What would the settlement for a self-governing Britain be like? The ninth extract from Ten Years On takes a sneak look into the future…

Associated membership was the name given for the arrangement. The British got their deal; Free Trade and Friendship, accepting the price of a four year wind-down of the old system of contributions to the EU budget. Some were disappointed not to pull the financial support more quickly; this proved particularly acute in November 2010, when the country teetered on the edge of a national strike. Huge cuts had been required across government departments to stop the country going bankrupt. MPs had grudgingly agreed a token pay cut; some of the new intake had excelled in volunteering for more, though even this did not endear themselves to the GPs who were already limiting their hours in protested anticipation of a major pay slash. Nevertheless, in this context, a settlement that removed a major diplomatic distraction, while starting to return billions of pounds to the Treasury and defibrillate the economy, proved a significant and timely fillip.

So thirty nine years after joining the EEC, the UK rejoined the ranks of self-governing countries of the world. It was, fisheries excepted, a mostly amicable parting. In its place arose a bilateral treaty that spelled out in basic terms that advances made in freedom of movement would be kept, under safeguards; free trade would be advanced bilaterally; goods imported from third countries would not be Trojan- Horsed; and countries would cooperate in areas of common interest.

Parliamentarians were now extraordinarily busy. For once, the agenda was driven not by the weight of new regulations, but by Queen’s Speech after Queen’s Speech filled with references to bureaucratic burdens that were being repealed. A Cabinet Member was even dedicated solely to the task.

There were two further direct developments. The first was rapid. Within hours of the announcement, the United Kingdom Independence Party announced that its time had passed. Arguments still remained about the exact trading terms with Brussels and the appeal structures, but the reality was undeniable. The country was breaking away from the structure of a future United States of Europe.

The shift of many of these ardent wet-weather political activists, once their hangovers had diminished and they concentrated on the uncertain 2014 General Election, proved a significant factor in the election of the second term Cameron Government. It’s commitment to ‘run British politics for what was right rather than for re-election’ earned it short-term enemies but gained it greater respect.

The second consequence was more of a pinball effect, or as one Italian commentator mysteriously put it, “a burning turtle”. Warsaw, Prague, Tallinn, Dublin, Copenhagen and Stockholm had all now seen that there was more than one deal on offer. If they so chose, they too could seek a form of association that did not mean they would leave, as their children’s legacy, the loss of nationhood. For the first time in forty years, musty consensus broke. The democratic genius flourished as new deals were struck, and a son-of-EFTA became reality.

Not everyone was happy. A number of former MEPs, who had become redundant overnight, begrudged their changed circumstance. They had ended up with a particularly generous pension, though only after a few weeks of hairy conversations with their bank managers when they discovered that, along with other Brits formerly employed in the European institutions, no government actually had any liability to pay their salaries or pensions. It was the last unfunded black hole of Britain’s EU membership.

However, there were enough former EU officials in the House of Lords to pull strings and find jobs for the boys. Those peers grumbled well enough, but the number of stories that now emerged from former staffers about how the system used to be run kept most pro-Brussels heads down, and incidentally triggered some valuable reforms as member state governments forced through changes.

Come 2012, Boris Johnson’s Olympics for a brief spring highlighted a Britain that had emerged from the immediate spectre of bankruptcy and was beginning to regain its confidence. The Games were not as elaborate as once anticipated – indeed the ceremonies made a 1948 – like virtue of being frugal in a time of scarcity – but the changed politics had provided a psychological uplift. The floats and fireworks looked back on the merchant adventurers and heroes of the last Elizabethan Age but they also suggested that the same spirit would be unleashed again in the years to come.
 
The British had learned an unvarnished lesson from the brutal statistics of old EU membership.

The daily cost of the Olympics ran at the same level as the daily tariff of Britain’s former EU membership. But the Olympics had lasted a month, not four hundred and fifty.

Thanks to such visual comparisons between white elephants, the price tag of policies such as the CAP was made abundantly clear to everyone . A question of Bread and Games, then.