Out Of The EU. But How Far Out?

To me it seems probable given the high level of hostility in the UK to membership of the European Union (EU) that in 2016 at the promised referendum, a majority of voters will opt to remove the UK from the union.  I no longer mix with politicians but do come across middle and working class members of the public who seem happy, especially at this time of the year, to talk about politics.  They assume the EU is a bad thing and that leaving it will 'free' the UK from all its rules.  I was speaking to such a man just before Christmas and for me he summed up the next difficulty that the UK faces which the government does not seem to have considered, but I imagine (I hope) that civil servants are working on contingency plans for even now.

I said that the question of whether we left the EU seemed settled.  However, the question of what relationship we would have with it afterwards had to be hammered out.  I used the example of three countries which are outside the EU but have very different relationships with it: Norway, Morocco and the USA.  He dismissed this as any serious concern, because he said the referendum would simply be in/out.  I accepted that that was the case, but said that someone had to work out the precise details of the relationship.  I asked him what he thought the relationship would be like and he seemed to believe he could have his cake and eat it.

Norway is often cited as the model that Britain would favour, but it is a member of the European Economic Area (EEA) which means that while it has no right to vote on any EU legislation, it still has to accept the free movement of EU citizens into its country.  Now, the free movement of EU citizens is one of the key reasons why parties like UKIP and fellow travellers want to leave the EU.  Consequently the UK moving into the EEA would not remove that aspect.

Morocco is an associate member of the EU.  This might be the model most favoured by those seeking UK exit from the EU.  There are a range of associate agreements; they were started in 1961.  However, typically they allow the country to have access to specific markets, e.g. in agricultural or industrial goods or more recently free trade with the EU.  They have been focused on the Mediterranean littoral, the Balkans and Eastern Europe, but there are agreements with former colonies and states across the world.  Interestingly even this kind of relationship implies that the country works towards political, economic, trade and human rights reform to bring it in line with the EU.  Given that the UK is not a full democracy (the House of Lords is unelected as is the Head of State) and is seeking to abandon human rights legislation, we might find it difficult to get an agreement.  However, this one seems to be the status that people would favour, retaining the trade privileges without being bothered with the mobility of people or quotas.

The USA is friendly to the EU and has some bilateral agreements such as on extradition and on airline ownership.  There have been efforts at tariff agreements but anyone who has bought anything from the USA or tried to sell stuff there knows you get customs duties slapped on them at one end or the other.  It is the administration of these which is as painful as the actual cost.  If the UK wants to be out of the EU as much as the USA does, then this would be the model for selling even to France or between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, where much more stringent border controls would have to be introduced.  The UK could close its doors to anyone under this model just as the USA does and we could insist even daytrippers from France needed a visa if we so chose.

The thing is, no-one is yet speaking about the model that the UK will end up with, no doubt at the end of a lot of discussion.  You cannot simply walk out of an organisation you have been tied into for over forty years, especially if you want to keep many of the privileges that a majority of the anti-EU Britons seem to think are their right and not the result of that membership.

We spoke about the need to disengage from EU legislation in the British legal system.  The UK would be free from EU quotas on farming and fishing, but human rights legislation which is at the top of the list for many of those opposed to the EU, does not come from the EU, it comes from an often forgotten body, the Council of Europe which is entirely separate.  Unlike the EEC (the European Economic Community, the predecessor of the EU), the UK was a founder member of the Council of Europe in 1949.  The EEC was not established until 1957 and the UK did not join it until 1973.  The Council of Europe has 47 members; the EU only 28.  Thus, if we are to purge human rights from British law, the UK will also have to leave the Council of Europe and, as yet, that is not on the cards.

I asked the man whether he knew how difficult it is for people from outside the EU and EEA to travel to countries in the EU.  Anyone in the UK who has relations from Australia or South Africa or a host of other countries (though US citizens do not need a visa for tourism) knows how difficult it is for them to simply 'pop over' to France from the UK.  Generally it means 8 hours being interviewed at the French Embassy in London in order to be issued for a visa lasting 6 months.  The man said he was sure the French would not impose that on the British and surely we would go back to the situation in 1972.  I said that was making big assumptions about the willingness of the other EU states to tolerate the British leaving perhaps even the EEA but still making use of the benefits.  I also pointed out that the world of 2016 is very different from the world of 1972 in terms of protecting borders.  Given that those who want to leave the EU want to close the gates on EU citizens coming to our country, why can we assume the French and others will not simply do the same in return?

From this I moved on to how many Britons live outside the UK in other EU countries.  There are 761,000 living in Spain alone, probably augmented by about another 200,000 who live there for part of the year.  200,000 Britons live in France and again many others own property there; 115,000 live in Germany; 44,000 in the Netherlands; 28,000 in Belgium; 26,000 in Italy and 18,000 in Greece.  There are around another 48,000 in other EU countries.  This does not include UK students who study in EU universities; 9,500 UK students study in France, Spain, Germany and Italy.  Many of the Netherlands 41 universities have hundreds of British students.  With free movement of citizens Britons can apply to these universities and in some countries like Denmark have to pay no fees.  With numerous courses taught entirely in English (as these appeal to Chinese students as well) it is very easy to do.  However, once we leave the EU this will stop.  I know many who support the UK leaving the EU have no time for students anyway, but is is just another factor.  The man I was talking to said he did not think Spain or France would eject Britons resident in those countries.  I said: why not?  Given that UKIP has spoken of sending EU citizens home what is to stop these other countries doing the same in return?  An influx of over 1 million Britons being sent home, many of those from Spain being elderly, is going to be worked out.  Remember, before Greece joined the EEC it did not permit foreigners to own property in the country and Australia does not allow this either.

