been required to accept the free movement of people's but in a referendum in February 2014 the swiss voted to establish quantitative limits on all immigration including EU immigration this breached a bilateral agreement with the European Union and the European Parliament has said it puts at risk the whole series of bilateral treaties since Switzerland should not be able to reject free movement while benefiting from all its other agreements with the European Union the European Union has threatened that unless a Swiss reconsider it will withdraw access to the single market the Switzerland is currently seeking a compromise solution but the European Union is in any case trying to alter its relationship with Switzerland the immigration issue has confirmed the EU in its belief that bilateral agreements are not a good idea since it gives non-member States the right to cherry-pick benefiting from the agreements it likes while trying to find ways Round Agreements it does not like the European Union is now seeking a tighter relationship with Switzerland involving greater supervision by the Commission and controlled by European Court and more rapid adoption by the Swiss Parliament of European legislation in the relevant areas the Council of the European Union declared in December 2014 that a precondition for further developing a bilateral approach remains the establishment of a common institutional framework for existing and future agreements through which Switzerland participates in the internal market in order to ensure homogeneity and legal certainty in the internal market and that an ambitious and comprehensive restructuring of the existing system of sectoral agreements would be beneficial to both the European Union and Switzerland the Swiss model may well be breaking down the EU prefers a multilateral not a bilateral approach it would like the Swiss model to converge towards a Norwegian model which in turn it hopes would lead to actual membership of the European Union so it's highly unlikely that the EU would agree to replicate the Swiss model for Britain a former British ambassador to Switzerland once said to me that the Swiss model with its large number of bilateral agreements requiring continuous adaptation and renegotiation was not even good for Switzerland let alone Britain and both Norwegian and Swiss models require broad equivalents of laws with the European Union they seem to preserve the autonomy of Norway and Switzerland to give them control but in practice they do not do so in practical terms Norway and Switzerland lose sovereignty but without the compensating benefit open to members of the EU of helping to determine EU legislation in 2013 the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Lords concluded that current arrangements for relations with the EU that are maintained by Norway or Switzerland are not appropriate United Kingdom if it were to leave the EU in both cases the non EU country is obliged to adopt some all of the body of single market law without the ability to shape it if it is in the interest of the UK to remain in the single market the UK should remain in the EU or launch an effort for radical institutional change in Europe to give decision-making rights in the single market to all of its participating states so Norway and Switzerland seemed to me less examples than warnings on how even though de jure sovereignty is preserved de facto autonomy is lost now some say that Britain should seek to remain a member of the EU customs union after she has left the European Union that is the view that has been put forward by circus Tama labour shadow brexit secretary and it's a thought to be the view held by the chancellor of the exchequer philip hammond but the argument is often put rather loosely membership of the customs union is by definition not possible since by definition the EU customs union comprises only EU members what Britain could do is negotiate a customs union with the European Union as turkey has done now this option is open to the obvious objection that it would prevent Britain from having an independent trade policy of her own she would not be able to seek trade agreements with other countries which was one of the hopes of many of those who support it brexit the EU could not allow such an independent policy since if for example Britain had a free trade agreement with India then a flood of goods could arrive from India via Britain that would have avoided EU tariffs and possibly also EU regulations you know of course India's outside the EU customs union now the supporters of this option say that there is any in any case only limited scope for such trade deals with other countries and they may be right so this objection is not a very powerful one and they also say that a customs union with the EU would had the advantage of avoiding a hard border between Northern Ireland and public that is a tariff barrier between the two parts of the island of Ireland but there are two disadvantages to the customs union approach first Britain would be committed to the European Union's common trade policy without any means of influencing it Britain would have to continue to accept EU legislation relating to trade policy and the decisions of the European Court or some other judicial body or masses to do with the customs union where it was alleged there had been breaches of the rules secondly EU trade agreements do not include countries outside the EU with whom they have a customs agreement for example they do not include Turkey so Turkish markets are opened up to third