Friday 8 January 2016

More feeble arguments for staying in the EU.

Nick Clegg in yesterday's Evening Standard:

... this is exactly what the anti-EU campaigners claim: that we can merrily leave the EU, stop paying our dues, refuse to play by the rules, but still get all the benefits of being part of the world’s largest marketplace and ask the other EU member states to shoulder all the onerous duties for us...

Or, more foolishly still, they claim that Norway or Switzerland are paragons of unfettered freedom which we should emulate. The truth is that both countries have to abide by all the EU’s rules and pay into its coffers, surrender control over their borders — all without having any say within the EU itself. So much for unfettered freedom.


That is a wild exaggeration. 'All the rules'? Seriously? On this very blog, Kj has explained how things work in Norway and SumoKing has explained how things work in Switzerland . Those countries do follow a lot of EU rules (voluntarily or otherwise), that much is true, but they still have a lot of opt outs. Those countries do pay in, but they only pay 'market access' fees of hundreds of millions a year, not tens of billions. They have not 'surrendered control of their borders' anywhere near as much as EU member states in the Schengen area. It is true that they have little say in EU rules, but the UK doesn't either, and at least they can opt out of many of them.

Second — and this is a point for the pro-EU side — remember that people tend to vote with the heart, not the head. The referendum will not be won by statistics, but by emotion. I don’t just mean flighty emotion about the virtues of international solidarity and co-operation. Fear of the unknown is a powerful — and legitimate — emotion too.

Politicians love stoking up a climate of fear to get their own way and accrue more power. What's wrong with research, education and rational debate..?

Finally, safety in numbers is a precious thing. Our age is defined above all by a profound sense of insecurity. Terrorism, climate change, globalisation, mass immigration — all conspire to create an overwhelming feeling of insecurity among millions of our fellow citizens. Yet we cannot tackle a single one of these forces on our own.

Terrorism? Home-grown terrorism is our own problem, but we survived the IRA. Terrorists benefit hugely from porous borders, the Human Rights Act and our membership of the ECHR, which are all part and parcel of being an EU member state.

Climate change? To the extent that you belief in it - are Switzerland and Norway really more at risk? Aren't we always told that there have to be global agreements involving the US, China and India? Whether those three large countries are negotiating with the EU as is or with the EU excl. UK is surely neither here nor. More to the point, it is not climate change as such which is the worry, it is particular impacts like flooding, and as we now know, it is the EU which encourages us to subsidise upland deforestation and deters downstream dredging, that's why we have had these terrible floods over the last ten years.

Globalisation? We love buying cheap stuff from China and going far, far away on holiday. We like French wine and German cars. We are happy if UK businesses export a lot to other countries.

Mass immigration? What most people get upset about is foreign workers - skilled or unskilled - pushing down wages, and as we know, most of those workers are from other EU member states. I accept that this is a tad hypocritical - given we like buying cheap Chinese stuff - but so what?

And if we remain in, Ms Merkel will try and fob off a load of genuine undesirables on us, shipped via France. See above re Human Rights Act and ECHR.

His only halfway decent point is that France will cut up rough if we leave - which ignores the fact that they have always taken the piss in flagrant violation of EU rules. I like to look at this way round. If we had never joined the EU in the first place and had a referendum on joining, what arguments would Clegg be making then? You can take all his waffle and easily mould it into arguments for staying out, can't you?

6 comments:

Bayard said...

Why should anyone listen to a man whose lack of political nous destroyed his own party?

Random said...

"What most people get upset about is foreign workers - skilled or unskilled - pushing down wages, and as we know, most of those workers are from other EU member states. I accept that this is a tad hypocritical - given we like buying cheap Chinese stuff - but so what? "

Don't think so. It is a 'beggar thy neighbour' strategy. Is the healthcare system in India so totally awesome that they have spare doctors going begging? I think not.

In business people don't train and run apprenticeships any more because as soon as someone qualifies they get poached by another firm.

Skilled Immigration is the country equivalent of the same stealing process. If skilled people leave a country in droves, then the country starts to run down its training system - primarily because it isn't getting the production out the other end to support it.

We don't need unskilled people because we want businesses to automate - and we have a surplus of unskilled people. Making unskilled labour expensive (JG) in a highly competitive environment with heavy public R&D investment forces that to happen.

Businesses should be able to get staff, but it should be expensive. Like the lender of last resort function at the central bank. That way if they have a genuine blockage they can unblock, but it would be better for them to train a native or automate the job away.

Net immigration favours GDP growth over social cohesion and environmental concerns. I'm not sure the entire impact of that is correctly taken into account.

Bayard said...

"In business people don't train and run apprenticeships any more because as soon as someone qualifies they get poached by another firm."

People don't change jobs for the hell of it, they do so either because they don't fit in well where they are (crappy boss, office politics), or they are looking for more money. So if a business wants to retain its trainees when they are trained, they have to be prepared to treat them properly and to offer the "going rate", the "going rate" in this case being what the other guy is offering. There is a great tendency in British business to undervalue people who have been trained up in house, because there is a tendency to remember them as the clueless trainee they once were.

PJH said...

"all without having any say within the EU itself"

Like we don't at the moment. Can't find the graph, but we were top of the list of countries where our opinion/voting intentions were ignored in favour of the opposite position.

Bayard said...

"His only halfway decent point is that France will cut up rough if we leave"

That's pretty rich , considering they were the ones who were dead set on keeping us out before we joined.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, first comment, separate topic. I am rubbish at political games, doesn't mean I'm wrong about other stuff.

R, I refer you to B's response. I'm no fan of JG. But I do agree wholeheartedly with your last bit::

"Net immigration favours GDP growth over social cohesion... I'm not sure the entire impact of that is correctly taken into account."

PJH, yes I made that point in the post.

There is a theory - not entirely unfounded - that civil servants in Whitehall who want to push through some nanny authoritarian corporatist measures don't dare to impose them here, so they get the EU to propose it and then present it as fait accompli in the UK. Either way, it's all shit, and those civil servants do not represent the people of the UK.

B, you said yourself a while ago that France's immediate response would be drastic. Quite possibly true. You gave the analogy that an ex-wife is far more vengeful than a former girlfriend. But so what? If it's an unhappy marriage, it's best to end it and in ten or twenty years time it will usually settle down.