This is one challenge for those pressing for exit from the EU.  They assume that the rest of the EU will let the UK go quietly and to retain many of the privileges that it has in relation to those states, unchallenged.  No-one seems to be thinking this through and simply making assumptions that it will be all very nice for the UK and that EU states will not be resentful to Britain.  I know Britons think their country is special, but they have to recognise that other countries see it very differently.  The UK has long been a troublemaker in the EU and is exacerbating this situation at a time when the EU has enough to deal with handling terrorist attacks and the refugee situation.  The UK is making no concessions but in return expects the EU to just go on allowing tens of thousands of Britons to live, work and own property and to travel freely back and forth even when the UK is trying to stop that for EU citizens coming in.  To expect the rest of the EU to tolerate such treatment of their citizens and not seek a balance against UK people, is incredibly naive.  If we must leave the EU we need to be far better prepared for the consequences than is currently the case.

Guaranteeing Eternal Conservative Governments - One Victory is Not Enough to Satisfy Cameron

I did wonder during the lead up to the Scottish independence referendum why Prime Minister David Cameron was campaigning so hard for Scotland to remain in the Union.  With Scotland independent, the Labour Party would be denied 41 of its current 256 MPs.  In contrast the Conservatives have only 1 MP from Scotland among their 304 currently in the House of Commons.  It would have probably made it impossible for Labour ever to get back into office on its own ever again.  While this would not have ensured a Conservative government for ever more, it would certainly have increased the chances of that happening.  I realise now that I was naive to wonder why Cameron was behaving in the way he did.  

Today the explanation has become clear.  In fact it did not matter which way the referendum went, he had plans on how to permanently reduce Labour's majority at Westminster.  This can be seen as the next step in his shaping of democracy to constantly favour his party.  We know that boundary changes will favour the Conservatives anyway.  However, now he is going to exclude Scottish MPs from voting on legislation that is about England (and presumably Wales too).  The argument is that with certain powers being given to the Scottish Parliament it is argued Scots MPs in Westminster should not then vote on things that English, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs cannot affect in the Scottish Parliament.  Of course, 83% of the UK population lives in England and with the royal prerogative legislation passed can be extended in time or scope without reference to Parliament.  Thus, now Cameron can simply introduce purely English laws, be guaranteed of opposition not being able to muster sufficient seats and then extend it to the other nations through royal prerogative.

Cameron has steadily adopted steps to reduce democracy.  The introduction of the fixed 5-year term was the first move in this direction, making it almost impossible to break the coalition or bring down his minority government.  The vote on proportional representation similarly dismissed another chance to make the UK more democratic.  Only one, poor model was offered and yet its rejection is seen as ruling out any electoral reform.  At the last election the Conservatives received 36.1% of the vote but 47.2% of the seats; Labour won 29.0% of the votes but 39% of the seats; the Liberal Democrats got 23% of the votes but only 8.7% of the seats, they should have received 149 rather than 57.  However, these things such as fair representation are seen as 'not British'.  The Conservatives benefit from the fact that most British people feel politics is somehow inappropriate for them even though they complain about its impact.

Of course, the chipping away of democracy was begun under the Blair regime.  With hindsight it appears that the governments of Tony Blair had very little to do with Labour Party values, they were simply a repackaged form of Thatcherism something Cameron is taking to new extremes.  The erosion of civil liberties under Blair, notably the extension of detention without charge; the declaration of war based on faked evidence, the elimination of some critics and steps like identity cards and the RIPA anti-terrorism legislation which has constantly been abused by local authorities, let alone the constant use of the royal prerogative established a culture in which Cameron's steps to erode democracy can prosper.

In future I will be sure to try to see behind every step Cameron takes and recognise that no matter what he says it is about, all the rubbish about being passionate for the Union, in fact his core agenda is about creating a Britain where the Conservatives will never leave office and many of our remaining freedoms will be gone.  Today I really pity the Scots for not having chosen to escape from this developing dictatorship.  I know it would have left people in England in a tougher position, but even if you cannot escape from the prison yourself it is always good to see that someone else has made it out.  Now we are simply going to share our bitter fate together and I am sure many who voted for Scotland to stay under the yoke of Westminster yesterday will soon be regretting it.

Life After Europe

This is certainly a topic I know more about than many others as I used to teach on European Integration and even got to grips with the complexities of farming subsidies.  I do not need to tell you that the key political development in the UK of recent months has been the success of UKIP, a right-wing party primarily aiming to have Britain leave the EU.  Receiving around a quarter of the vote and going from 8 to 147 councillors in the local election has unsurprisingly attracted attention.  Though it is important to note that there are 165 Independent councillors and that the Conservatives have 1116, i.e. more than Labour, the Liberal Democrats and UKIP put together.