countries with whom the EU has a trade agreement but the markets of those third countries are not opened up to Turkey in other words a country which has a customs union with the EU is involved in asymmetric relationship and if for example the EU were to sign a trade agreement with rural taenia it would mean that British markets would be open to retaining goods but Ruritanian Goods would not retaining markets would not be opened to British goods so the effect is that Turkey like Norway and Switzerland seeds a part of its sovereignty without being represented in the EU and with little influence on decision-making process in the case of Britain continued membership of the customs unit from outside the EU would mean that when the European Union signed a trade agreement for the third country Britain would have no access to the markets of that country now some ministers have suggested that Britain would seek a bespoke agreement one that is tailored to Britain's specific needs and to reason may as Home Secretary achieved such an agreement over justice and Home Affairs she opted out of much of it but then opted into those areas which suited British interests and the Labour Party's recent election manifesto proposed retaining the benefits of single market and the cut Union but also restricting immigration this how of resumes that we could get the benefits we wanted from the European Union without being bound by its obligations it's not clear why the governments of the European Union would agree to something of this sort because if that was possible and Euroskeptic movements in other countries would say that their countries might also leave the European Union if they could get the benefits without the obligations and if one leaves the Tennis Club it's unlikely that one will be allowed to play tennis on the same basis as those who remain members I recently heard an official in the European Parliament which must ratify an agreement with Britain complain that while in the European Union Britain continually wanted exceptions and opt outs now Britain is leaving the European Union but still wants exceptions and opt outs I rather doubt that the European Union will allow Britain to cherry-pick it seems to me therefore questionable whether there is any such animal as a so-called soft brexit this former brexit seems to me to mimic EU membership to give Britain many of those advantages of membership without the ability to influence EU legislation they would in practice turn Britain into a satellite or colony of the European Union Theresa May has been criticised for saying that brexit means brexit but that is not a mere meaningless mantra she has said that we are not staying in the internal market or customs union perhaps she has merely drawn out the logic of brexit that's the only real alternatives of a so-called hard brexit and remaining in the European Union if Britain does not seek continued membership of the internal market or the customs unions there are only two alternatives left the first is an association agreement with the European Union under Article 217 of the treaty on the lines of agreements which the Union has negotiated with the Ukraine Georgia and Moldova providing for free trade and also political cooperation and such an agreement leaves a non European Union state free to make its own trade agreements with third countries they do not require free movement and the agreement with the Ukraine goes further most free trade agreements in that it also provides for the freedom of establishment in service and non service sectors but that part of the agreement was made dependent upon the Ukraine being prepared to accept the Archy of the European Union that is the laws of the European Union so again an association agreement might like the other options limit the autonomy of Westminster but there is a historical precedent for Britain which in December 1954 negotiated an association agreement with the European Coal and Steel community providing for Britain to joy' enjoy access to the integrated coal and steel market of the community and that lasted until Britain joined the European community in 1973 but of course the political difficulty of negotiating such an agreement is that the European Union will not want it to be so favorable to Britain that it becomes attractive to those Member States which also have secessionist or populist parties there would also have to be a method of dispute agreement which did not subject Britain to judicial review by the European Court of Justice now furthermore and I'm sorry at this lecture is getting a bit pessimistic but European Union procedures for ratifying association agreements and those trade agreements are far more stringent than for ratifying the withdrawal agreement under Article 50 but withdrawal agreement requires a qualified majority in the European Council and a majority in the European Parliament an association agreement or so-called mixed trade agreements that is one which include air is falling within the shared competences of the Union and the member states and that would apply to most thing though they need to be ratified separately by each of the Member States Parliament's together with some regional Parliament's including those of Flanders and Wallonia that's a total of 38 legislators each of which has a veto the trade agreement between the EU and Canada was held up for some time by the Belgian regional Parliament of Bologna in addition no such agreement can be signed until Britain has actually left the European Union because of course the Union cannot