Wednesday 22 June 2016

Be in No doubt! - Wales and its people have an enormous lot to lose if the UK leave the EU

   Wales contributes far more to the EU than it gets back ‘’ says Boris. NOT TRUE!
     The Facts are -
·         Wales benefits from our membership more than any other part of the UK;
·         Wales is due to receive more than £3billion of EU investment between 2014 and 2020;
·         The European Investment Bank has invested £1.6bn in Welsh projects over the past 20 years; In the last five years Wales has benefited from 96 investment projects from the EU, creating or protecting 16,000 jobs,
·         Wales exported £5.8bn worth of goods to the EU in 2014 which was 43% of total goods exports
·         More than 190,000 jobs in Wales are linked to our European trade;
·       The tourism trade has benefited from investment in developments such as the coastal path, while European water directives have ensured cleaner waters and beaches around our coast. 130,000 people are employed in the tourism industry in Wales and EU tourists in Wales spent £206m in 2014, over half of all international visitor spend.



·      Welsh farmers will receive £1.7bn between now and 2020 and enjoy branding protection for Welsh beef and lamb;
·         Subsidies make the difference to many farmers between making a profit or loss. In Wales subsidies accounted for an average of 81% of farms’ business income in 2014-15 and over 50% of all farms made a loss or would have done so without a subsidy.
·         In Wales this amounted to £ 240m in 2014 in direct payments via the Single Payment Scheme and we are expecting to receive an additional £300m to help rural development from 2014 to 2020.
·         The agricultural sector in Wales is still significant with almost 58,000 people working directly in the industry.
·         The agri-food sector with food processing employs around 230,000 people or makes up for around 18% of the workforce and is worth around £6bn annually to the Welsh economy.
·         Ninety per cent of Welsh lamb is sold to the EU so an exit would have a huge impact on the market.

A recent study has revealed that the amount of money Wales received from the EU budget in 2014 totalled £658m, while Wales’ contribution to the EU (after accounting for a share of the UK’s rebate) stood at £414m. This net benefit of £245m was equal to around 0.4% of GDP in 2014.


      

Be in No doubt! - Wales and its people have an enormous lot to lose if the UK leave the EU

   Wales contributes far more to the EU than it gets back ‘’ says Boris. NOT TRUE!
     The Facts are -
·         Wales benefits from our membership more than any other part of the UK;
·         Wales is due to receive more than £3billion of EU investment between 2014 and 2020;
·         The European Investment Bank has invested £1.6bn in Welsh projects over the past 20 years; In the last five years Wales has benefited from 96 investment projects from the EU, creating or protecting 16,000 jobs,
·         Wales exported £5.8bn worth of goods to the EU in 2014 which was 43% of total goods exports
·         More than 190,000 jobs in Wales are linked to our European trade;
·       The tourism trade has benefited from investment in developments such as the coastal path, while European water directives have ensured cleaner waters and beaches around our coast. 130,000 people are employed in the tourism industry in Wales and EU tourists in Wales spent £206m in 2014, over half of all international visitor spend.



·      Welsh farmers will receive £1.7bn between now and 2020 and enjoy branding protection for Welsh beef and lamb;
·         Subsidies make the difference to many farmers between making a profit or loss. In Wales subsidies accounted for an average of 81% of farms’ business income in 2014-15 and over 50% of all farms made a loss or would have done so without a subsidy.
·         In Wales this amounted to £ 240m in 2014 in direct payments via the Single Payment Scheme and we are expecting to receive an additional £300m to help rural development from 2014 to 2020.
·         The agricultural sector in Wales is still significant with almost 58,000 people working directly in the industry.
·         The agri-food sector with food processing employs around 230,000 people or makes up for around 18% of the workforce and is worth around £6bn annually to the Welsh economy.
·         Ninety per cent of Welsh lamb is sold to the EU so an exit would have a huge impact on the market.

A recent study has revealed that the amount of money Wales received from the EU budget in 2014 totalled £658m, while Wales’ contribution to the EU (after accounting for a share of the UK’s rebate) stood at £414m. This net benefit of £245m was equal to around 0.4% of GDP in 2014.


      

Charles Kennedy on Europe 2013

Tuesday 21 June 2016

Agricultural study shows why leaving the EU is full of uncertainties and too much of a gamble for farming and rural communities

The complexity of the political and economic reality cannot be captured in full - there are many elements that cannot be factored in the study, like the impact of Brexit on the availability of foreign labour, the price of UK land or on the £/€ exchange rate.


