What would possess Scheer to endorse Brexit madness?
It would be hard to imagine a more hideous train wreck than the steaming pile of metal, flesh and bone Britain has made of its departure from the European Union. By the time all the bodies have been bagged and tagged, Brexit’s victims may include, not only the country’s membership in the EU, but also the access to other countries’ markets it enjoys thereby, and the union with Scotland and Northern Ireland besides.
That’s if it is ever implemented. The mere contemplation of this week’s exit agreement with the European Union was enough to prompt further resignations from Prime Minister Theresa May’s already depleted cabinet, undermine her leadership, and divide her Conservative Party. Should the agreement be rejected when it comes before Parliament next month, it could bring down her government, triggering new elections and more uncertainty.
So, naturally, Andrew Scheer is all in favour. The Canadian Conservative leader took the opportunity of this week’s carnage to reiterate his support for Brexit, first expressed in an op-ed just before the 2016 referendum that committed the United Kingdom to its present course. The argument, then as now: sovereignty.
“I do believe that the U.K. over the years has given up a tremendous amount of sovereignty,” he told The Canadian Press, in ways that “I don’t think Canadians would ever accept for ourselves.”
If Justin Trudeau had agreed to a clause in the renegotiated NAFTA, he said, establishing “a new legislature” among the three countries whose laws would be binding on Canada, “I don’t believe Canada would ever go for that.”
That’s almost certainly true. It was difficult enough persuading Canadians to agree to NAFTA as it is, which is a much looser arrangement than the EU. And I take his point — up to a point. Had I been a citizen of Britain at the time of the 1975 referendum on membership in what was then popularly known as the Common Market, and had I known it would evolve into the much more tightly integrated political and economic union it is today, I might have voted no.
But there is a difference between what one might choose ex ante, in advance of such developments, and what one might choose ex post, after having been a member of the union for 40-odd years, with all of the economic, legal and institutional ties that have built up over that time. Brexit would have been an enormously destructive act even had its advocates given any serious thought to what they wanted to replace it with, or how to go about it.
But of course they hadn’t, as was obvious even at the time.
It was always clear, contrary to the airy assertions of the Brexiteers, that the EU would have by far the stronger hand in any negotiations, both on the terms of divorce and on what would come after.
Even if the EU might be otherwise disposed to come to terms, it would have every incentive to strike as hard a bargain as possible so as to deter other would-be exiters.
And in the still-fragile accommodation between Ireland, Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, it was given the means to enforce its will.
Brexit could not be allowed to interrupt the free flow of people and goods across the border between the two Irelands, a cornerstone of the peace settlement; but neither could it result in any similar border being placed in the Irish Sea.
In the event the negotiators cobbled together a fix that has pleased no one. For at least the next two years, nothing much would change, as attempts continued to find a more lasting solution to this dilemma. Should these fail, a “backstop” arrangement would kick in: to avoid having to impose controls on its southern border, Northern Ireland would remain inside the European tariff wall. But to avoid border controls with the rest of Britain, so, more loosely, would the U.K.
The price of this continued tariff-free access to the continent? The U.K. agreed to abide by European standards with regard to a vast range of social, environmental and labour regulations, among other concessions.
It would have to accept many of the existing restraints on its sovereignty, in other words, without any say in how these were drafted — and with no assurance of when, if ever, this state of affairs would cease.
All of this, just to preserve the access it has now — though in fact, in areas such as financial services, it will have rather less.
Brexiteers had told the voters in 2016 that Britain could have most of the benefits of EU membership with none of the costs. Instead, it seems likely to end up with something closer to the reverse: all of the costs, with fewer of the benefits.
Unsurprisingly, the agreement has been panned by both pro-Brexit and antiBrexit MPs. Ulster unionists fear it will result in their being torn from the United Kingdom, while Scottish nationalists remain equally opposed to being pulled out of the EU.
And if the deal is rejected? Then the U.K. is plunged into the unimaginable chaos of a “no-deal” Brexit, as early as next March, in which Britain would suddenly have no more access to the European market than might be enjoyed by, say, Bolivia. Unless, as growing numbers of Britons are demanding, the whole issue is reconsidered, via a second referendum.
What could have possessed Scheer to endorse this madness? Perhaps he hopes to play to the same populist nationalism that propelled the Brexit vote. Perhaps he is in the grip of the sentimental attachment so many Tories have for Mother Britain.
But no Canadian political leader has any business signing on to a project that would tear apart an existing political union — if you catch my drift. Brexit is less a cause than a cautionary tale.