Scribblings

Brexit: Not So Glory Days

I remember turning on the television on the morning of June 24, 2016, to learn that by the narrow margin of 52% to 48%, the UK had voted to leave the European Union. My immediate reaction was: “Wow, do they know what they are doing?” But the decision had been taken. David Cameron, the then Prime Minister, had played all his cards and lost. He was gone from office within hours. It would be up to others to decide what Brexit meant.

And from early on, it quickly became clear that, other than leaving the hated EU, Brexiters had no idea how to manage the consequences of what was about to happen. During the campaign, they had deliberately failed to spell out what Brexit would mean to keep together a coalition of those who, on the one hand, saw quitting the EU as a turn to working-class protectionism and closed borders, and, on the other, those who dreamt of an ultra-free-market Singapore-upon-Thames. Not to mention out-and-out racists who just hated foreigners of any sort.

I had not followed the Brexit debate with much attention. Like many, I had assumed that the decent people of the UK would not do something so stupid as to walk out of their biggest export market, that they would not erect barriers to trade and the movement of people where none existed while they were inside the EU. But they were told by the Brexiters that they could leave and there would be no downside consequences, just upside benefits because if they voted to leave, the UK would hold all the cards and the EU would cut a deal with them on beneficial terms.

The empire mentality of the public school ruling elite continued to believe that the world revolved around the UK and who, even to this day, cannot accept that the UK is just a minor power off the Eurasian landmass. Its navy once ruled the world. Now much of what remains of it cannot even put out to sea but is in dock for maintenance. As the former Europe minister in the Blair government, Denis McShane, once caustically put it, the British navy has more admirals than ships.

Very quickly, Brexit turned from being a simple political decision taken by a narrow majority into a new religion. Brexit became the sacred “will of the people”, never to be questioned. A cadre of Brexit high priests soon emerged and what might be described as a Brexit theology began to develop. These high priests claimed they would lead the people into the promised land that would see them being able to come and go and live in Europe as they saw fit, while cutting great trade deals with the rest of the world, especially with the US.

Oh, and as an extra bonus, the British would just be the first out of the EU, with other countries soon following. The EU would implode, and a Europe of sovereign free-trading nations would take its place, wisely led by a newly invigorated UK.

These fantasies would soon collide with the rock of reality. The European Union was not about to bend to the will of the Brexiters. Nor was it about to break up. If anything, Brexit made the EU stronger as the 27 remaining members determined that they would not be dictated to by an ex-member. (See this from the Guardian here)

There would be no soft Brexit landing. No cake and eat it. Just the brutality of isolationism. If the UK wanted to be alone, well, it could be alone.

There was a blite assumption on the part of Brexiters that Ireland would soon follow the UK out of the EU as it had once followed the UK into the old European Economic Community. But the Ireland of 2016 was no longer the impoverished, agricultural-based economy that it was in 1972. It was the European home of many major US tech and pharma multinationals, and Ireland was never going to give that up to again become dependent on a shrivelling UK market. What has happened during the past ten years has borne out the wisdom of that choice. While the UK economy has spluttered, Ireland has continued to grow. The island of Ireland was to loom very large in the Brexit saga, but a detailed comment on that is for another day.

Brexit prime ministers, first Theresa May and then Boris Johnson, twisted and turned and believed six impossible things before breakfast every day as they sought to negotiate an exit arrangement with the EU that would be cost-free and give the UK all the benefits of the EU single market with none of the obligations.

Such a deal was never going to be on offer. No one country was bigger or more important than the European Union and certainly not one that was leaving and behaving badly as it did. It is a fundamental truism of any negotiation: never reward bad behaviour because rewarding it just encourages it. And the UK behaved badly on the way out, to say the least.

So, the UK eventually left the EU with a miserable thing of a deal and has paid the economic price ever since. There were no sunny Brexit uplands, just the soggy bogland of a low-growth economy and long queues at airports and seaports as non-EU Brits waited to get their passports stamped or their biometric details recorded.

