Clegg vs Farage: some points of interest

Jonathan Lindsell, 27 March 2014

Last night saw the first of two ‘In vs Out’ EU debates between the leaders of the Liberal Democrats and the United Kingdom Independence Party. SO this blog isn’t an exercise in patting myself on the back, I’ll just say now; seven (and a half) of my predictions were right. Clegg said what Clegg would say, and Farage responded predictably – indeed, he used Civitas research when arguing about cars.

Instead I’ll try to look at a few little things other pundits might have missed. They are gloriously wonky.

1. Farage’s opening gambit was a false analogy

He opened by asking us to imagine that we were independent, and considering joining the EU on current terms. While compelling in terms of raising the questions ‘Why on earth would Croatia/Turkey/Ukraine want to join?’, it has no bearing on Britain. First of all, you’d have to imagine what Britain would be like having never joined the EC in 1973, which is extremely difficult, and would imply that the EC/EU would have developed differently anyway, so alternative-2014-UK would never have the choice Farage poses.

Secondly, Farage’s point denies the complexity of economic, political, legal and social links between the UK and EU-27. For Croatia to say ‘No’ to joining the EU would have been simple – Croatia would sail on as before, as would EU-27. If Britain is to say ‘No’ now, there will have to be massive and detailed exit negotiations on all manner of minutiae, which could take years. A lot of Civitas work, some of it my own, is concerned with how best to extricate Britain from Europe – implying there would be zero friction misleads voters and sets UKIP up for a fall if they ever achieve their goal.

For some, this actually highlights the benefits of status quo stability and adds to Clegg’s case!

2. Clout Clegg dodged the Icelandic example

When the duo were discussing trade, Clegg argued that only within the EU, with a 500,000,000-strong market at our backs, could we negotiate decent Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with the world’s heavyweight economies. Farage popped back at him the example of Iceland, a miniscule economy that nevertheless has succeeded where Goliath Brussels continues to fail, in an FTA with China. Farage could equally have gone for Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa or Mexico – all economies smaller than Britain that boast more impressive trade relationships.

Nick Clegg did not respond. First he tried to outflank the difficulty with a red herring: that Farage was an MEP on the ‘Gravy Train’ he loves to criticise. Then Nick moved on to the difficulty – a surmountable difficulty – of renegotiating trade with the EU and with the EU’s current free trade partners, all 55 of them. This is a reasonable point to raise but did not support Clegg’s initial ’clout’ point at all.

3. Farage contradicted himself on prison conditions

Farage argued at one point that the problem with the EU (actually the ECHR) is that we cannot deport foreign criminals from our shores. He wanted good British justice, magna carta and all that.

The example he used was Domenico Rancadore, a former mafia kingpin who has been living quietly in London for two decades. A British district judge ruled that the Cosa Nostra man, convicted in absentia in Italy in 1999, could not be deported because of the barbaric overcrowded state of Italian jails would breach his human rights. Strasbourg has ruled that Italian prisons break Article 3 of the Human Rights Act, which prevents ‘torture, inhuman or degrading treatment’. The judge considered his ‘serious heart condition’ was a factor too, that overcrowding could exacerbate. This probably has very destabilising implications for the rights of all other Italian prisoners, but that’s another story.

A little later, Clegg was extoling the virtues of the ‘European Arrest Warrant’ and how it did allow deportations in most pressing criminal cases. The EAW has serious problems, to be sure, and Farage pointed some of them out. His illustration, however, was Andrew Symeou – a Briton extradited to Greece on flimsy, contaminated evidence and held in terrible conditions before trial. Farage decried both the process (which is reasonable) and the Greek jail conditions, which is reasonable in relation to the fact Symeou shouldn’t have been there in the first place, but directly contradictory in principle to the idea that inhumane prison conditions should not be taken into account when dealing with criminals or suspects in cross-border cases.

4. Credibility Clegg?

Towards the end of the debate the two argued about what percentage of ‘British laws’ emanated from Brussels. Farage was quite honest in explaining his own estimates, pointing out that there were other higher and lower studies finding between 50% and 84% depending on country and circumstances.

Clegg, on the other hand, insisted that his own figure of 7% was objectively true. He repeated it again and again, explaining that his source is the House of Commons Library, the very best people to answer the question. For anyone who bothers to check, they’ll see this isn’t as straightforward. The document does indeed calculate that 6.8% of primary legislation (Statutes from 1997-2009) ‘had a role in implementing EU obligations’. Clegg neglected to mention that another 14.1% of secondary legislation (Statutory Instruments) came from the EU. Nor did he consider the difficult counterfactual – that in some cases, Parliament might have made laws but did not even begin to because they would contradict EU ones. As David Green points out, the document actually notes, ‘it is possible to justify any measure between 15% and 50% or thereabouts.’

These are the kinds of half-truths and ‘fine print’ that Clegg really needs to avoid – when Farage is reaping popularity for being an everyman, Clegg shouldn’t help by coming across as a duplicitous lawyer-type. That said, Farage’s more expansive rhetoric also flirts with contradiction. Both speakers will need their wits a little sharper for round two. Perhaps skip the pub lunch next Wednesday?