Brexit anyone?

I used to think the UK (my home for some 40 years) was a haven of reasonableness and common sense where the middle ground and gentle compromise had become an art form.  Now, however, this whole Brexit débacle seems to have thrown all that ‘baby’ out with the bathwater.

Where did this Brexit come from?  I think it is generally recognised that Prime Minister Cameron wanted his Euroskeptics off his back, so he offered a referendum on Europe to confirm without a shadow of a doubt his control over his own party and to shut up the skeptiks.  Perhaps that is why we were given such a stupid referendum choice: Yes or No – Cameron was certain it would be a YES.  On such an issue a small, simple majority would decide…. without knowing the terms of the deal and upon pre-referendum assumption and disinformation.  Just a few voices could condemn almost half of the population to something it simply didn’t want!

Now think on this: when it comes to labour relations and strikes – before any strike can be called, under English law there has to be a postal vote and for a strike one would need 2/3 of the votes to be cast in support!  It is so important, that there has to be an overwhelming proportion of people in favour.   But when it comes to something as crucial as membership of the EU: a simple majority! Crazy.

Worse than this is the fact that the referendum effectively created a second class of British citizenship.  If one were British and had been living in France or EU countries a good while (about 10 years) and had not voted in British elections, one was not allowed to participate in the referendum!  I know of many Brits who were content not to vote in a UK election until and unless something significant happened that would change their lives in the EU…. the moment that moment arrives, a regulation is past to disenfranchise them so that they cannot vote – the very people who would have almost certainly voted Remain!  There are about 750,000 Brits living outside Britain and in the EU.  The Leave vote in the referendum was just 1.9% above the 50/50 level …. about 600,000 votes….. now if ALL British people were eligible to vote, this could perhaps have been cancelled out and we would not be where we are today…. or perhaps we would, with just a handful of votes cancelling out 49.9% of the wishes of the population.  Crazy again.

Then, of course, there is Prime Minister May…. she who was a vocal advocate of Remain before the referendum – transformed, in an instant, into a rabid Brexiteer Prime-Minister!  Where is the honour in that? Has she never heard of Cognitive Dissonance – the idea that holding two opposing ideas in one’s head at the same time results in an impossible battleground.  [I voted Remain because I believe in it…. I can’t be PM unless I lead the Leave charge even if I don’t believe in it……  I have to resolve the two …. I’ll jettison Remain then and become PM….the power will be compensation for not doing something I believe in… ]  A case of ‘power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely’, perhaps?

Harold Wilson (Labour PM) and Mrs Thatcher (Tory PM), both spoke of the need for ‘balancing the books’ (financial accounts: cost/benefit) in order to make sane and well thought through choices at the level of the family and country (not that I voted for either, by the way!).  Now we have something new – the polls are saying that the majority has switched from Leave to Remain as we now have most of a ‘Leave Deal’ before us and are beginning to understand the relative cost-benefit equations for staying and leaving.  But rather than let us decide now we have the facts (or as much of them as we can stand!), the government seems to want to take us out of the EU once and for all based upon a two year old, fact-free referendum, rather than put the deal to us and let us decide.  Insane.  That is not how you treat citizens.  For info, there is a petition to stop Article 50 and stop Brexit that has just gone up on Parliament’s Petitions site: in a matter of a few days they have collected: 5,387,423 signatures and is going up at the rate of 1000 per minute (as of Monday morning 25th March).