conclude an agreement with a member state and whatever the virtues of the European Union speed in negotiating agreements is not one of them when in 1985 Greenland whose staple industry is fishing withdrew from the European Union it took three years to negotiate the agreement the trade agreement between the European Union and Canada took 7 years to negotiate now well no association agreement or trade agreement to be in place by March 2019 then unless there was unanimous agreement to extend the two-year deadline they would need to be a transitional agreement and that might when involve Britain remaining in some sort of relationship with the EU until agreement was reached it might mean continued acceptance of EU law judicial supervision by the European Court of Justice contributions to the European Union and a continuation of free movement it is not clear whether such a transitional agreement would be acceptable to large sections of the Conservative Party or to the British people who voted in 2016 to leave the European Union and perhaps assume that our departure would take place within a fairly short period of time now the second alternative in the absence of a trade or association agreement is that Britain following brexit would be subject to World Trade Organization rules that in my view is not as horrifying as some people say it would leave Britain free to negotiate her own trade deals with the European Union and other World Trade Organization members and Britain's own tariff schedules could not be vetoed by the members of the World Trade Organization provided they did not yield a greater degree of protection than at present and since Britain is a member of the World Trade Organization the European Union cannot discriminate against her by raising its common external tariff against British goods but World Trade Organization rules do not apply on the holes and non-tariff barriers which in the modern world have become far more important than tariffs and the European Union has removed many such non-tariff barriers with the development of the internal market and more are in the process of being removed and it's these non-tariff barriers rather than tariffs which will probably constitute the main difficulty for Britain after brexit since services are such an important part of a British economy now some have argued that Britain does not need a trade agreement to trade successfully Japan and the United States have after all traded perfectly happily and successfully with the European Union for many years without a trade agreement if one has goods and services that other countries wish to buy they will trade and it's fair to say that the country adopting a policy of free trade gains an immediate economic benefit if other countries impose tariffs against her goods it is the standard of living of those other countries which Falls not the standard of living of the country that has adopted free trade indeed there is no doubt but one advantage of leaving the European Union is that we move from a protected market in agriculture and in some other goods to an unprotected market being free of the common external tariff Britain can import cheap food from beyond the European Union for example from Australia Canada and New Zealand so the price of food can fall and she can import for example cars from the United States without any longer paying the common external tariff of 10 percent on cars to leave a protected market for an unprotected market gives you an automatic economic gain and therefore the logic of a post brexit britain is that she should reduce tariffs and move towards unilateral free trade and that was the policy adopted in New Zealand in 1984 by a Labour government to compensate for the fact that she had lost British markets when Britain joined the EU and it's fair to say that after some immediate upheavals New Zealand prosperity was improved by that oh and this is the model at some brexit ears site they cite New Zealand or they cite Singapore or Hong Kong as global trade hubs that have benefited from free trade and the philosophy of economic liberalism and in my view brexit makes no sense unless Britain is prepared to adopt that path but this involves a huge paradox because a referendum vote was in essence a cry of rage by the victims of globalization the revenge of the betrayed they sought protection against the excesses of globalization against market forces which so they believed were cutting their jobs and holding down wages and their above all or wanted restrictions on immigration from the EU because they believed that immigration was holding down their wages so the vote for brexit was a popular protest against globalization and that was the main motivation of you Kip in many other brexit ears but some of the leaders of the brexit campaign from the Conservative Party had a quite different motivation they were economic liberals who are accepting that immigration from the European Union might have to be restricted they had an entirely different agenda they thought brexit for basically Thatcherite reasons to ensure a more effective operation of the market economy freed from the restrictions of that the laws social Europe they believed that a Britain free of EU regulations and restrictions could be a powerful global trading hub like Hong Kong or Singapore these people opposed not globalization but social protection and regulation and it is this economically liberal view of some of the brexit leaders rather than the populist view of most of the brexit voters which seems to me more likely to