EU Referendum 2016: A Guide for Voters E-Book

David Torrance

• Herausgeber: Luath Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 163

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Should the United Kingdom remain a part of the European Union or leave the European Union? This is the question we will have to answer on 23 June, when we head to the ballot boxes to cast our votes in the in/out referendum on EU membership. It's a complicated issue. What, exactly, would the much discussed 'Brexit' mean for the UK? With varied opinions on the EU from all over the political spectrum, do you know enough to make an informed decision? This non-partisan guide features chapters on the history of Britain in Europe, the 'Remain' and 'Leave' campaigns, and the likely timelines following both a 'In' and an 'Out' vote. With maps illustrating the EU and EEA membership and clear exposition of issues key to the debate by journalist and broadcaster David Torrance, author of guides to the 2015 General Election and the Scottish Independence Referendum, this is the only guide to 2016's referendum you will need.

Leseprobe

DAVID TORRANCE is a freelance writer, journalist and broadcaster who specialises in the politics and history of the long-running debate about Scottish independence. After being educated in Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Cardiff he worked as a newspaper and television reporter before taking a brief career break to dabble in politics at Westminster. For the past nine years he has been a freelance commentator as well as the author or editor of more than a dozen books about Scottish and UK politics, biography and history. Like all good Scotsmen he has lived in London for long stretches, but is currently based in Edinburgh. A keen traveller, he has visited every Member State of the European Union and more than 120 countries around the world.

Luath Press is an independently owned and managed book publishing company based in Scotland and is not aligned to any political party or grouping.

By the same author

The Scottish Secretaries (Birlinn, 2006)

George Younger: A Life Well Lived (Birlinn, 2008)

‘We in Scotland’: Thatcherism in a Cold Climate (Birlinn, 2009)

Noel Skelton and the Property-Owning Democracy (Biteback, 2010)

Inside Edinburgh: Discovering the Classic Interiors of Edinburgh (Birlinn, 2010) (with Steve Richmond)

Salmond: Against the Odds (Birlinn, 2010, 2011 and 2015)

Great Scottish Speeches I (ed.) (Luath Press, 2011)

David Steel: Rising Hope to Elder Statesman (Biteback, 2012)

Whatever Happened to Tory Scotland? (ed.) (Edinburgh University Press, 2012)

The Battle for Britain: Scotland and the Independence Referendum (Biteback, 2013)

Great Scottish Speeches II (ed.) (Luath Press, 2013)

Britain Rebooted: Why Federalism Would be Good for the Nations and Regions of the UK (Luath Press, 2014 and 2015)

Scotland’s Referendum: A Guide for Voters (Luath Press, 2014) (with Jamie Maxwell)

100 Days of Hope and Fear: How Scotland’s Referendum was Lost and Won (Luath Press, 2014)

Nicola Sturgeon: A Political Life (Birlinn, 2015)

General Election 2015: A Guide for Voters in Scotland (Luath Press, 2015)

EU REFERENDUM 2016

A Guide for Voters

DAVID TORRANCE

IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE ELECTORAL REFORM SOCIETY

First published 2016

ISBN: 978-1-910745-51-9

e-ISBN: 978-1-910324-81-3

The author’s right to be identified as author of this work under the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 has been asserted.

© David Torrance 2016

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction by Darren Hughes

1 – The Referendum

2 – The Renegotiation

3 – A Short History of Britain in Europe

4 – How does the European Union work?

5 – How much does the EU cost?

6 – The ‘Remain’ Campaign

7 – The ‘Leave’ Campaigns

8 – The Issues – Migration

9 – The Issues – Trade

10 – The Issues – Sovereignty

11 – The Issues – Influence, Security and Risk

12 – The Issues – Employment, Education and the Environment

13 – Scotland

14 – Wales

15 – Northern Ireland

16 – Irish Citizens in the UK

17 – What Happens if the UK Votes to Leave?

18 – What Happens if the UK Votes to Remain?

19 – Who Supports Remain and Leave?

