Brexit: the UK should leave the overrated EU single market

“She is not one of the tiny band of lunatics who think we can have a sort of glorious economic future outside the single market.” That was ex-chancellor Ken Clarke’s verdict on Andrea Leadsom during his supposedly eavesdropped conversation with Malcolm Rifkind in a television studio. (Does anybody seriously believe the veteran Clarke, whose delivery was declamatory while Rifkind’s was furtive, did not know he was being recorded?)

Clarke was preparing the next line of defence for the referendum-routed Remain camp: retreat to the Maginot Line of the Single Market to prevent genuine Brexit being implemented. Realist Europhiles recognize that the EU anthem and flag will have to be sacrificed, but if Britain can be corralled within the Single Market, then the substance of EU membership can be preserved, including only nominally restricted immigration by gracious concession of a temporary “emergency brake”, and with British taxpayers continuing to contribute to the EU budget.

According to Clarke, only a “tiny band of lunatics” want to leave the Single Market. That is the propagandist line being taken by Remainers. It is calculated to appeal to “soft” Leave voters, to evoke the British spirit of compromise: “Yes, I voted Leave, but I think we should stay within the Single Market,” is the kind of reasonable stance a pipe-smoking Englishman will naturally embrace. Clarke’s denunciation of “lunatics” who want to exit the Single Market is designed to demonize as fanatics those who oppose membership of this trade cartel. Such propagandists should bear in mind that only a few months ago similar language was employed to stigmatize all supporters of Brexit.

The Single Market will now become the crucial battleground in the War of British Independence. The referendum victory was just one battle – though a crucial one – in that war. To achieve anything other than a Pyrrhic victory, Brexiteers must enforce exit from the Single Market.

Among Ken Clarke’s “tiny band of lunatics” is Michael Burrage, academic and businessman, who first took the trouble to carry out an in-depth analysis of the Single Market. He disclosed his findings in the study “Myth and Paradox of the Single Market”, published by Civitas last January. This initiative was provoked by a claim made in 2011 by Ed Davey, then minister of state at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) that “EU countries trade twice as much with each other as they would do in the absence of the Single Market programme.

It emerged that the government had no data to show the “benefits” of the Single Market and the BIS had relied on a European Commission report and other questionable sources. Burrage revealed that the aggregate GDP in 2015 of the 55 countries with an EU agreement was $7.7 trillion. That contrasted with aggregate GDP of all the countries with which Switzerland had agreements of $39.8 trillion, Chile $58.3 trillion, Korea $40.8 trillion, and Singapore $38.7 trillion. Some 90 per cent of the agreements these four countries had negotiated included services, whereas only 68 per cent of EU agreements did so.
The EU has opened an insignificant $4.8 trillion of services markets to UK exporters, while the four non-EU nations cited above have opened markets of $35 trillion, $55.4 trillion, $40 trillion and $37.2 trillion respectively. In two-thirds of cases, post EU agreements, the growth of UK exports has fallen. Yet the CBI and other business organisations, on the basis of no specific in-depth data, assert that the UK benefits from the Single Market. The truth, as revealed by OECD and UN Comtrade data, is that Britain has sacrificed years of freer trade for exporters in both goods and services by abdicating the right to negotiate its own trade negotiations.

Other facts discrediting Ed Davey’s rash claims include the revelation that exports of goods of the 12 founder nations of the Single Market are 14.6 per cent lower than they would have been had they continued to grow at the same rate as in pre-Single Market days and UK exports to the other founder members have been 22.3 per cent lower. As Burrage puts it, “the image of the Single Market as the ‘crown jewel’ of the EU which has delivered ‘substantial economic benefits’ to the UK is a myth”.

Exposure of this Single Market myth is now a growing industry, so that the attempt by Remainers to exploit it during two years of Brexit negotiations are likely to meet with the same sceptical rejection that derailed Project Fear during the referendum. Almost daily the damning facts are piling up. UK exports of goods to the EU amount to less than 8.7 per cent of Britain’s GDP. Britain’s non-EU markets are expanding while the EU is in long-term structural decline. The UK has a trading surplus with the rest of the world, but has a trade deficit with the EU.

The supposed “3 million job losses” of Brexit are also mythical because the UK, released from the costs and restrictions of the Single Market, would create more jobs. Why do countries such as Spain and Greece labour under such a heavy unemployment burden? Figures for exports of manufactured goods to the EU are grossly distorted by the so-called Rotterdam-Antwerp effect whereby goods bound for the far regions of the world are classified as exports to the EU because they are transferred onto a container vessel at a Dutch port.

These are some preliminary considerations regarding the Single Market scam before addressing many others, including the elephant in the room: open borders and mass immigration. This was by far the biggest single issue in the referendum, yet already Europhiles untutored by experience are seeking to frustrate the public will expressed in the biggest vote in British history through a variety of cosmetic evasions – Norway model, Liechtenstein Lite, whatever.

If they temporarily succeed they will sentence this country to another decade of debilitating trench warfare between the elite and democrats while the EU continues to sink with grappling hooks still attached to Britain, dragging her down. We need a clean break, a reversion to total sovereignty, absolute control of our borders and the bilateral trade agreements with other countries that gave us generations of prosperity. To achieve that, it will be necessary to keep the stratagems of the intransigent Remain camp under regular review.