MUCH ADO ABOUT #BREXIT
The #Brexit ship has probably sailed! On February 20, 2016 David Cameron went to the EU to demand a new deal for the UK. In a sense this was exactly the right thing to do. However, it does pre-suppose you know what your are talking about and how to negotiate at that level – and to have done your homework.
Cameron was right on principle but wholly wrong on the detail and came back with squit.
Not to worry, David could redeem his position putting his ‘failure’ to the test with the British public. There was a hope in hell of the UK voting to leave the UK, UKIP style, so David cast the die for the EU referendum. He had this covered to such an extent that he didn’t waste any time on an exit plan or strategy – it would absolutely never happen.
How wrong can a person be. With the largest vote recorded on any topic in the UK, 17.4 million voted to leave the EU. Since that time the UK has stumbled from shambles to shambles based on indecision, incompetence, weakness and the fact that those trusted to deliver #Brexit do not even believe in it themselves – you could not make this stuff up.
There are a number of key reasons for the shambles that we must recognise up front:
- a) Asking the UK people the question, should we remain or leave the EU was ridiculous in the extreme. Too ridiculous for words. Nobody, absolutely nobody knows the answer to that question – it is a million times more complex than a simple question. Some people answered the question on immigration, some on Fiscal Control, some on the shackles of the single market when there ‘may be’ bigger markets outside the EU. Some people felt the EU was undemocratic and a massive administrative and financial burden – pick your reason, any one will do.
- b) The absence of a plan for leaving is beyond incompetence – it is criminal incompetence. Cameron did not resign as PM so much as ‘legged it’. If a junior project manager pulled this stunt they would be sacked on the spot. As if the disappearance of Cameron wasn’t bad enough, much worse was to come. Theresa May was a complete incompetent disaster as a Home Secretary. When she took over as PM one could be forgiven for assuming absolutely nobody wanted this poison chalice. May’s hunger for the power and the glory prevailed over her awareness of her inability to bring anything other than disaster to the roll.
- c) Somehow or other, the people of the UK may have thought the EU members would be in shock at the UK’s decision and roll over to take their fate unchallenged. The EU is Hotel California. No member has ever left, not even lying Greece. The thought of one of the key members leaving motivated the EU’s very best spoilers to kick the crap out of lightweights like Davis, Hammond and Johnstone. I think a lot of people in the UK still believe that Britain won the last war. We did not, we played a very minor role and the EU will punish us for our complacency and inability to pick decent leaders.
So what the hell should have happened? If we can understand that perhaps we can come up with a tangible way forward.
Point a) above is absolutely crucial. In general, the people, politicians even the so called intelligentsia had no clue about the EU as an institution and whether it is beneficial for the UK to be inside or outside. When asked a single, simple question about the EU, Dr Liam Fox was unable to answer citing the fact that the question was too complex to provide a simple answer.
Putting the question to the people of the UK was an act of madness, perhaps, but more likely an act of arrogant posturing by David Cameron – pure and simple.
As a European by birth who has worked in Brussels and who has been fortunate enough to hold a director position in a global plc in London for many years, I always felt there was serious problems with the EU. I felt that we should probably come out. However, that was a feeling and not a decision. The decision would only come at the end of a very long, highly researched and meticulously crafted programme. In others words, absolutely nothing like the process followed by David Cameron.
I think we all know or believe the issues regarding the EU. For me the whole issue of EU Fiscal control was fundamentally wrong. I felt the EU should act a bit like the House of Lords in fiscal matters and provide a revising, advisory role rather than a diktat. The single market was another bone of contention. In business I was never comfortable with someone else doing the negotiating for me and leaving me with the outcome – and that is the single market. The whole business of the ‘one size fit all’ EU, I always felt was flawed. North Europe is fundamentally different from South Europe; the only connection between Germany and Greece is the odd holiday flight. Also, every country in the EU has a different level of economic, social and cultural development. Lumping everyone together is rather like filling up an ice cube tray – when one is full it spills over into every other one until every one is full. Finally, immigration was possibly the biggest bone of contention. The Schengen Agreement which fundamentally made the EU one big country ignored every single difference between member countries, levels of attainment and basic human nature. Finally, and only a potential issue for the UK was the Euro. For all the previous reasons the Euro was always going to be a problem.
So, for me, this was what was wrong with the EU. On the other hand, what was right? In a couple of words, the EU was not the US. Plain and simple. That one reason alone would discourage me from voting to leaving the EU. In a dreadful sense, the ascension of Donald Trump as the US President should make that point loud and clear with every single person in the UK, the EU and probably the world.
