The idea of a cross party approach has it's downsides. I recall there was a cross party approach to "NO" to Scottish separation and the SNP never stopped going on about Labour selling out by campaigning with the Tories. It must have had some traction. At the very least there will have to be a cross party approach that does not use party labels, since some or all of them are aversions to too many people. Then other non official, non officially funded campaigns can run alongside, such as parties targeting their own voters and supporters.
As to Schengen and the Euro, Poland is in nether and does not have to be. It's people have clearly decided they do not want to be in Euro and no EU body is going to force such a huge change onto a country, which would be impossible anyway, unless they fully co-operated. Denmark too has no intention of joining it. It would not be difficult to get the EU Commission, Parliament and Council leaders to say that the UK did not have to be in either facility unless it wanted to and that universal coverage by the Euro was just a long term aim. Then the issue would mainly go to bed except with a minority of conspiracy theorists.
There are a number of factors steadily increasing UK support for rejoining the EU.:
1) the largest group of Leave voters were elderly or one foot away from being so and they are increasingly pushing up the daisies, which alone, has likely pushed Remain over the line ;
2) millions of young people have come of age and the pro Remain to Leave ratio is about 6-1;
3) millions of voters have since realised all the down sides for leaving and that they were misled or duped and would reverse their previous vote. Either free money on a red bus, improvements to the NHS, increased worldwide trade, EU roaming charges not returning, imaginings on sovereignty or in expunging the swarthy, or even one foolish senior Green Party Official voting Leave for higher animal welfare standards, despite the EU having high minimum standards and there being no restrictions on increasing any standard;
4) the turnout for the Remain side was reportedly lower than it could have been because the less politically engaged assumed that Remain would win anyway, or that nothing negative would happen from leaving and this was reflected in huge numbers googling "what is the EU" in the following couple of days;
5) a pro EU minded leader of the Labour party to bring that body of support fully along, given that we did have the dreaded Corbyn leading, refusing to meet or correspond with the Remain side until it was too late and nurtured a bank of LEXIT people who alone would have made up the 1.89% each way that swung it to the stupids and their Pied Pipers.
The support for Leave will increasingly shrink back to the nativist minded 20 odd percent, or swollen where the a Remain Out side might be effective in pinning Schengen or the Euro on the Rejoin side, or helped a bit from clever slogans such as "we told them last time" with pictures suggesting arrogant establishment elite figures. But it won't be enough. Most people are not blind to the total mess Britain is in of which Brexit is probably the largest component, only rivalled by general Tory incompetence.
So essentially you are proposing that the UK Government promise to Join the € & Schengen in order to fulfill the Copenhagen Criteria, needed in order to join the EU, while having absolutely no intention of fulfilling those promises….
¿Do you think that that is the basis for good relations between the UK & the rest of the EU?
¿ do you think that UK voters would be convinced by a promise to lie to the EU, but not lie to UK Voters?
Pat, governments signing to join the Euro and Schengen at some theoretical future date is a vanishingly tiny price to pay to be inside the EU now. Th Polish and Danish people know that neither could happen without their agreement and co-operation. It is kicked into the long grass.
Taking part in these two achievements of European cooperation is not just a matter of intention or willingness but even more so a matter of capability.
Remember that the UK once had attempted to fulfill the criteria for Euro membership but spectacularly failed and had to pull out of the ERM.
It is very unlikely that as an economically weakened membership candidate it would be more capable than it was as one of the economically strongest member.
For Schengen membership that might be slightly different as the UK should, in theory, be capable of controlling its external borders well enough.
However, as we have recently seen with vetos against Bulgaria and Romania, simply achieving the entry criteria is not enough on its own.
Couldn’t agree more with all this. Along with facing up to Schengen, Euro etc. I think there also needs to be a strand associated with public consent and what it should look like. For two reasons: firstly to neutralise all the bound-to-be very noisy Brexit ultras shouting about not respecting the 2016 result; second, general education about democratic consent, truth telling, safeguarding, thresholds, public information etc. and why it’s all so important. Would also drum it in what a crock of democratic shit the last ref was. By rights any future referendum to win should only need a minuscule majority to level it up with last one, and I even think it could just go in a party’s manifesto, but that would probably be a disaster long term. In any case you can bet the Brexit ultras will be screaming about thresholds, so let them have them.
