FLEXCIT: Talking The Talk 2

FLEXCIT: 2.2 The Europhile counter-attack , p.26

"With the possibility of a referendum very much on the political agenda, supporters of continued membership of the European Union have been quick to present their arguments. Basically, these have fallen into two broad categories."

"Firstly, there are those, such as Open Europe, who argue that reform is a better proposition than withdrawal. Secondly, they and others have sought to demonstrate that the consequences of withdrawal would be seriously damaging to the UK."

• Fallacy of the Middle Way argument has significant advantages for political manipulations: It is a common thought process in the West that not too extreme on the one hand leaving but on the other hand the current state is "not good enough". Secondly it potentially gains borderline adherents from either side. Next it sounds plausible which is a part of sense-making where plausible > accuracy applies in the news media due to imperfect information and media manipulation in a multi-polar viewpoint society.

"Primarily, the counter-attack highlighting the adverse consequences of withdrawal has been based on economic arguments, but with a strong reliance on fear, uncertainty and doubt (known as FUD)."

• FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) is the magician's trick of attempting to deflect attention onto Economic grounds for not leaving which are in essence uncertain which fuels myriad forms of doubt and can then be exaggerated as those doubts all manifest as acceptable fear-mongering.

"This FUD has been a characteristic of pro-EU campaigns for some decades. The fear exploits the status quo effect which is a significant phenomenon in all referendums, where the innate conservatism of the electorate can weigh heavily against change, allowing the pro-EU side to enjoy as much as an inbuilt 20-point advantage. Focusing on the economy sidesteps the sovereignty and independence arguments, and exploits the practical concerns about withdrawal."

• Status Quo Effect is leveraged by FUD as well as ensuring attention is drawn away from Sovereignty to Economic questions - this ensures insufficient interest can grow on the core questions of Sovereignty to which the evidence is very unequivocal and hence ensures delay of decision-making in people concerning their independence. The more FUD is fuelled the more effective is the lack of decision-making that the status quo effect manifests from.

"Thus in his 2012 New Year's address, we saw John Cridland, the CBI Director-General, declaring: "The debate about our future in Europe … must be based on an informed, hard-headed analysis of where our long-term economic and financial interests lie and business will need to make its voice heard"

• Controlling The Agenda All it takes is for the bigwigs in the CBI to pronounce their "profits of doom" economic sermons to summon FUD and ensure attention is diverted onto Economic matters and a lack of interest in Sovereignty information dominates the debate on Brexit. The full arsenal of economic weapons are deployed: Cars, Finance, Tariffs, FDI would all suffer catastrophically. The fact the CBI endorsed the EURO and predicted doom for not joining it is always swept under the carpet or the fact they are always wheeled out as Pro-EU economic weapon.

"The Economist asserted that, while a complete exit from "Europe" was certainly possible, few British Eurosceptics wanted it. They preferred "halfway options": a Norwegian one and a Swiss one. If Britain were to join the Norwegian club, though, "it would remain bound by virtually all EU regulations, including the working-time directive and almost everything dreamed up in Brussels in future".

• Prestige Owns All Arguments Establishment Set:{The Economist, The Financial Times, Open Europe, CER, CBI, Whitehall, Westminster} They are all part of the same set and hence argue both for and against the EU arguments even if politically they are all in the same Pro-EU camp. Without an independent Out Camp that assumes authority for the Anti-EU Camp all attention will be held by Prestige of the Establishment Set. They can even produce their own flawed Brexit options and set them up for failure as the Economist provides an example of above.

"The Economist asserted that, while a complete exit from "Europe" was certainly possible, few British Eurosceptics wanted it. They preferred "halfway options": a Norwegian one and a Swiss one. If Britain were to join the Norwegian club, though, "it would remain bound by virtually all EU regulations, including the working-time directive and almost everything dreamed up in Brussels in future".

• Social Ostracizing Meme aka "Seat at The Top Table" Meme or "Big-Player" on "The World Stage" in the "Influential Member's Club" are all marketing ploys to produce the idea that the EU provides "influence" which would somehow hurt the UK or leave it isolated and hence the people wanting that are "Little Englanders" or "Dwelling in the past" who want to "Pull-Up The Draw-Bridge" and are "Isolationist" and can't "The UK can'tSurvive alone in a Globalized World" and anyone who thinks so is "Dreaming of the Empire". NOTE: The same tactics were used in Norway in 1994 for reference.

"For domestic reasons, the magazine thus asserted, the Norwegian option could well fail. As soon as British MPs learned that Norway "has to swallow almost every regulation that comes out of Brussels, despite having virtually no power to shape them", they would waver. When they also learned that Norway had to pay for the privilege, "they may reject it outright".

• Poor-Man's EU is how Norway is branded by the Pro-EU and is dimissed as swiftly as possible as "telling the Anti-EU'ers" "It's not what they want anyway" or it is "Democracy By Fax" ie all the disadvantages and now none the advantages.

"In the view of the Economist, even the country's closest friends, who would rather keep Britain in to bolster liberal voices inside the EU, would be unlikely to be generous to a country that had chosen to leave. The most likely outcome, it suggested, would be that Britain would find itself as a scratchy outsider with somewhat limited access to the single market, almost no influence and few friends. And, it declared, there would be one certainty: that having once departed, it would be all but impossible to get back in again."

