This is everything that’s wrong with the Norway model for Brexit

I spoke to experts on the country’s relationship with the EU about whether the deal is a good option for the UK, and their answers were less encouraging than you’d think

Parliament has voted against leaving the EU with the Brexit deal we’ve negotiated. Parliament has voted against leaving the EU without a deal. Parliament has voted against having a second referendum. Parliament has voted against simply stopping Brexit by revoking Article 50.

Plenty of attention has been on the idea of a softer Brexit. Among these options: a Norway-type deal, branded “Common Market 2.0”. Norway, outside of the EU, nevertheless seems to thrive in Europe. Nigel Farage may deny it now but he used to be a passionate defender of the UK getting a Norway-style deal. That was before he got the result he wanted in 2016. But in the indicative votes process, our politicians weren’t scrutinising the options ahead of them properly. So we at Our Futre Our Choice decided to do it ourselves.

When we went to Oslo, we spoke to journalists, business leaders and politicians: all of them told us that the Norway deal, membership of the European Economic Area (EEA), is utterly essential to Norway’s economy. It gives them membership of the single market, meaning anything made legally in Norway is automatically legal to sell across the EU, and vice versa, because regulations are the same. That lowers prices for businesses, which in turn lowers prices for consumers. Agriculture and fisheries are excluded from that, but Norway still follows many of the regulations set by the EU in those areas in order to avoid costly border friction.

But would that work for the UK? If you threw in a customs union, it would solve the Irish border problem, which would allow us to leave the EU without damaging the peace process. But 52 per cent of voters wanted to leave the EU, primarily to have more control over their laws. Norway has objectively less. The UK has 73 of the 750 members of the European parliament, giving it three times the voting power of the average EU country.

Norway has zero votes in the European parliament, council or commission. It does have a joint committee with the other EEA members (Iceland and Liechtenstein), which has to implement the regulations EU countries set, but its veto power has never been successfully used. Furthermore, if one country tries to veto and digs its heels in, it risks all EEA countries losing market access.

Given that the UK isn’t currently perceived as the biggest fan of following EU rules, many of those we spoke to in Norway weren’t thrilled at the idea of the UK joining their group. So it wouldn’t work for the 48 per cent who voted to stay in the EU, but also wouldn’t work for the 52 per cent who wanted more control over their laws.

Brexiteers promised that leaving the bloc would be great for the UK fishing industry. Norway is outside of the EU common fisheries policy, so it has total control over its fish with no EU quotas and sells 60 per cent of its fish to EU countries. It has a number of deals in place which reduce tariffs to 0-13 per cent. Given that the UK sells 49 per cent of all fish it catches (66 per cent of exports) to EU countries, that would mean half of UK fish would become 0-13 per cent less competitive.

But at least that’s better than a no-deal Brexit where tariffs could be up to 23 per cent. That’s why a doctoral fellow at the University of Oslo, specialising in EU-Norway relations, joked that a no-deal Brexit might be “good for Norway”, as it would gain an advantage over the UK.

You’ve heard that Brexit might mean cheaper food, as imports won’t face the EU’s common external tariff. Well, the EU does have tariffs on agricultural products, but so does Norway, as it’s outside the customs union and sets its own.

A farmer in Northern Ireland told me that if we left the EU, he would have to cease farming partly due to cheap imports. To keep Norwegian farmers in business, the tariffs on food going into Norway are high, just as they would be to keep UK farmers alive. That’s why food prices are much higher in Norway than they are in the EU.

As Jonas Gahr Store, the leader of the Norwegian Labour Party, put it, the Norway deal is “a very Norwegian deal”. It works for Norway. It wouldn’t work for the UK.

Femi Oluwole is co-founder of Our Future Our Choice