01 February 2019
Let’s Leave…
And see what we think in twenty years’ time.
By Richard Pooley
My friend and Shaw Sheet colleague, Lynda Goetz, likes the solution to the Brexit conundrum proposed by Sir Anthony Seldon – leave the EU on March 29th, ideally with a variation of Mrs May’s deal, and have a referendum four years later to decide whether to stick with the terms of May’s deal, leave with no deal, or re-join (Lack of Trust). She may be surprised to learn that I like much of it too, even though I voted to remain in the EU. I’ll come back to Seldon’s proposal in a moment. But before doing so let me make one comment on her article. She assumes that the British have lost trust only with those politicians who voted to remain and who are now, in her words, “prepared to stoop to almost any level to ensure that [the Referendum] vote is not honoured.” She will find if she listens to her Remainer friends that there are a lot of British people who have also lost trust in those many Brexit-supporting politicians who either continue to pedal the lies of their 2016 Referendum campaign or now deny that they ever said such things (yes, Mr B. Johnson, I’m looking at you).
In fact, I am finding something in this mess which gives me some hope for the future of this fractured country to which I have recently returned. A number of MPs from across the political spectrum, Brexiteers as well as Remainers, are trying to do what they are supposed to do in our version of democracy: take account of what their constituents have said they want, and find ways of meeting their wishes which do not cause harm to them and their children. I note that nearly all these MPs are relatively young and new to the House of Commons. They are not tied to an ideology as their elders in both main parties appear to be. Let’s hope that the threat of deselection and the virulent online abuse that they receive does not make them leave the House. We will need them, Brexit or no Brexit.
As another Shaw Sheet colleague, J R Thomas, said in his excellent article two weeks ago (On The Edge), the point now must be to work out where we go next. I sent this article to my brother, an avid Brexiteer, and to a fellow British expat in France who supported Remain. I asked them what they thought of it, informing them that J R has long made the Brexit case in the pages of Shaw Sheet (as well as telling some American home truths to those of us who can see only evil in Trump and Trumpism). Both liked it for its thoughtfulness and for the analogy with the English Reformation: It feels like the 1530’s all over again, as two very similar branches of the same religion, divided in only one thing, at least at the outset, could not agree who was head of the church in England. Both had the same rituals, the same God, the same structure. But nothing divided the population so much and so violently for many generations, a division which has taken four hundred years to heal. That fight was not about different Gods; this one is very little about Europe.
So, why would a Remainer like me now support the proposal by Seldon to leave on March 29th and then have another referendum in four years’ time? Well, I said I liked “much” of it. The bit I don’t like is the suggestion to hold another referendum. No more referenda, please. Ever. They are alien to and undermine the notion of representative democracy. They were only ever supposed to be “advisory” but political parties have been forced to promise to obey the people’s will, even if that will is anything but clear. Far better for any re-evaluation of the merits and demerits of being a member of the EU to be done at a General Election (and the same goes for Scottish independence, Northern Ireland’s merger with the Republic, and any significant change to our voting system or democratic institutions). Anyway, isn’t the referendum device another alien import from Continental Europe?
I also don’t think four years is nearly enough time for us to decide whether we want to return to the EU (if they’ll have us), give them a V-sign (which the Europeans will interpret as a sign of Victory but for whom?), or carry on with whatever Mrs May has bequeathed to her successor (Mr Corbyn? Mr B. Johnson? … I’m losing hope again). The UK or whatever is left of our disunited kingdom needs at least twenty years to discover whether Brexit is a disaster, a triumph or neither. I don’t think even a No Deal Brexit in two months’ time will result in instant Armageddon for the UK. The EU Commission and individual EU countries will find ways to avoid the worst disruption to their own economies. France, for example, has been planning for a No Deal Brexit for years, not months. The Irish, north and south, will find ways of keeping the border between them as invisible as they can, however much pressure the Commission put on the Republic of Ireland to follow EU rules. I’ll be back in my village in France on March 29th. But don’t believe the flight I have booked back to Blighty in May won’t happen. If it doesn’t, striking, yellow-vested French air traffic controllers are more likely to be to blame.
But medium to long-term Brexit will do huge damage to the UK. The Scots will demand, and this time get, independence (though not as early – 2020 – as I predicted in Shaw Sheet in January 2017). The Northern Irish will have a referendum (damn it!), as the Good Friday Agreement allows them to do, and will vote to leave the UK (“by 2024”, I predicted two years ago). Unemployment will rise as international companies choose to locate their offices and factories in the EU rather than in what one foreign businessman dubbed the UK – “the European aircraft carrier”. And even British companies may find it to their financial advantage to move their head office and some operations outside the UK. Meanwhile, the UK, no longer part of a market of 500 million people, will find it has to accept whatever terms and conditions its trading partners demand in those free trade deals the Brexiteers are so keen to negotiate. Chlorinated chickens, anyone?
The UK needs to leave on March 29th, deal or no deal. The government can begin to govern again and no longer use the excuse of Brexit to explain why they are not tackling the myriad problems our society faces. “Brussels” will no longer be the bogeyman that our rulers and the media can point to as the cause of all those problems. The poison that has infected our politics not just for three years but for thirty years and more will soon be drained from the system. The Brexiteers will have won. Good. Let’s see if what they have dreamed of for all those years can really work. I sincerely hope it does. I’ll probably be dead before the inhabitants of these islands (this island?) will know if it has. So, I won’t have to face “I told you so” from Brexiteer family and friends. My grandchildren, currently not yet a year old, won’t mind hearing that their grandfather got it wrong.
Meanwhile, I can but hope that the EU undergoes major reform. Perhaps that will be the greatest benefit of Brexit. As J R Thomas said in his article: If the EU wants to survive it has to change, to embrace its citizens, and to understand their dreams. I agree. Maybe, when it has done so, the English and Welsh will wish to join that new and thriving entity.