What if rejoin won a ref 52/48 but the threshold were 55% (say). A recipe for endless disaster. I take your point but I think that it has to be 50% +1. The Brexies set that that precedent - let them own it
On a personal level there’s nothing I would like more than to see them lose like that, believe me. But for the long term security of rejoin (which ultimately will frustrate them even more, drive them mad actually) I think the answer is to take it in stages and build in layers of consent, but obviously you need to be careful with your timings and questions. So first have a referendum to test the temperature for rejoin - which you tell everyone loud and clear is advisory because you want to do it right and make sure there is real consent at every stage “this time” , always reminding them obliquely that the last time was not done right. That will make people feel safe and give you flexibility to return to the matter and refine questions in follow up refs. Very important is to say right at the beginning that this will be a multi-step process with more options later so they retain a feeling of control, also important so they don’t get fatigued. It’s what the Brexiters should have done to tie up the process but they were too impatient and incompetent. Plus they knew they wouldn’t have got consent for hard Brexit. It was never actually there and there’s even less consent for it now. I’m optimistic. I think people want to be rid of Brexit but they want it to happen in a ‘nicer way’.
Rees-Mogg initially said that he imagined that the 2016 referendum would be a two-stage process - firstly a question of Leave / Remain and then, if Leave was the preferred option, a referendum on the final deal that was negotiated with the EU. That was before the Brexiter mob realised that they could simply hijack the result of an advisory poll as the definitive “will of the people”, even though only 37% of the total electorate actually voted Brexit.
It will be fantastic to see Brexiters pay the price for their deceit, plus denied the oxygen of victimhood if there are multiple layers of consent for rejoin.
I find it interesting that this piece, and the associated comments, are introspective in nature. I believe that continuing in this vein will lead to a transactional approach towards the EU ('we give up this to obtain that'). Nothing in any of this article is directed towards educating people and fostering commitment to the EU as a political project. It is entirely economic in conception and direction. This is simply a continuation of British attitudes towards the EU and its predecessor entities from their inception.
I do not deny that Brexit for the UK has been an absolute omnishambles; led by snake-oil salesmen, with no single fixed end state objective, no plan and fully intending to deceive, misdirect, ignore any difficulties that arise and scamper away from any responsibilities. There was no consideration of the European perceptions of Brexit during the referendum campaign and there has never been any such consideration of the European perceptions of the UK since.
I agree with the main point that any rejoin campaign will have to be broad based, not specifically linked to any particular party. And I agree with one of the comments that phased referendums would be necessary, probably with a minimum threshold for at least the initial referendum to enable an application to be made to join the EU. But I fear that absent any clear initiative to foster buy-in of the political aspects of the EU will cause the application to be rejected in at least some of the European capitals. There is deep emotional meaning and attachment to an 'ever closer union' in many European countries, even if it is a vague slogan. In the UK it has been an anathema.
In Europe here has been a lot of rueful recognition of the wisdom of de Gaulle vis à vis the UK since Brexit.
The British have been conditioned to consider anything that is a result of cooperation to be something bad.
A lose-lose outcome instead of a win-win other as seen by other peoples.
It is even worse when the cooperation partners are European nations.
Take the Schengen agreement, for example.
Every other nations celebrates when they achieve membership, like Croatia recently.
Or are really pissed off when someone blocks them, like Romania and Bulgaria also recently.
Yet, even this very article makes it sound as if even the consideration being part of such a great achievement of European cooperation is something to reject.
Yes. This is why I despair when I look at the Facebook site the 48% and see posts more interested in attacking the Tories than marshalling arguments for Rejoin. I am not a Tory, never have been, never will been, I disagree deeply with their philosophy and general mindset, but, although the Hard Right are beyond the pale, the likes of Ken Clarke and Dominic Grieve are not, and we need them to bring the centre ground to a Rejoin stance
Your post might better have been titled “A Requiem for Re-Join”
Its amusing that you suggest there be cross-party support for rejoining, Since 1918 there has always been cross-party support for EU membership, I would go so far as to claim that large segments of our governing elite have always favored the ultimate objective of becoming the “United States of Europe” . the problem has always been the British voter, the British voter has never seen the need to become part of a much greater Union than the one we actually have, much less give up the Pound for the €, (they might have been interested if it were a choice between pound or gold).