Of course UKIP’s impact has been greater than simply the number of councillors it has.  It has again exposed the long-running fracture in the Conservative Party over the question of the extent to which even if the UK stays in the EU it actually participates in the political process.  This is because the Conservative Party has two main wings, one which is primarily business focused and welcomes being part of a vast free trade system and the other which is more nationalistic and simply baulks at the perception of giving any degree of sovereignty to any non-military organisation.  This fracture has not really troubled the Conservatives since the closing days of John Major’s administration in the mid-1990s, but is now back in force.

In recent days David Cameron has been compelled to accelerate the movement to a referendum and without anyone really noting this it has quickly mutated from being about redefining the relationship with the EU to the now trumpeted ‘in/out’ referendum.  Cameron has had to play some politics because he is coalition with the most pro-EU of the British political parties, the Liberal Democrats.  Labour has had an ambivalent attitude towards the EU through its history.  This is because back in the 1950s and 1960s it was seen as a project brought forward by conservative, largely Catholic, businessmen.  It was only in the 1980s when with the pressure that working people were facing in Britain and the EU’s introduction of labour and social policies that most, though not all, Labour members began to see a benefit in the EU, as it is now known.

One reason why Cameron is under so much pressure from UKIP is because, whilst it is primarily a single-issue party, it has also managed to adopt a populist stance that taps into a strong sentiment in British society personified by the presenter Jeremy Clarkson, who in fact has been the most successful ‘political’ author of the past decade.  Cameron has been weak on the populist side of Conservative support right from the start as I noted as far back as October 2010: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/camerons-blunder-with-electorate.html  The nostalgia for a kind of edited golden days of the 1970s when people were apparently free to damage themselves through speeding, not wearing seatbelts and smoking, is very strong in Britain.  Cameron, unlike both Margaret Thatcher and John Major, has never even attempted to speak to those Conservatives in Britain who are not wealthy, but in fact, make up the majority of the people who vote for them.  This is why Nigel Farage is succeeding where Jimmy Goldsmith and his rather elitist Referendum Party which was also anti-EU did not thrive.  Farage may flirt with racism but he manages to do it on the ‘down the pub chat’ basis of ‘I’m not racist but …’ which less alarms the bulk of voters than the more explicit rhetoric of Nick Griffin and the BNP.  Cameron, though elitist has a modern outlook which is all about high-tech global business.  However, that is not the world that the bulk of Conservative supporters feel comfortable with even contemplating.  Britain is a country which lives in the past and any attempt to move away from that, especially when people feel insecure in terms of jobs and the economy, is to make yourself unpopular: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.co.uk/2007/05/britain-land-that-time-forgot.html  This is why it may benefit Ed Miliband to adopt the trappings of ‘Old’ Labour at least to appeal to a sector of working people who liked the certainties of the past but with a more labour-focused approach.

Anyway, there are loads of commentators with more time to explore these issues so I will move now from the current political turmoil to look longer-term.  It is clear that there will be an in/out referendum.  Even if Labour comes to power in 2015 they will find it difficult to resist the head of pressure for this.  It is something that the bulk of the population have wanted for decades and had to accept assurances that it was not possible.  Now Cameron has opened the door, it cannot be closed again.  All politicians have to face the fact that the vast majority of the British public loathe the EU.  Many of the reasons for this loathing are based on misinformation which has been provided by the media decade after decade.  However, the support for UK membership of the EU is limited to business people who like the free trade aspect and the ability to bring in cheap labour legally from Eastern Europe and middle class people living in South-East England who own property in France or lower middle class people from Essex and Liverpool whose parents retired to Spain.

One key myth about the EU is that it compels Britain to accept regulations that hamper the freedom of Britons to be exploited and to have their environment wrecked.  The EU only got into social and labour legislation in the 1980s but it has meant better conditions for maternity leave and eventually for limiting working hours.  These things are seen as hampering the potential success of British business which feels compelled to work on a cheap labour, long hours approach with workers accepting lower wages as they compete for jobs against cheaper workers from Eastern Europe.  The ironic thing is that in terms of health and safety legislation countries outside the EU have gone down the same route.  In issues such as farming and fishing quotas Britain has always enforced these far more rigorously than the more pro-EU states like France, Germany and Spain.  It is the British government that has made these rules apply.  Yet, the propaganda portrays that the assertion of regulation comes from Brussels.

As Tony Benn has long noted, the EU does not have a democratic structure.  The European Parliament which all UK electors can vote for, is seen as the ‘government’ of the EU, in fact does not create legislation and is little more than a talking shop.  EU business is carried out by the Council of Ministers, the prime ministers and in some cases foreign ministers, of each of the member states.  It is no more than a club of democratic leaders.  Thus democracy is not direct, it is filtered through whoever is in power in each state.  Yet, this is not the perception that has been peddled to the British over all these years.  Of course, to a large extent, this is irrelevant, because the British even now we have a coalition government which is sort of working, we dislike other countries negotiating with us, we just want them to do what we say and leave us alone.

All EU members have nationalism and bigotry, it is an element of the modern nation-state.  However, the lack of travel by young British people and the general inability to speak foreign languages: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.co.uk/2007/05/british-and-foreign-languages.html  exacerbates the situation in which the only view of the EU is the one that comes from the BBC and is heightened by ‘The Sun’ and ‘Daily Mail’ even when people bother to read them.  It is far easier to make a scare about immigrants taking jobs and school places than explain the opportunities of the EU.  The sustained rise in the cost of living in Britain is making British people more and more insular.  It is expensive even to travel within the UK let alone abroad.  As a result, increasingly it is only the children of those who own houses in France that are experiencing neighbouring cultures and they are generally pro-EU already.

