A GOOD DEAL — BUT FOR WHOM?
“We are going to get the best deal for Britain”. It is hard to find a story about Brexit which does not include the word ‘deal’. But it is harder to find out what Ministers perceive this Britain to be, and for whom the ‘deal’ is intended.
Prime Minister May is on record as saying that she will get a good deal on trade and services. Financial Services Minister Simon Kirby, not inconsistently, but more specifically, is reported as saying that the ‘absolute priority’ was the City of London. Angela Leadsom, on the other hand is committed to getting the best deal for Britain’s farmers.
I have yet to see a claim that Brexit will result in a good deal for one of Britain’s most successful export industries — higher education and research — but the mood in the sector is verging on the desperate. Universities’ Minister Jo Johnson has said that EU students will remain eligible for support in 2017 and 2018. Given that on nobody’s timetable does Brexit take place before 2019, this is a statement of the bleeding obvious, and the fact that it needed to be said is a measure of how awful things are becoming.
Not surprisingly, Ministers have been relatively quiet recently on Brexit being a good deal for Britain’s National Health Service, focusing instead on playing down the outrageous claims made pre-referendum on how much additional money the NHS would get.
Underlying all of these is the assumption that what matters most is a package of significant but essentially marginal changes to the circumstances of groups of people — unemployment may be a little higher or a little lower; the cost of food may or may not rise; hospital waiting lists may be slightly shorter.
But there are two groups that are very directly affected by the negotiations: European citizens living in Britain; and British citizens living in Europe. Apparently our fate is too sensitive to be discussed in public, so we are left hanging. There is even talk of deportation. The worst-case scenario would seem to be something like the 1923 exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey, but on twice the scale.
Perhaps we should be charitable and assume that the Government is trying to do its best for everyone. However in all the articles I have read and programmes I have listened to I have yet to hear a definition of who is included in ‘Britain’. Is it everyone currently living in Britain? — one assumes not, since the Brexiteers want to get rid of some of them. Is it everyone who has a British passport? I have not heard Ministers say so. Is it people who live in Britain and have a British passport? Or is it some as-yet-undefined sub-set — the intersection of the most vocal interest groups.
The people may have spoken but some of those people were silenced. Peter Bradley, in an otherwise well-argued piece in the New Statesman omits all mention of Britons living outside the UK.
Is it too much to ask the British Government to give us some reassurance that our fate is of concern to them? Or are they hoping that we all seek citizenship from France, Spain or any other country that will have us? If so they could at least let us know so we can make plans.
I have to declare an interest here as I have a British passport but live in France. I wasn’t allowed to vote in the referendum, and I am no longer allowed to have an MP, so I am reduced to asking these questions of anyone who cares to read this piece. If you have any answers, or just comments, please respond.