20 – Frequently Asked Questions

UK/EU Timeline

Further Reading

Glossary

Appendices

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my brother, Michael Torrance, whose superior knowledge of the workings of the European Union and its institutions were invaluable in saving me from both factual errors and omissions. John Edward from Scotland Stronger in Europe (part of Britain Stronger in Europe) also checked the typescript for accuracy and balance, as did researchers from Vote Leave. Neither campaigning organi­sation, however, officially endorses this publication and any remaining mistakes are, of course, my own responsibility.

Introduction

Darren Hughes

As the UK’s longest-standing democracy organisation, the Electoral Reform Society has been standing up for voters’ rights since 1884. And this is no less the case than with the upcoming EU referendum.

We’ve been asking how well informed the public feel about the pros and cons of Britain’s membership of the EU. The results are worrying – polling commissioned by the ERS suggests that only 16 per cent of voters feel well informed about the issues.

That means that everyone involved in the referendum should be doing all they can to boost public knowledge and engagement in this crucial vote. We saw in Scotland during the 2014 independence referendum what can happen when people feel informed about an important decision and are empowered to take part – record voter registration, citizen-led debates and a huge 85 per cent turnout.

People are crying out for the full information they need to get to grips with the EU referendum debate, and for the space to have those discussions. We know that there is a clear link between how well informed people feel and their likelihood to vote. So we need to foster a deep and vibrant debate around the real issues – not the personalities.

That’s why this book is a timely intervention. David Torrance brings his usual strong assets to this book – incisive and clear writing combined with the balanced and unbiased journalism we have come to expect from his work. His previous books have generated diverse debate and informed discussion. David’s recent book on the issues pertaining to the 2015 General Election was an immensely helpful guide to voters in deciding who to support. His ability to distill what is important among the haze of claim and counter-claim serves the reader well. It’s certainly something that’s needed now.

In these pages David sets out in a fair and straight-forward way what the policy issues are in the referendum for voters to consider. From migration, trade and sovereignty through to security, education, employment and the environment, voters wanting a digestible summary of the arguments will be glad to have this resource.

He also covers some of the standard questions citizens raise – how does it all work, what is the cost, who is on what side and how did we get to this point. A very useful inclusion is an assessment of the referendum from the perspective of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – often left out of the Westminster narrative.

As he notes, this will only be the third time that a referendum will take place across the whole UK, so it is critical that people feel able to participate in an informed way. Unlike our antiquated Westminster voting system, where millions of voters marooned in ‘safe seats’ play little role in the final outcome, here is a poll in which – whether cast to Leave or Remain – every vote counts.

So it’s vital that people do go out and exercise their democratic right on 23 June. This is a potentially once in a lifetime decision, and one that will shape the next few decades in almost every way possible; economically, politically, and constitutionally. Such a major democratic choice is one that shouldn’t be taken lightly – hence the need for resources like these – but it is one that should be taken nonetheless, particularly in the context of the huge instabilities and uncertainties the 21st century has faced so far and which Britain will face – as part of Europe or outside of it – in the coming years.

What next? The Electoral Reform Society has created an online democratic tool to facilitate grassroots discussion about the issues in the referendum. We want voters to read books like David Torrance’s and then get together in their communities to debate and learn from each other, so that as we wait for the ballots to be counted following the poll on 23 June we can say that, regardless of the outcome, the campaign has made democracy across the United Kingdom stronger.

The Referendum

On 20 February David Cameron, the Prime Minister, set 23 June 2016 as the date for a referendum on the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union. On that day, voters will be asked the following question in a nation-wide ballot:

Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union, or leave the European Union?

‘This is perhaps the most important decision’, commented Mr Cameron, ‘the British people will have to take at the ballot box in our lifetimes.’ His Government had originally planned a straightforward ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ referendum, similar to that held on Scottish independence in September 2014, but the Electoral Commission (which regulates elections and referendums in the UK) believed this wording might be leading – or biased – and asked for it to be changed to ‘Remain’ and ‘Leave’.

The First Ministers of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland formally objected to the proposed June date, arguing that it came too soon after elections to their devolved assemblies and parliaments in May 2016, but the Prime Minister said he believed the two campaigns could comfortably co-exist. Mr Cameron also made it clear that members of his Government (and individual Conservative MPs) would be free to campaign on both sides of the referendum, and soon after he announced the referendum date Cabinet members began declaring in favour of Leave or Remain.

