Brexit, No Exit

Why (in the End) Britain Won't Leave Europe

Denis MacShane

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781786722577
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The UK's Brexit vote in 2016 and the inconclusive general election just 12
months later have unleashed a wave of chaos and uncertainty - on the eve
of formal negotiations with the EU.
Denis MacShane - former MP and Europe minister under Tony Blair - has
a unique insider perspective on the events that led to the Brexit vote and
ultimately to Theresa May's ill-fated election gamble of June 2017. He argues that Brexit will not mean full rupture with Europe and that
British business will overcome the rightwing forces of the Conservative
back-benches and UKIP, which have already been weakened by the latest
election. Although negotiations with the EU may prove excruciating,
Britain cannot and will not divorce itself from the continent of Europe.
Indeed, the European question will remain the defining political issue of
our time.

PART ONE

THE IMPACT OF BREXIT

1

THE BREXIT REVOLUTION

Wednesday 22 June 2016 was a typical London mid-summer day – warm, but muggy, with the occasional chilly wind and a hint of the thunderstorms that later in the night led to a month’s worth of rain falling in less than an hour.

The next day, Thursday 23 June, was to be one of the most momentous in British and European history. In the eighteenth century Lord North was the Tory prime minister who lost America. In the twenty-first century David Cameron became the Tory prime minister who took Britain out of Europe.

The word ‘revolution’ barely appears in the lexicon of British political history. The seventeenth century saw a civil war, a restoration and then an invited-in invasion by a Dutch king to ensure Protestant supremacy and parliamentary sovereignty. There were major reforms in the nineteenth century but nothing that justified the word ‘revolution’. That was something that happened across the Channel or the Atlantic or, in the twentieth century, in Russia in 1917 or Iran in 1979.

Yet it is hard not to see the process of Brexit as anything short of a revolutionary moment in the placid waters of Britain’s political life. In Brexit combined with the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House following a Brexit-type post-truth campaign and wild exaggerations, the two great English-speaking democracies voted to end the era that opened with the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. Then the United States and European democracies, including Britain, joined in the construction of the Euro-Atlantic project of peace, economic integration and liberal democracy. It lasted from the Marshall Plan of 1947 until a US president and a British prime minister held hands as they celebrated a return to nationalist protectionist populism, with some hard-working taxpayers in Britain and America now targets of choice for government action against ‘immigrants’.

The new Brexit–Trump political axis was based on a contempt for truth and a rejection of all the lessons of rationality painfully learned since the Enlightenment. Hannah Arendt, who gave the world the concept of ‘totalitarianism’, might have been predicting the Brexit–Trump world when she wrote in 1974, during an interview with the French writer Roger Errera:

If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. […] On the receiving end you get not only one lie – a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days – but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.

The modish term ‘post-truth’ came into play as analysts tried to grapple with a new politics in which provable facts and rational argument were regarded as old-fashioned forms of communication irrelevant to the era of social media and fake news. The BBC in particular gave up discharging its duty to truth, instead allowing endless lies about the EU to be broadcast without challenge. To be fair to President Trump, as his first months in office went by he did seem to leave behind some of the surreal tweeted policy pronouncements that helped him win the White House. NATO was no longer ‘obsolete’ but essential to US global interests. He would work with Angela Merkel on a US–EU trade agreement and Britain would have to wait. Vladimir Putin’s support for the Syrian president after he used gas to kill young children was unacceptable. Trump’s America would now work inside the US–Mexico–Canada North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which Trump had scorned much as UK Tories attacked the EU. In contrast to Mrs May’s line on Europe, President Trump said he wanted to work to reform NAFTA, not walk out of it. Trump’s campaigning ideology appeared to be giving way to a more measured realist assessment of US core interests. Might this also happen across the Atlantic, as the excitements of the Brexit plebiscite and general election gave way to the realities of what a full rupture with Europe entailed?

The Brexit plebiscite vote opened up divisions in Britain. The young voted for Europe. The old voted against Europe. Scotland voted for a European future. England voted to cut links with the EU. London voted to remain a giant European global city, but many smaller cities and towns in England voted to stop Europeans coming to live and work freely in their community.

The Conservative Party was convulsed as a successful Tory prime minister and chancellor left office just a year after winning a majority in a general election. Tory MPs who had been excluded from power for years on the grounds of unreliability and political eccentricity now held high office because they had secured an exit from the EU. The Labour Party was depressed and divided as its leader ordered his MPs to vote in the same lobby as the Conservatives and UKIP rather than vote with and in the name of the 63 per cent of the population that did not vote for Brexit.

As part of the Brexit-engendered hate campaign against any kind of foreign entrant in Britain, a small amendment was added to the Article 50 vote in the Commons to stop the arrival in Britain of 2,500 child refugees from the wars that British policy in the Middle East had helped ferment. There had already been agreement to let the children into homes waiting for them in this, our generous country, just as the Kindertransports had brought Jewish children and adolescents to safety from 1930s Europe. But as Jonathan Freedland wrote, post-Brexit Britain felt able to break ‘a promise to give shelter to 3,000 of the most desperate people on Earth, children fleeing war and devastation? What kind of government sneaks out an announcement that the 3,000 places it had reserved for child refugees will be shrunk to 350 and, after that, the doors to this peaceful and prosperous country will be slammed shut?’

