It seems quite certain that Mrs May's deal will be voted down on Tuesday. Amid the scramble to find an alternative solution, a Plan B to provide an escape from the constitutional quagmire she seems intent on driving us into, Peter (Lord) Mandelson has written a piece for The New European giving eleven reasons why the Norway EFTA/EEA option would be a disaster for Britain (HERE). Mandelson used to be Trade Commissioner for the EU so I assume he knows what he's talking about or he has spoken to people who do. The reasons seem quite plausible to me.
In brief, here are what we might call Mandelson's first eleven - you can read them in full at the link:
- It wouldn't give the frictionless trade its proponents think it will.
- There would still be freedom of movement.
- The EFTA court is not really independent of the ECJ.
- It doesn't resolve the Irish border issue.
- There is no incentive for EFTA to let us in.
- No EFTA member is in the EU customs union and we could not be either.
- There is no majority in parliament for it.
- It does not meet Labour's six tests.
- EFTA is not in the CAP or CFP so damages our food and fish exports.
- EEA members still make significant payments.
- EEA members have to accept all EU single market rules without having a say.
To which Senior Norwegian politicians and business figures, according to The Guardian (HERE), have added two more:
- EFTA countries have a veto on trade agreements so Liechtenstein, a tiny country of 38,000 people, could veto a trade deal that the UK has negotiated.
- EFTA has 29 trade agreements with 39 countries that we would have to accept without any negotiations.
You have to ask yourself if we seriously want to become a member of EFTA, accepting many, if not most EU rules and regulations without a say and giving a veto to the other EFTA members over our free trade deals. Brexiteers for one group would be furious, but then again they would be furious with anything short of building a Channel wall.
But if all that is not enough, reinforcing Mandelson's point 5, it looks as if Norway definitely do not want us in EFTA anyway:-
"The plan was rejected by Heidi Nordby Lunde, an MP in Norway’s
governing Conservative party, and leader of Norway’s European movement.
She said her views reflected those of the governing party even though
the Norwegian prime minister, Erna Solberg, has been more diplomatic by
saying Norway would examine a UK application.
Lunde told the Guardian: “Really, the Norwegian option is not an
option. We have been telling you this for one and a half years since the
referendum and how this works, so I am surprised that after all these
years it is still part of the grown-up debate in the UK. You just expect
us to give you an invitation rather than consider whether Norway would
want to give you such an invitation. It might be in your interest to use
our agreement, but it would not be in our interest.”
The EEA option is or was Dr North's first stop on his longer and more
circuitous Flexcit route but even he seems to have given up on it. He says this morning that Norway Plus has "sunk without trace". He takes a swipe at The Guardian and claims, "Somehow, the newspaper omits to tell us that Ms Lunde is also president of the European Movement in Norway dedicated to taking her country into the European Union" even though it's written as plain as day in the report. Being pro-European is of course, enough to damn your views whatever they are.
Over the past few weeks politicians here have been openly discussing this option as a temporary stop gap measure and without even asking themselves let alone EFTA, if we can join the group. This cannot have helped matters much. It smacks of arrogance and exceptionalism.
We hear Brexiteers criticising Germany for throwing its weight about in the EU but at least they're members. We talk about joining EFTA, an entirely separate group that we have no connection with at the moment, without even asking - or thinking of asking - if this is something they want. It is as if our politicians think all three nations, looking on as we treat them like insignificant, deaf simpletons, will welcome us with open arms. They are as bad as the Brexiteers.
Imagine their outcry if Belgium started a national conversation about joining the United Kingdom.
The no-deal outcome was never alive, in my opinion, and now it seems the EFTA/EEA or Norway option is dead. What does this leave? It seems that it's Mrs May's deal or remaining in the EU - after another referendum. What else is there?
