If the UK had never joined the EEC/EC/EU

[Deleted]

Supposing the UK had taken the example of Norway and Switzerland and never joined the EEC or its successors. What would the implications have been for both the country as a whole, and British politics?

This article written by Christopher Booker in 2007 sums up my personal views better than I could.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-426827/What-Britain-HADNT-joined-EU.html

This was of course written before UKIP support had taken off (when their ratings were slightly less than those of the Greens today). They would never have been founded in the first place, certainly under that name. Could another right-wing populist party have emerged and gained momentum? Could Nigel Farage have become a Conservative MP?

[carlton43]

I am just having a warm bask in the idea.

I had always hoped that French intransigence and Heath's nerdish vacillating incompetence would be enough, but failed to appreciate the ability of some politicians to sell out and prostitute themselves in order to damage everything that made Britain what it once was, and at an amazingly ongoing high cost. There is a self-loathing and national loathing in the liberal left that welcomed this project as a means of self-flagellation and perpetual self-abasement with high annual subscriptions. They still enjoy the pain and the knowledge of the pain it causes the people.

[Tony Otim]

I can't see Farage lasting long in the Conservative party under any circumstances. I can't see him managing the internal politics to get enough allies to get near the top and I can't see his ego letting him settle into the role of a backbench MP. He would end up somewhere else with a party he could bend to his needs.

[mrhell]

It's clear from early on that the article is a polemic and not a "what if" is any normal sense.

[thirdchill]

We would have never had the ERM debacle or the conservatives going into meltdown over europe in the 90's if we had never joined, so it might have led to a better 1997 result. Though we still probably would have lost due to being in power for too long.

There are other possibilities of course. Thatcher not going in 1990 and being intrangiscent over the community charge/ poll tax, which meant we could have lost the 1992 election.

[carlton43]

Dec 6, 2014 10:12:26 GMT thirdchill said:

We would have never had the ERM debacle or the conservatives going into meltdown over europe in the 90's if we had never joined, so it might have led to a better 1997 result. Though we still probably would have lost due to being in power for too long.

There are other possibilities of course. Thatcher not going in 1990 and being intrangiscent over the community charge/ poll tax, which meant we could have lost the 1992 election.

That second paragraph option is one that I deeply desired at the time. Much better to have been more lightly defeated then under her than very seriously later. Had it happened we would have had Labour problems with ERM, Black Monday or an equivalent, and Maastricht. IMO Labour would also have had internal problems over all that and the Conservatives far less because they had others to blame instead. It might well have been a one term Labour Government; less or no Blair; less or no UKIP and a very different Now??

[The Bishop]

That is a common right wing view - alternatively, Labour could have learned from the 1967 experience and managed a relatively pain-free "realignment" of the ERM (an incoming Kinnock government would have had a fair amount of goodwill from Brussels, so not impossible) and whilst there was and is Euro-scepticism in the Labour ranks, it was surely nowhere near as virulent or visceral as with the Tories.

Labour *could* have been a relative success if elected in 1992 - even then, though, Thatcher losing then would have been the better option for the Tories in the long run IMO; actually being defeated would have deflated much of the Maggie myth and removed a lot of the poison.

And as you say, what would UKIP be now in that case - if it existed at all?

One thing doesn't change, though - I still think we would be seeing quite a lot of A C L Blair in one way or another......

[carlton43]

Dec 6, 2014 12:33:23 GMT The Bishop said:

That is a common right wing view - alternatively, Labour could have learned from the 1967 experience and managed a relatively pain-free "realignment" of the ERM (an incoming Kinnock government would have had a fair amount of goodwill from Brussels, so not impossible) and whilst there was and is Euro-scepticism in the Labour ranks, it was surely nowhere near as virulent or visceral as with the Tories.

Labour *could* have been a relative success if elected in 1992 - even then, though, Thatcher losing then would have been the better option for the Tories in the long run IMO; actually being defeated would have deflated much of the Maggie myth and removed a lot of the poison.

And as you say, what would UKIP be now in that case - if it existed at all?

One thing doesn't change, though - I still think we would be seeing quite a lot of A C L Blair in one way or another......

That is a an interesting analysis. I think it would not have been as economically placid as you propose and that the Euro-scepticism would have grown and become divisive in Labour instead of in the Conservatives. It used to be very divisive at one time. The Conservatives could have kept a tighter head on it all just as Labour did because they were not in office and could look to an external cause. I like to think that Blair might not have happened because the timings would have looked less propitious for him and perhaps a European job  (and salary) might have beckoned?