Despite these uncertainties, the NFU is confident that the scenarios presented offer a good representation of the spectrum of policy options a UK government might consider in the event of leaving the EU.

Last year the NFU presented a report examining the UK’s current relationship with the EU and it highlighted that while some of the positives and negatives of EU membership for British agriculture are known, there is no clarity on what a vote to leave the EU would mean. In particular, what trading arrangements would we have outside the EU and what would a British agricultural policy look like?

So the NFU commissioned a world leading agricultural research institute from the Netherlands, the LEI Wageningen UR, to assess the possible effects of a number of different trade and agricultural support policies which would, in theory, be open to the UK government in the event of a Brexit.

The findings in respect of those scenarios are presented in a summary report and can be read in full on the NFU’s website. It has also been widely commented on in the media and I include links from Farming UK and the Guardian as examples.

The study gives an indication of what may happen based on three scenario whilst accepting that there are limitations to what can be quantified. For example:-

doesn’t consider what the impact would be if the UK government decided to cut the level of regulation faced by our industry;
or
what would happen to the demand for British produce if some food manufacturers decided to relocate somewhere else in the EU in order to remain in the single market.

The report indicates that some of the scenarios appear to suggest that there could be serious risks to farm income from leaving the EU, while others suggest there could be a more favourable outcome. 

It comes down to a matter of judgement as to which of the scenarios appears the most likely.
This in turn will depend on the policy position adopted by the UK government when outside the EU.

In the past successive British governments have been strong advocates of open and free trade. It has called for tariff protection across all farm sectors to be reduced and it has called for the abolition of direct support payments made through the CAP. While a member of the EU, the UK has not been able to realise those goals fully, nevertheless it has taken direct action to reduce the level of farm payments available to farmers.

An important point made is that:

As yet, those who are advocating for us to leave the EU have not made it clear whether these policies would change in the event of a Brexit.

This study provides an insight into the potential effects of two key issues for farm businesses after the UK has left the EU:

UK’s international trading relationship (and its impact on the domestic market) and
the level of domestic support for farmers.

Two of the three trade scenarios modelled, namely the Free Trade Agreement between the EU and UK (FTA) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) both have a kind of anti-trade bias. In other words, British agricultural policy would in effect become more protectionist than it has been under the present CAP.

Under both trade scenarios, UK farm gate prices are expected to increase. This is mainly because imports would become more expensive, driven by trade facilitation costs, loss of benefits from cheaper imports under the EU’s preferential trade arrangements and in the case of the WTO default scenario, higher tariffs with the EU. Higher prices would stimulate domestic production, but on the other hand they would reduce domestic use. The net result of this would be an improvement in the UK’s trade balance mainly due to declining imports.

The questions to be asked about these two scenarios are political rather than economic. A more protectionist policy would be a reverse of the policies that successive British governments have pursued for the last 40 years; it would go against a world-wide trend to more open agricultural trade and would be in contradiction to the stated aims of many of those who advocate that the UK should leave the EU.

The UK Trade Liberalisation scenario would appear to be more in line with the established British government policy and with the views of many of those who advocate leaving the EU. This scenario has a significant negative impact on farm gate prices for a number of products, but mainly for meat and some dairy products. The result would be less meat and milk production, decreasing the UK’s self-sufficiency levels in those products, and creating a knock-on effect on demand for feed. Lower tariffs would offset the higher trade facilitation costs faced by importers and could therefore be appealing to the government. 

The results of each scenario show that the biggest driver of UK farm income change is the level of public support payments available. The positive price impacts on farm incomes seen through both the FTA and WTO default scenarios would be offset by reductions in direct support.

 A reduction of direct support, or a complete elimination of it, would exacerbate the negative impact effects seen under the UK Trade Liberalisation scenario. The cattle and sheep sectors are particularly dependent on direct support payments, but so too are mixed farms and field crops. Consequently, the combination of a more liberal trade policy and a reduction or elimination of direct support would make many British farms less viable.

My verdict:
As I have posted several times before the prospect of leaving the EU is far too much of a gamble to take, it is full of uncertainties and crucially those who advocate leaving the EU have provided no information or clear commitments whatsoever on alternative policies to the CAP, international trade and farming regulation.

The risks involved in losing access to European markets is too great, the Common Agricultural Policy  is critical to Welsh agriculture, especially in the current commodity price crisis and the EU Rural Development Programme helps Welsh farming improve its competitiveness and profitability.