prevail after brexit indeed it seems to me the view which must prevail if Britain is survive economically after brexit indeed it may be that brexit makes no sense unless Britain decides to chart a new course towards economic liberalism survival outside the European Union entails that Britain must become more competitive opening up markets and embracing free trade that means encouraging enterprise by lowering corporation tax and perhaps personal taxation as well to encourage entrepreneurs and innovators to come to Britain but these reductions in taxation can only be financed by reducing public expenditure and that will put further pressure on social and welfare expenditure already under strain after seven years of austerity it will mean a radical sprinkling of the state which is likely to disadvantage the very voters who believed that brexit would protect them from the excesses of globalization far from gaining shelter from world economic forces they will find themselves even more exposed to them they will have to sink or swim in the harsher economic climate in which post brexit Britain will find herself so brick brexit could lead to a Britain more not less expose to the forces of globalization it could prove the revenge of Margaret Thatcher from beyond the grave and indeed that was the reason why she was in retirement opposed to the European Union because she said it hindered the growth of a market economy it's a perfectly respectable position now such an economically liberal stance also conflicts with the resumés idea of a more socially responsible and interventionist private enterprise system in the recent conservative manifesto it was said that the Conservatives rejected equally the ideologies of the untrammeled free market and of socialism but there is a conflict between to resume the middle way of intervention and the more competitive policies needed if brexit is to be a success and the question is is there an appetite in Britain for such a radical solution Margaret Thatcher's fourth term as it were do the British people want such a radical solution if not it seems to me we either have to remain in the European Union or to become a satellite of it so there are no easy choices but now we have had the general election to resume called it to resolve the European issue once and for all had she gained the landslide she was hoping for that might have happened she could then have argued so the referendum results had been confirmed and she could have pressed ahead with brexit negotiations confident that the whole nation was behind her but the opposite has happened the election has been called The Revenge of the remaineth it reopens the whole issue of brexit that is so for four reasons the first is that there is now no commons majority for Teresa mais version or brexit indeed as I said at the beginning of the lecture there is probably a stronger representation of remain MPs in this Parliament than there was in the last one perhaps there's no majority for any of the forms of brexit on offer we do not know the second reason is that the election intensifies the division within the Conservative Party it is now perfectly possible that our deals secured by the government would be voted down in the House of Commons if a deal is seen is too hard conservative remainders may join with the opposition parties to defeat it on the other hand a deal which seems to Tory Euroskeptics not hard enough could lead to it being rejected within the Conservative Party and opposed by conservatives in the country 58% of whom voted to leave the third reason is that the House of Lords which probably has an even higher proportion of remainders in it than the House of Commons will now feel emboldened to press its own views had to resume won a landslide her position on brexit would have been seen to enjoy electoral legitimacy and in terms of the Salisbury Convention the Lord's would have had to let it prevail now with the government lacking a majority in the Lord's and with the Pro remain Liberal Democrats and across benches holding the balance of power the upper house will feel under no such constraint the fourth reason is that the success of a Labour Party raises the question of whether the British people do still want to leave the European Union in the great increase in the Labour vote the highest increase in the vote for any single party that for a CLE in 1945 there may be an element of buyer's remorse now the Labour Party was not as the Liberal Democrats were a romaine party the Labour manifesto declared that the party accepted the outcome of the referendum that a Labour government would leave the European Union that it would Institute a policy of what it called managed immigration in place of free movement and that it would seek to retain the benefits of a single market and the customs union it's not clear how it could jeev these aims the benefits of the single market and the customs union while also controlling EU immigration and adopting a separate trade policy but still election manifesto don't have to pass a very high standard of truth from your Delta but anyway that did not matter remain errs seemed to have come to the conclusion that a vote for the Liberal Democrats was a wasted vote and the best way to reverse or at least mitigate the outcome of the referendum was to vote labour in constituencies where over 60 percent voted leave there was a small swing of around 0.8 percent to the Conservatives in seats where the remain vote was over 55 percent there was a five percent swing to labour was a clear division of