We must reassert UK democracy through a new referendum...
Geraint Talfan Davies’ new book tells Wales’ Brexit story through his journal. Here, in the last 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, gives
NOVEMBER 9, 2016
Oh, God!! I feel terrible. And it’s not just the lack of sleep. Did it really happen? And for the second time in less than five months? To wake and know that the world has changed, again...
Scarcely a day has gone by in the last months when one has not been left open-mouthed at the behaviour of Donald Trump.
Nothing has been left unused in his lexicon of offensiveness, no minority left unbelittled, no woman unscorned, no depths unplumbed.
Yet no contravention of any one of the norms of decency dented his support. Is this really the champion of the “left behind”? Is this owner of a towering, gold-plated Manhattan palace really the Robin Hood of the huddled masses? Or have the put-upon of a transatlantic Sherwood Forest voted for the Sheriff of Nottingham?
If Mrs May comforts herself that swapping Obama for Trump will put Britain further up the queue for a free trade deal with America, just wait until she is faced with a protectionist American president intent on putting America first.
He will be content to ride as roughshod over her as he has done over the Scottish countryside.
In relation to America, Britain has surely learnt by now that it is the supplicant, and talk of the special relationship a dollar-free piety to be wheeled out when it suits.
MARCH 15, 2017
In our cultural sector the international dimension starts with Europe. It does not exclude the rest of the world, but it starts with Europe, not only because of proximity but also because we are part of the same shared civilisation stretching back over millennia.
Much is made – by British people especially – of the barrier of language within Europe, but language is only one facet of culture, important though it is.
Each European country claims its own distinctiveness in language, culture, politics and institutions, but those distinct features are mostly woven from threads we share, rather than existing in opposition to them.
Europe is a continent shaped by Greek and Roman civilisations, with common roots in Christian, Jewish and, yes, even Muslim traditions.
No language has borrowed more from other European languages than the English language, while over the centuries no European country’s culture has been immune to the periodic movement of people – sometimes born of aggression, at other times persecution.
English literature, French painting and German music are merely the more obvious examples of a shared kaleidoscopic heritage to which even a country as small as Wales has made its own unique contribution.
MAY 30, 2017
The fact that the Uefa Champions League Final – one of the greatest events in the world’s sporting calendar – is this week visiting the Welsh capital is a matter for pride and joy here at home: a time to show off Europe’s youngest capital, another opportunity to demonstrate that Cardiff and Wales can punch well above their weight in mounting major events, whether sporting, cultural or political.
Many Welsh people will be conscious of an irony: that the Welsh capital has this week received its biggest-ever influx of European visitors in the very year that the British Government has triggered the process of exiting from the European Union.
Such irony is only redoubled by remembering that Wales’ greatest footballing hero, the late John Charles, signed to play for Juventus in Turin (for a mere £65,000) in August 1957, only five months after the signing of the Treaty of Rome that created a European political and economic entity. This is a Government of fractious children playing with a toy set that came with no careful instructions.
They cannot even refer to a handy drawing on the cover of the box. There is a prevailing sense that David Davis’ meaningless repetitions at EU press conferences, far from being elements in the strategy of a brilliant poker player, are simply a sign that he himself and the Government as a whole have no idea where they are heading.
By now it is a Government clearly overwhelmed by the complexity of it all – the boxful of conundrums that it faces – and the knowledge that it lacks any political force or authority sharp enough – if I may change the metaphor – to slice through this daunting row of Gordian knots.
DECEMBER 3, 2017
Far from giving us back control, the mere prospect of Brexit is already reducing our capacity to tackle our own problems, and will do so increasingly as it bites on the economy and the public finances.
While our real problems are serious and legion – individual and regional inequalities, poverty, education, health and social care, low investment and low productivity – the Brexit debate has swamped the news and the Government.
Even on that subject we have had repetitive and insubstantial exchanges between the British minister David Davis and the EU’s lead negotiator Michel Barnier.
The listener is soon engulfed in a cloud of generalities from Mr Davis, counterpoised by M Barnier’s contained exasperation, conveyed “more in sorrow than in anger”.
Mr Davis’ cheeky chappy routine is wearing thin.
Meanwhile, back at Westminster, ministers negotiate with each other, sometimes in public, about how hard or soft a stance Britain should take. It is an unedifying process that leaves the public in the dark, either comatose or wearily suspicious.
DECEMBER 14, 2017
If this year’s slow trudge to an agreement on the mere preliminaries of our withdrawal from the EU has taught the Government one thing, it is surely that time and circumstance are not on its side...
It is surely clear that this is and will continue to be an unequal fight.
There is a massive gap between the UK and the EU in terms of clarity of objective, negotiating firepower, depth of preparation, and sheer numbers: population, size of market and economic clout.
Those who argue that “they need us as much as we need them” are clearly not good at sums.
Those multiple disparities are going to be even more in evidence when talks begin on the infinitely more time-consuming work of negotiating the endless minutiae of trade in what, to use David Davis’ own words, will be “excruciating detail”. Those details will haunt him for as long as he is in office, and they will matter to the lives of every one of us for a lot longer.
FEBRUARY 5, 2018
Play around with these economic assumptions as you will, it is impossible to conjure a plus on any front. No reputable economic agency or think-tank has managed to do so.
You would think that these figures would at least counsel caution. And yet the Government feels the need to listen to Mr Rees-Mogg and his band of brothers, who would have us brush them aside, preferring to send us into an uncharted mine without a Davy lamp or a canary.
