andrewducker.dreamwidth.org
Some thoughts on the EU, where we are, and what might happen next
Having blogged incessantly about Brexit back when it was just an exciting* event to look forward to**, I felt that I should write something about the possibilities now that we might be going to do something sensible about it.
The newspapers have been very excitable recently about the polls showing that Andy Burnham might not have to be burned at the stake for saying that Brexit is not entirely awesome. They've finally noticed that the polls are not in favour of Brexit. They don't seem to have noticed that the polls came out against Brexit as soon as mid 2017, and have been in favour of rejoining for five years now, presumably because it wasn't politically expedient to notice that.
In any case, we now have a prime minister who is in favour of some kind of closer relationship with the EU. What might that look like? Well, for a start, there might not be an answer that makes everyone happy. Public support for a closer union *without* rejoining is really popular, 73:15 (+58 net support), with rejoining the EU is popular, but less so - 59:32 (+27 net support)***, while if you ask people whether they would be up for rejoining if it meant losing our opt-outs (i.e. we'd have to join the Europ and Schengen) then support drops to 35:43 (-8 net support). So, if the EU say "We'll pretend that the last decade never happened, you can have everything you had before" then huzzah, all returns to normal. But if they say "Sure, we'll let you back in, but you aren't going to be super-special any more, you'll just be an average member of the EU" then there might not be support for it. On ther other hand, support for staying out (or getting *further* out is even lower (-21 and -41 respectively)****.
Support is there for rejoining the Customs Union or the Single Market. But the customs union alone doesn't shift the economic dial that far, and rejoining the single market without rejoining the EU really does make us a rule-taker. We'd be in the same situation as EFTA countries, signing up to EU rules we have no control over, in exchange for some opt-outs. Which might be where we end up for a while.
There's also the sticking point that the EU is not going to put up with us changing our minds all the time. And we recently had a situation where for over a year our bloody stupid voting system meant we'd have had a Reform majority, who would have pulled us straight back out, even though they never had more than 1/3 of the overall vote. So if we want the EU to accept a more stable situation in the UK then we're going to have to stop electing our governments in a way that provides massive swings in control over trivial changes in actual voter behaviour.
Now, I'm in favour of rejoining, but I'd also like people to end up with a possibility they can live with, with the possibility that we don't oscillate in and out of the EU because people hold a grudge. So if I was running the country what I'd do here is to go to the EU and discuss what kind of deal might be made on rejoining. And then I'd have a referendum using IRV***** which had multiple options, including things not changing, an EFTA-like relationship, rejoining the EU with our opt-outs (if there's any chance of that), and full-on joining the Euro/Schengen. And then let people rank them, and see which one gathers majority support. And have people argue over multiple options rather than "YES VS NO" would hopefully give us a slightly more nuanced discussion, and an answer which actually told us what people really wanted.
* Horrifying
** Dread
*** Both figures from here
**** See the graph 2/3 of the way down here entitled "What relationship with the EU do Britons support?", and the section directly above it.
***** Voting experts in the back row who are about to mention Condorcet or Arrow Theorem, please don't.
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