This post is based on the introductory remarks of Meurig Raymond, President NFU England and Wales and the concluding comments in the report

Things did not turn out as Boris, Gove and Farage said June 2016 that Britain would thrive outside the EU

No need to worry they said!
A look into the future after Brexit! Not pleasant and things are looking bleak
It is July 2018 and two years ago the UK voted to leave the largest trade bloc on the planet where we used to enjoy duty and tariff free trade and the ability to trade all over the world through other EU negotiated trade agreements.
We have finally managed, after two years of difficult talks to extricate ourselves from 40 years of trading regulation agreements and we have been removed from all the planned fiscal, travel, scientific, research investment and other agreements that we had with the EU.
The Government however is still grappling with untangling decades of laws that we have to amend now we are no longer in the EU. It is estimated it will take years to accomplish.
In addition a Scottish Referendum will soon be held and the future of the UK Union is under threat. Also there are major issues over the border between Ireland and the North.
Today the UK joins the EU Common External Tariff Regime of the EU and the Common External Tariff Regimes in every country around the world. Now the REALLY hard work can begin.
First off, whoever happens to be Prime Minister here has to appoint a lead negotiator (yes appoint, not elect) who will then appoint his team to send to Brussels to try to negotiate a worse trade agreement than we used to have with the EU.
Who will this be? And what training might they be given in negotiating international trade deals? They are sure going to need some. When will the first meeting take place? The EU teams are busy working and talking with trade blocs like the USA, Central, Eastern and Western African Trade blocs and trade blocs from Asia. But none of them will enter into trading agreements with the UK until our new relationship with the European Single Market has been settled.
Everything the UK sells around the world just got more expensive. UKTI is frantically trying to set up a UK Common External Tariff Regime under WTO rules to protect UK manufacturers and farmers while at the same time trying to recruit and train a bunch of new negotiators with its limited budget (approximately double the amount of International Aid that the UK sends to Ethiopia).
What on earth happens next? No one knows except that everything we buy is more expensive and everything we sell is more expensive and our customers have begun looking for alternative suppliers.

It's mid April 2019. We have terminated all our agreements with the EU now, they all finished 9 months ago and new Chancellor of the Exchequer just delivered the first ever Budget last month. And WHAT a budget!
Following our vote to leave the EU back in June 2016 GBP Sterling has continued to fall. It lost around 12% of its value just during the campaigns but it's continued to fall as predicted by every researched study at the time. Strangely the forecasters underestimated the damage this would do. The cost of imported goods is now subject to the new UK tariff regime and with the weakened £ prices have risen by nearly 20%. And we used to think 4% inflation was bad eh?
HM Treasury income has fallen on average by around 3%, or £23.4 billion in the last 9 months alone, triple our old EU membership fee. This means cuts across most Government departments and no department is ring fenced. Every department is facing a further 3% reduction in spending over the next 4 years.... including the NHS and Education.
The Department of Work and Pensions took the hardest hit in the Budget. Many companies are having staffing problems since the new points based visa system for EU nationals was introduced in January this year, and since businesses are unable to hire the staff they need to grow they are finding it increasingly difficult to function. This is lowering corporation tax income and has frozen Income tax and national insurance contributions. Many companies have just closed down as they are unable to handle the higher priced imports from their suppliers since July 1st last year.
More people are unemployed and head of DWP Iain Duncan-Smith was on Daily Politics crying again that the Government has less money and he has had to cut Job Seekers Allowance and Income Support payments by 30% as he did in 2015 with disability benefits. As always under a Conservative government the poorest are paying the price.
There is at least *some* positive news. The Stock Market is doing very well. Trading is higher than it has been for years!!! As a result of the low pound sterling, stocks in UK FTSE 500 companies appear cheap as chips on the global markets and foreign companies have been buying up what's left of UK companies left right and centre.
The rich get even richer and the poor get even poorer. Welcome to Brexit.