In what conceivable way can this course of action be judged to be in the interests of the country as a whole, let alone in the interests of Wales, and especially its poorer parts? More urgently, on what conceivable grounds can this be judged to be an acceptable proposition for the Leader of the Opposition and his party? If this isn’t a moment when “clear red water” divides the Labour Party at Westminster beyond any doubt from the Government, then what will bring that day about?
FEBRUARY 14, 2018
Only Brexit, Boris says, will allow us to move from a low-wage, low-productivity economy to a high-wage, high-productivity economy. Only Brexit will allow our entrepreneurs to innovate.
Only Brexit will allow us to exploit changes in the world economy. Have British governments really carried no responsibility on all these matters over the years?
But then he argues that our sales to many countries outside the EU have risen sharply since 2010. Indeed they have. Would you believe, that has been achieved by our allegedly chained entrepreneurs, even while remaining part of the EU.
Germany has done even better. The truth is that selling to the EU and to the rest of the world is not a zerosum game. Getting the best for Britain should mean a both/and strategy, not either/or.
Worst of all, Mr Johnson is explicit in saying we should not worry about coming out of the Single Market and Customs Union – although he carefully avoids a recommendation. In reaching out to Remainers, I’m afraid that he has offered a gnarled and leafless olive branch.
FEBRUARY 22, 2018
At the end of a business function in Cardiff last week, a businesswoman, English by birth but now wellstitched into the Welsh community and distraught at the prospect of Brexit, asked me a very surprising question.
“Tell me,” she said, “can our National Assembly declare war?” “Why?” said I. “Well, if we can, we could declare war on Ireland – and lose. Then we could join them.”
I daresay the constitutional lawyers will give this novel idea rather short shrift.
But the jest does speak of a common spirit between the two small nations that accentuates our horror at a too-common English amnesia about its own tortured relationship with the Emerald Isle.
A week ago our Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, in the first of a series of heralded ministerial speeches on Brexit, managed not to refer to Ireland or Northern Ireland even once – not a single syllable.
If English amnesia about Irish history is the first unforgiveable sign of insensitivity, the second is its continuing marginalisation in the Brexit context, while the third is a wilful disregard for the likely economic impact of Brexit on our closest neighbour. Do not underestimate the sense of injury.
We owe Ireland.
Our contribution to Ireland’s travails over the centuries is such that, at the very least, we should be obliged to resist any recurring amnesia not just from self-interest but as a matter of honour.
MARCH 7, 2018
The Welsh and Scottish governments have felt compelled to produce their own Continuity Bills, largely because of the UK Government’s unwillingness or inability to deliver a timely response to their concerns.
The source of this problem lies in a consistent pattern of behaviour by successive UK governments in relation to devolution. They have never had their hearts in the process. In his memoirs, Tony Blair seemed rather regretful about devolution, having pushed on with the legislation more out of loyalty to his deceased predecessor.
The Cameron government did what it could to avoid having to enact in full the last-minute “vow” of more powers that was made to the Scottish people in a state of panic, when it looked as if the referendum on Scottish independence could be lost.
As for Wales, Westminster, unable to conceive that Wales could exercise full legislative powers unaided, imposed a patronising system of legislative consent orders – LCOs – through which the National Assembly had to seek “permission” to legislate, one piece at a time, from a glowering Mother of Parliaments…
MARCH 29, 2018
The truth is that a complacent sentimentality towards our imperial history has distorted our view of the world, as well as of our own state.
Pride in one’s own country is a laudable sentiment, but excessive pride, tipping over into exceptionalism, risks dropping one’s guard against delusions and self-deception. Jingoism requires blind spots.
But this is to take a charitable view of some of the leading proponents of the Brexit cause.
Too often their enthusiasm for Brexit is not so much worship of the Union Jack as cover for a hankering after a different kind of state, the raising of neo-liberalism’s Jolly Roger. The treasure they seek to amass is not for distribution. The left behind can be, well, left behind.
Even the extra resources from Europe, while aiding our public sphere in so many ways, have not touched individuals sufficiently in their own homes and lives – not at Brussels’ direction but as a result of our own policies. To “respect” the referendum, therefore, is not to be bound by it, regardless of changing circumstance.
Questioning Brexit, even stopping Brexit, is not to disrespect those communities in Wales and elsewhere who voted to leave the EU, it is to respect the suffering that they have endured for far too long and to fear its prolonging.
In years to come, when people look back on this period between March and October 2018, they will recognise it as the last moment when the country and its elected representatives could still choose between a future buoyed up by continued membership of one of the most noble confederations in the history of the world – that is yet a work in progress – or a future where we will fidget on the fringes of everywhere – the perennial nuisance, sometimes indulged, more often not.
If we take the latter path we will, no doubt, try to make the best of it, but we will not make the best of ourselves or of our country.
We will have shrunk the garden in which our children and grandchildren will toil and play – and against their express wishes. We will have resurrected unnecessary borders on our shores and in our minds. We will have raised a tariff against neighbourliness.
It is to prevent this fate that we must all bend our efforts over the coming months, not to retreat from the rest of the world but to make ourselves effective in it, not to resist democracy but to reassert it – through a new referendum. We need, at this time above all, to be the most active citizens.
In all its tortuous dimensions and its pressing obligations, this is our unfinished business. Unfinished Business is published by Parthian at £8.99.