In Brexit limbo, U.K. veers between anxiety, humour
The only thing Britons can agree on is that May’s government has mishandled the split
LONDON — It’s said that history often repeats itself — the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. Many Britons feel they are living through both at the same time as their country navigates its way out of the European Union.
The British government awarded a contract to ship in emergency supplies to a company with no ships. It pledged to replace citizens’ burgundy European passports with proudly British blue ones — and gave the contract to a Franco-Dutch company. It promised to forge trade deals with 73 countries by the end of March, but two years later has only a handful in place (including one with the Faroe Islands).
Pretty much everyone in the U.K. agrees that the Conservative government’s handling of Brexit has been disastrous. Unfortunately, that’s about the only thing this divided nation can agree on.
With Britain due to leave the EU in six weeks and still no deal in sight on the terms of its departure, both supporters and opponents of Brexit are in a state of high anxiety.
Pro-EU “remainers” lament the looming end of Britons’ right to live and work in 27 other European nations and fear the U.K. is about to crash out of the bloc without even a divorce deal to cushion the blow.
Brexiteers worry that their dream of leaving the EU will be dashed by bureaucratic shenanigans that will delay its departure or keep Britain bound to EU regulations forever.
“I still think they’ll find a way to curtail it or extend it into infinity,” said “leave” supporter Lucy Harris.
It’s been more than two and a half years since Britons voted 52 per cent to 48 per cent to leave the EU. Then came months of tense negotiations to settle on Brexit departure terms and the outline of future relations. At last, the EU and Prime Minister Theresa May’s government struck a deal — then saw it rejected last month by Britain’s Parliament.
May is now seeking changes to the Brexit deal in hope of getting it through Parliament before March 29. EU leaders say they won’t renegotiate, and accuse Britain of failing to offer a way out of the impasse.
May insists she won’t ask the EU to delay Britain’s departure, and has refused to rule out a cliff-edge no-deal Brexit.
Meanwhile, Brexit has clogged the gears of Britain’s economic and political life. The economy has stalled, growing by only 0.2 per cent in the fourth quarter as business investment registered a fourth straight quarterly decline.
Big political decisions have been postponed, as May’s minority Conservative government struggles to get bills through a divided Parliament. Major legislation needed to prepare for Brexit has yet to be approved.
Britain still does not have a deal on future trade with the EU, and it’s unclear what tariffs or other barriers U.K. firms that do business with Europe will face.
That has left businesses and citizens in an agonizing limbo.
Rod McKenzie, director of policy at the Road Haulage Association, a truckers’ lobby group, feels “pure anger” at a government he says has failed to plan, leaving haulers uncertain whether they will be able to travel to EU countries after March 29.
McKenzie says truckers were told they will need Europe-issued permits to drive through EU countries if Britain leaves the bloc without a deal. Of more than 11,000 who applied, only 984 — less than 10 per cent — have been granted the papers.
“It will put people out of business,” McKenzie said. “It’s been an absolutely disastrous process for our industry, which keeps Britain supplied with, essentially, everything.”
He’s not alone in raising the spectre of shortages; both the government and British businesses have been stockpiling key goods in case of a no-deal Brexit.
Still, some Brexit-backers, such as former Daily Telegraph editor Charles Moore, relish the prospect of a clean break even if it brings short-term pain.
“Perhaps it is time for a Brexit recipe book, like those comforting wartime rationing ones full of bright ideas for dull things,” Moore wrote in The Spectator, a conservative magazine. He added that he and his neighbours were willing to “set out in our little ships to Dunkirk or wherever and bring back luscious blackmarket lettuces and French beans, oranges and lemons.”
Brexit supporters often turn to nostalgic evocations of the Second World War and Britain’s “finest hour,” to the annoyance of pro-Europeans.
The imagery reached a peak of absurdity during a recent BBC news report on Brexit, when the anchor announced that “Theresa May says she intends to go back to Brussels to renegotiate her Brexit deal,” as the screen cut to black-and-white footage of the Second World War British Spitfires going into battle.
The BBC quickly said the startling juxtaposition was a mistake: The footage was intended for an item about a new Battle of Britain museum. Skeptics saw it as evidence of the broadcaster’s bias, though they disagreed on whether the BBC was biased in favour of Brexit or against it.
Some pro-Europeans have hit back against Brexit with despairing humour.
Four friends have started plastering billboards in London with images of pro-Brexit politicians’ past tweets, to expose what the group sees as their hypocrisy.
Highlights included former U.K. Independence Party Leader Nigel Farage’s vow that “if Brexit is a disaster, I will go and live abroad.”
The friends dubbed the campaign “Led by Donkeys,” after the description of British soldiers in the First World War as “lions led by donkeys.”