THE GRADUAL REVERSALOF BREXIT

Europe - the future of the United Kingdom? 

It was Damon Albarn, the lead singer with the pop-group Blur, who said that Britain was just a bolshy island off the coast of Europe. It was a shrewd and unexpected comment from someone not normally known for his political analysis and summed up what a lot of supposedly more sophisticated thinkers have said – that the Brits have a fundamental mistrust of foreigners and this affects the way we vote. This was confirmed for me wen someone in Dover referred ro the French 'playing solo bugger' at the border, It was all their fault - the well-publicised problems when crossing the Channel - and we were better off without them.

Brexit has been described as a disaster and a mistake by those who opposed it and (a good image this) as like when you are taking off on plane and it takes a while to steady the ship while you are climbing and before you start cruising comfortably at height and you wonder what all the fuss was about as you settle back in your seats. In other words, it will all be ok once we get used to and adjust to the new way of doing things.

 

Whatever you think of Brexit, it is clear that a certain amount of co-operation is needed with our European neighbours. To give a small example, we can only feed ourselves up to early August until we rely on imported food. There is nothing sinister about this, We have a large population in a limited space and we do not devote enough land to farming to feed the number of people who live here. This is going up while the land mass remains the same.

 

I feel sorry for those trying to export to Europe who have lost their single market advantages and have to fill in a huge number of forms to continue in business. An undoubted downside of leaving the European Union is the effect on manufacturers who are now burdened with the sort of barriers that, to be fair, existed before we joined Europe and the single market existed. It is back to the bad old/good old days for them.

 

As someone who – putting my cards on the table here – voted against leaving the EU (we lost) and for Labour in the last election (we won), I have been disappointed but not surprised at how the government has listened to the people who voted in favour of leaving.  Call them the bolshies if you like, many of them are natural supporters of Labour who do not want to feel betrayed by a government which thinks it knows best what to do and feels happy about reversing the Brexit vote. The Brexit vote must be respected at all costs.

 

While I understand this, I do not share the view, and would like to rejoin Europe as soon as possible. In fact, when there was talk of having a ‘second’ referendum a while ago I was tempted to point out that it would actually be a third referendum. I am old enough to have voted in the first referendum on Europe when we voted to remain in the Common Market (as it was called then) by two to one. At each referendum I have voted to remain European and I am fairly certain that, given the chance, I would do so again.

 

The government seems to be taking a softly-softly approach to rejoining Europe, gradually dismantling the worst excesses of Brexit without ignoring the (actually pretty narrow) victory of the leavers in the referendum. So we have had a weakening of the boycott of scientists in Europe and a partial reversal of the idea that you have to have a full passport if you come to Britain, even if you are a student or school age pupil. As though a student would join the illegal immigrants who come over here in hard to stop numbers. This, incidentally, has affected people in my own business of tourist guiding.

Although I always vote in them, I am not a big fan of referendums (or referenda, if you prefer). We vote every five years or so for a government and we should leave them to govern before returning them or throwing them out. Part of me hopes for another referendum so that we can reverse the damage done by Brexit. Part of me wants to be shot of the whole idea of them so we can continue with arms-length government.    

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide,blogspot,com

Edwin Lerner