I think this article is a correct appraisal of the Tory landscape. The question is whether this new found Euroscepticism is sufficient to impact on the status quo. It will be interesting to see. I don’t see what Britain has to lose from negotiating a Swiss style relationship with the EU in terms of trade, and mutual defence wouldn’t be a problem either. The real problems are things like agriculture, environment and domestic regulation which we would be able to junk under such a scheme.

Even you soi-disant liberals must, along with many on the left as well on the right, understand the anti-democratic nature of the EU’s increasing control over wide swathes of domestic regulation?

Meanwhile I am not optimistic that Cameron will do much on this issue….nor on most others for that matter!

Without having read the post, and not being a Tory (some might say that ‘Eurosceptic Tory’ is a contradiction in terms) I’ll answer your question posed in the title.

I want to see an end to the supremacy of EU law over British law, an end to Euro-federalism, and a renegotiation of our relationship with the EU to make it more like that of Switzerland.

I do think this issue has the potential to cause David Cameron lots of trouble, although if as I suspect he has a majority of over 200 probably not in his first term. I can’t see him pledging any more referenda (people might not vote on what you want them to vote on) and I suspect he will come to see the benefit to Goverment of Blair’s approach to human rights (i.e. pass bad but populist laws in the certain knowledge the Courts will throw them out).

What we don’t yet know is how many of the next lot of Tory MPs seriously want to major on the issue, or whether they just made Euro-sceptic noises at their adoption meetings. The experience of my current MP, Mark Field, may yield a clue: adopted as an extreme “anti”, he was soon subjected to a re-reducation process by the City (which he represents) and nowadays says next to nowt on the subject. While only one MP at a time can represent the City of London, informal linkages will do their work on many more, I suspect.

The other factor is the “special relationship” – our use to Washington is as a Trojan Horse promoting US interests at the heart of the EU. If other EU leaders get used to ignoring Cameron, he may not be such a useful idiot to the McCain administration (which now looks like a done deal). And British PMs do love the red carpet treatment in Washington, don’t they?

O/T: Are you having server problems at LibCon today? I keep getting browser errors when I try to visit.

For all this talk by the Right of loss of national sovereignty – they seem unconcerned by the power of the global money markets that really do control/limit national power over our interest rates, environmental policy, welfare and tax rates. As imperfect as it is, the EU is actually a bulwark in defence of democracy against the power of global money – we would be weaker without it – deep down the Tories know this, which is why they play silly Eurosceptic games rather than advocate complete withdrawal – their policy is a sham.

“I want to see an end to the supremacy of EU law over British law”

Well, you’ll be a happy man to hear that there is no supremacy of EU law over British law. Our relationship with the EU is governed by the European Communities Act 1972 as amended; the UK Parliament remains sovereign and the UK continues to be governed under English, Scottish and Northern Irish law (there’s no such thing as British law and never has been).

“an end to Euro-federalism”

What, so you’d rather Euro-centralisation?

“and a renegotiation of our relationship with the EU to make it more like that of Switzerland”

So we’d join Schengen, and base all our domestic regulations (except for the financial services sector) on EU regulations whilst not having any input into them? Fairy snuff.

“anti-democratic nature of the EU’s increasing control over wide swathes of domestic regulation”

You might be too lazy to vote / too clownish to vote for anyone other than joke candidates in European elections, but that’s very much your outlook.

Indeed, Neil, why one only has to look at the examples of Switzerland and Norway to see how staying out of the EU has caused their governments to become mere pawns to global economic expediency, forced to sacrifice the well being of their workers for… oh, hang on.

“So we’d join Schengen, and base all our domestic regulations (except for the financial services sector) on EU regulations whilst not having any input into them? Fairy snuff.”

Do you mean with respect to goods and services sold to the EU?

“You might be too lazy to vote / too clownish to vote for anyone other than joke candidates in European elections, but that’s very much your outlook.”

Since when do any elected representatives in the EU decide on the direction of policy? Why not at least have a directly elected commission if you are so into your democratic accountability.

Couple of questions.

Firstly, isn’t it Norway that has to implement EU regulations due to its EEA membership whereas Switzerland, being outside of the EEA, doesn’t?

Secondly, Mexico has a free trade agreement with the EU – what EU regulations do they have to enforce?

