Weekend Essay – Was Britain’s decision to Brexit a good idea?
Much of the talk that surrounds Brexit these days focuses on the process. Couldn’t it have been easier, just like we were promised? Couldn’t the EU have sat on the same side of the negotiating table as us instead of fighting its own corner? How did Theresa May and Boris Johnson get everything so wrong? In short, why did the whole thing have to be such a shambles?
Time then for an audit.
In the spring of 2016, with the referendum campaign in full swing, a number of factors were uppermost in the minds of British voters. In descending order of importance, I would list them as follows: immigration; a desire to give the Cameron government a kick up the backside; a general feeling that Britain, on its own, would be freer and more prosperous; and the unelected and bureaucratic nature of the European Commission and Court of Justice.
Closely tied to the above was the assumption that getting out of the EU would be a piece of cake that we could either eat or keep, or both. Brussels would take a pragmatic approach, following our lead. Its team would be made up of dull fellows, no match for our smart operators. France would posture a bit but would then accede to our reasonable demands. Germany’s only concern would be selling us cars. And that would be that. No bother. Six months tops.
Not since we were told in 1914 that the war would be over by Christmas have we so profoundly misjudged the reality of the situation.
But back to my reasons for getting out. On the first of these – immigration – it is now widely accepted that England, in particular, was gripped by a moral panic stoked up by Nigel Farage and Ukip. The perception among the public at large, including many Remainers, was that Britain was being swamped by Eastern European migrants who were taking our jobs, depressing wages, jumping the queue for social housing and getting their illnesses treated for free on the NHS. Not only that, but the ungrateful wretches even refused to learn English, making Farage feel “uncomfortable” as from time to time, when he had nothing better to do, he made his way home by train to Kent.
We now know that the great majority of EU migrants pay their taxes in full and have brought significant benefits to the UK economy, including the NHS, not least by way of their impressive skills, work ethic and levels of education. We also know that most of them have learned English, some to a level at least equal to that of their native hosts. Finally, we have been told by all sides, including Ukip and the Brexit Party, that reduced immigration from Europe will have to be matched by an increase in the number of new arrivals from the developing world – for without a continued influx we will, apparently, have to rely on our own, sadly diminished skills base.
Which brings me to the ardent wish of millions of voters to deliver a sharp rebuke to David Cameron and the Tory Party. If the British people, on their own, lack the ability to run a 21st century economy, whose fault is that? I would argue that successive governments, Labour as well as Tory, failed to do anything like enough down the years to ensure that the UK kept pace with its rivals, not only in the EU, but in Asia. We allowed our skills base to stagnate – indeed to decline – while persuading ourselves that sending more and more young people to university (thus crippling them with student debt) was the same thing as building a properly-educated workforce.
But be that as it may. From the point of view of an electorate that had seen wages fall, benefits reduced and the prospect of careers for their children replaced by an invitation to join the “gig” economy, the Tories were plainly falling short. While the rich grew ever richer, the middle class was squeezed and the working class felt betrayed. The fact that Britain’s membership of the EU had little or nothing to do with this is neither here nor there. The voters wanted an end to the Tories’ flagship austerity, and not giving Cameron the vote he wanted on Europe was the simplest way of registering their displeasure.
The third reason for the 51.9 per cent Leave vote is less easy to pin down. Against all reason, the British remain a post-imperial people. They expect people to listen to what they have to say. India has been independent since 1947; most of our African “possessions” ran down the Union Flag in the 1960s. Undeterred, we cling to the belief that we are a core nation, seated at the same high table as America and China, with a potential that was choked off by Brussels but will be realised once more in its full glory as soon as we – like our erstwhile colonies – regain our freedom.
Simply put, this is a nonsense. Britain boasts a highly-developed, if fragile, economy that on the eve of the referendum, in spite of all its faults, was the world’s fifth-largest. There was nothing to prevent us from increasing our trade with the world outside of the EU. If we wanted to sell more to China or India, or for that matter Australia, we had only to follow the examples of Germany, Belgium and France. Our problem was that we had steadily less to offer that they wished to buy. For good or ill, we had decided during the Thatcher era to become a service economy, inflating the City of London to the point where it became the world’s number one financial hub while at the same time allowing the bulk of our once-vaunted manufacturing sector to fall into decline.