opinion that leave errors were more like to don't conservative remain err as a more likely to vote I said earlier that perhaps is no such thing as a soft brexit but perhaps there are only two real alternatives remain or two resumes brexit leaving britain outside the internal market and the customs union since the so-called soft brexit means becoming a satellite or colony of the european union with little means of influencing its policy perhaps the worst of all worlds it may be that faced with this choice of brexit me brexit or romaine the British public think again it may be that with the deadlocked Parliament MPs to overcome party divisions do what Harold Wilson and David Cameron did call for a referendum and that referendum would be on the deal when finalized asking the British public whether or not their proof of it that would if it was approved would legitimize British exit if it was not approved it might legitimize Britain remaining in the EU now there's a very narrow and slim possibility there for opened up the election with Britain might not leave the European Union head appeals are very slim possibility but opinion on Europe changes very rapidly if I'd said five years ago that Britain would leave the European Union we probably wouldn't have believed me labour in the recent general election attracted remain voters while not greatly alienating leave voters it produced a leave manifesto but used the language of the remainders or at least of the so-called soft brexit ears and the political parties that have been most successful since the European issue came to dominate British politics have been those that were able to finesse it has labored it in 2017 in 1974 Harold Wilson finished it by promising a referendum which meant that both pro Europeans and Euroskeptics could vote for him with a clear conscience David Cameron did the same in 2015 so that both pro Europeans and Euroskeptic could vote for him and indeed David Cameron's achievement looks rather more impressive now than it did I think two months ago but Theresa May enjoyed no such luxury she had to accept the outcome of the referendum in which around 58% of conservatives seem to vote of the brexit but Jeremy Corbyn could finesse the issue it's paradox that remainders look primarily to Jeremy Corbyn to rescue them from brexit since Corbin was with his Ben ital eyes a lifelong Euroskeptic whom voted no in the 1975 referendum and voted against the ratification of the Maastricht and Lisbon treaties it's an equal paradox that levers look to tourism a who supported remain in the referendum make of that what you will the general election was just the latest attempt and a failed attempt to purge Europe as an issue from the body politic the first was the referendum of 1975 which as I said earlier yielded a two-to-one majority for a remaining in the United Kingdom and after that referendum harold wilson prime minister at the time said the verdict has been given by a bigger vote by a bigger majority than there's been received by any government in any general election nobody in Britain or the wider world should have any doubt about its meaning it means that 14 years of national argument are over it means that all those who have had reservations about Britain's commitment should now join wholeheartedly with our partners in Europe and our friends everywhere to meet the challenge confronting the whole nation and Tony ban who'd wanted Britain to leave the European community said I've just been in receipt of a very big message from the British people I read it loud and clear by an overwhelming majority the British people are voted to stay in and I am sure everybody would want to accept that but by 1983 he wasn't willing to accept that because he was part of the Labour manifesto that advocated Britain leaving without a further referendum and Prime Minister's have since sought in vain to exercise Europe to control Ernest Bevin Jojen horses in 2006 in his first conference speeches Tory leader David Cameron said the Conservatives and alienated voters by and I quote banging on about Europe in 2013 he promised a referendum which he hoped would exercise the issue at first it seemed that it had done so but the 2017 general election the revenge of the remainders has reopened it because brexit depends inform upon the continuing consent of a sovereign Parliament but in practice upon the continuing consent of a sovereign people Disraeli once said there is no such thing as finality in politics how right he was so the story of Britain and Europe has not in my view come to an end it's not clear whether we've even reached the beginning of the end or perhaps only the end of the beginning who can tell and having wrongly predicted the outcome of the general election I will make no further predictions but I will ask everyone to leave by the back door an elector thank you very much [Applause]

Channel: Gresham College

Views: 29,509

Keywords: gresham college, gresham, lecture, free lecture, gresham lecture, public lecture, free public lecture, free education, education, college, museum of london, visiting gresham professor, political history, vernon bogdanor, European, Union, david, Cameron, prime, Minister, Of, the, united, kingdom, conservative, party, (UK), politics, labour, ernest, Bevin, coal, and, steel, community, Pandora's, box, Trojan, horse, out, (Tonéx, album), Harold, Macmillan, economic, veto, General, election, 1964, edward, Heath, Parliamentary

Id: 39KtssUwd-Q

Length: 59min 8sec (3548 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 29 2017