Ultimately the UK rejoining the EU is a lost cause; the UK will never voluntarily embrace the ultimate objectives of the EU, it wont even embrace the Copenhagen Criteria; & without informed & overwhelming consent of UK voters the UK would never be more than half in & half out of the EU, eventually leaving the EU.
Being in the Single market might have worked as a transition agreement when leaving the EU, but that ship has sailed & essentially having to follow rules that others make up without the UK having any input if totally unacceptable for UK voters.
It would be far better to accept the UK will never re-join the EU but support further EU integration as an interested neighbor & trading partner while slowly coming to selected agreements with the EU on subjects that interest the both of us, a New Labour government will be well placed to start such a process as they are not the party that took the UK out of the EU & the EU will have to opportunity to leave behind its rancor over a conservative run Brexit referendum.
I wonder if the Pound/Euro things is still an impediment at the same level as it was before.
During the reign of QE II the UK was in a similar position as Denmark and Sweden, with the population having an established fondness of seeing their monarch on bank notes and coins.
The Belgian, Dutch and Spanish population were content with just coins, prioritizing the every day advantages of a shared currency over nostalgia.
Does KC III have enough "pull" to stay in the first category?
Some great thoughts here - sadly, I agree with most of them. Looking at the long term, to be a "grown-up" EU member, we will need to take the full set of SM/CU, FoM, Schengen, Euro. Maybe not all immediately, but committed on the agenda. In some ways, this is already an "omnicause" bigger than many supporters imagine. Any subset of these is only a temporary state, open to attack from all sides. Brexit has already dug a ditch in front of the wall we will have to climb here.
I'm fuelled by an interesting mix of real-world data (missed opportunities, trade performance, friction everywhere), and optimism/belief in the project. Somehow the former is ignored by most people, could be defection or distraction, but will continue I fear.
So now the hard question. (How) can we generate a broad-based pro-EU movement across multiple parties in a FPTP environment? Maybe PR is a pre-condition. Or perhaps Keir Starmer is brighter and more committed than he appears, and has a cunning plan...fingers crossed!
I know Nick has written previously that PR is a distraction / undesirable but I agree, I think it is a precondition. Although I would say that it's an informal one. The EU won't formally require it, and - following Nick's comments about not getting rejoin sucked into the 'omnicause', it should NOT be a formal part of the rejoin campaign / objectives list... But I don't see how this country can build a stable consensus around rejoining without it.
The same goes for a lot of important changes the country needs to deal with.
Picking up this and other points, PR is definitely not the same priority as repairing our broken Health, Education, and Justice (etc.) systems. They will get the headlines, most resource and hopefully funding.
And clearly PR is completely distinct from rejoin EU in the public gaze. And it is not easy - BUT the current government have created a golden opportunity for PR. If Labour sell the concept as a step to clean up politics (SO many examples), at the same time as modernising government....
PR magically binds support from most minor parties (yes, including Reform), there has never been a better chance for cross-party support. Opponents will be Conservatives, defending the FPTP system which demonstrably failed its purpose, and (some) Labour.
I like your point about the need to move beyond Omnicause-type thinking. That argument applies to a lot of other policy challenges as well.
"Schengen. Single currency. Freedom of movement. You have to figure out what you’re going to say on these things. They aren’t going to go away - in fact, they will form the battleground of any future rejoin campaign."
Regarding all this, I think many pro-EU people in Britain personally want to join the eurozone and Schengen, so they engage in motivated reasoning and argue that Brussels and the EU27 will never restore the pre-Brexit opt outs. But I feel that's simply not the case. The UK is a big, important country -- now more than ever with an expansionist Russia -- and, after some grumbling, Britain would almost certainly be allowed to avoid Schengen and the eurozone once again. I don't think FoM should be in the same sentence as the eurozone and Schengen, because it's significantly more popular and much less toxic -- especially so now that the British have learned that Brexit didn't reduce legal migration and even made it harder to address irregular migration.
Joining the EU has the prerequisite of accepting the “Copenhagen Criteria” part of the Copenhagen Criteria is accepting all EU Acquis, that unequivocally includes € & Schengen.
Also, the EU is a project of “Ever Closer Union” ¿Why on earth would EU Countries accept the UK that wanted to be excluded from the € & Schengen? Their logic would be, if the UK doesn’t want € & Schengen, then that is proof that they don’t really want to be a full member of the EU.