Again, this had nothing to do with the EU and everything to do with purely domestic priorities. But when the gung-ho wing of the Tory Party, egged on by Farage, began to talk of a buccaneering Britain desperate to free itself from European restraints, millions were convinced. Not only could we get rid of EU migrants and give Cameron a kick in the pants, we could also re-launch the good ship Royal Sovereign and go out once more to dazzle the world.
Well, we’ve since learned that setting sail is not the same thing as bringing home the bacon. The world is a big place and Britain – currently the world’s sixth-largest economic power, shortly, with the rise of India, to be the seventh – is in no position to dictate terms. We can be prosperous (no bad thing, I think you will agree) but we cannot be dominant, and if we wish to make the most of what we’ve got, then the EU – surely – is our natural home.
And so to the undemocratic nature of Brussels. If we were to listen to Michael Gove or Liam Fox [who he?–Ed], the EU is like an old-style multinational corporation whose products are obsolescent and which is run solely for the benefit of its directors, who never listen to anyone but pay themselves huge bonuses out of ever-declining revenues.
This is a travesty of the truth. The EU is the most successful trading bloc in the world, to which we send 45 per cent of our exports. The Commission does remarkable work in regulating the internal market and maintaining environmental standards across all 28 member states. It has successfully negotiated some of the biggest and most complicated trade deals in history. It fines multinationals that seek to avoid tax. The court, whose judges are appointed in exactly the same way that British judges are appointed, decides cases without fear or favour. The directly-elected European Parliament, of which Farage has been a member for more than 20 years, has gained significant new powers in recent years, moving it closer to the heart of events. The European Council, on which Boris Johnson now sits, takes all the big, strategic decisions, which are then referred back to both Strasbourg and London. Who, in all good faith, could deny this? What other continent has delivered a quarter as much for its people in the years since World War II?
This is not to say that Europe is without its problems. Which country or continent isn’t struggling in the age of Trump? It needs to loosen up and hand back some of the powers to the member states that it acquired shortly after the millennium, when – in advance of the financial crisis that began not in the Eurozone, but in Wall Street – it felt it could do no wrong. Much remains to be done to stabilise the euro and to redress the imbalance in general prosperity between north and south. Meanwhile, half the developing world looks to be determined to break in to Europe and enjoy its benefits. Mass-migration has an urgency that the Union as a whole has failed to address. But in this, too, the 27 are far from alone. As we have seen this week with the arrival of dozens of small boats off the Channel coast, the UK ‘s island status cannot protect it indefinitely from the global tide. To pretend that Britain can secure its borders on its own is demonstrably untrue. Albania is not a member of the EU, yet Albanian gangs bring in thousands of illegals each year. Somalia is not a member of the EU. Nor is Nigeria. But the numbers from both countries, and many others, are rising month by month. In what way is that “taking back control”?
The last 12 months have revealed the Pandora’s Box that was opened by Britain’s decision to opt for Brexit. Even if Operation Yellowhammer exaggerates the dangers of No Deal, the risk of economic dislocation is real. The economy will contract; there will be shortages; factories will close; there will be queues of vehicles at Dover and Calais. Two million British citizens could find themselves under pressure in a Europe that increasingly treats them as aliens. Ten years from now, stripped of Scotland and Northern Ireland, the UK could drop out of the G7, just as it could lose its seat (to the EU) on the UN Security Council.
More than anything else, what we have already lost is the world’s respect. Our political leaders have been exposed as useless – the worst by far in living memory. Europe is embarrassed for us. In America, only Donald Trump thinks we know what we are doing. China, like India, barely hides its contempt. If you want to know how Britain will be regarded a decade from now, think of Spain in the eighteenth century.
So, my question today is this: do you, dear reader, any longer believe that Britain made the right decision on June 23, 2016? Bear in mind that Europe’s response to Brexit was never going to be positive. Why would it? It was we, after all, who created the problem and we who had to come up with a workable solution, which so far we have signally failed to do. Beyond that, do you honestly believe that Britain will fare better in an increasingly chaotic world than it would have done as a leading member of the EU? If so, I wish you good luck. I wish us all good luck. For we will need it.