- Hannan, Daniel.
What Next.
London: Head of Zeus, 2016.
ISBN 978-1-78669-193-4.
-
On June 23rd, 2016, the people of the United Kingdom, against
the advice of most politicians, big business, organised
labour, corporate media, academia, and their self-styled
“betters”, narrowly voted to re-assert their
sovereignty and reclaim the independence of their proud nation,
slowly being dissolved in an “ever closer union”
with the anti-democratic, protectionist, corrupt,
bankrupt, and increasingly authoritarian European Union (EU).
The day of the referendum, bookmakers gave odds which implied
less than a 20% chance of a Leave vote, and yet the morning
after the common sense and perception of right and wrong
of the British people, which had caused them to prevail
in the face of wars, economic and social crises, and a
changing international environment re-asserted itself, and
caused them to say, “No more, thank you. We prefer our
thousand year tradition of self-rule to being dictated to
by unelected foreign oligarchic technocrats.”
The author, Conservative Member of the European Parliament for
South East England since 1999, has been one of the most
vociferous and eloquent partisans of Britain's reclaiming its
independence and campaigners for a Leave vote in the referendum;
the vote was a personal triumph for him. In the introduction,
he writes, “After forty-three years, we
have pushed the door ajar. A rectangle of light dazzles us and,
as our eyes adjust, we see a summer meadow. Swallows swoop against
the blue sky. We hear the gurgling of a little brook. Now to
stride into the sunlight.” What next, indeed?
Before presenting his vision of an independent, prosperous, and
more free Britain, he recounts Britain's history in the European
Union, the sordid state of the institutions of that would-be
socialist superstate, and the details of the Leave campaign,
including a candid and sometimes acerbic view not just of his
opponents but also nominal allies. Hannan argues that Leave
ultimately won because those advocating it were able to present
a positive future for an independent Britain. He says that
every time the Leave message veered toward negatives of the existing
relationship with the EU, in particular immigration, polling in
favour of Leave declined, and when the positive benefits of
independence—for example free trade with Commonwealth nations and
the rest of the world, local control of Britain's fisheries and
agriculture, living under laws made in Britain by a parliament
elected by the British people—Leave's polling improved.
Fundamentally, you can only get so far asking people to vote against
something, especially when the establishment is marching in
lockstep to create fear of the unknown among the electorate.
Presenting a positive vision was, Hannan believes, essential to
prevailing.
Central to understanding a post-EU Britain is the distinction
between a free-trade area and a customs union. The EU has done its
best to confuse people about this issue, presenting its single
market as a kind of free trade utopia. Nothing could be farther
from the truth. A free trade area is just what the name implies:
a group of states which have eliminated tariffs and other barriers
such as quotas, and allow goods and services to cross borders
unimpeded. A customs union such as the EU establishes standards
for goods sold within its internal market which, through regulation,
members are required to enforce (hence, the absurdity of unelected
bureaucrats in Brussels telling the French how to make cheese).
Further, while goods conforming to the regulations can be sold
within the union, there are major trade barriers with parties
outside, often imposed to protect industries with political
pull inside the union. For example, wine produced in California
or Chile is subject to a 32% tariff imposed by the EU to protect its
own winemakers. British apparel manufacturers cannot import
textiles from India, a country with long historical and close
commercial ties, without paying EU tariffs intended to protect
uncompetitive manufacturers on the Continent. Pointy-headed
and economically ignorant “green” policies compound
the problem: a medium-sized company in the EU pays 20% more for
energy than a competitor in China and twice as much as one in
the United States. In international trade disputes, Britain in
the EU is represented by one twenty-eighth of a European Commissioner,
while an independent Britain will have its own seat, like New
Zealand, Switzerland, and the US.
Hannan believes that after leaving the EU, the UK should join the
European
Free Trade Association (EFTA), and demonstrates how ETFA
states such as Norway and Switzerland are more prosperous than
EU members and have better trade with countries outside it. (He
argues against joining the
European
Economic Area [EEA], from which Switzerland has wisely
opted out. The EEA provides too much leverage to the Brussels imperium
to meddle in the policies of member states.) More important for
Britain's future than its relationship to the EU is its ability,
once outside, to conclude bilateral trade agreements with important
trading partners such as the US (even, perhaps, joining NAFTA),
Anglosphere countries such as Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand,
and India, China, Russia, Brazil and other nations: all of which it
cannot do while a member of the EU.
What of Britain's domestic policy? Free of diktats from Brussels,
it will be whatever Britons wish, expressed through their
representatives at Westminster. Hannan quotes the
psychologist Kurt Lewin, who in the 1940s described change as
a three stage process. First, old assumptions about the
way things are and the way they have to be become
“unfrozen”. This ushers in a period of rapid
transformation, where institutions become fluid and can
adapt to changed circumstances and perceptions. Then the new
situation congeals into a status quo which endures until
the next moment of unfreezing. For four decades, Britain has
been frozen into an inertia where parliamentarians and
governments respond to popular demands all too often by saying,
“We'd like to do that, but the EU doesn't permit it.”
Leaving the EU will remove this comfortable excuse, and possibly
catalyse a great unfreezing of Britain's institutions. Where
will this ultimately go? Wherever the people wish it to. Hannan
has some suggestions for potential happy outcomes in this bright
new day.
Britain has devolved substantial governance to Scotland, and yet
Scottish MPs still vote in Westminster for policies which affect
England but to which their constituents are not subject. Perhaps
federalisation might progress to the point where the House of Commons
becomes the English Parliament, with either a reformed House of Lords
or a new body empowered to vote only on matters affecting the
entire Union such as national defence and foreign policy. Free of
the EU, the UK can adopt competitive corporate taxation and
governance policies, and attract companies from around the world
to build not just headquarters but also research and development and
manufacturing facilities. The national VAT could be abolished
entirely and replaced with a local sales tax, paid at point of
retail, set by counties or metropolitan areas in competition with
one another (current payments to these authorities by the Treasury are
almost exactly equal to revenue from the VAT); with competition,
authorities will be forced to economise lest their residents vote
with their feet. With their own source of revenue, decision
making for a host of policies, from housing to welfare, could be
pushed down from Whitehall to City Hall. Immigration can be
re-focused upon the need of the country for skills and labour,
not thrown open to anybody who arrives.
The British vote for independence has been decried by the elitists,
oligarchs, and would-be commissars as a “populist revolt”.
(Do you think those words too strong? Did you know that all of those
EU politicians and bureaucrats are exempt from taxation
in their own countries, and pay a flat tax of around 21%, far less
than the despised citizens they rule?) What is happening, first
in Britain, and before long elsewhere as the corrupt foundations of
the EU crumble, is that the working classes are standing up to
the smirking classes and saying, “Enough.” Britain's
success, which (unless the people are betrayed and their wishes
subverted) is assured, since freedom and democracy always work
better than slavery and bureaucratic dictatorship, will serve to
demonstrate to citizens of other railroad-era continental-scale
empires that smaller, agile, responsive, and free governance
is essential for success in the information age.
March 2017 