Apologies for answering my own question but it seems that Switzerland actually does have a lot of EU regulations applied to it, albeit through a different mechanism. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland_and_the_European_Union

Regarding Mexico, it seems that they are substantially outside of many EU regulations – a blueprint for a British Eurosceptic free trade agreement?

http://www.globalbritain.org/BNN/BN19.htm

Apologies for the Wikipedia link, but it’s on the money here: Switzerland is a member of the EU in all but name, pays into the EU budget, and follows EU law, but doesn’t have any influence in making it in the first place.

If we were to leave the EU, we’d be in the same boat. Yes, in theory we could impose divergent standards on goods and services sold into the EU compared with those which weren’t, but that would be insane: all exporters will have to comply with EU regulations anyway (and all imported goods will also comply with them, because you’ll load the same goods into the container ship in Shanghai to unload in Rotterdam and Southampton); some kind of regulatory system is required unless you’re a demented libertoonian; and the EU system is nowhere near suboptimal enough for it to be worth developing our own in parallel. So we wouldn’t – we’d be Switzerland or Norway, following EU rules without any influence over what happens (whereas at the moment we vie with Germany and France for ‘most influential member’.

On democracy: the Commission are chosen by democratically elected national governments (who chooses the Chancellor or the Home Secretary in the UK? Clue: not a referendum); and the legislature has the power to amend and veto legislation, remove the Commission, and control the budget.

(and the Mexico free trade agreement isn’t really one – it’s a ‘not quite as restricted as before trade’ agreement)

“I want to see an end to the supremacy of EU law over British law”

Sorry, can someone explain to me what ‘EU’ and ‘British’ mean in the context of law?

I thought it was a matter of whether the code derived from common law or roman law.

Personally I see these disputes continuing because rule by consent and rule by force are principles which combine with different applications in different contexts. I also think a state of tension between the two systems is a healthy thing for global politics.

Well the scheme seems to be working fine for Switzerland at the moment. Your link doesn’t say how much Switzerland pays into the EU’s budget, but I hazard it is proportionately rather a lot less than us. We would not be in the same position either as we are not land-locked and are a big economy in our own right. For sure, we may end up with some EU-regulation Chinese goods but the ability to accept different ones when we want to will be useful, as will the ability to import food from whoever we choose and to set our own agricultural policy.

The UK pays 0.3% of GDP in EU contributions. 0.3% of Swiss GDP is about €500m. This year, Switzerland is paying CHF1.25bn (€750m) in enlargement contributions. So, err, no.

“the ability to accept different ones when we want to will be useful”

Except that we wouldn’t, because realistically if you’re trading goods into the UK you’re also trading with the rest of Europe (remember, Ireland isn’t in the UK and would remain in the EU…) and the last thing you want is to bugger about with two different sets of rules.

“as will the ability to import food from whoever we choose and to set our own agricultural policy.”

Agriculture is 1% of GDP, which falls definitively into the “not really worth giving a fuck about” bracket.

“Remember, Ireland isn’t in the UK and would remain in the EU”

…for now.

“Agriculture is 1% of GDP, which falls definitively into the “not really worth giving a fuck about” bracket.”

Unless you are poor and care about food prices. It is the 1% that no one can do without!

“The UK pays 0.3% of GDP in EU contributions. 0.3% of Swiss GDP is about €500m. This year, Switzerland is paying CHF1.25bn (€750m) in enlargement contributions. So, err, no.”

John, the language of the quoted article is a little obtuse, but the figure appears to be for payments made over the next ten years. So… yes?

O/T: Are you having server problems at LibCon today? I keep getting browser errors when I try to visit.

Really? Is anyone else?

It’s fine again now, it was around 11am it wasn’t working properly for me.

Five years, not ten, but you’re right. Note that these are the enlargement subsidies for the EU10 alone – AIUI Switzerland also contributes to other aspects of the EU budget.

Uhh…

“Switzerland provides these contributions autonomously (it determines the selection of projects, etc.). Its contributions are not part of the EU’s cohesion policy. The period during which contributions for projects can be approved will extend over the next five years (obligation period). Experience indicates that the period during which payment are made will stretch over a period of approximately TEN years.”

So it is roughly ten years and these payments are not conditions of EEA membership. This seems to imply it is closer to a form of voluntary foreign aid. Which is fair enough. I would love Britain to have a relationship with the EU like that.

