Eyre Lines

Three years ago, we voted in a referendum, and by a modest but not wafer-thin majority, those who voted, voted to leave the European Union. At the time, I head a lot of reasons given for people voting to leave, and a lot of differing expectations about what leaving would actually mean. Many who voted did so on a rather fine balance between a “leave” and a “remain” vote (and I note in that connection that Boris Johnson prepared both a pro-leave and a pro-remain opinion piece, so he was at least somewhat representative of a country which took a very marginal decision to leave – and that after being a major contributor to the enthusiasm of some to leave through his largely fictional columns for the Telegraph, which unfortunately people often believed).

Of those I talked to who voted Leave, the vast majority expected to end up with a trade deal like Norway or Canada, or perhaps Switzerland. I’ve previously written about why I think the deal we currently have, remaining IN the EU, is superior to any of those options. Some voted that way as a protest vote against the way David Cameron had been running the country, without any expectation that the vote would succeed (and I’ve noted previously that even the arch-Brexiteer Nigel Farage didn’t expect to win, even on the evening of the vote). A significant number of people who wanted us to remain just didn’t vote, because they thought it a foregone conclusion that the vote would be to remain – and I’m sure David Cameron thought that when he campaigned on the basis of calling a referendum and then did so.

I’ve also commented that, far from deriding the House of Commons as unable to make up it’s mind and get on with things, I think they have been pretty accurately representing the population as a whole (and we are a representative democracy, not a direct democracy). We were

So, I ask myself, how have we arrived at a situation where, though we were most definitely in two minds about whether to leave or stay, where most of those who wanted to leave expected a trade deal not much different from the trading relationships we had previously had, the options on the table appear to be either:-
(a) a no-deal Brexit (which almost all commentators agree would be an economic disaster for the country) or
(b) a hastily cobbled together “deal” which commits us to 33 billion pounds in transitional costs, erects a customs border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK and, most saliently, contains absolutely no assurances that after a little over a year’s transitional period, we would have any trade deal at all, far less the Norway/Canada type model.

Looking at its terms, it (in common with the previous Theresa May deal) is predicated on us leaving the customs union, which means that 44% of our exports and 53% of our imports will be subject to administrative burdens even if there are no tariffs, again in common with that deal, but in stronger terms, it is predicated on us not having the same protections against unreasonable labour conditions, food safety and product safety and environmental protection, and it withdraws us from all Europe-wide information sharing and other cooperative ventures – even the European Court of Human Rights. It also leaves the issue of a possible hard border in Ireland up to a simple majority vote of the Northern Ireland Assembly, which would actually let the Unionists break the Good Friday agreement which brought civil strife in Northern Ireland to an end.

It is, as one might expect from any agreement reached in a hurry, a pretty bad agreement.

The main thing is, it definitely looks to a trade deal not as good as that for Norway, and it’s dubious that it looks to one as good as Canada. The whole tenor of it seems to indicate that we’ll end up on terms which are not specially favoured in any way over more distant EU trading partners…

And that is most definitely not what the majority of my Brexit-supporting friends voted for three years ago. Curiously, though, some of them who expected a very close trading partnership with the EU three years ago are now content (or at least resigned) to accept no-deal or something close to it. Why? Probably because they are tired of this going on, and on, and on, and think that this will bring an end to that (it won’t, of course, because we still need to negotiate an actual trade deal with the EU…). The refrain of Tory Brexiteers is now “let’s just get this done”, and I am SO sick of hearing that.

I see this as the first factor at work, exhaustion. We are, it seems, supposed to surrender to a really bad deal because it’s too much work to carry on fighting.

The second factor I see at work is path-dependence. Our avilable options for the future are governed by the decisions we have already made. Granted, in the case of Brexit, there is relatively little which has been done which cannot be undone, but the perception is definitely that we have collectively made a decision (much reinforced by Brexiteers saying “the people have voted, now we have to act on that”); the agreement, if parliament does vote for it, represents another step in that direction. I will freely grant that that perception is an example of the slippery slope fallacy, but it is a very real factor.

The third factor is another fallacy, the sunk cost fallacy. It is a fact that we have already, as a country, lost a very great deal by having Brexit looming for so long – commentators estimate over 400,000 jobs have been lost as a result so far, and that the damage to the economy has been around 66 billion pounds so far. Johnson knows that, having argued in the House today that we needed to accept the deal to put an end to cotinuing damage to our nation and increasing acrimony in the nation, clearly appealing to just that fallacy. The sunk cost fallacy says that we’ve lost so much already, we ought to just plough ahead and try to make a success of it – though in fact estimates of future cost range between around 8% of GDP and 20%, and clearly a significant amount of that could still be avoided.

I think the sunk cost fallacy also applies to our national reputation, which has suffered a huge blow (the only reason my American friends are not holding us up as a laughing stock is that they elected Trump in the same year…) and to the personal reputations of those who admitted to voting for Brexit; again, the feeling is that we just have to, somehow, go ahead and hope that in some sense it can be demonstrated to have been a good thing, because otherwise they’ll just look like total idiots.

Those who are busily saying “we just need to get on with it”, “I just want it to be over” and “there’s no other option than no deal or Boris’ deal” are just falling for one or more of those fallacies. The answer, of course, if we want the damage to stop, is to stop banging our head against a wall and revoke the Article 50 notice.

(addendum – I’ve explanded on the slippery slope in another post)