Britain will regret Brexit as the EU reforms itself

The well of anger against Britain is deep within the 27 remaining nations of the European Union. If those in the Brexit camp think that it is they who have had to put up with EU arrogance and intransigence all these years, imagine what our soon-to-be ex-partners think about us, standing half inside, half outside the door for four decades shouting abuse. More to the point, imagine how they will feel when we finally put in our application for some kind of “deal,” in which we claim most of the benefits of membership without having to pay all but a fraction of the dues.

For that, gentle readers, is exactly what Britain will now seek to achieve, and take it not from me, but from Europe’s leaders, led by Angela Merkel and Jean-Claude Juncker, it is not going to happen.

If we want continued access to the Single Market and passport rights for the City of London into the Eurozone, there will be a cost. Not only will we have to pay a full share share of the EU budget while having no voice in the Commission, Council or Parliament, but the immigration question will remain precisely what it was on the day David Cameron called the referendum.

It is after their belated realisation that such is the case that some Leavers are now distancing themselves from assurances they gave only last week that EU immigration into the EU would soon be “controlled” and that Europe’s governments, guided by self-interest, would swiftly be brought to heel on the question of the UK’s “legitimate” demands. Their backtracking – amounting in some cases to outright lies – is the most despicable feature of the unfolding debacle.

The reason the Outers are in no hurry to trigger actual, as distinct from theoretical, Brexit is, of course, that they have no idea how to proceed. Not so our erstwhile partners. France, though concerned that the referendum contagion might spread, is quietly jubilant. It looks forward to the implosion of the City of London and the transfer of much of its business to Paris. More worryingly, Germany’s mood switched overnight from warm and sympathetic to cold and self-interested. Juncker, as President of the Commission, has meanwhile wasted no time in circling the wagons. He says he will work to create a united Europe until his dying day. He has banned all contacts between EU nations and Britain “by presidential decree” and has already spoken (in French) of removing English as one of the EU’s official languages. The Luxembourger wants us out, bag and baggage, the sooner the better.

Elsewhere, America (Trump or no Trump) has begun its pivot from London to Berlin, with barely a thought for the “special relationship”. Russia, naturally, is gloating at the havoc we have caused; Japan is mystified; China and India can scarcely conceal their contempt. Even our friends in Canada, Australia and New Zealand – the “kith and kin” on whom we turned our backs when we chose the Common Market over the Commonwealth – are shaking their heads in disbelief. They have moved on; we have moved backwards.

And, to cap it all – the icing on the urinal cake – Scotland is getting ready to embrace its own independence from England’s independence, to be followed within a surprisingly short space of time by Northern Ireland – a province whose future as an integral part of the UK (“as British as Finchley”) has been rendered all but unviable by the political and economic regression foisted on it by Brexit.

So well done Leave campaigners! You knew not what you did. You never thought it would happen. But as the Scots would say, y’ken noo. I wouldn’t mind if you’d been hoist by your own petard. I’d have enjoyed that. But you’ve put a bloody bomb under the rest of us as well.

Still … mustn’t grumble. It’s not all gloom and doom, after all. From an EU perspective, the throbbing boil that was Britain has been lanced, and while the puss has spattered far and wide, the mess can be cleaned up and the healing process is underway.

Lovers of irony will be painfully aware that Britain’s root and branch critique of the EU is now, at last, bearing fruit. Politicians from every corner of the Continent are falling over themselves to proclaim their conversion to reform. In Brussels, Donald Tusk, the pro-British President of the Council of Ministers, as well as Juncker and his anglophile deputy Frans Timmermans, have pledged themselves to a more democratic, more accountable Union that abjures unnecessary regulation and gives member states the freedom to pursue policies outside of the treaties that accord with their own culture and traditions. Even that supreme gallic tosser Nicolas Sarkozy has joined the call to action.

In Strasbourg on Tuesday, where a graceless Nigel Farage was roundly booed as he unleashed the first of no-doubt many parting shots at his EU foes, there were calls by MEPs of all parties not just for unity, but for meaningful reform and a reconnection with voters.

My guess is that the Europe that emerges over the next ten years will be markedly different from the one Britain is about to leave. I should not exaggerate. The changes will not be fundamental. They will not reduce the EU to a mere Common Market. But they will be significant and, poignantly, are likely to echo many of the themes outlined by David Cameron in his 2013 Bloomberg speech.

The Commission, a pompous, self-regarding busybody of an institution, could find itself reined in. Its unique right, never properly explained, to propose legislation is already under review, increasing the likelihood that it will in future be obliged to stick to its central brief: supervision and negotiation. If the present, reformist mood is maintained, no longer will Junker, or his successors, be listened to as if only they, in the manner of De Gaulle, Franco or Ireland’s Eamonn De Valera, can sense, deep-down, what it is that the people of Europe truly want.

Heads of government, acutely aware of wounds opening up in the body politic, can be expected to respond with greater attentiveness and sympathy to issues and ideas raised by individual member states. There will be more debate, more give and take. The Council will learn to proceed with increased caution and no longer to ride roughshod over national interests. Future treaties, other than those needed to safeguard the single currency, are likely to be tidying-up exercises, leaving member states with greater freedom to reflect their individual personalities.

The Parliament can hardly expand. It is too big and too boring already. But its remit can be refined so that it becomes more like the U.S. Senate, holding member states and the Commission to account for their actions while submitting all proposed legislation to intense scrutiny. Most of all, the scandalously neglected concept of subsidiarity, under which laws and regulations are supposed to be decided at the most appropriate level – Brussels, Westminster, Edinburgh, Wolverhampton, Little Gidding – is poised to reassert itself as a guiding principle.

Beyond this, it is possible, even likely, that changes will be enacted in the rules governing freedom of movement. Germany is in favour of restricting access to benefits, as are France and the Netherlands – though not, for obvious reasons, the East Bloc. It is a question of how and to what end. No one among the 27 is about to say that citizens of one country should not be able to seek work (or retire) in another. But levels of benefit and the automatic right to remain no matter what could well be adjusted.

Britain would have benefited from all of the above, including a properly invested Eurozone to which it had automatic right of access. The sad fact is, post-Brexit, its role has been reduced to that of a battered Moses. We shall see the Promised Land only from afar.

Is this so bad? Does it matter? Yes. We could have been pioneers in Europe. But we rejected that role early on as too insignificant for a great nation. In the 1980s, we could have been reformers. Instead, seeing ourselves as mavericks, we huffed and puffed and tried to blow the house down. Latterly, we could have been leaders, bringing sense and direction to EU foreign policy, perhaps even to the creation of a tightly-focused European rapid reaction force. But no, that was not for us. We were too “special” to be bracketed with the states with which we had been feuding and conspiring for a thousand years. We preferred to work with America, which, having kicked us out in 1783, now prefers to work with the EU.

So here we are and here, unless somebody – please! – can pull a rabbit out of the hat, we look set to remain – the doughty inhabitants of Cold Comfort Farm. The European juggernaut is undergoing necessary repairs and will then move on without us, its leaders’ howls of rage replaced, over time, by sighs of relief. But at least we’ll be rid of those bloody immigrants, won’t we? Except that, oh dear, we won’t.