Ngaire Woods, Oxford University, Opinion; Big consequences of Brexit :
Some countries can go it alone. The USA has such a big market (and firepower) that it can practically dictate the terms of its trade agreements with other countries. North Korea doesn't need them since it's closed to most of the world. But Britain is (and has been for centuries) an open trading economy. It attracts jobs and investors drawn to this English-speaking doorway to the EU and all its trading partners.
If Britain leaves the EU, it will suffer three consequences. First, it will lose foreign investment and jobs because new trade deals take an average of 28 months to negotiate - and that's too much uncertainty, for too long, for most investors. Second, the U.K. will become a rule-taker in trade negotiations. Like Switzerland in its recent deal with China, Britain will have to accept what larger partners have to offer. Third, the U.K. will lose its special access to the 60+ countries with whom the EU has agreements. In a slowing and intensely competitive global economy, these are serious handicaps to creating the jobs Britain needs.
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Ngaire Woods on the UK's trade deals outside of the EU :
If everyone in the world believed in the free market as a matter of religious faith Britain might have a chance. But that's not how trade negotiations work... and that's why Britain as part of a European market of 500 million has passed some very successful trade deals with more than sixty other countries.
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Professor Ngaire Woods is dean of the Blavatnik School of Government, and Professor of Global Economic Governance at the University of Oxford.
