He obviously didn’t plan it this way, but Scottish agriculture minister Richard Lochhead has done the Remain side in the EU Referendum an enormous favour. For a taste of the chaos which could follow Brexit, doubters should observe what’s happening with payments of EU subsidies to Scottish farmers, or more precisely the payments not being made.
Hundreds of farmers have been waiting since December for Common Agriculture Policy payments but an IT meltdown in Lochhead’s department led to the announcement that the Scottish Government will make £200m available for emergency pay-outs to tide them over.
It might not mean much to us city dwellers, but it’s a crisis for small rural communities and it’s happening when the continuity of European payments is supposed to be unbroken. So what would happen if the subsidies didn’t get paid, not because of a computer cock-up but because the CAP itself was at an end?
It’s reasonable to presume there would be some sort of deal whereby the Scottish and UK governments agreed to fill the financial hole left by the CAP, but to what extent, over what timescale. How would the new system work and how would the transition be managed? For the people at the end of the chain it could be a very painful process, as Scottish farmers are finding out now.
Multiply the CAP by every European-backed project or system, then add the need to negotiate new relationships against the background of the withdrawal of Britain’s balance of £8bn annual contribution to the EU, and the scale of the de-coupling becomes clearer. It’s obviously not beyond the wit of man to re-cast the relationship with the rest of the EU post Brexit, but the problem is the time, the ultimate outcome and the uncertainty along the way.
For more clues about the complexity involved, again we don’t have to go far for an example. From a position whereby all major political parties accepted that Scotland would remain part of the UK for the time being at least, that new powers should be ceded to the Scottish Parliament, and that there should be no financial detriment to either Scotland or the rest of the UK it has taken two years to agree what to devolve and how to fund it. Two years to thrash out a deal where, in theory at least, all sides were agreed about the basic principles.
As Bank of England governor Mark Carney pointed out this week, negotiations can take a long time, time in which important investment decisions can be put on hold. Speak to anyone involved in the property business and they will confirm that persuading big funds to back Scottish projects became markedly more difficult in the year leading up to the 2014 vote. The tap has only recently begun to open and in the event of a yes vote it would have taken far, far longer because the landscape would have been unpredictable. The money would simply have gone elsewhere. This is not Project Fear but Project Face-up-to-reality.
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There is another lesson from the Independence Referendum; the demand for hard facts about the future can never be fully met. Right up to the last minute in 2014, “Don’t Knows” complained there wasn’t enough information when in reality there was no more information to be had.
There were plenty of opinions, but in what became a battle of rebuttal and counter-rebuttal for many people the only certainty was uncertainty – and they didn’t like it. In the end, even though the No side was right to say that No wasn’t a vote for no change at all, their position was the closest thing to certainty on offer.
And so it will be this time. Just like the SNP’s economic model for an independent Scotland, it is wildly optimistic to suggest that because Britain is a major trading partner with the rest of Europe, in the event of departure it’s in everyone’s interests for negotiation to be quick and smooth. All the evidence, from David Cameron’s renegotiation to the difficulties of our own devolution talks (and we were told Scottish independence negotiations would be completed by 24 March this year), suggests it will be otherwise.
But this is conjecture. Maybe departure will indeed be clean and easy, the deal wrapped up in a year or so and we can head off amicably to mutually bright futures. And North Korea might scrap its weapons programme and announce free elections.
My guess is by 23 June many Don’t Knows will still be Don’t Knows, they will complain about lack of information and most will either vote to stay or not vote at all, and there is some evidence of a slight tipping away from Leave.
Thus far, the EU war is being fought almost entirely on English soil but will it hot up here after the May election? With only Ukippers and a handful of Tory renegades leading the Brexit charge I have my doubts and our biggest contribution might be our experience. Uncertainty? Tell us about it.
John McLellan is a columnist for the Herald and an editor of InFacts. He contributed a version of this article the The Herald published on March 10.
Edited by Yojana Sharma
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