If you read more on the subject, it’s definitely five not 10 – the physical money from the Swiss government will be paid into the fund over five years, with the expectation of another tranche in 2012ish.

In terms of ‘not conditions of EEA membership’, erm, perhaps not *formally*…

So you are saying the EU is a sort of bullying transnational agency (“give us the cash, or we’ll shut our markets!”) and that we should be part of of it. Nice!

If we want to play that game, wouldn’t we be better off joining a transnational bully that actually has enough guns to back up its policies?

No, I’m saying if you want the kind of preferential relationship that the EU has with Switzerland, which goes well beyond anything recognised by the WTO as ‘free trade’, then there are necessary quid pro quos involved.

Well I don’t recognise the WTO, and I think we would have a better bargaining position than the Swiss. Despite that worse position, I still think they are in a better position than we are now.

1. So massive subsidies to the very wealthy; paid for by those less well off through regressive taxation and higher prices for food, which also has the side effect of creating protectionist barriers stopping the third world trading with us and therefore helping to keep the globally poorest people in poverty is “not really worth giving a fuck about”.

2. The EU commission’s own figures show that we would be better off out of the common market than in it. Not that that is much of a surprise, the Liberals won the argument against protectionism over a century and a half ago. Shame we are now stuck in a protectionist bloc where it is not even our industries that are being protected! All the pain and none of the gain.

3. Some industries are being actively destroyed through EU incompetence, fishing for instance. It is not impossible to create a fisheries management policy that actually works most of the time, Norway, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland all have one however the Common Fisheries Policy can’t really be thought of as anything less than insane with its requirement that dead fish be thrown back into the sea in the hope that they will magically come back to life. The incompetence is such that while most countries are having their fishing rights cut and cut again some, notably Spain, are actually being subsidised to build bigger and more efficient boats. The EU’s fishing policy has turned the North Sea, which used to have the best fishing grounds in Europe, into an ecological disaster zone. This means that they are forced to put in place restrictions that are driving many British fishermen out of business, yet at the same time the EU is subsidising the construction of bigger and better Spanish boats in a perfect example of Grey’s Law.

“some, notably Spain, are actually being subsidised to build bigger and more efficient boats”

Note to Chris: fuck off back under your bridge and never come back.

Note to everyone else: the toss about ‘ooh, those Spics and their boats’ is, as I’ve just indicated, toss. Spain is the country to have cut the size and tonnage of its fishing fleet the most on the grounds that – guess what? – there aren’t any fucking fish anymore.

Oh, also:

“So massive subsidies to the very wealthy; paid for by those less well off through regressive taxation and higher prices for food, which also has the side effect of creating protectionist barriers stopping the third world trading with us and therefore helping to keep the globally poorest people in poverty is “not really worth giving a fuck about”.”

Basically, yes. It’s a mildly nasty piece of corporate welfare, but so trivial compared to tax credits that just, whatever. And the “ooh, we’re starving the third world” stuff is absolute bollocks, as Dan Davies regularly points out and never gets refuted beyond ranty toss.

“The EU commission’s own figures show that we would be better off out of the common market than in it.”

I like Tim W, count him as a friend and am glad the world has him in it.

However, the suggestion that the cost of complying with all business regulation throughout the EU in the world ever can sanely be equated with the benefits of the EU single market is obviously toss since – just as people are doing in this thread – it ignores the fact that *of course we’d have government regulation of business*, we’ve had it since William the Conqueror made a big book of land to work out how much people had so he could work out how much to tax them…

Bollocks, eh? http://www.free-europe.org/blog/?itemid=58

Unfortunately, that fails the “written by Stephen Pollard” test for ignorant rubbish. It also confirms the validity of that test.

Its methodology is to take 20,000 of the 24,000 daily deaths from starvation and attribute them to general poverty (with the other 4,000 attributed to crop failure and war. Given that most starvation is caused by crop failure and war, this seems weird). It then assumes that, because the EU accounts for about a third of trade protectionism, the EU is therefore responsible for a third of those 20,000 deaths.

It fails to demonstrate (as opposed to assert) that trade protectionism is responsible for starvation, which one might think was quite an important logical step when producing such a report…

Hmmm… alright one-all, John. I’ll have to look deeper into this.

In any case, vote YES to Free Europe at http://www.FreeEurope.info – the tipping point is near.