How much has Brexit cost the UK economy? No one can ever know for sure, but anywhere between 4% and 8% would not be a bad guess. Not to mention what I once called the “Brexit of small things” like queues at borders, the extra cost and paperwork to take your dog on holidays with you, the limit on the time you can spend in the EU, 90 days in 180, and the rest. If you happen to be a rock ‘n roll band, trying to do gigs in Europe has become a nightmare. No chance of getting “Lost in France”.

Now, ten years on, there can only be one verdict. Brexit was a bust, a dystopian economic nightmare. But, worse than that, it has become a well of poison in British politics. It has let the evil genie of ethno-nationalism out of the bottle. Hatred of the “other” as represented by immigrants has moved into the right-of-centre mainstream, and some on the left are not immune to the virus. Labour “red-wallism” is just racism by another, proletarian name.

The English ruling elite never wanted to be part of an “ever closer” Europe. They kicked against the idea from the start, refused to consider membership of the coal and steel community in the early 1950s. Churchill saw the UK at the centre of three overlapping circles: the colonial empire; the English-speaking Anglo-sphere (which included the US); and continental Europe. Affiliated with all three, but beholden to none. In other words, a global power. Suez showed that it was no such thing.

Slowly, after Suez, the long journey to joining with the rest of Western Europe began, but always grudgingly, rooted in economic calculation, never with any idealism in the heart. The UK and Europe were never anything other than an arranged marriage, two people who lived in the same house but with little in common. It was always going to end badly.

Today, most people in the UK know that Brexit was a mistake and that it has cost them dearly. Opinion polls show that a majority would now vote to join the EU again.

In my own view, it is not going to happen now, or anytime soon. Maybe it will in a universe far, far away. As an Irish person, would I like to see the UK again join the EU? Yes, definitely I would. Would I support the UK joining again? Yes, definitely.

So, why do I say it is not going to happen?

First, UK politics will not allow it. UK politics was once dominated by two great parties, the Tories and Labour. The Liberals, as they then were, had a small walk-on role. Today, even if it is “out of Europe” UK politics are European, fragmented across multiple parties, with a new one appearing almost every day. all jammed into an archaic FPTP first past the post electoral system. It is conceivable that a party with just 25% of the vote could form a government. The current Labour government got just 34% of the vote at the last election, and things have split even further since then. How could the EU do a deal with such an unstable entity? How long would it take to do a deal and what guarantee would there be that it would last? A waste of time and effort.

Second, relations with the UK are not an EU priority. The UK is just not that important, no matter what UK commentators might think. Russian military aggression, Chinese commercial aggression, American “firstism”, demographic challenges, including immigration, and candidates for enlargement. Who wants to spend time talking to a UK that does not know its own mind?

Third, as Jean-Claude Juncker said in a recent interview with the Financial Times, “The first cut is the deepest, baby I know. The first cut is the deepest”. OK, he did not use those words, but that is what he meant. Like in any relationship, you cannot end it, walk out berating the other party, bad-mouthing them as you leave, and then, when you realise you have made a mistake, expect them to graciously take you back. Life and politics do not work that way. (Also, see this from the Financial Times here.)

So, ten years on. The UK is off the European train which continues to pull away into the distance. Will the train stop to allow the UK to catch up and get on board again? Not anytime soon. The UK made its existential Brexit decision. Now, it is condemned to live with the consequences of that decision.

As every schoolchild knows, you cannot put Humpty-Dumpty back together again.

Coda

I am not persuaded that the change of PM from Starmer to Burnham will make much difference. Burnham might not be as rigid as Starmer was about the “red lines”. The most I think he could do would be to announce that he will drop the “red lines” at the next election and in the meantime seek preparatory talks with the EU. But would the EU be prepared to invest any time in such talks for the reasons stated above?

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose