Hotel California?
We checked out but, in their hearts, some never left.
Why not just campaign to re-join the EU?
we would not get a good deal
It is likely that a consensus to re-join would be hard-fraught. The present government would be just as likely to sanction the process to re-join as it would be to approve a Scottish referendum. The time taken to negotiate membership would be long. The terms of membership would require a commitment to ‘ever-closer-union’. As time goes by, the EU will seek to forge closer internal ties with nations called upon to surrender sovereignty in certain key fields.
· the EU aspires to be a federal union
The Central European Bank needs greater powers (and sovereignty ceded by members) in order to do its job. Membership of the Euro and budgetary constraints by all members is key to that goal. Further actions would follow to pool military and fiscal resources which would underpin a common foreign policy.
What then should we do?
seek to migrate towards a second-tier of membership or association
This would involve being a member of the single market. Services would be included in that market. Common customs arrangements would be observed and freedom of movement assured. Resources for budgetary control, military deployment and taxation would be separate amongst associate members.
It would be better if we were able to negotiate with the strength of other supporters. This will probably involve delicate skills of international diplomacy with nearby States, not already members of the EU.
This would be our version of ‘ever-closer-union’, or ‘being a good neighbour’, which might be a more persuasive strap-line.
What do the voters think?
No one likes to be told that they made the wrong decision or that they lacked the knowledge or intelligence to assess the consequences of any decision. It is also unlikely that many of those who voted for Brexit will be persuaded that they were duped by false facts or propaganda. The fact that Boris Johnson enjoys strong support today despite the government’s performance over Brexit, the environment or the pandemic is testament to this.
It will therefore be hard to associate the economic disaster of Brexit with that label within a sizable proportion of the population. Other consequences will similarly be obscured with associated reasoning - the pandemic was an Act of God. Scottish independence was inevitable. Environment policies were a success – look how we reduced our carbon footprint. Together with these impacts will be a government campaign to extol the virtues of Brexit; new trade deals (regardless of their merit); a countryside policy that ‘greens-up the land’; huge infrastructure spending and industrial subsidies. Failures of the EU in (e.g.) areas of farm management policy and vaccination will also not escape censure by the UK press.
How to carry the nation with us?
Brexit was as much an emotional call as it was xenophobic. We should not hope for an economic recession nor for continued racism. We should however clearly argue that many issues are still predominate and were always independent of EU membership.
The ‘north-south’ divide, energy poverty, inequality and deprivation, the ‘left-behind’ and many other issues will be hard to solve. The EU did a better job of supporting deprived areas within the UK than Conservative governments have or are likely to do. The strength of purpose and economic heft of the EU will do a better job of (e.g.) reigning in global industries (in terms of tax evasion and data security) than the UK alone will achieve.
These and other aspects of our future performance should be either decoupled from EU-phobia or identified with Brexit where appropriate. More than this, a government so anti-EU should be removed from office for its own sake. In time the natural instincts of Tory philosophy will return and with it social programmes enacted during the pandemic will vanish. This means the political opposition will need positive campaigning for a difference which recognises our dependence on Europe and the present government’s (not the individual’s) ignorance of this.
Most of all we need a clear focus for the campaign, pragmatic responses and the charisma of effective leadership, none of which featured in the pre-Brexit Remainer world.
