Guest post by Sackcloth & Ashes
The events of the morning of the 24th June have come as something of a shock to me. I’m not going to say that it was the worst day of my life, as it would be a fatuous assertion lacking in a sense of proportion. I’ve lost both my parents, I remember crying over footage of 9/11 and other terrorist barbarities, had friends of mine wounded in war (and wondered if they would make it through the day), and have had far worse moments than one in which an exercise in democracy did not go the way I wanted to. I am, and will be, one of the 48.1%. My side lost, and now I’ve got to accept the outcome.
I will admit that since Friday morning I had been feeling anger and despair. I know I have made intemperate remarks here about the result on HP, and I apologise now for the invective I showed towards fellow visitors. You did not deserve it, and I have no excuse for my invective.
I know people who voted for BREXIT. They are my friends and members of my family. I have listened to their reasons for voting, and know that they asked the same questions – about the economy, society, security, our place in the world, our relations with our European neighbours, the fate of future generations of Britons – as I did. It’s just that they, along with 51.9% of Britons, came up with a different answer.
Saying that all Leavers are racists or self-centred baby-boomers is as inflammatory and as insulting as saying that Remainers are traitors and elitists (and indeed, hinting as Nigel Farage has done that people like myself are not ‘decent’ people). The vote has been cast. The result is confirmed. As a democratic exercise it cannot be faulted at all. The question is what we do now.
I do not know who will be the next Prime Minister, who it is who will have to go to Brussels to negotiate with Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk, and who will have to have those difficult conversations with Francois Hollande, Angela Merkel and other EU leaders, while also ensuring that transatlantic and other important alliance ties (not least the NATO one) remain safeguarded. I will however express the hope that he or she does the following.
The first is that he or she will recognise that there is a mandate for BREXIT, but it is a narrow one. This factor will be important when it comes to talking to Nicola Sturgeon, Carwyn Jones, Arlene Foster and Sadiq Khan. Scotland’s First Minister, for example, should be reminded delicately (preferably behind closed doors) that at least a million Scots voted to leave, so inflammatory rhetoric of ‘Scotland being taken out of the EU by England’ is not going to help anyone on either side of the border. A similarly worded hint that an independent Scotland is not guaranteed membership of the EU by states that can cast a veto because of fears of ethnic separatism (such as Spain, Slovakia, Estonia or Cyprus) is also worth offering, in conjunction with assurances that Scotland’s desire for close ties with the EU will be respected by the new government.
The aim should be to try and get a consensus that as many of the UK electorate can agree to as possible. If BREXIT will happen, it needs to be on terms granting Britain access to the European Economic Area. It will be a messy compromise, but one which will aim to satisfy the objectives of moderate BREXITeers on sovereignty while settling at least one concern from the Remain side. The deal should try to find common ground between the main parties and also as many of the electorate as possible, and also save us the ball-ache of having to renegotiate over 50 trade treaties from scratch.
The second involves the process of negotiating Britain’s future relationship with the EU. Juncker has already declared that this is not an ‘amicable divorce’ – the new PM’s job is to make sure that the rancour does not get worse. In this respect, he or she needs to remind European partners that the very concerns that fuelled BREXIT are not unique to the UK. According to one recent poll 61% of French voters have an unfavourable view of the EU. Austria has recently narrowly avoided electing a neo-Nazi as President. The AfD in Germany, Fidesz in Hungary, PiS in Poland, Five Star in Italy, and Syriza in Greece have profited by exploiting public dissatisfaction in their own countries, and three of the named parties are in government. Discontent with ‘bubbles’ of isolated metropolitan elites. Concerns over immigration and security. Fears over economic stability and the effects of globalisation on people’s livelihoods and jobs. These are familiar concerns across the continent, and the voters who hold them do not necessarily wear brown shirts. The democratic politician tasked with addressing these concerns has no easy task. But ignoring them as per the default Corbynista solution means leaving the field to the Front Nationale, Jobbik and Golden Dawn. There has got to be a better option here.
