What you can pick up in Iceland

It is no mystery why British Eurosceptics love Iceland. A bracing visit to Reykjavik is all it takes to see what the European Union could have been, if Brussels had stuck to the path of free trade and shunned ever closer union. Like pilgrims to a shrine, British Tories come to observe how Iceland enjoys the best of all worlds, thanks to its membership of the European Free Trade Association and — equally vitally — its stubborn non-membership of the EU.

Iceland enjoys the great prize Brussels has to offer: access to the EU single market. Yet Iceland is not a member of the Common Agricultural Policy. Iceland can strike its own free trade agreements with the rest of the world — unlike Britain.

Reykjavik can veto the screeds of EU laws and directives that come with single-market membership. (The veto has never been used. Instead Iceland secures occasional exemptions on the grounds that it is so small, and so far from the rest of the single marketplace.)

Before British fishermen can trawl for British fish, UK ministers have to stay up all night pleading with foreign colleagues in the airless backrooms of Brussels. Outside the Common Fisheries Policy, Iceland can take a different approach. When its seas are trespassed by foreign trawlers, Iceland has, in its day, sent out coastguard cutters with names like Thor to cut their nets, then ram them.

And here, at this stirring point, is where pro-withdrawal British Eurosceptics usually leave things. Go for a similar deal to Iceland’s, is their conclusion, and grab back our freedom. But there is a serious — and previously unreported hitch — to this plan.

The canny men who run Iceland, robust Eurosceptics all, do not actually believe that Britain could replicate their happy arrangements. They go further. They think that from the perspective of Iceland’s self-interest, a British attempt to join the cosy Efta club could be positively dangerous, like allowing an elephant into a rowing boat.