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#AceNewsDesk – On the day of the EU referendum in 2016, Lord Ashcroft conducted a pollof over 12,000 voters. It found that the main reason why people backed Brexit was “the principle that decisions about the UK should be taken in the UK”. Either you agree with that take or you don’t.
Nonetheless, leaving the EU has advantages, political and economic. On the political – or, strictly speaking, constitutional – side, the pluses outweigh the minuses to date. You will point out that the Withdrawal Agreement established new barriers between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
But in Scotland, it is precisely the fear of a new border, and its consequences, that has helped to swing the balance of floating Scottish opinion against separatism, at least so far. And Northern Ireland has been a special case since the Belfast Agreement of 1998, with its north-south bodies.
Or, more accurately, since 1985, and the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which gave Dublin a formal say in the government of Northern Ireland. Or indeed since the latter’s creation, when power was devolved to Stormont. Arguably, Northern Ireland’s settlement now gives nationalists enough of what they want to make the preservation of the UK more likely.
Furthermore, the referendum calmed public debate on legal migration. The second main reason for Brexit had been, according to that Ashcroft poll, that it offered the best chance “for the UK to regain control over immigration and its own borders”. That it has done so in principle has taken the sting out of it not doing so in practice, at least for the past three years.
On the economy, the minuses outweigh the pluses. It was unlikely to be otherwise given the erection of new trade barriers between the UK and its neighbouring market But even so, there have been gains. Could we have pursued the Covid vaccine rollout from within the EU? Yes. Is it likely that we would have done? No.
Furthermore, losers are noisier than winners. So, for example, a small bank that gains from the relaxing of ring-fencing capital rules may quietly pocket its gain, while a small firm whose manufactured exports now meet EU customs controls will vehemently complain on Twitter.
Britain’s economy since Brexit was, until the middle of last year at least, growing faster than Germany’s. In any event, it will, as Ryan Bourne has argued on this site, take decades, not years, to determine the economic impact of Brexit. During them, the EU will continue to seek the road to ever-closer union.
So, for example, the UK will neither gain nor lose from the EU’s recent programme for debt mutualisation. I believe that the balance of the argument on Brexit, even if the principle of self-government doesn’t persuade you, supports the decision to have left. But that is a far cry from claiming that all has gone well.
Voting to leave the EU was buying a pig in a poke. It couldn’t be otherwise. The referendum mechanism is well established in British politics. But people couldn’t give their verdict on a deal because none had been negotiated. This turned out to have baleful consequences.
First, David Cameron’s government willed the end of a referendum without preparing the means for leaving. This was irresponsible. Second, Vote Leave, which led the campaign for Brexit, wasn’t a political party, let alone the governing one. So it wasn’t in place after the referendum to effect its programme. That left a vacuum.
Third, the narrow margin by which voters backed Brexit left Britain’s negotiating position weaker than it might have been. The gutsy option would have been No Deal. But the genius of Boris Johnson in 2019 was to recognise that public support for it was weak. His agreement with the EU dished the Liberal Democrats, who had prepared an election campaign against No Deal.
More importantly, it gave Labour nowhere to go, and prepared the way for a crushing Conservative election win. Fourth, had Johnson become Conservative leader in 2016, much the same deal would surely have been agreed – but three years earlier. Instead, the space that Vote Leave had left was filled by Theresa May.
Her deal never gained the consent of Parliament. (On its third go, her version of the Withdrawal Agreement won on Second Reading but lost the programme motion.) In filling one vacuum, May had opened up another. Out of this Pandora’s Box flew a succession of exotica: the Cooper-Boles amendment, meaningful votes, the Letwin amendment, the Benn Act, and so on.
Some of the actors, like Rory Stewart, opposed No Deal; others, like Dominic Grieve, were working to stop Brexit altogether. The tables were turned on the Brexiteers. Before the referendum, we Conservative ones were the outsiders, campaigning against the Government. After it, we were the Government.
But to be in office isn’t necessarily to be in power. At a stroke, Britain’s entire pro-EU ascendancy – its foreign affairs elites, the CBI, its civil service establishment, the unions, the big banks, most MPs, most academics, most bishops, the lobbyocracy – had been dramatically upended. The blow to its sense of entitlement to rule and how class in Britain should work was hurtful.
“We will huff and puff but, in the end, we will basically come to heel,” John Kerr – or, to use his title, Baron Kerr of Kinlochard, told his fellow peers. Lord Kerr is a former Ambassador to the EU. Into his three last words was packed the Ascendancy’s condescension for the proles who had thumbed their noses at their betters.
The wheeling of John Bercow; the dealings of Brenda Hale. Neither of these stopped Britain leaving the EU. Often, there was less to the opponents of Brexit than met the eye. If you’ve ever seen Steve Bray, you’ll take the point. But though the elites didn’t get their way here, they left their mark abroad.
Kwasi Kwarteng’s leaky mini-Budget would have sunk even in calm waters. But Brexit had undoubtedly stirred up the waves. Those who move the markets are more likely to read the Financial Times and the Economist than the Daily Telegraph or the Spectator. The shapers of elite opinion have taken to viewing Britain against unflattering light.
Even so, Brexit has undoubtedly, in one specific sense, not delivered. Liberal Brexiteers wanted lower taxes, freer trade, less regulation, and the scaling back of public spending on healthcare and pensions without which these can’t be delivered. Conservative Brexiteers, whether with a small c or without, were preponderantly older people.
These voters, by and large, cling to their triple-locked state pensions, free TV licences and free bus passes – plus the NHS. Who can blame them? But the lower taxes that so many want don’t fit with the government supply that they also demand. Perhaps this circle can’t be squared.
Nonetheless, it’s the duty of our leaders to try and – with the exception of housing, about which he had bold ideas – Boris Johnson, having won Brexit, didn’t seem to know what he wanted to do with it. Truss did, but couldn’t. Now we’re back to square one, four years after having left.
In short, we haven’t been well led since leaving the EU – indeed, for quite some time. All the same, the point of Brexit was elsewhere. We are masters of our own fate, insofar as a sovereign country can be. We can no longer claim our failings are the fault of those pesky continentals. If we don’t succeed, we will have no-one to blame but ourselves.
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