I'm quoting you above: "Ultimately the UK rejoining the EU is a lost cause; the UK will never voluntarily embrace the ultimate objectives of the EU, it wont even embrace the Copenhagen Criteria; & without informed & overwhelming consent of UK voters the UK would never be more than half in & half out of the EU, eventually leaving the EU."
It sounds like you're opposed to the UK rejoining the EU -- or Single Market -- so engaging in motivated reasoning in the comments. That's fine, but it would be better to just admit your bias? Or am I inaccurately interpreting your comments?
"Also, the EU is a project of “Ever Closer Union” ¿Why on earth would EU Countries accept the UK that wanted to be excluded from the € & Schengen? Their logic would be, if the UK doesn’t want € & Schengen, then that is proof that they don’t really want to be a full member of the EU."
And yet the fact that Sweden and Denmark will likely never join the eurozone is no big deal. The fact that Ireland will never join Schengen is accepted, because the third-country UK makes Ireland joining impossible.
The EU is a pragmatic project. If the UK wanted to come back without the eurozone and Schengen, it would be warmly welcomed.
Ì didn’t vote for Brexit, because I have lived abroad for the last 50 years, but I would have voted for Brexit if I could have.
UK voters have never accepted the EU for what it is & what it wants to be, but in the rest of Europe they really do want a “United States of Europe”.
Even now in the UK pro Europeans still think that the UK could be a member of the EU without adopting the € or Schengen & ever closer Union; With this mind set the UK will never re-join the EU. The position of UK pro Europeans wanting to be in the EU but not € & Schengen equates with the position of EU Euro-sceptics, it really is amusing that you actually think that you are pro EU even when you don’t want the € or Schengen.
As for Sweeden & Denmark.
Sweeden has no choice in the matter, Denmark has a choice, but eventually it will join the €, Denmark has been shadowing the € successfully for so long that € membership is a forgone conclusion.
The EU is pragmatic, that is why it will offer an alternative arrangement to the UK, something like “Associated membership”, because the UK in the EU in not sustainable in the long term unless an overwhelming majority of UK voters embrace the long term objectives of the EU as well as the € & Schengen.
I also think that an alternative arrangement is more likely.
Something like the EEA but with a different name and primarily targeting the existing candidate nations.
Similar to how the EEA was created to allow EFTA members into the Single Market before they were ready for EU membership.
This new arrangement would extend it to all those candidates with sufficient progress while not requiring them to be fully capable of accession.
This works around the EEA requirements of either being an EFTA or EU member, neither of which would be achievable by the UK at this point, and could potentially be easier to sell if the UK government of the time positions itself as someone who helped create it (the British electorate loves fake leadership claims)
Essentially the so called “democratic deficit” must be addressed… as this is felt throughout Europe. The Public needs to be educated as to how the various components of the EU work in language with explains how their vote, their voice is heard as well as the economic social and political benefits and being clear about the disbenefits such as compromise and collaboration means you won’t get everything you want unless you can persuade others
The Corbynistas' convincing themselves that either Corbyn was pro-Europe or that his victory was more important than rejoining / stopping Brexit was one (of many) reasons why we are where we are today.
I'm interested in your comment "I don’t see this [a cross-party organisation that seeks this end unambiguously] as existing at present and it needs to"...
I'm not a member of the European Movement and my perception is that they're not set up / able to become the organisation you describe as being necessary, but are you saying they're not unambiguously cross-party? I'm not saying you're right or wrong - I don't know - but would be interested to know why you think they're not, if you think they're not.
Very good as usual but slightly differ with you thinking this will be in the main a leftish cause and we need some centre rights on board...........it will be the centre right driving this, be in no doubt businesses , ALL one nation Tories, hard on Capitalists, young and old right wing folk will be leading the charge. the only Brexiters left will be the Loony Right, hard left and the English Nationalists who are often racist by nature and creed.
One thing you didn't mention is getting UK businesses on your side.
UK businesses should be overwhelmingly in favour of rejoining the Single Market. They are also good at lobbying MPs, particularly Conservative MPs. Money talks, in many ways.
Just getting to the point where we could rejoin the Single Market involves a huge amount of work, politically. If we get businessess on our side, that gives us a lot of help.