In the next decade, perhaps as early as 2017, maybe even before that, there will be a referendum regarding the UK leaving the EU.  There will be an overwhelming vote in support of immediately leaving.  There is no question of this given the extensive hostility to the organisation.  What will life be like once Britain is out of ‘Europe’?

The first thing is that trade would be affected.  I know this from working part-time in an import/export business which brings in goods from the USA and China as well as EU countries.  With EU countries the company pays not import duties and customers in those countries similarly can get their goods at the price they see on the website.  The moment the UK is outside the EU, this will stop.  However, we are fortunate that there is a drive for international free trade so leading to a reduction of tariffs and so the impact on British trade would be less than if we had left the EU in the Thatcher years.  Overall 48% of the UK’s exports in goods and services is with the EU; of all the EU states the UK is least dependent on trade within the union, but currently there is a trade gap with Britain importing £6.1 billion more items from the EU than it exported to these countries.

According to the Confederation of British Industry, the USA with over 300 million people takes 17% of the UK’s exports, but Germany with 80 million takes 9%, France (65 million) takes 6.6%, the Netherlands (16 million) takes 6.9%, Eire (4.4 million) takes 6.1%.  Thus both per capita and as an overall figure, the EU is the largest consumer of UK exports which would now not have free trade with.  You could argue that we could replace this with exports elsewhere.  This is certainly the case, but we need to move quickly.  Between them India and China have 2.3 billion people but only 2.0% of UK exports go to China and 1.2% to India; 1.1% go to Russia and only 0.1% to Brazil, the other two burgeoning ‘BRIC’ countries.  The USA only provides 2.8% of Britain’s imports whereas Eire sends 9.4%.  We have a large trade imbalance with the BRIC states with China providing 9.4% of Britain’s imports, India 8.0%, Russia 4.0% and Brazil 4.1% despite how little we sell to them.

Yes, it is likely the EU would remain Britain’s prime trading partner, even after we had left but access to the EU marketplace would be harder.  In addition, US and Japanese investors are already concerned that their manufacturing in Britain would now be the wrong side of the free market ‘wall’ and it would be better to move to a country remaining within the EU.  This might be of benefit to an independent Scotland.

Leaving the EU would provide a set-back for British trade that is clear.  However, this would fit in well with the populist UKIP attitude and to attract business and produce competitive exports, the UK would rely on cheap labour costs and deregulation.  Former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Lawson, has argued that EU regulation is hampering the financial companies of the City of London, always a strong element in Britain’s export of services, from making as much profit as they can.  The City of London while it may see itself as an autonomous element of the British economy is in fact currently integrated into it.  The separation is moving far too slowly.  This integration was why reckless activities by its bankers impacted so heavily on high street banks and the general public: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/myth-of-alternative-to-bank-bail-out.html  The cuts in welfare and other spending are a result of insufficient regulation of the UK banking sector and we need, not simply want, more regulation if ordinary people are going to be spared suffering once again from bankers pushing to make even more stupendous profits.  Regulation does not have to come from the EU.  However, this disengagement from the EU does seem to be increasingly linked by other extreme right-wing policies.

The one factor that probably wins greatest support from those seeking to leave the EU is the barring of the immigration of EU citizens, in particularly those from Eastern Europe.  This is where the populist view goes against that of the business community who love cheap labour that can be used to push down wages for British workers too and reduce overall costs.  The impact on the construction, catering and care industries as a result of the loss of these people would be great.  In 2011, there were 2.7 million people in England and Wales (not including Scotland and Northern Ireland) who came from other EU states, this included 579,000 from Poland and only 79,000 from Romania.  The peak for migration from Eastern Europe was in 2007 and the monthly figure is now a quarter of what it was that year.  The economic crash of 2008 naturally made the UK far less appealing.

The balance across the country is uneven; 27% of Polish immigrants live in London as do 56% of Romanians.  In the mid-2000s, 10% of the population of Southampton was Polish but this fell sharply after 2007.  The majority of citizens of other EU countries, 59% are from states which were in the EU before 2004, for example at any one time 300-400,000 French live in London making it the city with the sixth largest French population in the world.  There are around 270,000 Germans, 54,000 Spaniards and over 100,000 Italians.  This can be compared with the 761,000 Britons living in Spain permanently with a further 229,000 living there for part of the year; 150,000 live in France; 120,000 live in Germany and 29,000 live in Poland.  In total around 1 million British people live in other EU states though there are seasonal fluctuations; 660,000 Britons live in the USA.

With Britain leaving the EU, the rights of all these people to live in the UK would suddenly go.  This does not mean that there would be mass deportations because Britain does allow some immigrants even from outside the EU to settle here still.  What would make an impact is what laws restricting provision for immigrants would be introduced either before or after the exit from the EU.  Currently there are plans to limit the access of Bulgarians and Romanians to free health care and policies like this, it seems likely, would be quickly extended to other EU citizens with Poles being the top of the anti-immigration supporters’ list.  In such a climate many EU citizens would choose to leave anyway.  There was a fall in the Polish population in 2008 at the time of the economic crash, particularly noticeable in some towns.  The impact would be very varied across the country with London experiencing the greatest changes.  There are likely to be tensions especially for cases of the children of EU immigrants who have only lived in the UK or for people who have been living here for many years.  The large increase in immigrants from other EU states came in 1992 meaning that some will have been in the country for over two decades.  How would families in which one parent is British and the other an EU citizen be treated?  Expelling one, might mean the other going too.

