Articles:
The Truth and Lies of Scottish and EU Secessionists

A
shorter version of this article was published in the Financial Times
on August 7th,
(http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e58f7a3e-1e19-11e4-ab52-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=uk#axzz39RgnxqWy ).

To watch clips of the TV
debate between Alex Salmond and Alastair Darling, or to read of the
latest tactical manoeuvre by Boris Johnson on British membership of
the European Union, is at once irresistible and deeply depressing.
Irresistible, because such displays of political chutzpah are
impressive, in their way. But depressing because they are really
beside the point. Worse, in fact: they mislead the public grossly
about the nature of the decisions that face them, in both the
Scottish and the European referendums.

The chutzpah ought not to
be surprising. It is politicians’ job to exude confidence, to
pretend to knowledge about the future that even they must know cannot
be justified. And the now reams of studies, by all sides and by
non-partisans too, of what would be the costs and benefits of
Scottish independence or of Brexit from the EU just encourages this.

You could see the effect,
too, in the vox pops shown by BBC News of “undecided” voters who
had watched the Salmond-Darling debate. “Just tell us the facts,”
said one; “I just want to hear the facts, and then I will make up
my mind, yes or no.” For that would-be voter, it seems, there had
been too little chutzpah in the debate, not too much. Why were the
facts being withheld by this coy pair?

Here is the answer that a
political debater would give, if they were honest. It is that there
aren’t any facts. None, in the true meaning of the word “fact”.
And when you ask the same question about British membership of the EU
in 2017, the answer will be the same. There aren’t any facts on
which to base the decision. The real conclusion from all the
cost-benefit analyses is that this is not a choice that can be made
on the basis of cost-benefit analyses.

The reason is simple.
Whether or not Scotland should become independent and whether or not
Britain should leave the European Union are strategic, long-term
questions, not one’s about tomorrow’s policies or the day
after’s. They are questions the answers to which will have to be
lived with for decades, perhaps even centuries, not just this year or
next year. It is not like leaving a club you can rejoin at will when
you feel the need for it or when the balance of benefits alters.

They
are issues of strategic positioning, of how your nation, be it
Scotland or Britain, wants to be placed in the face of a necessarily
unknowable future, in the 2020s, 2030s or 2040s, amid war or peace,
boom or bust, globalisation or protectionism.

Moreover,
that future is as unknowable domestically as it is internationally:
it is a question of how an independent Scotland might feel not with
the specific policies promoted by Alex Salmond and his Scottish
National Party (unless they expect to be Scotland’s version of
South Africa’s permanently ruling African National Congress) but
with whatever alternation of governments and political fashions might
occur in coming decades; and the same applies to Britain and Brexit.

In a
limited way, the cost-benefit analyses have performed one service for
both debates. They have shown that in economic terms neither Scottish
exit from the UK nor British exit from the EU would make a huge
difference either way. In both cases, it all depends on what policies
their varying national governments turn out to follow over the course
of decades and, more immediately, on the unknown terms of the
divorce.

This
is not surprising. Independent countries of Scotland’s size and
circumstances exist and do well or badly mostly according to the
vagaries of their domestic politics and policies: Ireland is a good
example. Similarly, countries of Britain’s size and circumstances
can exist and do well or badly alongside a huge neighbour with which
they do most of their trade and even share much of their culture:
Canada is the most obvious case.

So
London’s mayor is quite right to say that Britain could have a good
future outside the EU. No Canadian could refute him. But Mr Johnson
is nevertheless practising a deception in his new stance. He says he
would vote for Britain to stay only in an EU that, in about three
years’ time, has radically reformed some of its policies, most
notably the common agricultural policy and the free movement of
people.

This
is a deceit, first because he knows very well that he is setting up
thresholds that are unlikely to be capable of being met in such a
short period of time. To get 28 countries to modify the treaty-based
requirements on free movement or even to slash back the CAP would
take a lot longer than that. He must recall that the CAP has changed
a lot since he was Brussels correspondent for the Daily Telegraph
(1989-94) and even more since his father Stanley worked for the
European Commission (1973-79). It ought to change a lot more but to
make British membership contingent on that happening by 2017 is a
deceit.

It is
a deceit mainly, however, for a second reason: that Britain’s
membership is a strategic issue, not a matter of tweaking policies
here and there, which means that his rival David Cameron’s position
is also a deceit. You don’t make a strategic decision on the basis
of a short spurt of reform negotiations.

Actually,
although they too reach for deceitful claims about facts in order to
pretty up their case, it is UKIP and the hard-core Tory Eurosceptics
who have a more honest stance. They want to get out of the EU
regardless of what reforms occur. They are thinking strategically:
they believe Britain would be in a better position to flourish and
adapt to changing circumstances if it were to reclaim the sovereignty
it has shared with its European partners.

Personally,
I disagree. Much of the reclaimed sovereignty would be purely
notional, and some would be the sovereign power to mess things up –
through many of the methods outlawed by the EU, such as state aids,
protectionism, national champions and the rest. Perhaps UKIP and the
Tory right wouldn’t favour this, but a subsequent Bennite Labour
government in the 2020s just might.

Yet
that is the real basis on which the Scottish decision on September
18^th, and the
British decision in 2017 or whenever it occurs, must be made.
Margaret Thatcher understood that, when she made her famous “Bruges
Speech” in 1988. We want to make Europe better, she said, in all
sorts of ways. We don’t want to be run by an ossified bureaucracy.
But, she said, “Britain
does not dream of some cosy, isolated existence on the fringes of the
European Community. Our destiny is in Europe, as part of the
Community.”

To
her, it was a strategic issue, in other words.