It is not that Mrs May or Tory ministers are cruel, but anti-Europeanism has coarsened and degraded the quality of public and press discourse in Britain. Thus today’s Conservative ministers were confident they could act more harshly than their predecessors in the 1930s. So void of coherence and confidence or even plain political courage was the Labour Party that they offered neither hope and a voice to the old values of the British people nor any policy for healing the wounds of the 20-year Brexit campaign.

Scotland and Ireland were transformed by Brexit. The ruling nationalist separatist party in Scotland invoked the possibility of an independence referendum to secure Scotland’s future as a European nation. In Ireland, there were great fears in both the Irish Republic and the six counties of Northern Ireland that are part of the UK that the full-scale rupture with all European institutions demanded by Prime Minister May’s Brexit ministers would mean customs posts to check on all goods crossing to and from the European Customs Union, to which Ireland belongs, and the six counties of Northern Ireland, which would now have different tariffs and duties. There would be different rules about farming subsidies which would encourage smuggling across the UK–Ireland borders. Many Irish firms export from the north and south as a single economic entity. Outside the (EU) Single Market and Customs Union that would stop. They feared a range of new tensions along the border, which before England’s vote to leave Europe was completely free, open and tranquil.

There were worries in Gibraltar and Britain around leaving the EU treaties which obliged Britain and Spain to cooperate. As Gibraltarians lost EU rights thanks to Brexit, they could be exposed to new pressures from Spain. There would be a hard border between Spain and the territory now outside the EU. The Rock’s airport could lose the right to receive flights once the UK left all the aviation bodies that policed EU airspace.

The immediate aftermath of the Brexit–Trump victory was a reversion to scapegoating and finger-pointing on the basis of nationality or religion. European citizens long based in Britain, with British spouses and British-born children, were told they did not qualify for residence in Britain. In streets and workplaces, hard-working, tax-paying Europeans were told to their face ‘Go home!’ Five days after the referendum, a 20-year-old man, Robert Molloy, appeared in court in Manchester after shouting at an American who had lived in the UK for 18 years, ‘Don’t chat shit when you are not even from England, you little fucking immigrant. Get back to Africa.’ The defence lawyer explained to the judge that ‘Leading up to the referendum those in positions of great responsibility employed divisive rhetoric that clearly has had an impact.’ The lawyer sensibly added, ‘That’s not an excuse.’ No, it isn’t, but as the Brexit-induced hate against all foreigners in Britain increased as a result of the referendum, those who attacked the presence of Europeans in Britain refused to accept any responsibility for the tensions their demagogic rhetoric unleashed.

British Muslims who had some connection to a country President Trump did not like, including Sir Mo Farah, the Olympic Gold medallist, who was born in Somalia, were told not to try and travel to President Trump’s America. But other Muslims were being hauled off planes from Europe, as they would not be allowed entry into the new world that arose after the Brexit–Trump vote.

Prime Minister Theresa May announced that Britain would leave the world’s biggest open trade market, the EU’s Single Market. A thousand Japanese firms, including global names like Nissan, Toyota, Honda, Mitsubishi and Hitachi, and scores of banks and financial firms in Japan had set up business and opened factories in Britain to export to Europe after Mrs May’s predecessor, Margaret Thatcher, abolished national vetoes in Europe, when she forced through the Single European Act creating the EU’s Single Market. She enticed the Japanese to make Britain their gateway to Europe and helped bring back to life the UK automobile industry and renew jobs in depressed regions with the promise they would be able to trade anywhere in the European market of 500 million consumers. That pledge was reaffirmed by all of Mrs Thatcher’s successors until Mrs May arrived.

Many economists and objective think-tanks and consultancies believed that unless Britain agreed to stay in the Single Market the nation could see a significant decline in its GDP and loss of growth. To be fair, other economists hostile to the EU argued the opposite. In truth, no one will know until well into the 2020s, when Brexit fully happens, and much of the frantic writing in the press is little better than forecasting next year’s weather or announcing the Premiership League Champion in a decade’s time. If the UK limits itself to a political Brexit, and sustains, like other non-EU governments in Europe, relations with Europe based on open trade, respect for common European rules and laws, free movement of goods, capital, services and people – then perhaps the outcomes of the more apocalyptic fears and prophecies will be avoided.

Brexit was voted in 2016. It will be some years until it is fully effected, and its exact form depends on the decision of the Prime Minister and the ruling Conservative Party. The worries over the impact of UKIP on the Conservative vote that many believe impelled David Cameron to hold the 2016 plebiscite have disappeared, as has any serious parliamentary political challenge to Mrs May. Can she rise above party passions and see the wider national interest?

A massively complicated set of negotiations lies ahead to extricate Britain from dozens of tightly interwoven agreements with other EU nations, covering everything from aviation landing rights for low-cost airlines to agricultural subsidies or involvement in European-wide policing and anti-terrorism measures and common climate change agreements. Enda Kenny, the Irish prime minister, declared it was impossible for all these complex negotiations to be successfully terminated in the space of two years before the next European Parliament elections in May 2019 – the deadline desired by Theresa May.

