PHILIP JOHNSTON
21 JUNE 2016 • 6:15PM
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Yet I know people who would like to vote Leave even though they would be happy to stay because it is the only way to make the EU understand that it seriously needs to reform and not just pay lip service to the concept. But they are being told that is not an option.
In many ways this referendum has replicated what happened two years ago in Scotland – “hope vs fear” – with one big difference. When the political establishment sensed there was a serious prospect that the Scots might vote for independence they responded by giving them much of what they wanted short of separatism.
Yet there has been no similar response from Europe, just a succession of threats and ever more outlandish warnings about what will happen if we leave. The only surprise is that we have not been told that plagues of locusts and frogs will be visited upon us. At the weekend, a German acquaintance told me: “Unless you vote to leave the EU will never change.” He didn’t want us to go but was certain that a vote to stay will be seen in Brussels as British acquiescence with its centralising ambitions, whereas a Brexit declaration would shake the EU out of its arrogant complacency.
You watch, he said. Within hours, Angela Merkel and François Hollande would be offering to talk about a new deal. However, if we vote to stay, however narrowly, we can forget it. In other words, there may well turn out to be nuance in this referendum, but only in one direction. While in definitely means in, out does not necessarily mean out. We know this because it has happened before. In 1992, the Danes rejected the Maastricht Treaty in a referendum, demolishing the keystone measure needed to turn the Common Market into the European Union, complete with single currency and central bank.
Unless the Danes reversed this position, the political project was stymied, so everyone trooped off to Edinburgh to find a way to keep the Euro-train on the rails. An agreement was reached that gave Denmark opt-outs from monetary union, the common defence and security policy, from justice and home affairs harmonisation and from citizenship of the EU. This was enough to satisfy the Danes, who reversed their veto the following year.
Could the same happen here? The “two referendum scenario” has hardly been mentioned during the campaign but the idea was very much around before it began. Indeed, its most prominent advocate was said to be Boris Johnson. A report in the Sunday Times claimed he was considering a vote against Britain staying in the EU in order to get better terms that would be put to the country in a second referendum. In his Daily Telegraph column in February announcing that he would, indeed, be supporting Brexit,
Mr Johnson said: “There is only one way to get the change we need, and that is to vote to go, because all EU history shows that they only really listen to a population when it says 'No.’”
Yet once the campaign was underway, Mr Johnson changed tack. Out means out, he insisted. If we vote to leave there could be no going back. The Remain side have made the same pitch. Some senior figures like Jean-Claude Juncker and Wolfgang Schäuble have given the impression that if the British vote to Remain the EU will recognise it has had a near-death experience and change its ways.
I don’t believe it: Boris was right first time: the only word they respond to is No. Conventional wisdom has it that if Britain votes to leave, the rest of the EU will say good riddance and carry on with their grand design, unencumbered by their semi-detached, constantly whingeing neighbour. But that is not how the place works. Even if they regularly give a good impression of being completely out of touch, the leaders of the EU are not unaware of the risks to the project that a Brexit will bring.
As with Denmark in 1992, there will be a move to get the Brits to change their minds – leave the bits they don’t like but stay as on an associate member. In the aftermath of a close Leave vote there will be such a backlash from the Establishment that nothing can be ruled out.
This is why it is incumbent upon leavers, should they win, to insist that Parliament gets on and repeals the European Communities Act 1972, the legislation that cedes sovereignty to European agencies and the Court of Justice. If that is not done quickly, certainly by the end of this year, then there is a likelihood that the EU and Parliament will combine to decide that the UK should think again, having been promised new terms that eluded Mr Cameron. These would have to address free movement, since immigration has become such a pivotal issue; but don’t put that past them, either. Fundamental principles become remarkably flexible when the chips are down.
So even those who might wish to stay but harbour serious misgivings about the EU have a good reason to vote leave because that is the only way anything will change. Once again, there are senior British politicians insisting that the message has got home, the pfennig has dropped, Europe understands, Britain is in the driving seat, blah, blah. But we have heard this for 25 years and it has never been true. Vote Remain tomorrow and we are stuck with it for good. If we vote to Leave, however, better terms might be offered, with another opportunity to vote until we come up with the correct answer, which in Europe is always Yes.
Are we seriously being told that a great nation like ours has no alternative other than to be manacled in perpetuity to a failing, undemocratic, self-obsessed, dysfunctional political edifice that even the Remain side in this campaign can hardly bring itself to support? Let’s remember this when we go to the polling station tomorrow: the referendum was supposed to be a vote on whether we wished to remain in a reformed Europe – not stay in come what may.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/21/if-you-want-to-be-in-a-reformed-eu-then-you-have-to-vote-to-leav/
Remain or Leave? Best of Telegraph Opinion
REMAIN: David Cameron
‘Economic security with the EU, or a leap into the dark’
‘I believe it (leaving the EU) would be needless and reckless – an act of economic and political self-harm’
Click here to read
LEAVE: Boris Johnson
‘There is only one way to get the change we want’
‘A vote to Remain will be taken in Brussels as a green light for more federalism, and for the erosion of democracy’
Click here to read
REMAIN: Barack Obama
‘The EU makes Britain even greater’
‘Together, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union have turned centuries of war in Europe into decades of peace, and worked as one to make this world a safer, better place’
Click here to read
LEAVE: Col Richard Kemp
‘It is an EU army that could bring about war’
‘A vote to Remain would embolden Brussels in the goal of ever-closer union. This will include a European army.... And an EU army would undermine deterrence and cripple Nato, weakening European defences’
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REMAIN: William Hague
‘The Leave campaign is really the Donald Trump campaign with better hair’
‘This transatlantic mirror-image is completed by the uncannily identical expectations, at least on the part of political pundits and financial markets, of what the results will be’
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LEAVE: Allister Heath
‘EU red tape is suffocating UK economy and Brexit can set us free’
‘As it becomes ever clearer that we won’t be able to reform our economy if we stay in the EU, let us hope that more senior business leaders add their names to such (pro-Brexit) lists’
Click here to read
REMAIN: John McTernan
‘Turkey deal reveals the EU’s future - Britain should be desperate to be a part of it’
‘A Britain in the EU is open for business – for free trade, free movement of capital, goods and services and free movement of labour. Outside we will have chosen to close ourselves’
Click here to read
LEAVE: Michael Howard
‘David Cameron’s reform bid has failed – it’s time to go’
‘The EU’s fundamental flaw is its misconceived attempt to impose rigid uniformity on countries as different as Finland and Greece, Portugal and Germany’
Click here to read