The possibility of holding another referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU (the first having been held in June 1975) had been raised over several decades, not least because it has changed significantly since the UK first joined in 1973, with many more members and a far greater number of shared competencies. Over the past 20 years Prime Ministers Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron all promised to hold referendums on new EU treaties but later changed their minds, infuriating those who wanted to cast their verdict. A ballot was finally proposed, however, by Mr Cameron during a speech at Bloomberg’s London HQ in January 2013. He promised that if the Conservatives were re-elected at the May 2015 general election then he would ‘renegotiate’ the UK’s membership and hold an ‘in/out’ referendum by the end of 2017.

When the Conservatives won a majority at that election, MPs soon debated and passed the European Union Referendum Act 2015, which enables the referendum to take place on 23 June. It will be only the third such ballot to take place across the whole UK, the first having been in 1975 and the second in 2011 on switching to the Alternative Vote for elections to the House of Commons. Voters in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar will also vote in this referendum, as they are subject to full EU membership. Although EU citizens resident in the UK cannot vote in the referendum (except citizens of Ireland, Malta and Cyprus), UK citizens resident in other EU Member States can (as long as they have been resident overseas for less than 15 years), as can citizens of the Commonwealth or British Overseas Territories (like Bermuda and the Falklands) based in the UK or Gibraltar, provided they are old enough and on the electoral register. Citizens of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man, however, will not take part, as those British Crown Dependencies are not formally part of the EU.

The Electoral Commission will also regulate campaigning activity before 23 June. By 15 April it will designate which Leave group (Vote Leave or Grassroots Out) will be the ‘lead campaigner’ on the basis of how much cross-party support each enjoys, as well as campaign tactics and organisational capacity. Its counterpart on the Remain side will almost certainly be the cross-party Britain Stronger in Europe group. There will be strict guidelines for campaign finance, including guidance covering donations and spending, but the lead campaigners on either side will be able to spend £7 million on campaigning, gain access to television and radio airtime, mail­shots and receive a publicly-funded grant of up to £600,000.

The official referendum campaign begins on 15 April 2016, and on polling day there will be 382 local voting areas grouped into 12 regional counts, each of which will have a separate declaration. The Chief Counting Officer will be Electoral Commission Chair Jenny Watson, who will announce the overall referendum result (combining the 12 regional counts and that in Gibraltar) in Manchester Town Hall on Friday 24 June 2016. A simple majority of the total vote is required to provide a winning result, for the UK to either Remain part of or Leave the European Union.

The Renegotiation

Following a two-day meeting of the European Council in Brussels, on 19 February 2016 the Prime Minister announced he had reached a deal with the other 27 Member States of the European Union that would form the basis of a referendum to be held on 23 June. David Cameron said the terms dealt with many of the ‘frustrations’ the British public had with the EU, while critics said the final deal fell well short of what the Prime Minister originally promised when he announced his plan for an EU referendum in early 2013.

Nevertheless, the key elements of the deal were:

EU migrants’ in-work benefits will be ‘phased in’ over a four-year period if there exist ‘exceptional’ levels of migration, which the European Commission has confirmed is a condition the UK meets. The UK will be able to operate this ‘emergency brake’ for seven years, although the details of how this works in practice are still to be confirmed.

Child benefit for the children of EU migrants living overseas will now be paid at a rate based on the cost of living in their home country: applicable immediately for new arrivals, and from 2020 for the 34,000 existing claimants.

In due course, EU Treaties will be amended to state explicitly that references to the requirement to seek ‘ever-closer union’ between Member States ‘do not apply to the United Kingdom’.

A ‘red card’ system under which ‘more than 55 per cent’ of national parliaments, or 16 Member States, can ask the European Council to reconsider legislative proposals on grounds of ‘subsidiarity’.But the Council can still proceed if it accommodates these concerns.

The ability for the UK to enact ‘an emergency safeguard’ to protect the City of London, preventing British firms from being forced to relocate to the Continent and to ensure they do not face ‘discrimination’ for being outside the Eurozone.

