Around The World Blog: The battle over Brexit

It was supposed to be finalised at “an
English breakfast” last Friday, said The
Daily Telegraph. But in the event it wasn’t
until dinner the next day that EU leaders,
after more than 30 hours of negotiations,
finally agreed to a new deal with Britain –
a deal, it is claimed, that gives the UK a
“special status” within the EU. David
Cameron duly confirmed that the in/out
referendum on the UK’s membership
would be held on 23 June. Admitting that
he felt no “love” for Brussels, the British
Prime Minister said the changes he had
achieved (see box, opposite) did not
address all the frustrations that he and
others had with the EU, but were a big
step in the right direction. “The choice is
in your hands,” he said, addressing the
British people. “But my recommendation
is clear. I believe that Britain will be safer, stronger and better
off by remaining in a reformed European Union.”
He’s unquestionably right about that, said Niall Ferguson in
The Sunday Times. It’s bizarre that the future of this crucial
relationship with our main trading partners may now turn
on such trifling questions as for how many years “a Polish
plumber will not be entitled to claim UK benefits”. The past
500 or so years of British history should have taught us by
now that our fate will always be inextricably linked with that
of continental Europe. To believe we can separate ourselves
from Europe and prosper in glorious isolation is “utopian”.
In the age of globalisation, the pooling of authority is more
important than ever, said The Economist. It’s the only way
to effectively tackle supranational issues such as pollution,
migration, terrorism and market volatility. That’s why we work
with allies through other bodies such as NATO, the World Trade
Organisation, the International Monetary Fund
and the World Bank. “If sovereignty is the
absence of mutual interference, the most
sovereign country in the world is North Korea.”
But is the EU really so effective, asked Suzanne
Moore in The Guardian. The more we’ve seen
of its workings in recent years – from its flatfooted
response to the Greek debt crisis and
the migrant issue to last week’s tortuous
negotiations over UK reforms – the less
impressive it has looked as a decision-making
body. Besides, the EU just doesn’t feel like a
proper democracy. Voting to remain in this
bloc – whose power rests largely “on a deadly
combination of mystification, officiousness and
being so boring that most people just
switch off” – doesn’t appeal. Were we to
leave, said Nigel Lawson in The Daily
Telegraph, we would of course continue
cooperating and trading with Europe
to our mutual benefit. We’d simply be
opting out of a “political project” whose
driving objective – the creation of a
United States of Europe – we happen
not to share.
Both sides are making exaggerated claims
about the consequences of Brexit, said
Ed Conway in The Times. Multinational
companies are warning of job losses
and closed factories, but they said the
same would happen if the UK didn’t
join the euro, only to be proved wrong.
Eurosceptics, meanwhile, are wailing
about the massive cost of EU regulations, the top 100 of which
reportedly cost $46.4bn a year. Yet if Britain were to leave the
EU and remain in the Common Market, like Norway, 93 of
those rules would “still apply to the UK, at an annual cost of
$43.8bn”. The reality is that, whatever the result of June’s
referendum, things probably won’t change all that much.
Not for Britain, perhaps, said Matthew Parris in The Times,
but the same might not be true for Europe. A vote for Brexit
would rock the beleaguered EU to its foundations and
probably lead to its “disintegration” – an event that would
diminish us all. For all its “squabbles”, “somnolence” and
“clodhopping complacency”, the EU is a torchbearer for
progressive values such as reason, compromise and democracy
at a time when these ideas are everywhere under assault.
“There aren’t enough people in today’s world trying to get
on with each other. Let’s stick with those that are.” Britain
may have delivered the “kiss of death” to the
EU in any case, said Le Figaro. Even if the
UK votes to stay, other EU members will now
have every incentive to employ the same
“blackmail” tactics to avoid bending to
common rules. A Brexit vote would certainly
be “traumatic” for the rest of the EU, said
Simon Jenkins in The Guardian, but it might
actually do the bloc some good, by shocking
it into the sort of meaningful reform that the
sclerotic organisation is crying out for – and
that Cameron’s deal so signally failed to
deliver. It might force it to find “a new balance
between supranational regulation and free
trade”. Without such reform, the EU may be
doomed anyway.