The idea of a cross party approach has it's downsides. I recall there was a cross party approach to "NO" to Scottish separation and the SNP never stopped going on about Labour selling out by campaigning with the Tories. It must have had some traction. At the very least there will have to be a cross party approach that does not use party labels, since some or all of them are aversions to too many people. Then other non official, non officially funded campaigns can run alongside, such as parties targeting their own voters and supporters.
As to Schengen and the Euro, Poland is in nether and does not have to be. It's people have clearly decided they do not want to be in Euro and no EU body is going to force such a huge change onto a country, which would be impossible anyway, unless they fully co-operated. Denmark too has no intention of joining it. It would not be difficult to get the EU Commission, Parliament and Council leaders to say that the UK did not have to be in either facility unless it wanted to and that universal coverage by the Euro was just a long term aim. Then the issue would mainly go to bed except with a minority of conspiracy theorists.
There are a number of factors steadily increasing UK support for rejoining the EU.:
1) the largest group of Leave voters were elderly or one foot away from being so and they are increasingly pushing up the daisies, which alone, has likely pushed Remain over the line ;
2) millions of young people have come of age and the pro Remain to Leave ratio is about 6-1;
3) millions of voters have since realised all the down sides for leaving and that they were misled or duped and would reverse their previous vote. Either free money on a red bus, improvements to the NHS, increased worldwide trade, EU roaming charges not returning, imaginings on sovereignty or in expunging the swarthy, or even one foolish senior Green Party Official voting Leave for higher animal welfare standards, despite the EU having high minimum standards and there being no restrictions on increasing any standard;
4) the turnout for the Remain side was reportedly lower than it could have been because the less politically engaged assumed that Remain would win anyway, or that nothing negative would happen from leaving and this was reflected in huge numbers googling "what is the EU" in the following couple of days;
5) a pro EU minded leader of the Labour party to bring that body of support fully along, given that we did have the dreaded Corbyn leading, refusing to meet or correspond with the Remain side until it was too late and nurtured a bank of LEXIT people who alone would have made up the 1.89% each way that swung it to the stupids and their Pied Pipers.
The support for Leave will increasingly shrink back to the nativist minded 20 odd percent, or swollen where the a Remain Out side might be effective in pinning Schengen or the Euro on the Rejoin side, or helped a bit from clever slogans such as "we told them last time" with pictures suggesting arrogant establishment elite figures. But it won't be enough. Most people are not blind to the total mess Britain is in of which Brexit is probably the largest component, only rivalled by general Tory incompetence.
So essentially you are proposing that the UK Government promise to Join the € & Schengen in order to fulfill the Copenhagen Criteria, needed in order to join the EU, while having absolutely no intention of fulfilling those promises….
¿Do you think that that is the basis for good relations between the UK & the rest of the EU?
¿ do you think that UK voters would be convinced by a promise to lie to the EU, but not lie to UK Voters?
Pat, governments signing to join the Euro and Schengen at some theoretical future date is a vanishingly tiny price to pay to be inside the EU now. Th Polish and Danish people know that neither could happen without their agreement and co-operation. It is kicked into the long grass.
Taking part in these two achievements of European cooperation is not just a matter of intention or willingness but even more so a matter of capability.
Remember that the UK once had attempted to fulfill the criteria for Euro membership but spectacularly failed and had to pull out of the ERM.
It is very unlikely that as an economically weakened membership candidate it would be more capable than it was as one of the economically strongest member.
For Schengen membership that might be slightly different as the UK should, in theory, be capable of controlling its external borders well enough.
However, as we have recently seen with vetos against Bulgaria and Romania, simply achieving the entry criteria is not enough on its own.
Couldn’t agree more with all this. Along with facing up to Schengen, Euro etc. I think there also needs to be a strand associated with public consent and what it should look like. For two reasons: firstly to neutralise all the bound-to-be very noisy Brexit ultras shouting about not respecting the 2016 result; second, general education about democratic consent, truth telling, safeguarding, thresholds, public information etc. and why it’s all so important. Would also drum it in what a crock of democratic shit the last ref was. By rights any future referendum to win should only need a minuscule majority to level it up with last one, and I even think it could just go in a party’s manifesto, but that would probably be a disaster long term. In any case you can bet the Brexit ultras will be screaming about thresholds, so let them have them.
