David Hannay is a member of the House of Lords and former UK ambassador to the EU and UN.
The government is attempting to weaponise the chaos that would be unleashed by leaving the EU without a deal – aka “Project Fear” – as a tactic for driving MPs, and the rest of us, into the arms of the prime minister’s deeply flawed Brexit deal.
But this only seems to be having rather modest effects, if any at all. Perhaps that is because the objective is both misconceived and beyond achievement.
Misconceived because many of the government’s recent economic predictions fall into the trap of trying to marshall macroeconomic forecasts of the distant future. They focus on broad figures for loss of GNP in a series of complex scenarios.
With the benefit of hindsight, it is now pretty clear that the original so-called “Project Fear” – a label attached to the Remain campaign’s tactics in 2016 – fell into the same trap. This strategy did not succeed and lent itself to mockery and ineffectiveness.
The trouble is that voters do not find such forecasts credible, since they are never precisely born out. Nor do they have much of an impact on the majority of people who have no clue what their average household income might be in 2030. People are far more exercised about getting successfully through the next week, month or year.
But the government’s approach also fails to set out with any precision the benefits to individuals of the deal Parliament is being asked to endorse. That is because it cannot be done. The Political Declaration, which lays out our future relationship with the EU, is just too aspirational, too vague and too self-contradictory to be capable of being presented as concrete outcomes.
What is needed, surely, is a microeconomic approach. This can concentrate on the detail of what is at risk, in any shape or size of Brexit, and how it relates to ordinary people’s everyday lives.
Demand a vote on the Brexit deal
Click here to find out moreThat is not in fact too difficult to do. But it does require comparison with what, for any type of Brexit, is the great unmentionable: the better deal we have as a member of the EU.
Just look at the following, non-exhaustive list:
1. Price rises in the shops resulting from a further fall in the value of sterling. We already know a good deal about this thanks to the fall in sterling’s value since the 2016 vote. Does anyone doubt that a further fall is in the offing if we leave on worse terms?
2. The EHIC blue health card. This takes such a load off the mind if one suffers from illness when abroad elsewhere in the EU.
3. Roaming charges for mobile phones and other technology. This is currently guaranteed under EU law. That will not be the case if we leave.
4. Cheap holiday air fares and improved compensation for cancelled or delayed flights. These cheap flights are based largely on the ability under EU law of airline carriers to fly between multiple destinations in different member states.
5. Keeping the full panoply of EU internal security measures: the European Arrest Warrant, membership of Europol and Eurojust, automatic exchange of criminal records, DNA and other crime-fighting data
6. Workers’, environmental and other rights covered by the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights. The government has refused to replicate this in UK law.
7. Freedom for students to travel to other member states for study or research, often done under the EU’s Erasmus+ programme.
8. Freedom for professionals to travel to and work in other member states without cumbersome bureaucracy and extra costs.
The list goes on and on. It is full of items which are important to the daily lives of millions of our citizens.
It is a difficult to use “Project Fear” to describe a list like this, of things we risk losing if we leave, and particularly if we leave without a deal. We already enjoy every one of them as a result of our membership. And their number is likely to increase as the single market develops further and extends into the services sector – 80% of our economy – and into the growing digital economy.
Fighting to protect these rights and benefits is much more Project Hope than Project Fear. And it is a lot more convincing than the government’s campaign.
Edited by Luke Lythgoe
“Taking back control of our borders” was clearly a major issue in the referendum, whether you like to discuss this or not.
As I understand it, we could have, under EU law , implemented tighter controls on EU immigrants, and of course we could have controlled immigration from outside of the EU at anytime. So, why not put this as one of our objectives for staying in the EU? I don’t really care if this embarasses the political parties with their years of lies…. the situation is too serious.
