Mark Goodge wrote:
On Thu, 14 Jul 2016 10:01:53 +0100, "tim..." put
finger to keyboard and typed:


"Recliner" wrote in message
...

So, with Brexit, the first vote should have been to choose between several
(legally possible, viable, rather than fantasy Boris-style) alternative
scenarios. There are at least three, and the population could have chosen
whether they preferred immigration control over the single market, etc.

In the second round, the most popular of these would then have been
compared with remaining an EU member. That way, everyone voting to leave
would know exactly which option they were mandating the government to
seek.

The problem with this approach is, what happens if the EU won't offer us the
preferred alternative, after we have committed to leave?

There are, broadly speaking, three post-EU options:

1. Membership of the EEA and EFTA (the "Norway" model).
2. Membership of EFTA, but not the EEA (the "Switzerland" model).
3. No European trade bloc membership at all.

Obviously, all of those have different sub-options, and there are more
variants to option 2 than option 1 and many more variants to option 3 than
options 2 and 1. But they do represent three distinct scenarios which could
usefully be voted on.

What also makes them viable as voting choices is that the EU cannot deny us
any of them. EEA membership is available to any member of either the EU or
EFTA. So if we join EFTA, the EU cannot exclude us from the EEA if that's
what we want. The other EFTA members could, theoretically, veto an
application to join them. But that is vanishingly unlikely to happen. The
UK was actually a founder member of EFTA, but subsequently left when we
joined the then EEC. Returning is unlikely to be a problem (in real life,
we have already been told we are welcome to rejoin; that assurance could
easily have been obtained prior to the vote if necessary). And, obviously,
if we choose to remain entirely unaffiliated, then there's nothing the EU
could do about that either.

In real life, I think it's likely we will end up as members of EFTA. The
benefits are useful, and the downsides of belonging are minimal (membership
carries far fewer obligations than EU membership). Whether we then go for
EEA membership will depend, I think, on whether or not we can negotiate a
suitable set of Swiss-style bilateral treaties with the EU or whether the
only way to get what we want is to join the EEA.

The difficulty is both EEA and EFTA involve paying money to the EU and
accepting free movement of people. An awful lot of people who voted "leave"
we're under the impression these were the things they were voting to get
rid of, and will be pretty miffed if they are retained.

Robin