What if rejoin won a ref 52/48 but the threshold were 55% (say). A recipe for endless disaster. I take your point but I think that it has to be 50% +1. The Brexies set that that precedent - let them own it
On a personal level there’s nothing I would like more than to see them lose like that, believe me. But for the long term security of rejoin (which ultimately will frustrate them even more, drive them mad actually) I think the answer is to take it in stages and build in layers of consent, but obviously you need to be careful with your timings and questions. So first have a referendum to test the temperature for rejoin - which you tell everyone loud and clear is advisory because you want to do it right and make sure there is real consent at every stage “this time” , always reminding them obliquely that the last time was not done right. That will make people feel safe and give you flexibility to return to the matter and refine questions in follow up refs. Very important is to say right at the beginning that this will be a multi-step process with more options later so they retain a feeling of control, also important so they don’t get fatigued. It’s what the Brexiters should have done to tie up the process but they were too impatient and incompetent. Plus they knew they wouldn’t have got consent for hard Brexit. It was never actually there and there’s even less consent for it now. I’m optimistic. I think people want to be rid of Brexit but they want it to happen in a ‘nicer way’.
Rees-Mogg initially said that he imagined that the 2016 referendum would be a two-stage process - firstly a question of Leave / Remain and then, if Leave was the preferred option, a referendum on the final deal that was negotiated with the EU. That was before the Brexiter mob realised that they could simply hijack the result of an advisory poll as the definitive “will of the people”, even though only 37% of the total electorate actually voted Brexit.
It will be fantastic to see Brexiters pay the price for their deceit, plus denied the oxygen of victimhood if there are multiple layers of consent for rejoin.
My head says that you're right, my heart says... Well you can imagine
I find it interesting that this piece, and the associated comments, are introspective in nature. I believe that continuing in this vein will lead to a transactional approach towards the EU ('we give up this to obtain that'). Nothing in any of this article is directed towards educating people and fostering commitment to the EU as a political project. It is entirely economic in conception and direction. This is simply a continuation of British attitudes towards the EU and its predecessor entities from their inception.
I do not deny that Brexit for the UK has been an absolute omnishambles; led by snake-oil salesmen, with no single fixed end state objective, no plan and fully intending to deceive, misdirect, ignore any difficulties that arise and scamper away from any responsibilities. There was no consideration of the European perceptions of Brexit during the referendum campaign and there has never been any such consideration of the European perceptions of the UK since.
I agree with the main point that any rejoin campaign will have to be broad based, not specifically linked to any particular party. And I agree with one of the comments that phased referendums would be necessary, probably with a minimum threshold for at least the initial referendum to enable an application to be made to join the EU. But I fear that absent any clear initiative to foster buy-in of the political aspects of the EU will cause the application to be rejected in at least some of the European capitals. There is deep emotional meaning and attachment to an 'ever closer union' in many European countries, even if it is a vague slogan. In the UK it has been an anathema.
In Europe here has been a lot of rueful recognition of the wisdom of de Gaulle vis à vis the UK since Brexit.
I fully agree!
And it will be difficult.
The British have been conditioned to consider anything that is a result of cooperation to be something bad.
A lose-lose outcome instead of a win-win other as seen by other peoples.
It is even worse when the cooperation partners are European nations.
Take the Schengen agreement, for example.
Every other nations celebrates when they achieve membership, like Croatia recently.
Or are really pissed off when someone blocks them, like Romania and Bulgaria also recently.
Yet, even this very article makes it sound as if even the consideration being part of such a great achievement of European cooperation is something to reject.
Yes. This is why I despair when I look at the Facebook site the 48% and see posts more interested in attacking the Tories than marshalling arguments for Rejoin. I am not a Tory, never have been, never will been, I disagree deeply with their philosophy and general mindset, but, although the Hard Right are beyond the pale, the likes of Ken Clarke and Dominic Grieve are not, and we need them to bring the centre ground to a Rejoin stance
Your post might better have been titled “A Requiem for Re-Join”
Its amusing that you suggest there be cross-party support for rejoining, Since 1918 there has always been cross-party support for EU membership, I would go so far as to claim that large segments of our governing elite have always favored the ultimate objective of becoming the “United States of Europe” . the problem has always been the British voter, the British voter has never seen the need to become part of a much greater Union than the one we actually have, much less give up the Pound for the €, (they might have been interested if it were a choice between pound or gold).
