09 May 2016

Laburnum Consulting: The UK’s Referendum - A failure to engage

Those in favour of remaining in the EU stress again and again the likely economic and financial cost of a decision to leave. And those who wish to leave concentrate on issues of sovereignty and immigration. This essay assesses the main non-economic arguments for leaving.

The Leave campaigners have three main arguments:  that once out of the EU the UK will be able to exercise greater sovereignty over its affairs, that once relieved of the need to observe the EU’s freedom of movement policies, immigration can be brought under greater control, and that as a result of both of these the UK will respond favourably to being freed from rules imposed by Brussels.

Let us consider first the issue of sovereignty. [...] the more important question we should consider is “what is the best way for the UK to advance its interests and achieve its objectives?”

This is a question not so much about sovereignty as about the exercise of power to achieve national ends, and expressed like this, it is less clear that the best way to advance the UK’s interests is to isolate the country from its allies and partners, from those with whom the country trades and whose actions and reactions affect the UK.  Indeed, in matters military it is absolutely clear that the UK is stronger within a partnership than standing alone:  not even the most ardent Brexiteer wants the UK to also leave NATO. [...]

The second argument the Leave camp puts forward is on immigration, where they seek to tap into public unease at the scale of immigrant inflows, and promise to control them more tightly once free from the obligation to allow all EU citizens freedom of entry.

However there are three rather uncomfortable truths which make this argument less than compelling.  The first, and perhaps most surprising, uncomfortable truth is that over half the immigration into the UK in recent years has come from outside the EU.  The UK already has complete autonomy over controlling non-EU immigration, and leaving the EU will not change this.  So it is very hard to see how leaving the EU will make it easier to slow down or prevent this element of immigration.

The second uncomfortable truth is that it will be almost impossible to stop immigration across the UK’s land border with the Republic of Ireland.  Free movement within the island of Ireland between the Republic and Northern Ireland has been in place since the creation of the then Irish Free State over 90 years ago, and it remains a key policy stance of the Republic.  For the UK to unilaterally impose border controls between the two countries would be deeply damaging to Anglo-Irish relations and might even call into question the Good Friday Peace Agreement in Northern Ireland – but without them, any EU citizen can fly to Dublin, where they will have absolute right of entry, and then simply walk to Belfast.

The alternative, of border and immigration controls between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, is even more unthinkable, and would reignite Northern Ireland’s sectarian tensions almost immediately.

Ultimately, there is no easy answer to Northern Ireland’s dual position of being geographically part of the island of Ireland and politically part of the United Kingdom.  But without an answer, the Leave camp’s claims that they can enhance the UK’s border security by leaving the EU lack credibility.

And the third uncomfortable truth is that there is no evidence that immigration is in general bad for the recipient country.  On the contrary, successive economic studies have shown that net inflows of immigrants, if well handled, at worst do no harm to the host country and usually provide positive economic benefit.  In the case of the UK, it is not the immigrants’ failure to stay away from the country that is the problem but the government’s failure to build the houses, schools, hospitals etc that a rising population needs.  On which the Leave camp is silent.

As for the third of the Leave camp’s main arguments, that the UK will respond favourably to being freed from rules imposed by Brussels, this ignores two important facts.  Firstly, international comparisons always conclude that the UK already has one of the most deregulated and flexible of the major economies, and that most of what rules there are have been imposed by Westminster anyway (and so would almost certainly remain in place).  And secondly, it is not impossible to succeed within the EU, economically or in any other way, as the example of Germany shows.  Whatever it is that stops the UK exporting more to China, it isn’t the country’s membership of the EU. [...]

Full essay on Laburnum Consulting

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