The past week has been dominated by the fallout from President Barack Obama’s intervention in the U.K. referendum debate. Mr. Obama stepped in on the side of those arguing for the U.K. to stay in the European Union, arguing the U.K. would go to “the back of the queue” when it came to negotiating a trade agreement with Washington.
More experts weighed in on the economic arguments about exit. With polls showing the economic issue tending to favor the Remain campaign, those urging Brexit were expected to try to switch the debate toward immigration, which polls suggest is a stronger issue for them. Home Secretary Teresa May stepped in to the debate on the side of Remain, saying the U.K. shouldn’t quit the EU but should leave the European Court of Human Rights.
Here, in a nutshell, are the issues that dominated the past week.
* Obama Drama So he did it and came out for Bremain, saying “I don’t believe the EU moderates British influence in the world–it magnifies it.” He elaborated later that being at the back of the queue meant that a U.S.-U.K. trade deal could take as long as a decade to come into force. Some of the subsequent debate focused on whether a U.S. president would really say “queue” and whether that meant his talking points were written in Downing Street. Before Mr. Obama spoke, London Mayor Boris Johnson suggested the president might be, as a part-Kenyan, influenced by his “ancestral dislike of the British empire.” That kicked off a whole storm of its own. Many people for Leave argued that the president had misunderstood the issue, which was about getting back British sovereignty. The leading Democratic presidential contender, Hillary Clinton, backed the president. Republican contender Ted Cruz said the opposite of Mr. Obama, writing in The Times that the U.K. would be at “the front of the queue” for a trade deal. Here’s Simon Nixon’s take.
* May Courts Controversy Home Secretary Theresa May spelled out her reasons for staying in the EU. It was her questioning of British membership of the European Court of Human Rights that drew the most headlines. The ECHR, based in Strasbourg, is not an EU court, and the U.K. is subject to it as a signatory of the European Convention of Human Rights. While many get the two mixed up, the EU’s top court is the European Court of Justice, based in Luxembourg, with which Ms. May has less of a problem. There’s some irony here in the sense that the ECHR (unlike the EU) is a British creation dating back to 1950, born of the pan-European vision of Conservative Party icon Winston Churchill. The speech revived the debate about whether the U.K. could leave the ECHR but not the EU. Here’s Stephen Booth’s fence-sitting response.
* Better Off Out: Economists Most economists who have spoken out on the question say the U.K. is better off in the EU. But this week a group of eight British economistsput their case for leaving, saying growth will be faster outside than inside. The full report is here. Their vision of a faster-growing post-Brexit Britain is one where the country has embraced the free market. The economists depict the EU as a protectionist bloc, and believe exit will allow the U.K. to lower tariffs on imports, making goods cheaper. Money saved from the contribution to the EU budget should be used to cut income taxes. There would be a bonfire of regulations. Could such a vision come to pass? We asked this question a couple of weeks ago.
* Better Off In: Economists The latest organization to say it would be damaging is the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Paris-based club of industrialized countries. Its boss Angel Gurria said “Leaving Europe would impose a Brexit tax on generations to come,” saying the losses were already starting. The central scenario had a loss by 2030 of £3,200 a year for every household. Here’s the paper.
* No Easy Way Out In this week’s Brussels Beat, we look at how legally the U.K. might go about leaving the EU. In broad terms, there are two ways: one is hard and the other is a nightmare. Here for the pro-EU Centre for European Reform, Agata Gostynska-Jakubowska drills deeper into the questions that surround Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, the clause that most likely would have to be used to negotiate the U.K.’s departure.
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