I was probably correct to have a referendum on membership of the EU but absolutely NOT the way Cameron crafted it.
Perhaps if the people were asked a different question but in a general election manifesto pledge that would have been the way forward. If you vote for us we will renegotiate our terms of membership of the EU. This spells out exactly what the people have concerns about. At the end of that process we will present to the people of the UK exactly what new deal is on the table and put that to the test in a referendum.
With that manifesto pledge on the table the negotiation with the EU would have been very, very different.
The manifesto pledge should have included a) commitment to an extensive study to determine those aspects of the EU charter that people disagree with and where 1) they need to and 2) where they would like to be. This is basic negotiation – you negotiate between 1 and 2 but you never, never go below 1 – that would be a deal breaker. b) an in depth study of the global market to identify all the potential markets, the value of those markets and our ability to take a commensurate share. Again this should determine what market share we reasonable expect to get and what share we need to work hard to achieve and the maximum realist value of the global market to the UK. We can then take the reasonable expectation share as the datum to measure against any potential loss of market share from leaving the EU.
Once these studies have concluded and their conclusions were included in a report this should then have been put to the House.
The purpose of these steps is to provide gravity to the UK’s position that the EU negotiators have to accept as in accord with the democratic will of the UK public.
If we had done our homework as any competent business person would have done we would have a strong basis to commence negotiations with the EU. Both parties would understand the deal breakers and should that point be reached either party can return to their public with their head held high and in the knowledge that they had done what was expected of them.
By contrast, in in the absence of these common sense steps and politicking, the EU are wiping the floor with us. They are using us as a soft target to demonstrate to other members the futility of attempting to leave the EU.
Not sure who he was quoting but Ed Miliband said ‘politics is too important to be left to the politicians’. This holds as a general rule. What about ‘the most important political decisions in a lifetime must not be left in the hands of the weakest political leader in a lifetime’.
Personally, I blame David Cameron. When he dropped the ball and ran for his life, no one would take up the reigns for very understandable reasons and this left the door open for Theresa May. I am convinced she was so deluded and opportunistic that she had no idea of the magnitude of the challenge ahead. There is every possibility that she will do more damage to the UK than the Romans or Adolf Hitler.
Going forward it is difficult to now what is best to do. The way the UK is headed #Brexit may trash the UK economy, lose the peace in Ireland, find ourselves at the mercy of the US and especially Trump. He will probable drag us and the rest of the world into another war. The only positive from my biased perspective is that Scottish Self Determination has never looked more likely, or even inevitable. The #unionistcult grip is slipping.
I was told as a kid that Britain was responsible for WW2 – they didn’t start it, but they made it possible and then inevitable. After WW1 Germany was reigned in. The depression of the 30’s that really began as an American problem in 1929, caught contagion and spread throughout the industrialised world. The poor manner that Britain adopted to tackle the depression left the country weak and feeble. Up to that point Britain had been the balancing power in Europe – with a strong Britain, Germany would stay in its box. Well, we all know how well that went?
Today, the UK acts as a sort of ‘sainted aunt’ to America. Sometimes it feels as if the yanks will always glance at the UK for approval in a way they would do with another country. You could say this is ‘the special relationship’.
With Donald Trump at the helm in the US and the UK, with May at the tiller, this feels a bit like Europe in the 30’s – although that was long before my time. Current events coming across the pond do leave us all with a chill that the only balancing forces to the US are Russia and China and they are and almost always have been, adversaries.
It takes a big person to say, stop the ship, we are headed for an iceberg. The UK are doing policy on the hoof. I think we need a General Election to remove the current. It is well within the terms of the EU convention for the UK to say to the EU that this is an unprecedented move for a member of the magnitude of the UK to leave. Negotiations have not progressed anything like they must do and, perhaps understandably the EU has not been as co-operative as we would have hoped. There may be a cost to this, there may be a lot of egg on chins etc but far better than finding ourselves in a crumpled heap at the bottom of a cliff with nothing more than the tide to wipe our brows.
We can put the EU on notice that we will withdraw from article 50. However, we almost certainly be back. In the meantime, we are going back to the drawing board to do a proper job, craft a carefully thought through proposition that is fully researched and costed that we can put to the people of the UK to enable them to make an informed decision.
BASICALLY, DO ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING THAT DAVID CAMERON FAILED TO DO!