When ideas are encapsulated in a few simple words or catchphrases, they can be easily bandied around without anyone necessarily understanding what they are talking about. In the debate about Britain’s membership of the EU, many of our successful business people, hard-nosed officials, and even quite a few grizzled commentators, all agree that we must be in the “single market”.

After all, they say, this gives us free access to the largest market in the world. If we are not members, then we would be excluded from this market, or we would not have full entry. Cue: guffaws, mutterings and the nodding of heads in affirmation of a self-evident truth.

But is this self-evident? Or even true? It is as though the single market were envisaged as some sort of enclosed space which you are either allowed, or not allowed, to enter. Of course, if you are outside the single market, unless you have a free trade agreement with the EU, then your goods have to pay an entry fee in the form of the EU’s external tariffs. But these are not very high. And there is an offset – namely not having to pay the Union’s annual membership fee, i.e. our net contribution to the EU’s budget. The tariff issue is really quite minor beside the supposed importance of the single market.

Yet hardly anyone seems to know what the single market is really about. It is more appropriately described as a single regulatory system. You can readily understand why this makes sense – certainly compared to a situation in which all 28 EU members have their own regulations and standards. In the extreme, a company might need to have 28 versions of the product it is exporting – or at least 28 versions of the packaging, documentation, testing certificates, quality accreditation, etc.

But in the context of whether or not the UK should stay in the EU, the issue is not whether the single market has been a good thing, and accordingly whether it should remain or be disbanded. The issue is whether we should continue to belong to it.

 The situation is different as between goods and services and I will discuss financial services on another occasion. But for goods exports, if we left, not only would the single market still exist, but a British company trying to export into it would still enjoy the advantages of there being a single set of regulations governing all 27 other countries. In other words, the single market’s advantage to us derives, not from the fact that we are in it, but rather from the fact that they are in it.

This is profoundly at odds with the statements of many business people who give the impression that, the day after we left the single market, they would be faced by either an insuperable obstacle or unbearable costs. Of course, post exit they would need to comply with the EU’s regulations. Yet they already do. Would one of those industrialists who claim it is so important for us to stay in the single market please explain just how their business would be adversely affected after we left?

It is important to realise that “no change” for them does not mean “no change” for the rest of us. For outside the single market the UK government would have the ability to rescind EU regulations, and all those parts of the economy which are not involved with exporting into the EU – that is to say about 85pc of it – would no longer be bound by them.

 

David Fuller's view

Here is a PDF of Roger Bootle's article.

All of Roger Bootle’s points in this column make sense to me. 

Additionally, David Cameron’s earnest negotiations will make little difference to me.  He says he is pro Europe and wants a better deal with more autonomy for the UK.  I am also pro Europe but the better situation, I believe, is for the UK to be an entirely independent country, outside the EU but which remain an ally of the EU.

The EU is an unwieldly and overstretched, political organisation which has suffered economically since the introduction of the Euro.  Its advocates say these problems would be reduced by greater political integration.  Theoretically, perhaps, but there has never been any real public support for a Federal European system.  Why should there be, given the long histories and widely different cultures within Europe?  A homogenisation of European nations and their cultures would diminish rather than enhance Europe, in my opinion.