I’ll keep this relatively brief. No-one wants yet another exceptionally long piece on Brexit. Life is short and it’s another nice day outside. But before I go for a walk, just one observation on the latest instalment in the “Brexit means Brexit” row. The phrase, which was invented by Tory leader Theresa May to assure Remainers in denial that it really will happen (and it will), drives some of my Remainer friends absolutely potty. They tweet “Brexit means Brexit” at each other excitedly, along with #takebackcontrol, sarcastic remarks about the supposed collapse of the economy and demands for a detailed plan from Theresa May so that they can, one suspects, set about disagreeing with it and demanding another referendum, which is not going to happen
Now, I’m just putting this out there, as they say, but it is not really a mystery what “Brexit means Brexit” means. Brexit means Brexit means… the UK leaving the European Union. That’s it basically.
Now, before Hugo Dixon, or any other foot-soldiers in the Remainer Resistance who are on a difficult journey to the acceptance of reality, start shouting, I should point out that the precise form of Brexit is of course up for negotiation in discussions in which there are many moving parts. The end result could be:
1) A Soft Brexit, in which Britain secures privileged access to the EU single-market (which is a massively over-rated custom union, incidentally) and some kind of deal on control of borders, but otherwise out of the EU.
2) Hard Brexit, the “want to see something stronger, guv?” option, in which we say there is clearly no room in Berlin and Brussels to budge on this borders situation. So in a friendly way we trade as good neighbours but take our chances outside the EU’s Single Market, along with those other pathetic self-governing countries such as America, India, Australia and New Zealand.
Personally? I want to see what can emerge from the informal talks going on behind the scenes and I like that May is taking her time. But if Soft Brexit is so soft as to be indistinguishable from membership of the EU, and time is marching on, it may have to be Hard Brexit. Whatever the outcome, Britain will leave the EU because it was voted for by a clear majority in a referendum the validity of which was not questioned by Remainers when when they thought they were going to win. But let’s see what emerges in the next couple of months.
So, essentially, Brexit means… the UK leaving the European Union. And there I cite again the best letter so far to a newspaper about the implications of refusing to accept the referendum result. It came from Professor Vernon Bogdanor, to the Times, although it doesn’t seem to be on the Times site. Bogdanor voted Remain and he is a constitutional expert. He put it exceptionally well:
“Sir, I voted Remain, but clearly my standpoint has not found favour with the British people, 72 per cent of whom turned out in the referendum, the highest turnout since the the general election of 1992. Turnout seems to have been highest among Leave voters and lowest among Remain voters. Yet the former are now told by academics, lawyers and others that, as the Bishop of Durham suggests (letter, July 2), they were not voting on the EU at all but on “longstanding social grievances”. Others also have suggested that Leave voters did not know what they were doing, or were bigoted (though bigotry in the form of antisemitism is more likely to be found among university students or on the Labour left than in the pubs of Sunderland or Hartlepool). The arguments against accepting the legitimacy of the outcome of the referendum are similar to those used in the 19th century against extending the franchise. Were they to succeed, the poorer members of the community might well begin to ask whether democracy has anything at all to offer them; and that would be a very dangerous development. VERNON BOGDANOR, Professor of Government, KCL”
