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.
