Visit to Brexit Britain tells me they can’t wait to quit

Having spent most of the week in and around Oxford, the phrase that resonated most with me was when a Brexit voter declared: ‘We are not European!’ Another comment constantly heard was: ‘Did no one notice that we in Britain resolutely decided not to join the euro in 1999?’ Ironically, this university town voted by 70% to remain in the EU. But the attitude to leaving is definitely becoming more bullish, even in Oxford, though the divide between ‘town and gown’ is echoed across Britain.

Driving into the city, one passes the massive BMW Mini plant in Cowley – which is undergoing a major expansion, though there is something ironic about a car manufacturer owned by the biggest economy in Europe, Germany, expanding in the second biggest economy, the UK, on the eve of the divorce.

With Britain’s economy thriving, taxes far exceeding expenditure and the number of tower cranes much greater than the number of dreaming spires, there is no turning back. If anything, it’s full steam ahead to Brexit.

That is one reason why Tony Blair’s call for people to ‘rise up’ and vote again to remain was met with snorts of derision and disbelief. I then travelled to the birthplace of Winston Churchill, in Blenheim palace, a man who once called for ‘a united states of Europe’.

More irony in this incredible location as we were constantly reminded by our guide that the breathtaking palace had been gifted by a grateful nation to the Duke of Marlborough, John Churchill, after he led the combined armies of Europe at Blenheim to defeat France and ensure the superiority of the British crown.

But students of the Duke of Marlborough’s descendant Winston Churchill quickly pointed out to me that he would have abhorred trade tariffs, restrictions and economic barriers. Over a hundred years ago he wrote trenchantly: ‘I am utterly opposed to anything which will alter the free trade character of this country, and I consider such an issue superior to any other before us... preferential tariffs are dangerous and objectionable.’

Equally trenchant today in the UK are the Brexiteers who proudly reminded me of how they are at the heart of industrial Europe, if not the world. All around Oxford they pointed to the thriving car industry and heavy manufacturing which has carried on here since the days of coal and the unleashing of the industrial revolution. They almost sneered when I mentioned high end pharma and computer jobs in Ireland, deriding them as short-term, mobile, tax-driven ‘fly by nights!’

Of course, I had to pay a visit to the birthplace of another great Englishman, William Shakespeare, in Stratford-upon-Avon, an hour from where Churchill is buried.

The town thrives on his memory and proudly reminds anyone willing to listen that they gave the world the greatest ever writer. In the house where Shakespeare was born, and up to 4,000 people a day queue to stroll through his bedroom, the guides pointed out that a man who never left England could still write about star-crossed lovers in Verona and the royal family of Denmark. In other words, the UK does not have to be part of an unwieldy economic union to thrive? Thrive they will, and Brexit will see the UK leave the EU sooner rather than later. It has stopped the march towards closer European unity and will have unforeseeable consequences for us in Ireland.