Peter Hitchens in The Mail on Sunday (HERE) has an article pushing the EFTA/EEA option as proposed by Dr Richard North. In fact North and Christopher Booker, who co-wrote a book about it and have developed a model called flexcit to describe the process, are mentioned twice in the article. This is the exit route now being openly talked of by senior Conservatives Nick Boles and Stephen Hammond. There are several problems as I see it.
Firstly, North and Boles are both arguing for the UK to become a temporary member of the EEA. This would be as a stepping stone to a looser relationship but crucially giving us more time to decide what that looser relationship would be. To do this we would first need to join EFTA. According to Tim Shipman in The Sunday Times yesterday this wouldn't please the existing EFTA members or the EU. They say it would be like, "an elephant jumping into a bath. All the bathwater comes out. After a few years the elephant gets out and there's no water left".
Secondly, the argument is often made by North and others that Norway only has to obey about 27% of the EU acquis and are outside the political stuff. This doesn't include a lot of other EU rules and regulations in other areas like aviation and VAT so the truth is a bit more nuanced. North admits, "Norway, the largest of the Efta/EEA states, has [a further] 56 recorded bilateral (and more than 20 multilateral) treaties with the EU. Would this be acceptable to leavers? I don't believe so. Most leave voters don't understand the details and the comments under Hitchens' article shows what the average leave voter thinks about it.
Thirdly, I don't even think most remainers would like it. They would argue if we're going to be taking a lot of EU directives and regulations we might as well be sitting at the table and helping to set them.
Fourthly, Dr North is saying the EEA option is flexible and can be adapted but admits it would take years to negotiate. Would the EU be happy to do this on a temporary basis? Knowing we would leave the EEA as soon as we got a better idea? I'm not sure they would.
Finally, May has comprehensively ruled this out so it would need a change of PM at the very least.
This option might do the least economic damage but will it fly? Probably no more than any other alternative to membership.
Finally, May has comprehensively ruled this out so it would need a change of PM at the very least.
This option might do the least economic damage but will it fly? Probably no more than any other alternative to membership.