Jean-Claude Piris, widely accepted as Europe’s best legal expert on EU negotiations, reckoned British withdrawal would take a full decade after the UK left the EU following the start of the negotiations (which under the EU treaty were meant to be concluded in two years). Piris told me further that:

All legal and budgetary commitments, accepted by the UK before day D of withdrawal, shall remain legally obligatory for the UK and remain subject to the jurisdiction of the EUCJ after the UK’s withdrawal.

The UK shall remain bound to fulfil its budgetary obligations created by regulations, directives and decisions adopted by the EU’s institutions when the UK was still an EU Member State.

This obligation is valid both in classic public international law and in EU law.

So even after the withdrawal treaty has been negotiated, there will be continuing UK financial obligations to other EU member states that cannot be avoided unless Britain wants to break all its traditions and norms of respecting international law.

Political leaders and senior officials in national governments as well as the EU institutions have been clear that Britain would leave the EU treaty framework and cease to elect British Members of the European Parliament, no longer have an EU Commissioner and no longer send ministers and officials to take part in the meetings that decided EU policy and laws. The substantive negotiations could take place only once the UK was no longer bound by the common treaty obligations that other European nation states agreed to live by.

There was considerable confusion about the length of time it would take to negotiate Brexit. The two years stipulated in Article 50 of the EU treaty which allows for a member state to withdraw from the EU has to include time for consultations with member states about the withdrawal agreement or treaty agreed with the leaving country – in this case the United Kingdom. The talks over what future relationship Britain would have with Europe will only begin in detail once we have left, even if some exploratory talks could happen before formal withdrawal. The notification that Britain would invoke Article 50 was sent in March 2017 but then had to be examined by 27 EU member states, with effective negotiations not starting until after the formation of a new German government late in 2017.

Then there has to be a six-month period at the end of the negotiations for the 27 member states to agree the final terms negotiated in Brussels to allow Britain to secure a political exit from the EU before the new EU Commission, Parliament and Council President begin their five-year term of work in May 2019. So in effect there would be about nine months between the end of 2017 and autumn 2018 to negotiate a withdrawal treaty with the full authority of the new government in Germany. Few in Brussels or Brexit specialists in the 27 EU member states believed that the relatively short time frame for Article 50 talks could cover big issues like trade and market access, still less the question of the Customs Union. The EU selected three priorities for the withdrawal negotiations. First, the UK would have to pay, and the EU would have to agree on how much, to discharge its obligations and liabilities to the EU. Second, the rights of EU citizens living and working in Britain and British citizens in Europe should be clarified and guaranteed. Third, the status of Ireland and especially the Peace Process in Northern Ireland underwritten by the EU should be agreed. If all these points could be agreed then the EU would offer Britain the possibility of maintaining tariff-free trade in goods that respected the EU’s rule-of-origin obligations for a number of years pending a final settlement.

According to researchers in Brussels, there were more than 20,000 EU laws and regulations that Britain had helped promote or had accepted which would no longer apply unless negotiators agreed otherwise. There are 350,000 so-called Single Market ‘passports’ awarded to financial service firms in the UK (British and foreign) that allow a firm based in Britain to buy and sell financial products or offer advice and consultancy services without further controls to 27 EU member states. Several references to the UK are included in EU treaties and would have to be removed.

One of the trickiest issues is paying for the pensions and redundancy payments of all the British citizens who were EU employees. There are 1,800 British citizens who are currently working and being paid by the EU and 2,000 former employees who enjoy EU pensions which Britain will be asked to take responsibility for. UKIP has its quota of parliamentary aides who are on the EU payroll and some will not reach pension age until 2064, when they will expect to be paid some pension on the basis of their EU employment.

One of the paradoxes of Brexit is that having fulminated against the ‘corruption’ and excessive costs of British membership of the EU, no UKIP or pro-Brexit Tory MEP followed the wishes of voters and stood down following the referendum result. Instead they and an army of pro-Brexit British political aides paid for by the European taxpayer want to extract the maximum amount of salary and expenses right up to the last moment of membership and for years afterwards in terms of pensions.

British citizens make 42 million trips to EU member states every year. As EU citizens they are covered for free hospital care if they have an accident or fall ill. Now they will have to take out travel insurance, adding to the cost of holidays and other visits. Aviation industry experts believe that low-cost airlines based in Britain may face difficulties, as the whole basis of low-cost flying is based on the Single Market rules which Mrs May now rejects. Indeed all flying within the EU is governed by EU-wide rules and supervised by agencies and safety bodies ultimately under the overall authority of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). British Airways flies its planes back for maintenance in Britain. If these planes no longer have an EU certificate of airworthiness because a Brexit Britain refuses to work under common EU laws and rules and the European Court of Justice, then BA may have to r...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Endorsement
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Part One The Impact of Brexit
• Part Two Why Brexit Happened
• Part Three Brexit in the Channel: Britain Cut Off
• Part Four why Brexit will Change Europe
• Afterword