Immigrants are always people with ‘get up and go’.  If you have worked in the civil service you will be familiar with working alongside multi-lingual French, Spanish and German workers.  The stereotype of the Polish and Lithuanian builder is based on a degree of fact as are Eastern European waiting and pub staff.  Thus, these sectors which employ a sizeable percentage of especially skilled or cheap foreign labour will suffer most.  There do not seem to be loads of UK people waiting to fill these posts and it seems that ahead of the exit a training campaign would have to be introduced to get young British people ready to fill the lower paid posts or see numerous shops and cafes close; certainly all the Polish grocery shops would disappear and again it is not as if there are Britons waiting to fill those slots.

A further challenge would come if there was a ‘tit-for-tat’ approach from EU states and Britons found they were no longer welcome living in Spain or France and either would be ordered to leave or face increasing restrictions of the kind these states’ populations would be encountering in Britain or that we already see for expatriates in Australia.  Spain would be foolish economically to expel Britons, but they may leave anyway in this new climate.  New locations, notably Turkey, still outside the EU, might become increasingly attractive in the post-EU era.  The difficulty for the UK is that whilst the bulk of immigrants coming into the UK are young and economically active, the bulk of emigrants are retired.  Thus, their return would not only not contribute much to the economy but add a new burden to health and social services.  It is actually of benefit to have so many old Britons looked after by Spain and Cyprus.  It would be interesting to see how the UK’s relationship with the Republic of Ireland would change.  There is a special relationship between the two countries which mean that Irish have more rights than other EU citizens.  This might shift once Britain left the EU and Eire remained in.  There are over 600,000 Irish living in Britain, again focused in specific areas including London; they are the only nationality group which has continued to see a fall in their numbers in the UK in the past decade before and after the economic crash.

Overall on leaving the EU in the following years around 2 million people might be compelled to leave the UK, primarily from London.  In general these would be economically active tax payers who up until the break had been living in the UK legally.  There is likely to be some influx of retired people coming back from EU states but also workers from Germany in particular.  Some would argue that this would solve unemployment in the UK in one go.  However, it ignores the number of businesses run by migrants that would close and the fact that many Britons are not skilled or willing to take the jobs that migrants fill.  Ahead of the exit British teenagers would have to be schooled in accepting posts as cleaners and waiters and be trained in construction and administration in order to fill the gaps left by the missing EU citizens.  Once the EU citizens had been removed, which group would the government turn on next: Commonwealth immigrants?

This represents the changes on a very clinical basis, and that is what people like UKIP want.  However, it would be far messier than that.  Anti-foreign attitudes would be crystalised and people suspected of being from another EU country even if this was not the case, would come under pressure.  Thousands of people in the UK are descendants of immigrants from Poland in the 1940s and from Italy, France and Germany going back decades; who would draw the line between them and more recent arrivals from these countries?  Some people would seek to buy false identities and hide from the authorities.  The policy would also dent the economies of certain districts especially in London, exacerbating the impact of the decline in EU trade on the UK economy as a whole.  Along with the people expelled, would go all the funds that these EU citizens have in the UK.  Of course, as in all these things, wealthy French or Germans or even Poles, could buy exemption, the government is always nationality blind when dealing with the rich.  It would represent the largest organised removal of people in Europe since the end of the Second World War which is unlikely to make Britain look good on the world stage.

Following the UK’s exit from the EU there would certainly be economic and social upheaval.  Britain’s exports and imports would fall and there would be gaps in towns from where EU citizens had been removed.  Attitudes would become insular and xenophobic, something that the UK does not need more of.

What would be the greatest impact for ordinary people?  Well, aside from the economy going downhill further, it would be the difficulty of going on holiday or even a ‘booze cruise’ day trip to France.  If you want to know the difficulties that would occur just ask an Australian or South African who has the right to permanent residency in the UK.  Just to go for a two-week holiday in France requires them to spend eight hours at the French Embassy in South Kensington.  They are interviewed; their children are interviewed separately and you have to battle with the officials to be allowed to have a parent present even with a five year old (this is based on my experiences in assisting a South African planning a trip to France).  They have to produce proof that they have a job in Britain and if they are self-employed, need a letter from their Chamber of Commerce.  Of course there are loads of forms to fill in.  The visa is only valid for six months so if you want to holiday in France again next summer you have to go through the whole process again.  From the Kent coast you can see France, but who is going to bother trying to go to visit it if you have to spend all of this time and expense even for a short visit.  As it is, the French and German embassies are going to be full of business people trying to get visas to visit to carry on at least a little trade with EU states.  No school trips to France or Germany any longer, it would just be too hard to organise.  I guess this severing of the UK (or perhaps by then England, Wales and Northern Ireland – ‘Ewani’ – we need a term for this grouping) from the EU, is the ultimate goal of UKIP.  We can then all speed around not seeing anything much beyond a Britain whose economy would be in further recession and prone to insularity and xenophobia.

