Will Britain continue to be dragged back closer and closer to the EU so that when we eventually rejoin, in say a decade\u2019s time, our politicians can present it as a mere exercise in regularising an arrangement which effectively already exists? At some point it must have dawned on most frustrated remainers that they were never going to reverse Brexit in one fell swoop. That would reopen old wounds, motivate a strong reaction from Brexiteers and a sense of ennui. Such an attempted move would probably be doomed by the \u2018Brenda from Bristol\u2019 effect alone (the elderly lady who reacted to the declaration of the 2017 election campaign by exclaiming to a reporter, \u2018What, another one?\u2019). But what if Britain were to be drawn back into the bloc by degrees?<\/p>\n
\nIt isn\u2019t just on free movement that Britain risks being drawn back into the EU\u2019s sphere of influence<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
It is easy to argue in favour of joining an EU youth mobility scheme for 18 to 30-year-olds. Use those words and people tend to think about university students and graduates gaining experience of living in other countries. As supporters are eager to point out, we already have such arrangements with 13 countries, from Japan to Australia to Uruguay, and no one goes around saying that we have \u2018free movement\u2019 with those countries.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then again, an EU scheme could end up with a very different balance. No one worries too much about our youth mobility scheme with Australia, for example, because more UK citizens take advantage of it than Australians \u2013 the latter of whom only filled 9,000 of the 45,000 places which were available last year (there is an argument for saying that the greater worry is why so few Australians want to come to Britain? Is it a symptom of national decline?). <\/p>\n
A European scheme, on the other hand, may have a very different effect. The demographic which would benefit \u2013 18-30 year olds \u2013 rather matches the large numbers of Eastern Europeans who took advantage of free movement during Britain\u2019s membership of the EU. It would end up as just another source of cheap labour for employers, which ends up suppressing wages and opportunities for UK workers at the bottom end of the jobs market.<\/p>\n
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper does sound alive to the risks of entering into a youth mobility scheme. She is reported to be pressing for EU citizens using such a scheme to be limited to twelve months in Britain; any longer and they will appear in official migration figures. <\/p>\n
But it isn\u2019t just on free movement that Britain risks being drawn back into the EU\u2019s sphere of influence. Keir Starmer\u2019s reset in EU relations has already, quietly, led to Britain agreeing to mirror EU rules and regulations on food and agriculture.\u00a0It could mean, unless Starmer succeeds in persuading the EU to allow Britain an exemption, the end of our newfound freedom to embrace gene-edited crops. EU regulations previously destroyed what had been a promising UK industry in genetically modified (GM) foods a quarter of a century ago by making it all but impossible to conduct field trials. We are heading towards the \u2018vassal state\u2019 which many Brexiteers feared.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think we have seen the end of this process. We should expect more initiatives to draw us back towards EU rules and regulations. An \u2018ever closer union\u2019 might be one way of describing it. So long as every step is small, the government\u2019s diehard remainers might just get away with it.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Will Britain continue to be dragged back closer and closer to the EU so that when we eventually…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-279919","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114891207721921802","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}