They write for you
“No man is an island, entire of itself …. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less.”
I thought of these famous words by the poet, John Donne, as I watched the Prime Minister laying out plans for more investment in research and in new road infrastructure in her speech at the Mansion House in London.
The government thinks this is the alternative to staying in the European Union. Rutherglen people more than most know we should be doing it anyway to catch up with other countries. Coming out of the EU looks increasingly problematic.
Our universities are tearing their hair out as to how vital research collaborations will continue. Great wads of devalued pound notes are being flung at the car industry, the robotics industry, the local communities losing European grants, the construction industry – but not apparently the £350million a week promised to the NHS by Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson.
The chancellor is warning of the obvious – that a worse trade deal with our European partners means problems for UK businesses, less profits and less taxes to pay for public services. It is a slow motion disaster.
Now the High Court has told the Prime Minister that she has to tell MPs about her plan, if she has one, and get their agreement.
What does Theresa May want from the negotiations with the European Union? Will our businesses have to pay tariffs to sell to Europe (maybe)? Will they be bound by European regulations (probably)? Will we have to cough up a large membership fee to access the single market (almost certainly)? How do we stop large chunks of our important financial services industry moving from London, Edinburgh or Glasgow to Frankfurt or Dublin (no one knows)?
The PM’s line that “Brexit means Brexit” is a mere slogan and answers none of these questions. That is why there is increasing support for the Liberal Democrat view that the UK public should have a referendum on the terms of exit.
If MPs have to make choices on these things, Brexit will unravel.
Opinion polls already suggest a fairly major swing in opinion since the referendum with the public now decisively favouring remaining in Europe. The last line of Donne’s poem must haunt the PM’s nightmares –“And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”