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political participation with access to the European market. Many, indeed, seem genuinely to have convinced themselves that the two things are identical. It is worth stressing that no one – no one – is suggesting that Britain should disengage from European trade. Withdrawal from the EU does not imply withdrawal from the European market. Indeed, under Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, the EU is obligated to negotiate a commercial accord with any state that leaves. Britain might choose to remain in the European Economic Area, like Norway. Norwegian exports to the EU in 2010 were twice as much per head as Britain’s. Or it might prefer to leave the EEA, and rely on bilateral free-trade accords, like Switzerland. To repeat – for this fact cannot be repeated too often – Swiss exports to the EU in 2010 were four times as much per head as Britain’s. Some protest that, while this might be the legal position, an acrimonious split could leave the EU looking for ways to erect unofficial non-tariff barriers against British trade. Why on earth should it want to do so, though, when the balance of such trade is overwhelmingly to the advantage of Continental exporters? Over the past 40 years, Britain has run a cumulative trade surplus with every continent on the planet except Europe. Between 2005 and 2010, the EU accounted for 92 per cent of our total trade deficit.3 It is hard to imagine that other 102
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EU states would wish to prejudice their trade with what would be, by a long way, their single biggest export market. As for the idea that we are too small to survive on our own, it rests on a misconception. We saw in Chapter One that the most prosperous people in the world tend to live in tiny countries. In the global wealth league table, the ten states with the highest GDP per capita all have populations below seven million. What matters to a modern economy is not its size, but its tax rate, its regulatory regime and its business climate. One of the reasons the EU’s GDP is shrinking as a proportion of world GDP is that deeper integration means less competition among the member states, which in turn means higher taxes and more regulation. Too small to survive? Britain is the seventh largest economy in the world, the fourth largest military power and the fourth largest exporter. It is a member of the G8 and one of five members of the UN Security Council. It enjoys close links to America and the Commonwealth (which, unlike the EU, is growing impressively). If seven million Swiss and four million Norwegians are able, not simply to survive outside the EU, but to enjoy arguably the highest living standards on Earth, surely sixty million Britons could manage. British voters have worked this out for themselves: public opinion has turned against EU mem- 103

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political participation with access to the European market. Many, indeed, seem genuinely to have convinced themselves that the two things are identical.

It is worth stressing that no one – no one – is suggesting that Britain should disengage from European trade. Withdrawal from the EU does not imply withdrawal from the European market. Indeed, under Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, the EU is obligated to negotiate a commercial accord with any state that leaves.

Britain might choose to remain in the European Economic Area, like Norway. Norwegian exports to the EU in 2010 were twice as much per head as Britain’s. Or it might prefer to leave the EEA, and rely on bilateral free-trade accords, like Switzerland. To repeat – for this fact cannot be repeated too often – Swiss exports to the EU in 2010 were four times as much per head as Britain’s.

Some protest that, while this might be the legal position, an acrimonious split could leave the EU looking for ways to erect unofficial non-tariff barriers against British trade. Why on earth should it want to do so, though, when the balance of such trade is overwhelmingly to the advantage of Continental exporters? Over the past 40 years, Britain has run a cumulative trade surplus with every continent on the planet except Europe. Between 2005 and 2010, the EU accounted for 92 per cent of our total trade deficit.3 It is hard to imagine that other

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