Brexit: The never ending story – all sense of control is lost

 

Brexit Weekly Bulletin, 18th October: ‘All sense of control is lost’ writes Philip Gilbert

 

‘But she expressed herself in many different ways, Until she lost control again. And walked upon, the edge of no escape, And laughed I’ve lost control’ ¹

 

The Brexit movement, led by UKIP, that so ardently wanted the referendum remind me of other extreme political movements of yesteryear; led by a bar-room politician, they gain respectability from the support of certain intelligentsia (who seem to favour steel-framed spectacles), gaining support by picking-on minorities and giving people someone / something to blame for their own shortcomings, before leading the population into the abyss.

We are now at the point where the people must be heard, where we step-back and think again, whilst we still can. But before that some news ‘highlights’ from this week:

 

• Andrew Bridgen, a long-time member of the European Research Group – a hard Brexit-backing group of Tory MPs – displayed a wonderful lack of understanding about the Irish border problem, claiming that everyone in England is entitled to an Irish passport, which is both baffling and untrue. Even after it was explained to him that his alarming assertion was untrue, he doubled down on his claim: ‘There’s a reciprocal agreement where I can go to Ireland and ask for an Irish passport and someone from Ireland can come to the UK and ask for a British passport. ‘We have that system. That’s the system we have, isn’t it?’

 

Errr, no it isn’t Andrew, mind out for that abyss

 

• A Brexit-supporting member of the cabinet has a simple analogy to explain whether Theresa May’s government can survive; The government will crash onto the rocks if it ends up with no deal on Brexit or indefinite membership of an EU customs union, this minister told me. ‘So we need to find a place between those two extremes’.If the prime minister opted for membership of a customs union to avoid no deal, then the minister would resign from the cabinet. If Britain fell into no-deal, then there would be no government from which to resign.The government will crash onto the rocks if it ends up with no deal on Brexit or indefinite membership of an EU customs union, this minister told me. “So we need to find a place between those two extremes”.

 

Does, this mean that no-deal enables party unity? That abyss is getting closer….

 

• The Democratic Unionist Party has vowed to oppose any new checks on goods passing between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. And the party’s Brexit spokesman has said the prospect of a no-deal Brexit is ‘probably inevitable’.

 

• The cabinet revolt, or is revolting…….hard to say, really Cabinet ministers on “resignation watch” are Brexiteers who have been careful to insist they are supporting the prime minister rather than her plan – Penny Mordaunt, spoken of as a future party leader; Esther McVey the welfare secretary, and Andrea Leadsom, the leader of the house.

 

They gathered round a cosy pizza to discuss the situation, possibly prepared by Delia Smith?

 

• Who the Evening Standard today she fears Brexit is a ‘dog’s dinner’ (hope that isn’t in her next book!) as she was unveiled as a star speaker at the biggest march to hit London for over a decade. More than 100,000 people are set to demand a people’s vote on the final terms of leaving the European Union in a demonstration led by young people from across the country.

I can hear it now; ‘lets be havin’ you’:

 

 

Oh dear.

 

And now to this weeks EU Summit; whats to say, it simply didn’t go well, we have lost all control and are isolated.

Ahead of the summit, the PM was optimistic about the chances of achieving a divorce agreement with the EU, including on the thorny issue of the N. Irish border.

‘ignore bar-room politicians who keep playing the ‘its democracy, the people have spoken’ card’

Speaking after the meeting, Antonio Tajani, president of the European Parliament, said that the British PM had offered “nothing new” in terms of substance. “There was a message of goodwill and readiness to reach an agreement, but I didn’t perceive anything substantially new in terms of content,” Tajani added.

Perhaps more tellingly, Germany and France are stepping up their preparations for a no-deal Brexit even though both publicly insist an agreement with the UK over the terms of its departure from the EU can still be achieved.

 

• Angela Merkel revealed that Germany was drawing up contingency plans, saying the government had started making ‘suitable preparations’ for the possibility of Britain leaving with no accord.
• France has published a draft bill that would allow the government to introduce new legal measures to avoid or mitigate the consequences of a hard Brexit by emergency decree, as opposed to a parliamentary vote, within 12 months of the law being passed.

 

Now, enough is enough. Whilst the Irish border issue might be the straw that breaks the camel back, Brexit goes far deeper than that. Brexit was supposed to be an historic opportunity for the UK to break free of Brussels and flex its muscles once more as a nation.

However, the result of the referendum might mean that leaving the EU leads to the incremental dis-aggregation of the UK.

As, in the case of Northern Ireland, membership of the EU, which was crucial to the Good Friday Agreement, has been essential to the subsequent preservation of the Union. The porousness of its border effectively acting as a guarantor of the peace.

Scotland, too, has benefited, last week Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader, and David Mundell, the Scottish Secretary, made clear their readiness to resign if “the integrity of the United Kingdom” is imperiled by Brexit.

Strangely, isn’t the full name of the Conservatives, the Conservative and Unionist Party?

All we have seen is a total lack of statesmanship from both Government and the Opposition, no one seems to appreciate how much is at stake. The campaigns run by both faction in 2016 were awful, did anyone ask; ‘Do we really believe that leaving the world’s largest single market will enhance our prospects’?

‘Few, if any of us voted for this Shakespearean tragedy, a single referendum should not be allowed to come before the right to change one’s mind’

Sir John Major doesn’t think so warning that, post-Brexit, ‘much of the world will now perceive Britain to be a middle-sized, middle-ranking nation that is no longer super-charged by its alliances’.

He’s right to, in ‘Brexit: ‘The Never-Ending Story’; Episode 3, ‘Little Britain’, I looked at our exports. Put simply, 54.4% of our exports go to Europe. Can anyone just turn their backs on that? Of course not.

We all deserve the right to have our say, to be heard, now that we know what the position really is. We can no longer be seduced by the classic populist trick of pretending that there are easy answers to complex challenges. There aren’t

Ford’s European boss sum s this up, saying a no-deal Brexit ‘would be pretty disastrous’ for British industry and could affect the company’s future in the UK. A no-deal outcome would ‘force us to think about what our future investment strategy for the UK would be’. He went on to say that a deal based on the EU-Canada deal would not work for Ford.

Collectively we need to take control, to pull ourselves back for the abyss our leaders are careering towards, and ignore bar-room politicians who keep playing the ‘its democracy, the people have spoken’ card.

Few, if any of us voted for this Shakespearean tragedy, a single referendum should not be allowed to come before the right to change one’s mind.

 

 

¹ Something of a variation on a theme for lyric spotters this week as we make no apologies for returning to the sublime Joy Division ; however, with the theme as ‘She’s Lost Control’ there was really no other choice – and boy, what a track.

Poignant, powerful, tragic; enjoy:

 

 

 

Philip Gilbert is a city-based corporate financier, and former investment banker.

Philip is a great believer in meritocracy, and in the belief that if you want something enough you can make it happen. These beliefs were formed in his formative years, of the late 1970s and 80s