How will we know if Brexit has worked?
The number of people worldwide with experience of negotiating the extraction of a country from the EU under Article 50 is precisely zero. Perhaps it is because we are in uncharted legal territory that everyone thinks they know the way it will all work out.
Speculation on the timing and nature of Brexit is at saturation point. But deep diving into the mechanics of Brexit has meant that politicians and pundits have lost sight of a core issue.
How and when will Brexit make things better?
The fundamental point upon which the Leave campaign was premised was that the UK would be better off outside the EU. We were told that by reclaiming our apparently lost sovereignty (Brexit would be impossible by the way if we weren’t a sovereign nation) we could make trade deals in the global marketplace, and control our own destiny.
The Brexiteers would have us believe that there is no real risk in Brexit itself. That in the long term, Brexit will pay off, and that even though the UK already has one of the most successful economies in the world, Brexit will make it even more successful.
When will we see delivery on that promise?
Over a month after having declared the UK’s own Independence Day, Nigel Farage set out — with unusual clarity and brevity — what he believes Brexit means:
An end to free movement, quitting the single market and ‘taking back our territorial waters’ was the end game for Farage. Those are the conditions upon which he will perceive Brexit to be a success and the Leave campaign to have truly won.
What Farage doesn’t explain is how his vision will actually improve the experience of living in the UK. He doesn’t tell us how poverty will be tackled, how tax evading companies and individuals will be policed, or how Brexit will help us to build more houses, improve education, increase pensions, train more engineers and scientists or become more self-sufficient in food production.
Many of those who voted to leave the EU can’t see the wood for the trees. Everything is subordinated to the ideology of ‘out’ and there are no details about what happens after we have left the EU.
The only people who ever had a clear view on Brexit are the Remainers. They all want to stay within the EU — with the ready concession that institutional reform is needed. On the other hand, Leavers have never agreed on what Brexit actually means. Boris Johnson, David Davis and Liam Fox are sitting, newly appointed, in Government ministries and they are still arguing about what Brexit means and who should be in charge of it.
Some people are aghast that David Cameron’s government specifically avoided planning for Brexit. Andrew Hood, former legal adviser to Cameron is on the record stating:
“People at the heart of government were sitting down a week after the Brexit decision with an entirely blank sheet of paper.”
But this makes complete sense. If your opponents disagree amongst themselves as to what it is they actually want, what is the point in making any attempt to deliver it? Right now, all options are on the table, and that’s probably the best that can be said about Brexit.
With the majority of business support and economic evidence in favour of remain, Leavers knew that if they were successful that the UK would sustain an economic shock, putting our financial markets, jobs, and future growth at risk.
Hardline Brexiteers will never accept any economic evidence that Brexit is the wrong decision. Not for them the reality of a two-way negotiation against a powerful trading bloc in which the UK will have to concede some points to win others.
The most evangelical Leavers believe that that if their particular interpretation of Brexit is not delivered, that will constitute a ‘betrayal’. But wouldn’t a far bigger betrayal of the UK be to plan and manage an exit from the EU in the full knowledge that it will destroy jobs, shrink the economy and stretch our social fabric to it’s limits?
What happens when the less ideological, more pragmatic Leavers conclude that things are not quite as promised? Because you can be sure that the recent stock market tumble (yes, they came back, but as we all know, it’s full of global companies and we’ve not left the EU yet!), the fall in the value of the pound, erosion of the values of pensions, reduction in the Bank of England interest rates are all clear warnings of what is yet to come.
Leavers want Remainers to share the belief that the benefits of Brexit will become immediately self-evident once we have left the EU and have ‘taken control’. The conversation has never turned to what price is worth paying to leave the EU. Would the break up of the United Kingdom be a step too far? How many jobs would it be acceptable to lose? How many companies should go to the wall?
At exactly which point in the years to come will we know if the sacrifices for Brexit have worked? When should we be feeling richer? When will the deficit shrink? When will austerity be ended? These questions, and many more like them have yet to be answered by the Brexiteers. No prizes for guessing why that might be.
