More than 40 years ago, as part of my school chess team, I was taught always to think myself into the mind of my opponent. It was a habit that stood me in good stead in later life, whether I was facing Tony Blair across the Dispatch Box or negotiating about nuclear weapons with a poker-faced Iranian. As referendum day approaches, it is worth using this discipline: not about Conservative opponents — who have to make the great effort after tomorrow to be on the same side again — but about the opponents of the United Kingdom.
Unfortunately, there are plenty of these within Britain’s own shores, in the form of the Scottish National Party (SNP). For them, I have long argued, a result in which Scotland votes to remain in the European Union (EU), but England tips the whole of the United Kingdom into leaving, would be a great gift. This has been one of the neglected subjects of this campaign — understated by the Remain side because the SNP are part of it and ignored by the Leave side because it is a highly inconvenient truth.
So let us jump for a moment, painful though it may be, into the brains of Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond, and consider how to exploit such a result. The first thing to do is obvious — to express outrage at the outcome: The majority wishes of the Scottish people have been ignored, they will say, and they are now being removed from the EU against their will in a travesty of democracy. But the clever thing is what follows: an escalating and calibrated programme to create acrimony and resentment at every step of the long negotiation of UK withdrawal.
This starts with the demand that Scottish ministers be a party to the withdrawal negotiations, followed by obstructing them if included or denouncing every position taken in them if excluded. On every single item in what would be the world’s messiest-ever divorce, the Scottish Government would become a third party, making demands that sounded reasonable but could rarely be met. On fisheries, there would be an insistence that Scotland control its own waters. On farming, that Scottish farmers receive a guarantee from London of a pound-for-pound replacement of every EU payment in perpetuity. On European regional funds, that not a penny is ever deducted, now or in the future.
Since a loss of jobs in financial services would affect Scotland more than English regions, the next demand would be for special compensation from the Treasury for the additional job losses north of the border. Once trade talks began, there would be a veritable bonanza of problems to exploit. Facing tariffs on whisky of up to 20 per cent once Britain had to rely on World Trade Organisation rules rather than EU trade agreements, the SNP would ask for special deals for Scotland and then denounce the Westminster government when no such deals could be provided. Scottish ministers would seek talks with other countries about staying in the EU or joining the European Economic Area without the rest of the UK, and then fulminate vehemently when the British Government intervened to prevent them. Month after month, all the way to the elections of 2020, the relentless message would be: Not only was Scotland forced out against its will, it is now being trampled underfoot in the exit negotiations. The stage would thus be set for a new referendum, five or six years from now, with the nationalists having the best shot they would ever have at breaking up the United Kingdom. No one can know whether this strategy would succeed, but there is no excuse for not realising that it would be attempted, sowing deep bitterness within the British Isles.
Britain’s adversaries are not just internal. Away from the cameras on Friday morning — if by then Britain has voted to leave — Russian President Vladimir Putin will allow himself a thin but satisfied smile. Working out how to play the EU with Britain departing from it will not take long: Lie low for six months until sanctions on Russia can be lifted and then feel free to put the West under pressure — in Ukraine, or Moldova or Georgia or wherever — once Britain is no longer a voice in Brussels for transatlantic unity when the Kremlin mounts its next adventure. A solid European approach to reducing dependence on Russian energy? Forget it. The reimposition of sanctions when Moscow misbehaves? Less likely. Instead, there would be the wonderful spectacle of the major Western European countries consumed with renegotiating their arrangements with each other. Certainly enough reason for an extra round on Friday night.
So we do not need statistics, forecasts and experts to work out some of the consequences of voting this week to depart the EU. We only need our knowledge of the workings of the human mind. As I have watched the Leave campaign, I have realised it is anchored somewhere in a previous decade, before these and other threats had arisen. It is also based on the belief that Europeans are driving on to tighter centralisation, with the UK being sucked into it whether we like it or not. This fear is understandable after the events of recent decades, but it is also now out of date. Some of us have been Eurosceptics long before most of the campaigners of today. We fought to keep Britain out of the euro — and we won. Over the years we have kept us out of the Schengen zone, out of the quotas for asylum seekers, and out of paying for Eurozone bailouts. We even passed a law in 2011, which I introduced, requiring a referendum of the British people if any new powers or competencies are ever transferred to the EU, which effectively puts a lock on any such transfer. The idea that Britain could be forced to rely for its defence on a European Army is therefore a fiction. And support on the continent for tighter integration is evaporating. The truth about leaving Europe is not just that it is risky, but that it is not necessary to run those risks. Britain won most of its battles to be a different sort of EU member. It may have to fight more, but those are easier to win than the new battles forming in the minds of others. And that is why I am voting, without hesitation, to remain.
— The Telegraph Group Limited, London, 2016
William Hague is a former foreign secretary of Britain and a former leader of the Conservative Party.
