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How alarmist was ‘Ukip: The First 100 Days’?

Jonathan Lindsell, 17 February 2015

Last night Channel 4 hosted a docudrama with the premise that Ukip wins the 2015 election and begins to effect its policies. Ofcom received complaints before the show it even aired. Twitter was alive with condemnation for Channel 4, media bias and sloppy scripting.

In the show, Prime Minister Nigel Farage announces he will take Britain out of the EU immediately. While to an extent this was deliberate satire, attempting to suggest Ukip has no fleshed out plan for EU exit, it goes too far. The mechanism which Farage (in reality) has claimed he would use, Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, gives an exiting country two years of continued EU membership to renegotiate a future relationship with the remaining EU. Instead, the fictional Britain leaves the EU in haste, causing big businesses such as Airbus to abruptly pull out.

The programme focussed on immigration – especially on the violent removal of illegal immigrants. Recent estimates suggest there are between 417,000 and 863,000 ‘irregular residents’ in Britain. (Irregular residents are persons without the legal right to remain, which includes both migrants and their children.) Although identifying and removing them would certainly be a headache for Ukip, and has embarrassed the current government, this means the programme ignored two larger questions.

Firstly, what are Ukip’s actual plans for current legal residents, including EU migrants? Secondly, how will their proposed Australian ‘points based immigration system’ work? International law implies that current legal residents would have indefinite right to remain, and rough calculations suggest copying Australia’s border mechanism would greatly increase immigration.

As extreme as this scenario is, Channel 4’s effort should still send a message to Ukip that they need to set out detailed plans for what they want, should they join government. Speaking at a joint Civitas and Economists for Britain seminar last Friday, Martin Howe QC elucidated the legal possibilities of Brexit. He explained that upon exit, European Economic Area membership (enjoyed by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway) was not automatic – it would need the agreement of all 28 EU states plus the three EEA countries. He explained further than an independent Britain would not inherit the free trade agreements currently in place with third parties like Korea and Mexico. These would need renegotiation and re-ratification– although that should be straightforward.

Howe’s take home message was that a party campaigning in favour of leaving the EU must be prepared to argue in favour of the worst case scenario. This sees the EU deny Britain any preferential trade access during the two year exit negotiations – something the EU might threaten however unlikely – meaning World Trade Organisation rules require the EU to raise tariffs against British exports and vice versa. If such a scenario was not replaced very quickly, it could indeed worry large multinationals. Ukip need to reassure voters that it has a detailed plan for exit negotiations, for keeping trade access and keeping big business, or the satire will just keep coming.

My latest study, ‘The Norwegian Way: A case study for Britain’s future relationship with the EU’ can be accessed here.

3 comments on “How alarmist was ‘Ukip: The First 100 Days’?”

  1. Mr Lindsell ignores the disadvantages for the EU in playing hardball with Britain. These are:

    1. Britain runs a massive trade deficit with the EU. The EU would lose more than it gains by putting up trade barriers.

    2. The Republic of Ireland would have to abide by any EU trade sanctions unless the EU mad an exception for the RoI. However, even if they did that Britain could put up equivalent trade sanctions between the RoI and the UK. Either way it would reduce the RoI to penury because so much of their economy is dependent on trade with Britain. Britain could also remove the right of free entry to the UK of RoI citizens.

    3. There are far more continental EU nationals in Britain than there are Britons on the continent. The British welfare system (including the NHS, education and social housing) is much more generous than the EU average. Morever, there are more foreign EU nationals in Britain drawing in work and out of work benefits than Britons drawing benefits in other EU states. The EU would lose far more if there were no reciprocal EU welfare agreements.

    4. Britain is involved with a number of large scale industrial multinational projects, most notably in the aerospace sector.

    5. EU companies have a larger slice of Britain’s utilities than British companies have of continental EU companies utilities. British railways could be returned to the British state when the contracts run out. Of the other companies, they could be subject to increasingly severe regulation which could make them unattractive to foreign investors.

    6. There are areas in places such as northern France which are very dependent on British trade.

    1. 1. I quite agree, but this blog is discussing mr Howe’s seminar and the importance of considering the ‘worst case scenario’ as a genuine possibility. Because each Member state would have a veto on any EU-UK FTA, or EEA membership, as Martin Howe explained, there’s the possibility that a small central/eastern EU state vetoes a deal, or threatens to, hoping to get a better deal in terms of UK budget contributions or migrant access. The A8 countries trade very little with Britain, and some have to put their treaties to referendums: it is important for constructive Eurosceptics not to ignore this possibility as inconvenient.

      2. I’m not sure what you’re getting at. There’s a non-EU common travel area with RoI, and Mark Reckless said Irish migration would continue were Ukip in power. However the tariff point remains as you note.

      3,5,6. See (1)

      1. But the worst case scenario has to take into account the disadvantages playing hardball with Britain could inflict on the EU because otherwise it is unrealistic. The worst case scenario as described by Howe would remain a fiction for the reasons I gave.

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