A British leader who presses that case with his or her European counterparts ceases to be a saboteur, and has the best opportunity to argue a point that Brussels needs to heed. Adapt, or die. If BREXIT is a shock to the EU system, then how much worse will it be if (say) President Marine Le Pen invokes Article 50 after an electoral victory in 2017? What will it mean for the cause of European unity if one of the founders of the Treaty of Rome (rather than the perennial member of the awkward squad) calls time on membership? The Juncker line appears now to be that compromise with the UK could encourage other states to seek the same terms. Europe’s leaders need to understand that intransigence plus a sense of business-as-usual will only encourage a worse crisis when the next member state seeks to punch out. BREXIT may be put the EU in a critical condition. FREXIT will be terminal.
The new PM has to press the case for EU reform and for a more decentralised Union that devolves power and sovereignty to national governments if their peoples demand them. An easy compromise from the UK can include a pledge of continued support for common foreign and security policy goals, most notably the maintenance of sanctions on Russia imposed after its aggression against Ukraine. Britain can and will align with its EU neighbours if there are shared interests at stake, most notably with reference to Russia’s military threat to the Baltic States and Poland (which of course is also an Article 5 matter with reference to NATO). Backing sanctions and supporting a common front against Vladimir Putin’s regime will wipe the smiles off the faces of the Kremlin’s thugs, and be something to spike their tea. It will also send a message (an important one indeed to the EU’s newest members) that post-BREXIT UK will not be an isolationist state that will be a tool of the FSB and RT.
The final point involves the cohesion of Britain itself. The monstering on Twitter that Dan Hannan has received for his comments about immigration recently show that in the Leave camp there is a fundamental tension between the ‘internationalist’ BREXITeers and the nativists. From a Remain perspective, there are grounds for co-operation with the former to isolate the latter, and to make sure that Farage – a man who has repeatedly failed to get elected to a Parliament he supposedly venerates – is cast into the political oblivion that is so richly his due. With BREXIT, we have the additional joy of seeing that he and other Kippers will be denied the salary and allowances they have trousered for sitting for years in a European Parliament they have affected to despise. They wanted out, they can fucking have it.
Boris Johnson has publicly declared his vision for a future Britain as a nation that will maintain its friendships, preserve its alliances, promote free trade, and offer Britons the freedom to live and study abroad, while also attracting foreign migrants (and potential future UK citizens) with skills and trades our economy and our social services need. Even if his spiel on the morning of the 24th is a product of opportunism, it is a vision that he and other ‘liberal’ Leavers can and should be held to follow by Remain politicians and the wider electorate. The alternative, of course, is that they will be exposed to the electorate as chancers who pursued BREXIT without a programme for the aftermath. Like Chief Parker at the end of LA Confidential, they need a cover story to extricate themselves from an outcome they never planned for.
Some of you reading this will think that this is all pie in the sky. It may well be, and I am no doubt talking out of my arse. But I fear the consequences of an EU disintegrating in acrimony and internal strife, and of Britain becoming economically and politically isolated from the continent, beset by the risk of internal disintegration driven by the SNP, Sinn Fein and UKIP. Collectively, anyone who means this country well have to figure out how to overcome the divide imposed by the referendum, and to present a programme that the majority of us can agree on as a step forward.
What strikes me now is the absence of any celebratory rallies. As ‘independence days’ go, the 24th June has been a remarkably subdued affair, with the leading lights of the Leave camp preserving radio silence, or backtracking on their earlier boasts. My hope here is that the majority those who voted for BREXIT have recognised that the next step involves careful consideration. As a Remainer, I know that there is a narrow majority that wants us out. I also hope that Leavers understand that there is a sizeable minority that needs to be onside with the next step.
We are not all Westminster MPs and Guardian hacks. We are your friends, your neighbours, and in many cases members of your family. Surely both of us want a solution that helps our country and our people through this impasse. I offer this as a back-of-the-envelope option, welcoming some better and more informed options from anyone who has them.
