Douglas Carswell's Blog

Quit the EU? Simple, but not easy

Over on Guido Fawkes, more than 5,000 people have just taken part in an online poll to decide which Private Members Bill I should bring before Parliament.

Almost half voted for a Bill to overturn the European Communities Act and get us out of the European Union.

No one can accuse me of rigging the poll. I deliberately offered punters a wide range of proposals, including ideas - such as a Bill to end the defence procurement scam - that ought to appeal to both left and right. But no, the proposal that we quit the EU won overwhelmingly.

When even those who used to believe that Britain should join the Euro are lining up to tell us that the Euro should break up, you know something is up. The notion that the social and economic affairs of millions of European can best be arranged by the grand designs of Brussels is falling apart before our eyes.

As it slowly dawns on the SW1 gang that the EU project is a mess, the rest of us need to put some serious thought into how best we might extricate ourselves from it.

In a narrow legalistic sense, quitting the EU is remarkably simple. My soon-to-be-published Bill would need to be passed by a Commons majority (following an In / Out referendum), and that would be that.

Simple, but not easy.

What sort of trade relationship would we then want with Europe and the wider world?

Given that Britain buys far more from the EU than the EU buys from us, we would be in a strong position to ensure open trade agreements. Because only those businesses looking to sell to the Single Market would need to comply with Single Market rules, a great deal of economic and commercial activity that had nothing to do with EU exports could automatically be exempted from accumulated EU red tape.

Even if Parliament and the people voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU, our activist judges - whose role has been aggrandised by the Euro system - would be certain to challenge it. Europhile mandarins in Whitehall would do all they could to thwart any attempt to escape a system they helped bring into being.

We need to think through how best to face down the Europhile Establishment.

Getting Britain out of the EU is legally straight forward. Economically, it is increasingly desirable. Politically, it is no longer easy to dismiss as pie-in-the-sky.

I hope my Bill encourages more people to think through the mechanics of how to make it happen.

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