Also, I would like to see a more positive, can-do, attitude to the EU. it is not perfect..so what do we want to achieve and how? Attending to the same old, same old, will not convince anyone who has believed the Express/Mail. A program, looking forward, with ideas would make a big difference to selling he EU to the diehards.
project fear. rofl. project logic. it cost lest to get stuf from europe as of the short time of travel. then from anyu were else no mather what the deal is. as every other country is further away dus more exspencive to get stuff. ( plain logic) also i wish the english get of there bender in blaming e.u for not being flexcible. why would they. YOU did choose to leave. so they dont ow you anything. 27 country solid on there rules. one smal island ( that doesnt realize that the empire is dead) that wants to force the 27 countries to change the rules. wel tough. you cant eat cake all the time.
Erm, I’ve been saying this for years. I used to talk about the fact that the EU costs us 37 pence a day for 70 + years of peace or half a mars bar, rather than using £billions which fly straight over the heads of mathematically illiterate people.
Let’s start talking up the deal we (especially David Hannay!) have already negotiated over the last 40 years: UK +++. All the prosperity and rights plus £, plus non-Schengen border control, plus rebate.
Can it be that Corbyn has not read and considered this short list list of benefits that we have as members of the EU (and be aware of many more)? His chief stated concern is his fear of EU control on new investment in local communities. This is simply not an EU position or practice, to limit our right to constructively improve our communities. The restrictions that are in place are to limit the ability of big business to play one are off against another to gain concessions for locating in a particular place. To protect us from the international vultures.
Zoe Williams writes in the Guardian and has plenty of sensible comments about the Brexit situation and Labour (among many other subjects).
Forgot.. Why is withdraw A50 not on the table at each and every discussion about ‘deals and arrangements’? It is the most epedient and least costly option available to us. It is a gift and why is it kept in a dark corner?
We would immediately take our seat at the top table and get on with our lives. Constructively contributing to an evolving and improving EU not fighting it.
We would again be an important part of the world’s biggest and most powerful trade group.
The EU
Withdraw A50 without delay.
Just read Tim Shipman’s All Out War and his Fall Out to see that all the silly mistakes made by Remain during the Brexit campaign and those of the Brexit faction after that are pretty much the same that the Scottish Indyref faction made by their Scexit attempt from the UK. Basically it shows that such ideological coloured attempts to leave greater political bodies are inherently silly and doomed to fail.
David Hannay is absolutely right to concentrate on emphasising the benefits of EU membership and future developments if and when we get the chance to reconsider brexit. As well as the items he has specified frictionless trade is crucial particularly in the major industries operating on a “just in time” basis.
I would add two further positives which the individual gains by from UK membership of the EU.
EU rules are in most part benign, setting common standards to create the single market. These rules might be considered a safeguard rather than oppression, protecting us from wild deregulation by a far right Government or state interference by a far left one.
The EU is more effective (then the nation state) in dealing with the big Tech. Companies, so the individual’s relationship and privacy concerns with these companies are better regulated and policed inside the EU.
Don’t know if he meant to go this far publicly, but interesting to hear Jeremy Hunt say on Today yesterday ” how cataclysmic it would be if we didn’t end up having an agreement we could get through Parliament.” So no deal = cataclysmic – official.
When Hannay says “things we risk losing if we leave”, I assume he means there is a risk of Brexit happening, whereupon we lose these things.
However it can also be read to mean it is all up in the air and uncertain whether these things really will happen as a consequence of Brexit, which is much less forceful and frankly yawn inducing. We know for a fact we will lose freedom of movement etc as a result of Brexit, there is no point trying to pull our punches, otherwise we end up like the BBC: maybe this, maybe that, but on the other hand here’s someone who says something else.
George Brooke – Immigration will continue to increase after Brexit, it will be a controlled increase, with a lower percentage of EU nationals, but an increase.
Having a red European passport trumps having a blue British one in every respect.
It gives more rights, more freedoms and will lead to less queries and less delays.
As I understand it, leaving the single market, would also mean leaving SEPA (Single European Payment Area). There will be those on here who have more expertise than myself in this area, but I cannot believe it will do anything but make money transfers and transactions slower and above all more costly.