• Swiss Anomoly The Swiss option is always painted as exactly what the UK would want except for the tiny detail that it was a one-off and the EU would likely wish to punish the rash, short-sighted greed of the UK for attempting to Brexit and break the Clubs' rules. No "Privileged Partnership" or "Pic-n-Mix" or "Rugby in the Football Club" etc.

"On the other hand, we assume that the "out" campaign will have succeededbecause it will have offered a positive vision of a post-EU nation, emphasising high ideals such as self-determination and the restoration of democracy. But we also assume that success would have been unlikely without neutralising the torrent of FUD, of which examples we have seen here. To do so, assurances on continued membership of the Single Market will have been needed. Irrespective of the actual merits of membership, we do not see that a campaign could have succeeded without unbreakable assurances of this nature, to "kill stone dead" the business and foreign investment case against withdrawal."

"Such assurances as would have been given would have to be honoured, thus shaping the exit negotiations. They add further, insurmountable obstacles to the adoption of any tailor-made bilateral option (and, for that matter, the WTO option, discussed in Chapter 3). If those options were not already untenable, the need to keep the Single Market intact would make them so."

• Totemic Status of access to The Single Market and FDI for the UK and The City and sustaining Trade and neutralizing Economic perturbation have to factor into a successful Referendum and hence Brexit Plan to vote for during:-

1. The Referendum Political Event.
2. The Article 50 TEU Lisbon Treaty Formal Secession (2-years)
3. The Full Brexit Operational Process spanning days, years, decades.

FLEXCIT: 2.3 Timing complications , p.33

"Following the "in-out" referendum, however, we also believe there will be a strong demand for the earliest possible exit from the EU. We thus anticipate that the two years initially set by the Treaty for Article 50 negotiations will be treated as a maximum. Although the period can be extended by unanimous agreement, there will be little tolerance for prolonged talks and certainly not for a process that drags on for many years."

"Expectations will undoubtedly create a political momentum that will be difficult to ignore, especially if a general election intervenes. Dominating the talks, therefore, will be an over-riding need to bring them to a speedy conclusion. Furthermore, speed is no bad thing. To avoid unnecessary market uncertainty and political instability, leaving the EU is best done quickly – advice which was tendered to nations proposing to leave the euro. Delay in reaching a settlement could be highly damaging."

• Economy Of Time is critical to be controlled. Any Brexit plan that attempts to increase SCOPE will increase the forces acting on the negotiations and the referendum campaign itself, leading to increase in loss of control, which leads to increase in loss of confidence which leads to higher chance of lack of success both in support (before) and in resolution of negotiations (during).

"Advocates for bilateral options, though, rarely discuss the time needed to conclude negotiations. Economist Roger Bootle, for instance, posits that many British people imagine that the UK would not be able to negotiate free trade agreements because it is small and insignificant, then asserting that "this is not true". The UK is still about the sixth-biggest economy in the world, larger than Russia, Brazil or India, he says, then asking, "Why shouldn't it be able to negotiate satisfactory trading arrangements?"

"This, of course, completely misses the point. Undoubtedly, given unlimited time, the UK would be able to negotiate a different deal than when having to negotiate under time constraints. In the Article 50 scenario, however, the presumption must be that time is limited."

• Brexit is Political not Economic: The politics needs to be POSITIVE and the economics needs to be NEUTRAL to remove it from the Referendum Question. Is part of the winning strategy of the referendum; it neutralizes the FUD of the Pro-EU's, it maximizes the arguments of the Anti-EU/Pro-Brexit. Too many Anti-EU'ers misconceptualize Brexit as the time to maximize the economy. WRONG! It's the time to maximize the politics of Democracy, Sovereignty, Self-Determination, Global Destiny. The Referendum Question must be positive political and that means economically neutral, because any economic arguments positive or negative come with uncertainty and uncertainy is NEGATIVE to confidence which is to support which is to success of decision-making.

"When it comes to establishing trade agreements with more complex economies, the contrast is extreme. For instance, the current round of EU-Swiss talks -which provide the basis for many of the exit models proposed for the UK -started in 1994 and took 16 years to conclude. 73 And if that is to be an example, no negotiation scenario can realistically ignore the political and practical implications of negotiations taking a prolonged period."

• Council of Despair of the Pro-EU's depends on uncertainty of negotiations and on doubt of economic predictions which is inherent in economic arguments aka "The Dismal Science". This is to be avoided with a Positive Political campaign and a comparison of Influence in vs out of the EU and that is Sovereignty and Democracy questions not Economic.

"On this basis, it is highly improbable that British and EU negotiators could conclude a de novo bilateral agreement in less than five years. Whatever their attractions in theory, the bilateral options are not viable within the context of Article 50 negotiations, purely on the grounds of the time needed to negotiate them."

• Playing By The Rules of Brexit will ensure Pro-Brexit/Brexiteers'ers are not harshly dealt with by the biased media, the biased civil service, the biased government, the biased big business. The more they are forced to bend and break the rules the more the people will see the deception and corruption operating within the Pro-EU Project.

~~Fin.~~

It's very interesting to note so little of this advice has been taken by Vote Leave or Leave.EU/GO campaigns:-

The Leave campaign is failing. We need your help.