The Leave Alliance is a collection of serious people who have given a great deal of thought to leaving the EU. They are not UKIP or the wilfully blind Brexiteers who cannot see the cliff edge the government still appears to be headed for. The Alliance's plan, called Flexcit, is at least rational and they envisage a period in the EEA while we negotiate a new trading arrangement.
However, Flexcit involves six phases, the third of which on page 5, "involves breaking free of the Brussels-centric administration of European trade, building a genuine, Europe-wide single market, with common decision-making for all parties. This will be fully integrated into the global rule-making process, through existing international bodies. The aim is a community of equals in a 'European village', rather than a Europe of concentric circles, using the Geneva-based United Nations Economic Community Europe (UNECE). It would become the core administrative body, on the lines proposed by Winston Churchill in 1948 and again in 1950. Thus, the exit from the EU becomes the start of an ongoing process, the means to an end, not the end itself."
So, their idea is to leave the EU and to then create a "Europe wide single market" with "common decision-making" and a "community of equals" that would become the "core administrative body".
This looks to me remarkably like a carbon copy of the European Union. No doubt it would involve regulations to harmonise goods and products for fair competition and consumer protection. We would need directives to ensure no one was able to trade with an advantage using inferior labour or environmental standards of course. And after forty years we could then have another referendum where we choose to leave and start all over again. This is the British disease writ large. If something is not working well we don't fix it, we throw it all out and start over. This is the problem at most British companies now applied on a national level.
The Flexcit plan may be rational but politically it is totally impractical - even impossible.
The Flexcit plan may be rational but politically it is totally impractical - even impossible.
