Saturday, April 1, 2017

Article 50 is not the end of the story

In the week that British Prime Minister Theresa May sent her letter to Brussels beginning the process of the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union, there was the expected firestorm of delight from the Brexit camp.

“This is it, there’s no going back”, “the will of the people has prevailed” were just some of the comments, led by a call from the Prime Minister for the country to “come together” and that in the exit negotiations she would represent “every person in the United Kingdom — young and old, rich and poor, town, country and all the villages and hamlets in between”.

With the triggering of Article 50 the clock has indeed moved closer to midnight, but May’s attempt at Churchillian rhetoric is premature. It is not all over. Ahead lie complicated and possibly vexatious negotiations about the UK’s future relationship with Europe – the viability of London as a global financial hub and the border with the Irish Republic being just two problems to be considered.

May says she is ready to deliver a ‘hard Brexit’ if talks reach a stalemate, a situation that could cost thousands of jobs and isolate Britons from their European neighbours. This alone ought to be cause for a rethink, further parliamentary debate and a second referendum once what it actually means to leave is established.

On 23 June last year the referendum on membership of the European Union resulted in 51.9 per cent of respondents voting to leave and 48.1 per cent seeking to remain, 17,410,742 to 16,141,241. It was hardly a landslide, but in the months since we have had constant references to “the will of the people” as if those who voted against are of no consequence.

I have heard arguments that a margin of 3.9 per cent is often quite sufficient to elect governments, but in that case there always comes a time when a disastrous choice can be reversed at a subsequent poll.

Brexit has no such fall-back position. In fact if May and the Brixiteers had not been reined in by the country’s Supreme Court they would have conducted their negotiations in Brussels free from even Parliamentary oversight, let alone an opportunity for the people to reconsider.

May cannot hope to represent the majority of younger people who voted solidly to keep their employment, leisure and communal freedoms in Europe, nor interestingly, that of the very old.

Else Catchpole (92) did not allow her sight and hearing impairment to stop her catching a train from Cambridge to join the Unite for Europe Rally in London.

“I don’t believe in Brexit…I voted to remain,” she said.

“It’s very stupid to get out of the EU. A terrible mistake. We’ll have to suffer for it.”

Then there was Britain’s oldest man, Bob Weighton, who said that although he was not enamoured with all of the EU’s decisions, quitting was a mistake. 

Anecdotal evidence surely, but there is a theme here that can be traced back to the first referendum on EU membership in 1975 when 67 per cent voted to stay.

Catchpole and Weighton are among the dwindling number of people who can remember a Europe ravaged by war and its immediate aftermath. In 1975 there were, of course, many more and their vote was significant. I recall a friend of my mother’s, a retired farmer, saying he had voted for membership because “I have lived through two world wars and I do not wish to see a third”.

Which brings me to what I will always consider to be the most important achievement of the European Union — in its 60-year history no war has been fought inside its boundaries.

There are those who will sneer at that: They should read their history. I could fill another page by listing the wars that have plagued Europe in the centuries up to 1945.

When Farage, Wilders and Le Pen – and now Trump — wave their flags and decry internationalism, they simply do not understand the dangerous path they are treading.  




2 comments:

  1. Hang on a minute... You state that in 60 years no war has been fought within the boundaries of the European Union. This, of course, ignores the Balkan states who are falling over themselves to join the EU but remain at daggers drawn. The EU's role in easing the Balkan crisis was negligible and the prime mover was, as usual, NATO. Indeed, it has been NATO rather than the EU that has been primarily responsible for keeping the peace in Europe. Going back to the previous referendum, called by Harold Wilson in 1975, I'm sorry that the unnamed friend of your mother got hold of the wrong end of the stick, but the back remains that the referendum was sold to the British people on the grounds that we were voting for a trade agreement, nothing at all to do with defence, which then, as now, was down to NATO. Your implication that by voting to leave the EU, Britain has made the world a less safe place is as laughable as it is offensive. The UK is the only European country that fulfils its financial commitments to the defence of Europe. Germany keeps promising to do so, but it has been making similar promises for decades. Promising to do something is different to actually doing it. The other major European powers have quietly abandoned any pretence of meeting their commitments. So, if the worst were to happen, Europe would once again rely upon the UK and the United States (assuming Trump does not totally lose his marbles) to come to its rescue. There are many arguments for and against Britain's membership of the EU, but security is not — and never will be — a valid one.

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  2. I simply restate. In the 60 years of the EU membership, no wars have been fought within its borders. The Balkan wars that followed the inevitable break-up of the cobbled together state of Yugoslavia were NATO's responsibility - a responsibility it took far too long to exercise. When it finally lost patience after the shelling of the market place in Sarajevo, the war was over in weeks.

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