Who would be Norway? The Scandinavian country has it best in the world if you look at the Legatum Institute’s Prosperity Index whose most recent edition saw it top the ranking for the fifth year in a row. The measure includes indicators on the economy, governance, personal freedom and more. European countries overall come out well, with sub-Saharan African states Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic and Chad bottom of the 142-country league. The United Kingdom slips in at 16th, just behind Austria and Germany.
But according to the Fabian Society’s latest publication, Norway gets the raw end of the deal in one important sense. In the pamphlet Europe Was The Future Once … And How It Can Be Once Again, Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, sketches out the predicament the country finds itself in. Its parliament recently released a bumper 900-page report in which it outlined how it gets the worst of both worlds: implementing European Union legislation without a say over its content. This is an analysis which The Bruges Group contested last year with its publication The Norway Option. In it, the Eurosceptic thinktank denounced the ‘fax democracy’ label which often attaches itself to the country and indeed argued the UK should adopt the Norwegian model. In the EU debate that is set to engulf us this side of the North Sea, either image of Norway, a well-regarded near-neighbour of the UK, has the potential to gain traction in the public mind and thereby to shape opinion – though arid arguments around legislation may lack the allure of an independent country apparently prospering outside the aegis of Brussels.
Leonard’s pamphlet naturally focuses on the course Labour should chart and cites Tony Blair’s ‘masochism strategy’, recommending Ed Miliband throw himself wholeheartedly into the pro-European debate. He envisages the Labour leader embarking on a ‘four ports tour’ of Thurrock, Dover, Southampton and Grimsby, and tasks the party’s frontbench to speak up for recognisable people who benefit from membership – from the Nissan worker, to the nurse granted holiday thanks to EU social legislation, to even the City of London (itself a counterintuitive ‘hug a banker’ moment that may spark interest in Labour’s plans). Other ideas include extending the party’s own ‘zero-based budgeting’ approach to European legislation. Leonard also argues for the resurrection of potentially more controversial proposals such as the European commission’s plans for the introduction of a common corporate tax base, something which in an era of public anger about corporate tax avoidance wheezes may now resonate, and for the establishment of a European Reform Commission with leaders from other countries.
The pamphlet also proposes considering restricting child benefit and jobseeker’s allowance for a year for EU migrants, and compulsory English as a Second Language classes, which would be self-financing, though how is not clear. Indeed, ESOL is an area coming under increasing scrutiny: last month the thinktank Demos released a new report, On Speaking Terms, which explored the problem of diminishing access to ESOL classes in spite of great demand on the part of immigrants to follow them.
But lurking behind all of this are the little-explored potential risks in Labour’s referendum policy. Are the public more likely to vote ‘Yes’ to an in-principle commitment to remaining in the EU, especially a union that David Cameron will claim to have rolled back, or is there a danger that the treaty change which triggers Labour’s policy – to have a referendum only when more powers are transferred to Europe – will turn the choice in the public’s mind into one which runs: ‘Do we like the fact more powers are disappearing off to Brussels? Not likely. I’ll vote “No” then.’ The ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ in Labour’s referendum are not equal and opposite choices. It may be that Labour is banking on there being no treaty change between 2015 and 2020. But once the general election is out of the way, whatever the outcome, there will inevitably be pressure to renew a policy whose very lopsidedness could see us inadvertently topple backwards out of the union.
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Photo: Moyan Brenn