Electoral Reform/Deform?

As many readers know we are rapidly approach local elections (5th May 2011) for about a third of the seats on local councils in Britain.  This year for the first time since 1975, the UK also has a referendum.  It is on whether we should change from the so-called 'First Past the Post' (FPP) system of elections to the Alternate Vote (AV) approach.  This was part of the deal that the Liberal Democrats made with the Conservatives when they went into coalition with them almost a year ago.  The Liberal Democrats, as I have shown on a couple of occasions on this blog, have long failed to turn the number of the votes their candidates receive into anything even approaching an equivalent number of members in the House of Commons.  They have long been supporters of electoral reform, moving voting to the Westminster Parliament (well, the bit of it which is elected, the House of Commons; the House of Lords, the upper house is totally unelected) towards some form of proportional representation (PR).  Proportional representation is seen as being 'fairer' as it more accurately reflects the level of support each party receives.  With the FPP system if a candidate receives just one vote fewer then they do not win the seat, even though they may have had tens of thousands of people voting for them.

In the world around 43 countries (of those which are democratic) use FPP, many have had connections to the UK such as the USA, Canada and India and it was adopted in Taiwan when it moved to democracy in the 1990s.  Some countries have a partial FPP system, such as France where there are two rounds and only candidates receiving a certain percentage of votes move into the second round.  However, the bulk of EU countries use a proportional representation system.  This has sometimes elicited xenophobic hostility from the British who see PR systems as foreign and 'unstable'.  In particular, Weimar Germany 1918-1933 and Italy since 1945 are held up as examples of countries for which PR has led to political instability and short-lived governments.  In a patronising way some have even portrayed PR methods as being too complex for the average British voter given how low turn out is at elections.  For example, most UK constitutencies see only 35-40% of the electorate turn out for local elections and 50-70% for general elections.  These arguments have lost lots of ground in the UK in recent years.  The current coalition which has lasted almost a year has shown that actually coalitions can be strong as (West) Germany has demonstrated since 1949.  In addition, for all elections to the European Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly, a form of PR, the single transferrable vote (STV) system has been in use since these bodies were introduced over a decade ago.  I know turn out is low for European Parliament elections, but combined this does mean that many people in the UK population have had some, and many of these, regular, interaction with STV.  Anyone who has been to university will be familiar with it as I know from personal experience that students' unions have been using STV in their elections for over thirty years.

The AV system (used in many Australian elections where voting is compulsory), as even people who support PR acknowledge is a hybrid.   Like STV you rank If someone wins more than 50% of the vote on the first count then they win the seat just as is the case now.  In many constituencies, despite what the No campaigners for the referendum campaign are arguing, this is what will happen.  If no-one gets 50% or above then the second choice votes of the candidate who came last are counted, i.e. the people who put a '2' rather than a '1' by the candidate and so on.  Of course, this quickly eliminates all the minor and obscure parties; supporters of whom are unlikely, despite what the campaigners say, to have rated the larger parties much.  Ultimately, it will generally come down to the redistribution between the larger parties.  Of course, once any candidate goes over the 50% mark the process stops; this is a difference to STV.  It means, in fact that in most cases, the candidate with the highest number of votes in the first round will simply pick up sufficient to go over the 50% mark.

The No campaigners argue that this will mean that someone who received 3rd place in the number of votes on the first count could potentially win.  Yes, this is possible if they first three candidates are close together.  The reason why they fear this is that historically some Labour supporters would 'tactically' back the Liberal Democrat if they thought they stood a chance of getting in, in that district and some Conservative voters might too.  Thus, it is assumed that the Liberal Democrats may receive lots of '2' votes from both Labour and Conservative supporters and so may get in, in more constituencies.  Of course, it would not affect the 'heartlands' of any party where the majority is usually clear, but it will impinge on marginal seats which are the ones parties pour most effort into.  The one factor that makes AV more palatable to traditionalists is that whilst providing a slightly better reflection of the support for parties, it still returns one representative from each constituency.  Strangely, this is now enshrined as an important principle for British politics, despite the fact that the UK had constituencies returning more than one member of parliament up until 1950.

Things have changed through the formation of the coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, as this has disgruntled both Labour supporters who previously would have voted Liberal Democrat and, of course, many traditional Liberal Democrats have abandoned the party.  In fact, from the Barnsley by-election, it seems the Conservative might benefit from UKIP supporters giving them a '2' vote, if not in a Labour heartland like Barnsley but in other more uncertain locations.  All PR encourages people to give support to smaller parties, thus we might see Greens gaining votes from across the political spectrum, from people, who in the past would not want to 'waste' their single vote on a Green candidate.  Of course, for Labour and the Conservatives any advance of smaller parties, even the Liberal Democrats, weakens their traditional position.  This is why, despite promising electoral reform before the 1997 election, once in power Tony Blair abandoned the ideas and only had the Jenkins Commission and then ignored its advice through all his time in office.