So it's now the Summer of 2023 and five years since all our agreements ended with the European Union. How are things looking?
Back in early 2016 over 250 foreign banks (including the main Swiss banks) used the UK as their EU headquarters because of our access to the EU market through their ability to 'passport' banking and financial services to a market of 508 million people. Three quarters of them have now moved their head offices across to Frankfurt. 2.2 million people in the UK used to work in the Financial services sector - that's now down to just 750,000. The losses of income tax and National Insurance to HM Treasury have been devastating for the Budget.
The Nissan Juke, Qashqai, and Leaf models that used to be built by thousands of Brits in Sunderland are coming up to the end of their lifetimes and Nissan announced in May that their new models are going to be built at the new facility near the Renault-Dacia plant in Romania. Toyota and Honda have also made announcements that new models will be built inside the EU rather than in the UK. Over 700,000 people used to work in the automotive sector in the UK and over 70% of the million cars built in Britain were left hand drive for the EU market. With new import tariffs on car parts of 7% and sales tariffs in the EU of 10% the UK just can't compete any more. The unions have been begging the Government for a bailout but there just is no money.
Siemens engineering and research centres and the global research centre for Dyson and other companies in the UK that employ thousands have been really struggling to be able to recruit high quality staff from abroad and the brain drain from the UK as a result of R&D companies abroad hiring our talent isn't helping. There are rumours that Siemens and other R&D businesses are planning to relocate out of the country. This isn't helped by the loss of hundreds of millions of pounds in research grants that Universities used to get from the EU. This has gone and Westminster have not only failed to replace it but they've also cancelled the student loan programme and now everyone has to pay up front in full for Uni tuition.
There are more downstream manufacturers suffering the same issues as the auto sector and this is having a knock on effect to steel making and other upstream industries.
The Leave EU campaigners who were saying "see we told you nothing would happen if we leave the EU" from late 2016 to 2019 are now really starting to eat their words.
For each million jobs lost so far HM Treasury has lost £11 billion a year just in income taxes, national insurance, corporation taxes and VAT income. The loss here so far is £38.7 billion.
The loss to the wider economy in the first five years of Brexit is estimated in the region of £720 billion overall. It is sad looking back at 2016 when the Leave EU campaigns and people were complaining about the £8bn a year pittance that we sent to the EU. If only they could see then what we now know eh? And it's not like the evidence wasn't out there either - people knew but chose not to listen.


Compiled from various postings made by Jason J Hunter whose work over the last 3  months I have appreciated and valued greatly.


One of the UK’s leading EU law experts criticizes the referendum debate’s “dishonesty on an industrial scale”,

The substance of each viewpoint is analysed and an informed assessment of the UK’s potential future position, both as a member of the EU and in the wake of a vote to leave is made.
In my video chat No 5 yesterday which is now on my YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gwynoro  I made reference to Professor Dougan’s video and promised to upload on to my blog – so here it is.
University of Liverpool Law School’s Professor Michael Dougan has spent his career studying EU law as it relates to the UK; contributing to Parliamentary Select Committees, advising government and now helping media fact check the barrage of assertions emanating from the Remain and Leave camps, in the run up to June 23.
Here, Professor Dougan as he considers the claims and counter claims from each side analyses the substance of each viewpoint and delivers an informed assessment of the UK’s potential future position, both as a member of the EU and in the wake of a vote to leave.
Although it is about 25 mins duration it is well worth listening to – informative, factual and instructive

Click on link

In the video Dougan refers to a civil service research survey on UK’s relationship with the EU. It was carried out between 2012 and 2014. This survey is the most comprehensive ever carried out. 

Thursday 16 June 2016

Cameron has certainly risked the country’s future in the EU and has placed in doubt the survival of the UK Union as well!

In danger of turning out to be a gamble too far by Cameron – he should have known his party better and maybe even the people! There’s been significant and increasingly vociferous anti EU element here ever since the late 80’s- 

When in January 2013 DavidCameron promised that in the event of the Conservatives winning the 2015 General Election he would hold a Referendum on UK’s membership of the European Union.

There was no general clamour in the country at large for a referendum but pressure had been building up inside the Tory party over membership of the EU and he succumbed and he also delighted UKIP along with some others

He did it with two real motives in mind, the first was to attempt to wrong foot UKIP and the other was to pacify the anti EU wing of his party and thereby keep the party united. On both those counts he has clearly miscalculated.

Evident that Cameron did not think the whole issue through and the final outcome of his negotiations with the EU leaders did not impress a big part of his party.

A year ago I warned that if this referendum goes wrong then David Cameron will go down in history as the Prime Minister who was instrumental in the UK leaving the EU and also over a period of a few years after bring about the end of the UK Union.

