Readers of the blog will know by now there has been a heated discussion as to whether Flexcit should be adopted in tact by Leave.EU. Here's a couple of seriously good reasons why they should.
First off - Kipper headbangers HATE it. That's a really promising sign right there. If this minority of unreasonable and strongly bigoted people don't like it, then there's a good chance that decent people will. Secondly, and here's the kicker - if we vote to leave the EU, Flexcit is how it's going to play in any case.
The reason being that if you look at the my previous post on the complexity of the balance of competences and the different paths of legislation. Civil servants tasked with the same job of working out a Brexit plan will come to the same conclusion we did. A hard Brexit is economically difficult, politically impossible and risky in ways that the City, business and the EU would simply not tolerate.
They would conclude that it has to be done in stages and that to maintain continuity and mutual recognition of regulation, the first stage would require an acceptance of all EU regulations, single market membership and, yes, freedom of movement.
You see, if you look at those balance of competence reports you will notice they are very thorough, evenly balanced and high quality. They are written by adults who have examined the political realities in the exact same forensic way we have. It is likely those same people will be consulted for the exit process.
So in fact, when the Remain camp say, we don't know what Brexit looks like, we can say with near certainty that it looks a lot like the first stages of Flexcit - because it cannot happen any other way. Unless you know think you know better than the finest minds in the civil service?
So in fact, if Leave.EU do not run with an unmolested version of Flexcit they would be doing us all a huge disservice in that they'd be pretending something is possible when it isn't. That is an inherent campaign weakness that would be exposed by the opposition in no time. Is it really worth corrupting the campaign just to pacify a bunch of screaming toddlers? No.
The genius of it is that it plays to a real world scenario, it's pragmatic and it's reasonable. Business cannot whinge too much about it, it destroys the uncertainty argument and it makes more compromise than the Remain camp were ever expecting - and now that the prominent Europhiles like Catherine Bearder has resorted to idle threats, it rather looks like the Remain camp are the unreasonable zealots who have done nothing but lie through their teeth from the get-go.
All that then requires of us is to push hard to answer the "why bother?" question. Since at this point we will have ditched all the silly kipperish histrionics about saving thruppence ha'penny on membership fees and keeping out the foreigners - all that's left is the global participation aspect and the domestic democratic reform that the EU has prevented.
The point is, we have absolutely nothing to lose by playing it straight and sensible - and any other way is pointless since in the remote chance that kipper headbanging could win a referendum, they wouldn't get "control of our borders" anyway. At least not any time soon.
So really, it's time for these blockers to get out of the way and let us get on with what we have been planning for years and stop being such a bloody nuisance. You all know that I am a pessimistic miserablist at the best of times and have never had high hopes of actually winning this, but I am starting to get the feeling that we can win if we go with what is going to happen anyway. If we have a credible case - and we do - we win the online debate hands down. From there, we can get our message out that Brexit is risk free and that we have a better idea than the EU - which isn't exactly difficult is it?
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