Andrew Neil on the case against rejoining the EU.
Before putting in the link to Andrew Neil's article I'm going to write two paragraph which some people will find contradictory.
In 2016 I voted Remain. All three of the reasons I voted Remain have been totally vindicated by events. And if I were somehow magically transported back to 2016 knowing everything I know today, I would absolutely still vote Remain.
But we are not in 2016, we are in 2026. Trying to rejoin the EU how, if we were allowed in at all, would not restore us to the position we had in 2016 - in fact it would make some aspects of that damage worse. So if anyone asked me, as a 2016 Remain voter, if that means Britain should apply to rejoin the EU now, I would not just say "No," I would say, "Please for the love of God, absolutely not!"
The decision to go into or out of a complex union like the EU - or for that matter, as the separatists in Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland wish to do with the UK - is absolutely not like a general election where you have the right to vote every five years, and if you don't like the result you can change it five years later, vote out the people you first put in and replace them with another party.
First there is the major issue that the negotiations to do it are not a simple matter, they take literally years, require legislation, take up massive amounts of parliamentary time, and were always going to cause a great deal of bad feeling amongst your former partners.
That leads to the second point: there are other parties who will be affected by you changing your mind, are fully entitled to get fed up with you if you keep doing it, and are likely to start doubting your commitment and good faith, with the result that you get less good terms.
The same opinion polls which suggest there would be a majority in Britain for the principle of rejoining the EU also show that this majority vanishes if we don't get the rebate and opt-outs Britain had before 2016: but if we did get these terms again the majority in other EU member states for letting us back in will vanish.
It only takes one member state to veto the accession of a potential new member, as De Gaulle vetoed Britain's original attempt to join what was then known as the Common Market: the chances of a member state at the very least threatening a veto to tilt the terms of accession in their favour is very high.
After all, we would have changed our views on whether to be members or not three times: how could our potential partners know we won't change it a fourth time? Isn't it inevitable that they would doubt Britain's commitment to the project? And likely that they would insert in the accession agreement some penalty clauses to ensure they do not walk out if we walk away again. You can also guarantee that our "Hokey Cokey" approach to the EU - In, Out, In, Out, shake it all about - would mean that our views inside the organisation would be taken that much less seriously.
Andrew Neil argues that the EU has changed since Britain left it, and the arguments for re-joining now are much weaker than the arguments for staying in were in 2016.
You can read his argument in full at:
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