We wait to see how the future emerges
“ARED sunset; a long night; a pale, misty dawn. But as the light grows it becomes apparent to remote posterity that everything has changed. Night had fallen on Britannia. Dawn arose on England, humble, poor, barbarous, degraded and divided, but Alive!”
Not my words, but those of Sir Winston Churchill on the departure of the Romans in 455AD in his “History of the English Speaking Peoples” upon the first expulsion of European enhancement to British life, culture and trade.
Those words could have been even more apposite today save for a diminished relationship that has been established with 27 other nations through the new Trade and Co-Operation Agreement, by common consent the very minimum that could have been expected and which introduces a large cohort of bureaucrats whose costs will be borne by British taxpayers.
At least those who blindly voted “Leave” in 2016 now know what they actually voted for!
It may infuriate those who will see this country still having to follow EU rules and standards, without having any influence on their formulation, whilst being liable to be punished through tariffs should the UK diverge.
The arbitrage that the new agreement introduces may not be the European Court of Justice in title but its operation can still impose binding obligations on the UK and the £39 billion which was negotiated in the Withdrawal Agreement to cover the UK’s previous obligations to Brussels will still have to be paid. For those who still view the European Union as a progressive unifying force in an increasingly illiberal, fractious and dangerous world it will disappoint that their country is no longer able to assert itself with as much influence, not only because it is no longer an industrial power but just another country between superpowers against which the EU is the only equivalent countervail.
They will have watched with incredulity the UK march to an economic cliff edge to not jump off but find a way to an uncharted path below, damaging its own integrity in the process by the imposition of a border in the sea between its own constituent parts.
Perhaps it will now have to stay in the shadows of the vaunted sunlit uplands for a while behind the nontariff barriers and increased costs it has created for itself.
We wait to see how the future emerges whilst carrying a blue passport which, denuded of European citizenship, provides fewer rights and freedoms than those held by 450 million other citizens on the Continent and in Northern Ireland.
We will await the promised renaissance of the fishing industry and anticipate the re-emergence of merchant shipbuilding, the expansion of the steel industry, the repatriation of machine tool, heavy engineering and manufacturing upon which erstwhile British worldpower, trade and influence was founded.
It was not the EU that caused so many great British industries to be lost or sold to foreign interests but British government policy and asset strippers masquerading as patriotic business people.
It is not by any miracle that major continental countries retain and develop their industry, but simply by continued investment in their national interests and a more equitable commitment to their people.
If the promises made by “Leave”, backed by many of the people who have sold our country short, fail to materialise the British people may justifiably take aim at those who promoted a fantasy.
An idea founded in xenophobia, a false notion of sovereignty and a nostalgic view of the past.
It could never be fulfilled by a nation whose majority of trade is now founded in services that has chosen to plough a more lonely furrow.
Its role as a bridge between the EU and the USA abandoned and its presence removed from the governance of a union that amplified its presence in the world. Perhaps not in my now short lifetime, but as people start to fully comprehend the enormity of what they have actually voted away for themselves and their country, Brexit may just be a staging post on the way to England, or the UK if it still exists, being again a full and supportive member of Europe’s noblest effort in collaboration, prosperity, liberty and peace.