I do not think the vote for AV will succeed.  I would prefer that we went to STV as is the case for so many elections already in the UK.  By having the referendum on the same day as the local elections David Cameron, a clear opponent of any adjustment of the FPP system, has muddied the waters.  Britain is a very apolitical country with few people taking interest in politics these days let alone the electoral system, even though these are factors in them losing their jobs and public services.  They actually tend to blame other people like immigrants, than the politicians whose policies have impinged on them, but that always seems to be the way in the UK.  Other referenda, such as in Canada have had insufficient turn-out to bring about change in the electoral system.  Given how few people vote in local elections, I think the same will happen here.  The failure of the referendum will allow David Cameron to dismiss for ever any discussion of changing from the FPP system.  This is important for Cameron as he has ready plans which will make it easier for the Conservatives to remain in power indefinitely.  By abolishing 50 constituencies and redrawing boundaries, called gerrymandering, something the Conservatives of Westminster Council were very adept at doing in the 1990s, will make it hard for anyone but the Conservatives to win a majority of seats in parliament for the foreseeable future.  Just as Tony Blair seemed eager to reduce civil liberties in the UK, Cameron's mission appears to be to reduce democracy, in the broadest sense of the word, through both reducing opportunities for ordinary people and also to make it harder for any other party except the Conservatives to come to power.

My life has seen the steady erosion of liberty and democracy in the UK and it appears to be proceeding now even brisker than ever.  It is a pity that AV will not come in, but in many ways the whole set-up is just a blind for the damage that the Conservatives seek to impose on British democracy.

P.P. 21/04/2011
This morning I received the first piece of publicity about the referendum, a leaflet from the No campaign.  I was interested by its approach, which suggests the No camp are unnecessarily nervous, because the lines it takes are very much about scare mongering.  Of course it starts with 'keep one person, one vote' probably the most equitable issue about sticking to FPP.  Interestingly it says 'none of your taxes have been used to print this leaflet', well, the Yes campaign can say that too, but there is a sense that it is suggesting others would use tax money.

Inside the cost is the first issue that is raised is the cost.  It is argued that the cost of AV is £250 million broken down into a number of components, first, £91 million for the referendum, despite it being piggy backed on local elections in many towns.  Next is £130 million for electronic counting machines, which actually have nothing to do with AV.  Northern Ireland uses STV (as does Scotland and Wales) which is more complex than AV and yet they still count by hand as it makes clear on the website of the Electoral Office for Northern Ireland.  FPP votes could be counted by electronic machines, but the UK has chosen not to use them.  Thus, there is no connection between electronic machines and AV.  The final cost is £26 million on explaining the new system to the voters.  I have no idea where that figure comes from.  Given that every part of the UK uses STV for at least one election, I see no reason for this cost.  We did not have training in STV when it was adopted for European elections.  As the publicity points out, this £250 million could pay 2,503 doctors, presumably for a year; 6,297 teachers; 8,107 nurses; 35,885 hip replacements or 69,832 school places.  So, the party which is most opposed to AV, i.e. the Conservatives, will not then be cutting public spending budgets?  Oh, yes, in fact they are and by much more than £250 million.  Let us compare that £250 million, even if AV did cost all that to other current expenditure.  By 20th March 2011, the UK had spent £55 million on firing 110 cruise missiles at Libya; every sortie by a Tornado costs £30,000 just for fuel and the loss of a single Tornado would cost the UK £50 million to replace.  As for the war in Afghanistan, that now costs the UK £4 billion per year (£10.95 million per day).  So, to save £250 million we only need to not fight in Afghanistan for 23 days, less than one month.  The No campaign says, when many people are facing job losses or pay freezes should the money be spent on a 'politicians' fix'.  The argument against this is quite simply with PR it is unlikely we would have had such policies in the 1980s let alone now.

The next argument is against the technical aspects of AV which I outlined in my posting above.  The No campaign argues that 'the votes of the least popular candidate decide who wins the election', that is a false portrayal, as in fact that candidate is eliminated, it is the other votes, for other people on those ballot papers which actually decide who wins.   Yes, someone who was in 2nd or 3rd place at the first stage may go on to win, but they, at least will have a majority of the support from the constituency. 

The No campaign argues that the views of BNP supporters will be counted again and again. It is unlikely, unless all candidates are so far from the 50% line (and in many constituencies there are only 3 candidates anyway) that so many lower preferences will have to be counted.  As this referendum has simply come down to a Yes/No, there has been no discussion of different aspects of AV, for example the '2' votes carrying less weight than the '1' votes, the '3' votes less than the '2' and so on.  Given that it has been deemed by the government and many campaigners that the electorate, who, as I remind you, already use STV for many elections, cannot possibly understand the system, there is no discussion of the actual form AV might take in the UK.

The section entitled 'AV is Unpopular' is very misleading.  It shows a map of the world and coloured in green for countries who 'Don't use AV' and purple for 'use AV'.  The countries using it are Australia, Fiji and Papua New Guinea, all according to the pamphlet are unhappy with it. In fact many states of Australia use STV.  The misleading thing about the map is that many of the countries shown in green of course would not use AV because they could equally be coloured as 'Don't use democracy'.  Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Burma, North Korea and, of course, China where a quarter of the world's population lives, are shown as 'Don't use AV'.  Well, of course they do not use AV, because they are (or until recently) dictatorships.  It also neglects the fact that, as noted above, that over 70 countries shown as 'Don't use AV' actually use STV, a more proportional form of voting, far removed from the FPP system, including India where around 21% of the world's population lives; Brazil (3.7%) and Russia (2.7%) and 23 members of the EU including Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece and Poland, use STV.  The French system, whilst not precisely identical to AV is very close to it, and more similar to it than FPP.  The suggestion is that if you do not use AV the only alternative is FPP, whereas, in fact, most democratic countries have gone for something very different and more proportional.

