“When you take a position you should analyse all the aspects and all the consequences. Perhaps therefore if the people of Britain had known the consequences they wouldn’t have voted the way they did. But the vote is there and we have to deal with the consequences.” – French finance minister Michel Sapin commenting on the Leave campaign in the recent Brexit referendum.
It was a result for which there were not enough adjectives. The vote to “Brexit” was the biggest political event in Britain since World War II, also since joining the European Union in the first place in 1973, and since the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, and so on.
But there was a major disparity in the positives versus the negatives, at least among the adults in the room: It was hard to find anyone, even in Britain, to say how great it was going to be for the country. The party was over and everybody woke up with the worst hangover. What did we just do?
Even the leaders of the Leave campaign, who had spoken out so forcefully about Britain taking back control of its destiny, and about getting a new independence day for the country, seemed to lie low for several days. The only “celebrations” in the public space seemed to all too often involve racial slurs and the open harassing of people thought to be immigrants – on the buses, and in the streets of a once “great” Britain, now a very “disunited” United Kingdom (UK).
The leaders of the Leave campaign had painted soothing pictures of a calm and leisurely exit in which the EU would, of course, give Britain as much time as it needed to go, and at the same allow it to negotiate almost everything it wanted.
They gave the impression to voters that a Brexit would lead almost overnight to a virtual closing of the British borders to immigrants and refugees, and a stoppage of all those millions being paid into the EU coffers for the privilege of membership, plus an end to all that dictatorial control from Brussels.
If you just go back to almost any platform speech or article written by Daniel Hannan, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove or Nigel Farage, you will see this pleasant scenario outlined, along with the patriotic urging of Brits to vote to free the country from the cruel yoke of excessively bureaucratic Brussels.
But as soon as they won, backtracking, watering down, dissembling and admissions that they could not deliver on their promises became the order of the day; all those millions would not be pumped into health care, there would be no stopping free movement of “labour,” only “people”; and they plaintively held out their hope that Britain would be able to negotiate a good way back in to the EU after it gets out.
Today, many in Britain and around the world are hoping that some way can be found to appease the Leave voters and thus stay in the EU, while not actually having to trigger Article 50, which starts a two-year clock running on the UK’s exit.
But up to mid-week, the EU leaders, even as they “lamented the British decision to part ways” according to one news report, were “insisting that negotiations to finalise secession won’t be started until the UK gives official notification of departure.” So much for gentle discussions over tea.
In their final statement, which was released last Wednesday, leaders of the 27 other nations said “there is a need to organise the withdrawal of the UK from the EU in an orderly fashion.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said there was no turning back.
France’s President Francois Hollande told the world: “If the UK would want – at the end of the negotiations – access to the single market, the UK would have to accept all the rules and all the obligations, especially one which is to financially contribute to the functioning of the single market.” Like Norway, only a lot more money, he said.
Meanwhile, Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Loefven said market access depended on an adherence to the “four freedoms,” meaning the movement of goods, services, capital – and people. “There’s no question about that.”
With right wing leaders like Marine Le Pen in France saying they might also call for a referendum, many leaders across Europe were worried about anti-EU forces trying to use Brexit to get traction with their electorates. Hence, the hard line on Britain.
Elections are due in France, Germany and the Netherlands in 2017, countries that together make up more than half the euro-area economy, says Bloomberg, and “the UK result is proving to be a wake-up call.”
Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern said in an interview with Bloomberg TV in Brussels that the UK referendum had generated “a big mess,” and “done enormous damage.” Because of that, he didn’t think that Great Britain would become a role model for dealing with the EU.
Here in the Caribbean, writers and commentators far more learned have covered all of the bases as to what Brexit might mean to us.
But I will side with Minister of Tourism Richard Sealy, to the effect that we have seen Britain go through all sorts of economic adversity and survived.
Our tourism product mainly appeals to the wealthy or at least better off Brits, who will probably come out okay despite an ugly Brexit aftermath.
I am more interested in the way the Leave campaign laid it on so thickly and then, when they won, immediately started to exit from their own Brexit talking points.
How the Leave Campaign could focus so relentlessly on stoking the fears of lower income people about the economic terror to be visited on them if their side was not victorious; and how they have had to pretend they didn’t say a lot of things because they were simply not rooted in fact.
Perhaps it resonates with me because it seems like we have had an experience very similar to that in recent national elections right here in Barbados, and we are still paying the very hefty price today.