Although initially in the late 1970’s and for a few years after Margaret Thatcher was in favour of the UK remaining in the then European Community and indeed played a big part in bringing about the Single Market she became increasingly Eurosceptic during themed – late; 1980s especially when the EU moved towards implementing the Social Chapter.

The manner of her demise from power was full of drama as the pro-Europeans inside the Tory party had their pound of flesh! – particularly Heseltine, Geoffrey Howe, Kenneth Clarke and indeed Nigel Lawson who was pro the EU in those days.

However those people were never forgiven by a significant section of the party and throughout John Major’s premiership they were a constant thorn in his side on EU matters.

After the loss of the 1997 General Election the Euro sceptics started getting the upper-hand as William Hague, Ian Duncan Smith and Michael Howard became leaders of the party. Although Hague is now in the Remain camp now, back then he most certainly was an Euro sceptic.

Without expanding further suffice it to say if David Cameron ever thought that calling a referendum would smooth the waters he has without doubt miscalculated badly and never properly understood the mood of his party in Parliament and the country. After all in 2016 almost half the MPs and several senior members of the Government  are in the Brexit camp

Central to this story of course is not just the right wing of the Tory, the Referendum Party and the rise of UKIP along with strident voices of the far right National Front, BNP and so on have played their part in fashioning a good percentage of peoples’ opinions towards the EU.

Complicit in where we find ourselves today – a week before polling – has been the ineffective performance of the Labour opposition and Trade Union movement in the early stages of the Referendum campaign. I won’t pursue that line in this post but it has taken them a long time to wake up to the dangers of a Brexit victory.

Now they have in the last few days and thank God they have because it is only a strong vote to Remain in the EU by Labour supporters that can save the UK and Cameron now in this Referendum.

Another difficulty has been the sad and serious decline of the Liberal Democrats – for decades the most pro-EU party of all. In the good days from mid-80’s to 2010 it gathered over 5 - 6 million votes in General Elections until the debacle of 2015. At present its voice and influence has been greatly marginalised and pretty much ignored in Parliament and the media. However the fact remains that even with 2.5 million votes there is no doubt that their support too is needed now in order to win this Referendum.

But as important is the overriding impression I have had from speaking at several meetings, following social media comment and the rest that a significant body of the voters are just not listening.

Despite a daily diet of facts on the key issues being daily made available to them on a wide range of key issues there is distrust, cynicism if not disbelief in the air. This is particularly the case amongst working class people and those less well-off.

Too often have I been told and read

‘I don’t want to be governed by Brussels’

‘We are being told a bunch of lies’

‘We want our country back’

It is a fact that in the UK, both interest in,and knowledge about the EU are low. The 2016 Audit of Political Engagement found that only 38 per cent of people were confident about their understanding of the EU.

Many people have bemoaned the current state of the campaign. The regularity with which facts are either not being believed or distorted, others not checked with what is viewed as ‘inconvenient facts’ are routinely dismissed as exaggerations and downright lies.  The a lot of speculation is being presented as hard evidence and most certainly the references to Hitler and so on all inhibit and divert attention from having a proper debate about the costs and benefits of EU membership.

Furthermore the social media has resulted in people being surrounded with voices expressing similar views to their own.

But why has all this happened?
Well similar things are happening in other parts of the world – with right-wing populists movements across Europe and in the USA are trying to make their country great again by arguments for ‘keeping immigrants out’, clamouring to ‘have their country back’ and propounding falsehoods on matters such sovereignty and democracy
After the 2008 financial crash and subsequent austerity years people are poorer than they expected to be so they are looking for someone or something to blame and they don't feel like being generous to immigrants anymore or supporting international aid.

This is even true in the erstwhile socialist countries of Denmark, Sweden and Finland, where the right-wing Danish People's Party, Sweden Democrats and Finns Party have all risen near the top of the polls.

The current social, economic and political climate is fertile for politicians that often target migrants already here, who often subtly rail against the ‘elites’, the ‘fat cats’ and cleverly peddle an ‘anti-parliament, anti-politics’ line.  All this is done by people such as Farage, Boris and Gove who epitomise privilege. Boris Johnson and Michael Gove voted for the austerity that is punishing working families, while Nigel Farage has argued for privatising the NHS.
The difficulty all of us who support the European Union have is that working class families, low income earners and those caught in a poverty trap are angry with how this country has been governed for a decade and more
They are right to be angry and agitated about such grotesque inequalities, low wages, poor jobs, bad housing, can’t get GP appointments,  hospital waiting lists lengthening, the NHS in a bad state, schools full and struggling while the richest can afford to pay for private medical care and education.

