How alarmist was ‘Ukip: The First 100 Days’?

Jonathan Lindsell, 17 February 2015

Last night Channel 4 hosted a docudrama with the premise that Ukip wins the 2015 election and begins to effect its policies. Ofcom received complaints before the show it even aired. Twitter was alive with condemnation for Channel 4, media bias and sloppy scripting.

In the show, Prime Minister Nigel Farage announces he will take Britain out of the EU immediately. While to an extent this was deliberate satire, attempting to suggest Ukip has no fleshed out plan for EU exit, it goes too far. The mechanism which Farage (in reality) has claimed he would use, Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, gives an exiting country two years of continued EU membership to renegotiate a future relationship with the remaining EU. Instead, the fictional Britain leaves the EU in haste, causing big businesses such as Airbus to abruptly pull out.

The programme focussed on immigration – especially on the violent removal of illegal immigrants. Recent estimates suggest there are between 417,000 and 863,000 ‘irregular residents’ in Britain. (Irregular residents are persons without the legal right to remain, which includes both migrants and their children.) Although identifying and removing them would certainly be a headache for Ukip, and has embarrassed the current government, this means the programme ignored two larger questions.

Firstly, what are Ukip’s actual plans for current legal residents, including EU migrants? Secondly, how will their proposed Australian ‘points based immigration system’ work? International law implies that current legal residents would have indefinite right to remain, and rough calculations suggest copying Australia’s border mechanism would greatly increase immigration.

As extreme as this scenario is, Channel 4’s effort should still send a message to Ukip that they need to set out detailed plans for what they want, should they join government. Speaking at a joint Civitas and Economists for Britain seminar last Friday, Martin Howe QC elucidated the legal possibilities of Brexit. He explained that upon exit, European Economic Area membership (enjoyed by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway) was not automatic – it would need the agreement of all 28 EU states plus the three EEA countries. He explained further than an independent Britain would not inherit the free trade agreements currently in place with third parties like Korea and Mexico. These would need renegotiation and re-ratification– although that should be straightforward.

Howe’s take home message was that a party campaigning in favour of leaving the EU must be prepared to argue in favour of the worst case scenario. This sees the EU deny Britain any preferential trade access during the two year exit negotiations – something the EU might threaten however unlikely – meaning World Trade Organisation rules require the EU to raise tariffs against British exports and vice versa. If such a scenario was not replaced very quickly, it could indeed worry large multinationals. Ukip need to reassure voters that it has a detailed plan for exit negotiations, for keeping trade access and keeping big business, or the satire will just keep coming.

My latest study, ‘The Norwegian Way: A case study for Britain’s future relationship with the EU’ can be accessed here.