The final element of the publicity is down right hilarious.  It turns history on its head.  Having said that the Liberal Democrats, correctly, are the only party which is wholly behind AV (many Labour and some support it Conservatives support it, though ironically not the BNP), then they associate it with the unpopularity of Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the Liberal Democrats.  The publicity says 'AV leads to broken promises', saying that Clegg reneged on his promises not to allow job cuts, a VAT increase, the raising of university tuition fees and the cuts in public spending.  However, I ask how did AV lead to this?  AV is not in place.  We had these broken promises under the FPP system which is how the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition came to power.  Interestingly, there is no mention of David Cameron and the Conservatives, the strongest critics of AV and the party with its virulent monetarist approach which has brought about all these cuts.  They, of course, kept these policies secret before the election.  Clegg is portrayed as only supporting AV as a way to save the Liberal Democrats at the next election, despite the fact that the Liberal Democrats have been pressing for electoral reform since the 1990s and one reason why they fell out with Tony Blair, was, after his huge electoral win in 1997, he was no longer willing to consider electoral reform despite what he had been promising the Liberal Democrats 1994-7, in preparation for a potentially hung parliament in 1997 when he possibly would have formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, and so, as David Cameron has had to face now, also allow a referendum on electoral reform.  If this was the case, would not the Conservatives be ardent supporters of it too?  Even loyal supporters of theirs have begun defecting to UKIP. 

The argument is simply that AV would give more seats to Liberal Democrats and so there would be more hung parliaments and more deals involving the Liberal Democrats.  This totally ignores the democratic principle, the Liberal Democrats, even now are heavily under-represented for the amount of support they have constantly commanded at elections.  In addition, ironically, without the Liberal Democrats then the Conservatives, would, at best from their view, have a minority government now and would not be in a position to implement these 'broken promises' policies which they argue are necessary for the country's welfare.  This line of argument is utterly bizarre and turns chronology upside down.  It also neglects the fact that the Liberal Democrats actually want STV and have only been compelled by their comparative weakness to accept AV.  It seems incredible that the No campaign can twist facts around so extremely and somehow make it appear that Clegg alone is responsible for the harsh policies we are suffering.  With AV this situation, in fact would have long been avoided.

David Cameron has cleverly buried the issue and the only electoral 'reform' will be his gerrymandering of constituencies to ensure a Conservative majority at the next election and the foreseeable future.  In the meantime we are being patronised by campaigners who think that the British electorate, pretty used to STV, lacks the intelligence to engage with AV and so can be told distortions.

P.P. 23/04/2011
I have now updated last year's posting looking at the impact of PR on the 2010 general election to also consider how the situation would have turned out if AV had been in place: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2010/05/what-if-proportional-representation-had.html

P.P. 07/05/2011
As I had anticipated, AV was defeated in the referendum, though by a wider margin than I had envisaged, 70%:30% on a 41% turnout of electors.  It is interesting that in some districts, however, in Glasgow, Cambridge and parts of London the method received a majority 'Yes'.  This was exactly the outcome that David Cameron not only hoped for but engineered through the timing of the referendum.  In addition, he was aided by a very misleading 'No' campaign, notably supported by the 'Daily Mail'.  I was sickened by its headline today 'The Day British People Stood Up For Democracy'.  That is downright insulting to people fighting for democracy across North Africa and the Middle East at present.  Despite how the newspaper portrayed it, the referendum was not about saving or abolishing democracy, just different ways of running elections in a democracy.  However, to the 'Daily Mail' even to suggest a minor challenge to the way things have always been done is an a grave affront.  The system that is retained means that votes of around 50-60% of voters are disregarded in any general election.  You can argue, that anyway, the UK is little better than a semi-democracy given that, still, the upper house of parliament is entirely unelected.

Of course, the view that our method of choosing and running government is the best in the world is one that is held widely.  However, it seems with the coming changes to constituencies even this is going to be eroded further and I suspect that the 'Daily Mail' will make no complaint as Cameron builds a system that allows the Conservatives to remain in power for decades.  Cameron as a unionist will bitterly oppose the steps by the SNP, now with a clear majority in the Scottish parliament, to move towards independence for Scotland.  However, ironically, if he permitted it, then he would eliminate on average 40 Labour MPs from the Westminster parliament, making his goal of an elective dictatorship that much easier.  AV was probably the last chance we had to see off the further erosion of democracy in the UK by ensuring that even with the constituency re-arrangement there would be a greater chance of a wider range of parties being represented in parliament than will now be the case.

In many ways I wish the 'Daily Mail' would just be honest and say that actually it does not support democracy and would prefer a Conservative authoritarian state to be imposed, because then at least we would not have to see such hypocritical headlines.  I have long noted the erosion of civil liberties in the UK under the Blair and Brown governments.  Whilst this had seemed to slow up in recent months, Jan Culik, lecturer in Czech Studies at University of Glasgow, writing to 'The Guardian' this week noted how the police approach towards potential protestors at the royal wedding last week, was the same as that used by the Czechoslovak Communist regime in the 1970s and 1980s.