The great Brexit debate seems to have brought the Lying Toad Tendency out in force among our politicians. Small wonder that the Financial Times recently carried a piece headlined: “Brexit myths: why the EU referendum ‘facts’ read more like pulp fiction”.
The FT scrutinised five claims from each side – and punctured every one. First up is the claim that Britain sends £350m a week to Brussels. The true figure is £136m, though the paper says that if Brexit were “a shock or boon to the economy, the effects on the public finances would dwarf these figures”. Then comes the allegation that the EU forces Britain to put VAT on necessities such as food. The FT says Vote Leave correctly points out that VAT now applies to food, takeaways, soft drinks and more, while “forgetting to mention these were decisions of British governments”.
The Remainers can be just as bad. Claims that leaving the EU would cost three million jobs are based on “heroic assumptions”, according to the FT, while suggestions that our Premier League football only thrives because of the EU’s rules on free movement is unfair. Nobody can say what the immigration policy for footballers would have been had Britain not joined the EU.
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One of the finest exponents of being economical with the truth is leading Brexiteer Boris Johnson. Boris said on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that Crossrail had been held up for a year by EU red tape. Transport for London later told BBC News that this was not true, that Crossrail had been given a derogation from the relevant directive and that “the administrative process to gain a derogation had no impact on the Crossrail construction programme.” As TfL’s boss, surely Boris must have known that?
All this misinformation has been described as “scaremongering” or as “Project Fear”. Certainly civil servants should be afraid. Very, very afraid. For behind some of the glib, dubious and downright dishonest claims about Brexit is a belief that government is easy, that the ship of state can be turned around speedily, possibly in a matter of months. This is nonsense.
If we vote to leave it will take years to get back on an even keel. Even if we vote to stay, storms in the markets and turbulence in the Eurozone could see us being battered for a frighteningly long time. And who is going to have the task of trying to plot a successful course through squally waters? When it dawns on the politicians what a massive undertaking they have embarked upon, they will turn to the civil service.
“If we vote to leave it will take years to get back on an even keel. Even if we vote to stay, storms in the markets and turbulence in the Eurozone could see us being battered for a frighteningly long time."
While there are faults on both sides, it is the Brexiteers who are most cavalier about the realities. They are the most likely to underestimate the time required to renegotiate trade agreements and to overestimate their own abilities.
Former cabinet secretary Gus O’Donnell reckons Britain could face up to a decade of negotiations if we vote to leave. Lord O’Donnell of course doesn’t know how long it will take any more than the rest of us do. Yet he points out that it took Greenland three years to negotiate an exit from the EU even though their entire population could fit into Wembley stadium and their only issue was fish. Even more cogently, O’Donnell argues that France and Germany, which both have anti-EU parties, will be fighting elections next year and their leaders certainly won’t want Britain to be showing how easy it is to leave.
What’s more, once outside the EU, we would become a competitor to the remaining 27 member states. Anyone who thinks that that the Germans, for example, would agree to a level playing field in financial services so that Frankfurt and the City of London can compete on equal terms is in La-La Land. This is not to say that successful negotiations wouldn’t be possible – but they wouldn’t be quick and they wouldn’t be easy.
Ah, say the Brexiteers, but once Britain was out we would be able to make our own laws. Of course many of our laws are already made by British politicians without interference from Brussels. And what a track record our chaps have! There’s our 22,000 pages of tax rules, the millions we have wasted on PFI schemes and IT projects, the poll tax – all made in Britain. And let us not forget Universal Credit, universally regarded as great in theory but a slow motion policy foul-up of epic proportions.
Oh and then there’ll be all that Brussels red tape to offload. Some say 15% of our laws are made in Brussels but Brexiteers reckon it’s nearer 85%. And every last EU regulation will have to be scrutinised and then junked or partially junked or totally rewritten. To paraphrase the French General Pierre Bosquet: “C’est magnifique – mais ce ne’est pas le good government.” He was of course talking about the charge of the Light Brigade. Like I said, the civil service should be very, very afraid.