UKIP and the CAP

It is perhaps not surprising to learn that their agricultural policy is not particularly coherent and they are clearer about what they are against than what they would replace it with, but here is an interesting account of their policy stance on agricultural matters: UKIP

Are UKIP wrong about the CAP?

Stuart Agnew MEP, the UKIP agricultural spokesman, has said the EU 'has become far too big to have a CAP.' There are certainly those who think that the EU is too geographically diverse to have a 'one size fits all' policy, although in practice it is not really like that. He also criticised farmers who receive subsidies for wind turbines and solar panels on their land as 'robbing the poor to pay the rich.'

European Commission official and agricultural economist John McClintock was trotted out to defend the CAP and said that scrapping the CAP 'could lead to food riots like we have seen in other parts of the world like Haiti.' This is scaremongering of the worst kind, but defenders of the CAP have seized on the food security card.

Mr McClintock is described as an agricultural economist, but he doesn't seem to have much love for the market mechanism. He said, 'There are still people who dream about the free market in agriculture, but the reality is that it could be socially disastrous.' Socially disastrous for whom, one has to ask?

Mr McClintock said that scrapping the CAP would mean that many farmers would not be able to survive. But is getting rid of marginal and inefficient producers necessarily a bad thing? He also argued that food prices would go up, but this could be offset if the EU lowered the high tariff walls it erects against much of the rest of the world. Defenders of the CAP argue that this helps the EU to be self-sufficient, but is it such a bad thing to import from countries well suited for agricultural production? Anyway, if one is concerned about self-sufficiency, perhaps there ought to be renewed attention to the quality of agricultural land when development takes place?

He also said that one of the main objectives of the CAP was to ensure that farmers had a comparable income to those in cities. Fair enough, but there are many people in rural areas who are not farmers and suffer from relative poverty. Surely this is a case for income supplements rather than subsidies to agriculture?

Similarly he argued that the CAP kept the countryside alive. But that is a case for transparent subsdies to keep the land in good heart and environmentally sustainable, not for blanket subsidies like the single farm payment.

The CAP costs €50bn a year and hardly represents value for money. 40 per cent or more of the EU budget represents a high opportunity cost. But, of course, we are where we are and withdrawing subsidies overnight would hit the rural economy hard. So it is incumbent on those who would withdraw from the EU to say what they would replace the CAP with in terms of domestic policy.

Thinking about the unthinkable

Fifty years ago saw the start of the Cuban missile crisis. It was a frightening time if you were fifteen years old, as I was, and whatever else one says about Jack Kennedy, one has to admire the way he managed the crisis and resisted the calls of the hawks for early military action. Now it's all old history and it was announced today that two of the Cold War missile sites have been given listed status.

Nuclear war strategy was referred to then as 'thinking about the unthinkable'. Perhaps we also now need to start thinking about another kind of unthinkable, Britain leaving the European Union and what sort of domestic agricultural policy might replace the CAP. Whatever one thinks of British membership of the EU, few would mourn leaving the CAP, but British farmers would be worried about what would take its place. No doubt some contingency thinking is already being undertaken.

My hunch is that if there was a straight yes-no choice, the majority of British voters (although perhaps not in Scotland) would vote to leave. There is some evidence to support this. Peter Kellner of YouGov has written an interesting contribution on underlying attitudes for the LSE European Politics blog: Kellner

In essence the message is that there are three attitude clusters in the electorate in terms of attitudes to the outside world and only one of those could be largely relied on to vote in favour. Kellner thinks that fear would shape a lot of decisions. Of course, that could be fear of the consequences of staying in or fear of the consequences of leaving. Much would depend on the campaign.

Of course, we may never get to a yes-no vote. Dave Cameron does not like the EU, but he does not want to withdraw. His favoured scenario is to 'renegotiate' after the next election when the Conservatives might have an overall majority. He would then put the renegotiated deal to the electorate. Harold Wilson took the stance of 'no entry on Tory terms' before the 1975 referendum and got a few goodies out of the EU, but essentially we stayed in on the terms agreed by Ted Heath. Dave would probably get some concessions out of the EU, but they would fall short of what Eurosceptics wanted.

Hence some Eurosceptics are calling for a yes-no referendum at the time of the next election. Conservatives are worried about a UKIP victory in the 2014 European Parliament elections, a more than likely scenario, and then losing votes to them in the following general election.

How this will all play out depends on a wide range of different factors affecting Conservative Party politics. If Labour wins, there is a different scenario (although if they were dependent on Lib Dem support, there would be another one again). Ed Miliband always jumps on any bandwagon that comes along, although usually what he does is call for a public inquiry rather than a referendum. There wouldn't be any judges left to staff the courts if all his requests were granted. However, Miliband could promise some sort of referendum, although its timing and nature would probably be left vague.

Anyway, the point is that Britain leaving the EU is a sufficiently serious possibility to start thinking what we would do then and that is what I plan to do over the next few months, starting with the nature of agricultural policy betweeen the end of the Second World War and our accession to the EU.