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 (links to be inserted later). 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 mold it into arguments for staying out, can't you?
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