The Leave campaign had suggested that cost of leaving would be negligible and all that money saved could be poured into the NHS coffers…. a simple message and the gullible bought it.  Immigration is the fault of the EU – another easy hook to swallow for the gullibles! Even with May’s deal that will not happen – we still need to abide by tons of EU regulations if we want to trade with our biggest partner block…. if we want our citizens protected in the EU, then we are going to have to protect EU citizens in the UK.  Turn the clock back a century and we had two world wars starting in the EU that cost millions in lives, untold trillions in pounds and cost the British an empire…. but with all its problems, the community created in Europe post WW2 has kept those national tendencies at bay for 75 years…. peace … that is a significant return on investment, no?  We ignore that at our peril.  We also forget that in Britain, we have a great civil service who are particularly adept at supporting successful bids for money from various EU funds (a fact to which I can attest having written a number of such bids with civil service support).  What of the opportunities for British students to study abroad and extend their inter-cultural and liguistic horizons funded by ERASMUS and other EU initiatives?  Gone at a stroke – the British government in England makes students pay/take on loans to finance their education (tuition fees 15,000 – 30,000 Euros per year), and now the decision to leave the EU will take away the only real, non-repayable financial assistance a student could receive!

As a comedian, Jonathan Pie put it (I paraphrase) – May is: ‘leading us over the cliff and into a food blender’.  Truth to tell, it feels like it.  I fear she is seeing Brexit as her personal landmark political achievement – for good or ill, she will be remembered for it, so after all this time and these promises she feels she has to deliver it: she has ‘nailed her colours to the mast’.  Even she knows that she has zero chance of re-election, so she has to have this achievement as her legacy.  I think this means that she is wearing blinkers while driving her bulldozer towards the cliff.

What can I hope for?

That, in the end, the pre-Brexit political carnage is such that the British people are finally asked to decide (vote again) now they have the deal and the facts  and some sense of cost/benefit.  If May goes before Brexit, it would be a brave man /or woman that would not give the brits a final choice….. though who, politically, would want to take up that poisoned chalice?  That said, saying: ‘Well, now you know the details – choose once and for all! And that’s it!‘, is a reasonable and honourable platform, and defensible morally and politically.

The door to sanity, reasonableness and a place at the international table is closing fast, but there is yet time….

Final thought…. someone said that the Leave vote was historical …. a ‘wag’ replied that it was more of a case of the Brits ‘voting to leave History’…..  I tend to agree…… I hope we don’t.  I also think that the EU doesn’t want us to leave either (and perhaps not just for finance reasons). I keep having this picture of France occupied and the Brits (and others) coming to help out in two wars – duly replaced by a Britain occupied by dissent and non-sense and France and others trying to liberate us from our narrow-mindedness…. quite a picture.  Just look at how wide and long they have left the door open and how often leaders have said: ‘There is still time, it is all in your hands, you can still stay…’   For politicians, that is some plea…

How many times do circumstances intervene such that we change our minds about something? There is nothing wrong in so doing!  Bad joke?  I mean REALLY bad joke????  My wife asks a question: ‘Why are women’s minds cleaner than mens’?’   Answer – because they change them so often!  So, come-on , girls, now’s the moment!!!

Time will tell….  Petition at 5,404,400 ….and counting.

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Of course, the views expressed above are my own!  I am a Brit transplanted to France some 15 years ago who is having real difficulty in recognising his former fellow-countrymen and hoping against hope that they might, in the final hour, ‘wake up and smell the coffee’, before the EU ‘waiter’ comes to clear the table and hand us a very big bill!!!!!

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1. 

   Grace Jolley says:

   25 mars 2019 at 14 h 03 min

   Yes it is not a strange coincidence we should both have the same name. I am indeed Tony’s daughter. As a resident of England, it was clear from the beginning that Cameron was very convinced it was a ‘done deal’ unfortunately this also meant the campaign lacked the gumption that the leave campaign so eloquently (not) put forward to the British public in/on everything. Simply people were bought by the promises that the leave campaign suggested but no one questioned how this would actually be possible when we actually leave and what this would mean. Ironically the strong advocates of leave are now no longer to be seen or heard.
2. 

   tjolley says:

   4 avril 2019 at 10 h 10 min

   Thanks, Grace, for a view from the ‘other side’! Feels like the old Times headline: ‘Fog in Channel – Continent cut off!’, head in the sand mentality… sadly. Strangely though, the Pound was up some 8% against the Euro the other day….. Go figure!