But all of this is not the fault of the EU but to try and convince them otherwise is proving difficult because, as I have said earlier, they are not in the mood to listen or believe.

They blame the EU, or ‘immigrants getting everything first’.

Indeed even if the prospect of what a Boris Johnson/Michael Gove government would do they don’t seem to be particularly troubled at the moment.

So with a week to go the challenge is a serious one and it is one the Remain campaign really cannot afford to lose not just for the sake of the country but also for the sake of all those very people who will be most affected should the UK end up outside the EU.


Then here’s another thought could there be after all a ray of hope? What if the result is close? this referendum is not legally binding but that topic is for a future post!

Thursday 9 June 2016

It will take longer than the 2 years allowed in Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty for the UK to complete all exit arrangements from EU – years of uncertainty will await us all.

The FACT is that the UK is able to trade all over the world, wherever and whenever we want to and we are getting more successful at doing so.

There is No need to leave the EU to achieve this.
The EU currently has PreferentialTrade Agreements (PTAs) with 52 countries, and it is negotiating trade agreements with another 72 countries. It is an undeniable FACT that if the outcome of the Referendum is to leave the EU then the UK would have to re-negotiate or start new bilateral negotiations on 124 trade agreements.
This is quite apart from the crucial one of the need to redefine our trade status with the EU since the UK will be outside the Single Market of 508 million people.
Currently the top-50 trading partners of the UK account for 92% of all our trade, 41 of them do have some trade agreements of their own or ongoing negotiations with the EU.
Eighteen of them are in the EU single market; one (Norway) is an European Economic Area country; another (Turkey) has a customs union agreement with the EU, eight countries have existing EU PTAs in place and 13 countries are currently negotiating EU trade agreements.
So the question that the Leave campaigners have not attempted to answer is exactly how long do they reckon it will take our small UK Trade Negotiation team to get through all of that?
The FACT is it will take YEARS. That is years of uncertainty for our economy and businesses, years of uncertainty over jobs, investment and growth.
Remember all the while that it will be going on it will also be necessary to do at the SAME time the negotiations for the UKs extraction arrangements from all the current treaties and agreements that we have with the EU under Article 50. These have been built up over decades!
At present as members of the EU, the United Kingdom enjoys a raft of ‘Most Preferred Nation’ trade agreements with other countries around the world - 53 additional trade agreements outside the EU.
As a result of having this better access to Rest of World (RoW) markets, the UK has been increasing its exports in terms of value to nations all around the world. While we export mostly goods (around two thirds of UK exports) to the EU nations, our exports to RoW are mostly made up of financial services.
So the FACT is that the UK is able to trade all over the world, wherever and whenever we want to and we are getting more successful at doing so. There is No need to leave the EU to achieve this.
Leaving the EU will make all our trading more difficult, more expensive and much lower in volume and value.
It is a FACT that if we leave the EU we will have to renegotiate all those agreements.
The question is will the trade deals that the UK Governnment will possibly be able to be achieve outside the EU be better than what we have currently have within a union of 28 nations with a combined population of 508 million people and a GDP of just over €19 trillion?
Is it really in any way sensible to believe that the UK with a population of 65m people and a GDP of just under £ 2 trillion could do better on its own? Carry more influence and clout with the big trading blocks of the world?
Yes we might be able to trade more freely but it would mean higher tariffs on our exports until new agreements are negotiated and it's unlikely that any new agreement is going to be better than what we already have.
Only one country has ever withdrawn from the EU and that is Greenland
Greenland originally joined the then-European Communities with Denmark in 1973. A referendum was held in 1982 called the “Greenlandic European Economic Community membership referendum”. The referendum was called over a dispute over fishing rights.
Greenland voted to leave but it took Greenland (a country of 53,000 people) 3 years to extricate itself with an exit agreement (The Greenland Treaty) which was finalised in February 1985. That agreement was only about the exporting of fish to the EU!
Three years years!!!
Remember the UK has a population more than one thousand times larger, and exports more than 4,500 different types of product to the EU.
Be in no doubt it is a FACT that it is going to be longer than the 2 years allowed in Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty for the UK to complete all exit arrangements.
If the UK decides to follow the example of Greenland we will be facing interesting times, a decade or more of negotiations.

In the meantime we all will be paying a heavy price through uncertainty, higher living costs, fewer jobs, and tougher times.