Ultimately the UK rejoining the EU is a lost cause; the UK will never voluntarily embrace the ultimate objectives of the EU, it wont even embrace the Copenhagen Criteria; & without informed & overwhelming consent of UK voters the UK would never be more than half in & half out of the EU, eventually leaving the EU.
Being in the Single market might have worked as a transition agreement when leaving the EU, but that ship has sailed & essentially having to follow rules that others make up without the UK having any input if totally unacceptable for UK voters.
It would be far better to accept the UK will never re-join the EU but support further EU integration as an interested neighbor & trading partner while slowly coming to selected agreements with the EU on subjects that interest the both of us, a New Labour government will be well placed to start such a process as they are not the party that took the UK out of the EU & the EU will have to opportunity to leave behind its rancor over a conservative run Brexit referendum.
I wonder if the Pound/Euro things is still an impediment at the same level as it was before.
During the reign of QE II the UK was in a similar position as Denmark and Sweden, with the population having an established fondness of seeing their monarch on bank notes and coins.
The Belgian, Dutch and Spanish population were content with just coins, prioritizing the every day advantages of a shared currency over nostalgia.
Does KC III have enough "pull" to stay in the first category?
Nick,
Some great thoughts here - sadly, I agree with most of them. Looking at the long term, to be a "grown-up" EU member, we will need to take the full set of SM/CU, FoM, Schengen, Euro. Maybe not all immediately, but committed on the agenda. In some ways, this is already an "omnicause" bigger than many supporters imagine. Any subset of these is only a temporary state, open to attack from all sides. Brexit has already dug a ditch in front of the wall we will have to climb here.
I'm fuelled by an interesting mix of real-world data (missed opportunities, trade performance, friction everywhere), and optimism/belief in the project. Somehow the former is ignored by most people, could be defection or distraction, but will continue I fear.
So now the hard question. (How) can we generate a broad-based pro-EU movement across multiple parties in a FPTP environment? Maybe PR is a pre-condition. Or perhaps Keir Starmer is brighter and more committed than he appears, and has a cunning plan...fingers crossed!
I know Nick has written previously that PR is a distraction / undesirable but I agree, I think it is a precondition. Although I would say that it's an informal one. The EU won't formally require it, and - following Nick's comments about not getting rejoin sucked into the 'omnicause', it should NOT be a formal part of the rejoin campaign / objectives list... But I don't see how this country can build a stable consensus around rejoining without it.
The same goes for a lot of important changes the country needs to deal with.
Picking up this and other points, PR is definitely not the same priority as repairing our broken Health, Education, and Justice (etc.) systems. They will get the headlines, most resource and hopefully funding.
And clearly PR is completely distinct from rejoin EU in the public gaze. And it is not easy - BUT the current government have created a golden opportunity for PR. If Labour sell the concept as a step to clean up politics (SO many examples), at the same time as modernising government....
PR magically binds support from most minor parties (yes, including Reform), there has never been a better chance for cross-party support. Opponents will be Conservatives, defending the FPTP system which demonstrably failed its purpose, and (some) Labour.
How brave do we feel?
*deflection
I like your point about the need to move beyond Omnicause-type thinking. That argument applies to a lot of other policy challenges as well.
"Schengen. Single currency. Freedom of movement. You have to figure out what you’re going to say on these things. They aren’t going to go away - in fact, they will form the battleground of any future rejoin campaign."
Regarding all this, I think many pro-EU people in Britain personally want to join the eurozone and Schengen, so they engage in motivated reasoning and argue that Brussels and the EU27 will never restore the pre-Brexit opt outs. But I feel that's simply not the case. The UK is a big, important country -- now more than ever with an expansionist Russia -- and, after some grumbling, Britain would almost certainly be allowed to avoid Schengen and the eurozone once again. I don't think FoM should be in the same sentence as the eurozone and Schengen, because it's significantly more popular and much less toxic -- especially so now that the British have learned that Brexit didn't reduce legal migration and even made it harder to address irregular migration.
Joining the EU has the prerequisite of accepting the “Copenhagen Criteria” part of the Copenhagen Criteria is accepting all EU Acquis, that unequivocally includes € & Schengen.
Also, the EU is a project of “Ever Closer Union” ¿Why on earth would EU Countries accept the UK that wanted to be excluded from the € & Schengen? Their logic would be, if the UK doesn’t want € & Schengen, then that is proof that they don’t really want to be a full member of the EU.
