No one knows if we’ll be better off financially if we progress with Article 50 – lots of People are looking at the ‘Norway model’ – they pay around €526m a year to be a EEA member, about €10.12m a week – a lot less than the £350m a week we pay in – but of course if you factor the rebate and money spent in the UK it’s £163m a week.
But people are missing just how tiny Norway is compared to the UK.
We have a population of 64m so that works out as £2.55 per person, per week.
Norway has a population of 5m, so their contribution is €2.02 per person, per week.
So in theory, all things being equal – we might drop our contributions to €2.02 per person, per week (£1.84) £129m per week – saving £34m a week, but we lose any vote or veto power within the EU – The EU can’t pass laws that affect us directly, but they can pass laws that affect us indirectly because we’ll no lower have any control over our biggest trade partner.
To be a member of the EEA we have to agree to free movement of workers within our borders, but we lose veto power over new members (Turkey who Brexiters all seem to be shitting themselves over).
It doesn’t have any bearing over refuges or migrants arriving in trucks and boats, because that wasn’t legal before.
We’ll have to rely on Westminster to spend its economic stimulus budget in places that need it (typically places that voted out) and not in the already wealthy parts (they voted in) which going on past form is unlikely – the Tories at least will fund tax cuts for the top 10% and fund infrastructure for London and the South East or try to keep their promises with the deficit.
Most painfully though, that £34m a week won’t exist – we’ve lost BILLIONS already, and no amount of Spitfires over the white cliffs will fix that.
Oh and the punch-line? France and Germany have to agree for us to be EEA members, the very countries fighting to keep the EU alive – are they going to make it easy on us, to make it look attractive to other nations?
