Lost
Speaking as an UK national and resident, we are lost. We’re in an unpleasant place (with 9% inflation, stagnant growth, a major cost of living crisis affecting disproportionately the poorest among us, difficulties recruiting labour for all sorts of occupations, not least the NHS… and I could go on virtually ad nauseam).
Most of us, including those who voted Brexit and still seem wedded to the concept, are prepared to acknowledge that we’re lost. Gone are the days when Leave voters would say “we haven’t given it a chance yet”, aside from a few die-hards.
The thing is, when you’re lost and asking for directions, the first question you’re going to be asked is “where are you?”. And we’re apparently not allowed to mention Brexit. Economists are broadly agreed that a significant amount of the inflation and the stagnant growth are due to Brexit, but the government will not allow talk of Brexit, and the BBC and much other broadcast media seem to have been cowed into avoiding any mention of Brexit as well (not to mention that the majority of the press is still trying to find positives in Brexit). The BBC’s “Countryfile” programme recently had a short piece on difficulties caused by Brexit in farming, and there was a deluge of protest from Leave-voting viewers that they had dared to suggest there was anything negative about Brexit.
It is not always useful to rehearse how you got there when describing where you are. That, I think, is the main thing which produced those howls of protest – the thought is that they voted Leave, it’s clearly a disaster, and they are therefore to blame. No-one really likes admitting that they’re to blame, and some (including our PM) avoid doing it like the plague. We can’t, in any event, retrace our steps on Brexit completely. Many things have changed irreversibly, such as the movement of companies and European institutions out of the country. We could never expect to get back the discount we had on membership contributions. I’ve no wish to berate people for their vote back in 2016 – what is done is done, and we need to move on.
But we can’t move on successfully if, returning to my analogy of being lost and asking for directions, we won’t consider one or more of the possible routes out. Clearly, in this case, we could massively improve our trading position by regulatory alignment (which would remove the need for a large number of checks at borders, “non-tariff barriers”), rejoining the customs union (removing more) or rejoining the single market (removing all of them plus allowing us to get migrant workers from Europe again and restoring the position of our Financial Services industry). None of those would require rejoining the EU, so the sanctity of the Brexit decision would be preserved. The trouble is, our hypothetical friend on the phone is suggesting that we take the road marked “regulatory alignment” (for instance), and we’re being told that isn’t a route. We can’t do that, despite the fact that the original set of Brexit options included all three of those possibilities.
No, instead, the government rejects three of the four directions available and doesn’t even stop at the crossroads we’re at, it keeps suggesting that we motor on down the same disastrous road by tearing up the Northern Ireland protocol. Which will give us a trade war with Europe on top of our existing woes, and (as it will be a breach of the Withdrawal Agreement and probably prejudice the Good Friday Agreement as well) will break international law and demolish what’s left of our international reputation. No-one will want to make agreements with us after that.
The route we’re on runs over a cliff. Please can we pause, accept where we are, and decide that we don’t have to plummet to an even worse national disaster.