‘Remainers left bereft as Leavers languish in their fools’ paradise’
Geraint Talfan Davies’ new book tells Wales’ Brexit story through the eyes of his journal. In the second of three extracts from Unfinished Business, the co-founder of the Institute of Welsh Affairs and member of the Executive Committee of Wales for Europe
MARCH 7, 2016
Those who would have us disengage from the EU complain that supporters of the EU are indulging in Project Fear.
But only the ineffably foolish or the blind can believe that there is nothing to fear in the world today. The clouds are many and some are very dark indeed...
Are we to believe that all these threats are just an illusion, things to be casually waved away, with a Farage grin or a Johnsonian chortle? The Brexit camp would seem to have no risk register.
Despite arguing for a wholly unprecedented event – the very first withdrawal of a country from the EU – the “Leavites” cleave to a view that all will remain for the best in the best of all possible worlds. They will pass by on the other side of all Europe’s problems.
No economic or business disruption, no adverse reactions from any member of the European family, swift and trouble-free negotiations not only with the EU but with other countries around the world, no impact on our currency or credit, no risks for our financial services, no impact on our security despite the end of European Arrest Warrants, watertight borders – despite the experience of other non-EU countries – and the complete replacement of EU funding for our farmers and poorer regions via a beneficent Treasury.
In short, a path of action with not a single downside. Project Fantasy. It’s not a world I recognise or can imagine.
APRIL 12, 2016
Ukip has a strange resemblance to the party that flourished for a short period in the United States in the middle of the 19th century – the Know Nothings.
They were nativist, equivocal on slavery and anti-immigrant – antiCatholic immigration in the American case – with the Pope in the 19th century caricatured as the source of all evil in much the same way as the European Commission is lampooned by Ukip today.
Unlike Ukip, the Know Nothings achieved some real electoral success – such as control of Massachusetts – although their rise and fall was encompassed in scarcely more than seven years between 1849 and 1856.
It is instructive that the two American politicians who were later tagged with the Know Nothing label were George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama, in the 1960s, and Donald Trump today.
Ukip are Britain’s Know Nothings – carrion crows, feeding where they can on poverty and disorientation in this unsettlingly fast-moving, unstable and dangerous world.
APRIL 20, 2016
The belief that all that is needed to conjure a British economic miracle is a wave of Mr Gove’s rhetorical wand is, frankly, for the fairies.
Economic performance across the countries of Europe has just as much to do with national policies, even when the EU provides a fair and helpful framework and an internal market of more than 500 million people.
It is not the EU that ordained the collapse of British manufacturing. It is not the EU that sold Cadbury to Kraft. It is not the EU that sold Boots the Chemist to a private equity company. It is not Europe that made our big corporations and our banking system so short-termist when compared with their German counterparts.
If the creation of sunlit uplands is so easy, why hasn’t it been in someone’s manifesto – here, in Britain?
JULY 3, 2016
For almost half the nation it had already been a week of mourning.
Those who had gone to bed at the end of voting day, reassured by Nigel Farage’s premature conceding of defeat, awoke to the knowledge that their world had changed.
Yes, it was like a sudden bereavement. That terrible empty feeling of incomprehension. An inability to focus on anything else.
A pathetic wish to rerun time’s tape so that this time the crash would not happen.
A questioning of things done and not done, a scramble to pinpoint anything that might have diverted us all from what actually did happen. Then as one grey mist cleared, a red mist descended – a growing anger at fate’s multi-headed conspiracy.
After such a disfiguring event for the country, the natural response would be look to a healing process, except that the immediate logic of the result is to make the rupture permanent.
To sever ourselves from this union of 43 years’ standing will, in a formal sense, lock in a reduced joint responsibility for each other across this continent.
It will not be reduced to zero – many will do what they can to maintain networks of interest – but that will not be the same as whole nations operating together, day after day, year after year, the standing mechanisms of collaboration.
The means to reach out will be, at the very least, much diminished.
AUGUST 4, 2016
Three months ago Ukip’s rather rum Welsh cohort was delighting in the election of seven of them to the National Assembly.
Within days Nathan Gill, the leader who had delivered this success, had been ousted by his own group in favour of Mr Neil Hamilton, who is rummer than most.
The Ukip Assembly Group, with remarkable persistence – and, let it be said, some justice – is now insisting Mr Gill give up the other seat that he already occupies in the European Parliament. Mr Hamilton is, of course, not on speaking terms with Mr Farage.
So Mr Carswell falls out with Mr Farage, who falls out with Mr Hamilton, who falls out with Mr Gill, who never wanted Mr Hamilton in the Assembly in the first place.
This is all beyond satire, but at least it allows one to ask whether, less than six weeks after the EU referendum, the party has shot its bolt.
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