The Prime Minster, however, had to compromise on certain demands in order to get agreement from other EU members. For example, he had originally wanted a complete ban on migrants sending UK child benefit abroad but had to accept a modified arrangement after some eastern European states objected. He also had to shorten the period of the ‘emergency brake’ from 13 to four years, and accept benefits being phased in rather than removed completely. And while the renegotiation was signed off at the European Council meeting in Brussels, it will still require assent from the European Parliament. It is also not clear if the ‘red card’ system for national parliaments will ever be triggered in practice.

‘The British people must now decide whether to stay in this reformed European Union or to leave,’ David Cameron said after the Council meeting. ‘This will be a once-in-a-generation moment to shape the destiny of our country.’ But before we look at how the EU works and some of the issues likely to be involved in the referendum campaign, let us first look back at the history of the UK’s involvement in the European Union.

A Short History of Britain in Europe

We must build a kind of United States of Europe. In this way only will hundreds of millions of toilers be able to regain the simple joys and hopes which make life worth living. The structure of the United States of Europe, if well and truly built, will be such as to make the material strength of a single state less important. Small nations will count as much as large ones and gain their honour by their contribution to the common cause.

Winston Churchill, Zurich, 1946

On New Year’s Day 1973 the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland joined what was then known as the European Economic Community (EEC), or ‘Common Market’. Two years later, in June 1975, the UK’s first nation-wide referendum confirmed its membership, and now, more than 41 years later, voters will again endorse or reject continuing membership of a Union that now comprises 28 members rather than the original six.

Back in 1973, Ireland and Denmark also joined the UK in becoming members of the EEC, bringing its total number of Member States to just nine. At midnight on 31 December 1972, a Union flag was raised at the Community’s headquarters in Brussels to mark the UK’s accession. The then Prime Minister, Edward Heath, said British membership would lead to ‘a great cross-fertilisation of knowledge and information’, enabling the UK ‘to be more efficient and more competitive in gaining more markets not only in Europe but in the rest of the world’.

Since the Second World War, however, the UK’s relationship with the European project had been a troubled and divisive one: when the European Coal and Steel Community was formed in 1951, the UK stood aloof, later declining an invitation to join ‘the Six’ founding nations of the EEC in 1957, baffling the leaders of France and Germany who well remembered Winston Churchill’s 1946 speech calling for a ‘United States of Europe’.

And if the UK’s view of Europe was ambivalent, some of ‘the Six’ were ambivalent in return. When Britain changed its mind in the early 1960s and decided to apply for membership of the EEC it was twice vetoed by the French President Charles de Gaulle, who accused the UK of ‘deep-seated hostility’ towards the European ideal, and of being more interested in links with the United States. And even after the UK’s third application was accepted in 1973 (and confirmed in 1975), the debate continued.

Politically, the situation in the mid-to-late 1970s was the reverse of that in 2016: the Labour Party was deeply divided over Europe while the Conservatives (led by Margaret Thatcher) were generally in favour. In Scotland, the SNP had campaigned against continuing membership at the 1975 referendum, as had Plaid Cymru in Wales, while in Northern Ireland both Nationalists and Unionists were split; the SDLP and Vanguard in favour of staying, and the DUP, Sinn Fein and most of the Ulster Unionists in favour of pulling out. In 1975 Scotland was one of the most Eurosceptic parts of the UK, in 2016 it is one of the least.

Europe was also one of the factors that caused Labour to split in 1981, with many on its pro-European wing leaving to form the Social Democratic Party (SDP). For the Conservatives too there were ructions, with Mrs Thatcher, Prime Minister since 1979, becoming rhetorically more hostile. In 1984, for example, she demanded a permanent ‘rebate’ for the UK on its contributions to what was now known as the European Community (EC). While the French socialist Jacques Delors steered the European Commission towards a more federal Union and a single currency, Mrs Thatcher rejected what she called ‘a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels’.

Yet while the 1988 ‘Bruges speech’, from which those words are taken, became a seminal text for Conservative Eurosceptics, it also expressed a continuing commitment to membership of the EC; Mrs Thatcher simply differed as to what form it should take. In 1985 she had signed the Single European Act (partly designed by Lord Cockfield, one of the UK’s Commissioners), which further deepened the political and institutional aspect of the EC. By the end of 1990, however, internal Conservative divisions over Europe had contributed to her demise as party leader and Prime Minister.