EFTA YOU'VE GONE

Nissan image from Reuters

This week the car manufacturer Nissan announced that it is expanding its business in the UK. I take this to be a sign that the UK intends to withdraw from the European Union (EU) and join instead the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).

I have referred previously to this option. EFTA members (presently only Iceland, Liechtenstein, most of Norway and most of Switzerland) can trade with EU without any restrictions or surcharges.

EFTA members do not have to adopt EU laws, but they do have to abide by the EU’s basic principles of free movement of goods, services, money and people.

If the UK joined EFTA, the majority of Brits who voted to leave the EU would get what they voted for, and Colonel Blimps who harrumph about “lost British sovereignty” would get it back, and people who voted to leave EU on racist grounds would get a well-deserved poke in the eye.

Joining EFTA would put us back to where we were in 1973 when, as I recall, we left EFTA to join the EU.

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RHYL WEST BY-ELECTION

This week's by-election was won by Labour. So now both of Rhyl West's county councillors are Labour Party people who do not live in the ward.

The turnout was 12 per cent. In other words, 88 out of every 100 residents who could have voted did not bother to do so.

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