How a £50billion Brexit divorce bill will save Britain a fortune

THERE really is no pleasing some people.

Until this week, the standard Continuity Remain line went like this: “You mad Leavers! You’re bent on an ideological hard Brexit! We’re going to crash out without a deal! It’ll be disastrous, and it’ll all be your fault!”

Then, on Tuesday night, as news came through that an agreement had been reached on the money, paving the way for a trade deal, the Europhile hive-mind shifted.

“Ha! You’ve climbed down! Pathetic! So much for the £350million we were going to save!”

Some Remainers are morose by nature, determined to see the worst in everything — even if they were recently calling for those things themselves.

Not, let me stress, all Remainers.

Most of the 48 per cent have accepted the referendum result, and want as good an outcome as possible. But a small knot of Labour and Lib Dem MPs, cheered on by a group of smug columnists and academics, can see only gloom.

“£50billion to leave the EU” is how yesterday’s Guardian described the news. But it’s nothing of the kind.

For one thing, the sum looks like being less than £50billion. For another, we’re not paying “to leave the EU”.

The money in dispute is not a divorce bill. What we’re arguing about, rather, is how quickly we can taper away our existing financial obligations.

Britain is not the kind of country that walks away from its debts. Those debts will fall gradually, according to the European Commission, over the next 40 years.

We’d be paying the equivalent of a billion pounds a year, rather than the £17billion (gross) or £9billion (net) that we’re paying now.

That in itself is a big saving. But it doesn’t take into account the way the EU budget is likely to grow over those 40 years. (When have you ever known a Eurocrat to cut spending?)

The saving when compared to what we would be liable for if we stayed is far greater. In any event, for the first couple of years during the transition, we’ll still be covered by quite a few of the existing arrangements.

It would be odd to use the facilities without paying the subs.

Remember that the EU 27 will still be our customers as well as our allies.

We want them to be rich so they keep buying our stuff, investing in Britain and coming here as tourists.

Sure, we could refuse to pay. We could go to an international tribunal, which might reduce the overall sum we owe.

But that would destroy any chance of a friendly deal with the EU, which would leave all sides worse off. Better by far to approach the question of how to phase out our payments in a friendly spirit.

At the end of this process, we should aim to have a close, mutually profitable relationship with the EU, involving not just free trade, but also continued co-operation on intelligence, police co-operation, scientific research and the like.

Only now we’d be doing these things as an independent country, not as an EU province.

Is it feasible? Yes. Most non-EU countries do it now. The EU’s educational exchange scheme, for example, includes not just nearby states like Norway and Turkey, but even Canada and Israel.

Its scientific and security programmes also bring together members and non-members.

Plainly, if we choose to remain part of some of these projects, as an associate member, we’ll pay our share of the bill.

No one is going to argue with that.

The big-ticket items, though, will be cancelled. No more Common Agricultural Policy. No more Cohesion Funds. No more EU foreign aid racket.

Other nearby countries, such as Iceland and Switzerland, make smallish contributions to some EU funds.

This is partly because they want to participate in certain common projects and partly because they want to, in effect, buy themselves preferential export arrangements that go beyond simple free trade.

They approach the question quite hard-headedly, and we should do the same. Run the numbers and, if it makes sense, pay. If it doesn’t, don’t.

Either way, we’ll at last be a sovereign country again, living under our own laws, setting our own regulations, striking our own trade deals.

If we can’t use these freedoms to generate far, far more wealth than any residual payments, we’re not the people we think we are.

• Daniel Hannan is a Conservative MEP and the author of What Next: How to Get the Best from Brexit.