I'm quoting you above: "Ultimately the UK rejoining the EU is a lost cause; the UK will never voluntarily embrace the ultimate objectives of the EU, it wont even embrace the Copenhagen Criteria; & without informed & overwhelming consent of UK voters the UK would never be more than half in & half out of the EU, eventually leaving the EU."
It sounds like you're opposed to the UK rejoining the EU -- or Single Market -- so engaging in motivated reasoning in the comments. That's fine, but it would be better to just admit your bias? Or am I inaccurately interpreting your comments?
"Also, the EU is a project of “Ever Closer Union” ¿Why on earth would EU Countries accept the UK that wanted to be excluded from the € & Schengen? Their logic would be, if the UK doesn’t want € & Schengen, then that is proof that they don’t really want to be a full member of the EU."
And yet the fact that Sweden and Denmark will likely never join the eurozone is no big deal. The fact that Ireland will never join Schengen is accepted, because the third-country UK makes Ireland joining impossible.
The EU is a pragmatic project. If the UK wanted to come back without the eurozone and Schengen, it would be warmly welcomed.
Ì didn’t vote for Brexit, because I have lived abroad for the last 50 years, but I would have voted for Brexit if I could have.
UK voters have never accepted the EU for what it is & what it wants to be, but in the rest of Europe they really do want a “United States of Europe”.
Even now in the UK pro Europeans still think that the UK could be a member of the EU without adopting the € or Schengen & ever closer Union; With this mind set the UK will never re-join the EU. The position of UK pro Europeans wanting to be in the EU but not € & Schengen equates with the position of EU Euro-sceptics, it really is amusing that you actually think that you are pro EU even when you don’t want the € or Schengen.
As for Sweeden & Denmark.
Sweeden has no choice in the matter, Denmark has a choice, but eventually it will join the €, Denmark has been shadowing the € successfully for so long that € membership is a forgone conclusion.
The EU is pragmatic, that is why it will offer an alternative arrangement to the UK, something like “Associated membership”, because the UK in the EU in not sustainable in the long term unless an overwhelming majority of UK voters embrace the long term objectives of the EU as well as the € & Schengen.
I also think that an alternative arrangement is more likely.
Something like the EEA but with a different name and primarily targeting the existing candidate nations.
Similar to how the EEA was created to allow EFTA members into the Single Market before they were ready for EU membership.
This new arrangement would extend it to all those candidates with sufficient progress while not requiring them to be fully capable of accession.
This works around the EEA requirements of either being an EFTA or EU member, neither of which would be achievable by the UK at this point, and could potentially be easier to sell if the UK government of the time positions itself as someone who helped create it (the British electorate loves fake leadership claims)
Essentially the so called “democratic deficit” must be addressed… as this is felt throughout Europe. The Public needs to be educated as to how the various components of the EU work in language with explains how their vote, their voice is heard as well as the economic social and political benefits and being clear about the disbenefits such as compromise and collaboration means you won’t get everything you want unless you can persuade others
Fully agree.
The Corbynistas' convincing themselves that either Corbyn was pro-Europe or that his victory was more important than rejoining / stopping Brexit was one (of many) reasons why we are where we are today.
I'm interested in your comment "I don’t see this [a cross-party organisation that seeks this end unambiguously] as existing at present and it needs to"...
I'm not a member of the European Movement and my perception is that they're not set up / able to become the organisation you describe as being necessary, but are you saying they're not unambiguously cross-party? I'm not saying you're right or wrong - I don't know - but would be interested to know why you think they're not, if you think they're not.
Very good as usual but slightly differ with you thinking this will be in the main a leftish cause and we need some centre rights on board...........it will be the centre right driving this, be in no doubt businesses , ALL one nation Tories, hard on Capitalists, young and old right wing folk will be leading the charge. the only Brexiters left will be the Loony Right, hard left and the English Nationalists who are often racist by nature and creed.
Good, sensible piece.
One thing you didn't mention is getting UK businesses on your side.
UK businesses should be overwhelmingly in favour of rejoining the Single Market. They are also good at lobbying MPs, particularly Conservative MPs. Money talks, in many ways.
Just getting to the point where we could rejoin the Single Market involves a huge amount of work, politically. If we get businessess on our side, that gives us a lot of help.