Exit Cramp
After voting decisively to leave the EU, Britain is now hobbled by second thoughts and ineffective MPs. Meanwhile, world trade shifts away from Europe.
By Nick Cater.
As if the stoicism of the average Pom hadn’t been tested enough by the Brexit shambles, there are those still insisting the referendum should be declared invalid on the grounds of popular stupidity.
The second referendum they demand would be known as the People’s Vote to distinguish it from the Pillocks’ Vote in June 2016, when the poor dumb creatures failed to follow the establishment’s instructions.
Electoral idiocy of this kind is all too common these days in the eyes of the political class. It is why the US is saddled with a dysfunctional and inept president who is “unable to control his own running monologue”, to borrow the words of Michael Wolff in the latest New York Times bestseller to chronicle the awfulness of Donald Trump. It is why Chloe Shorten looked so crestfallen on federal election night, when she realised that the brilliance of her husband’s election promise of higher taxes and lower retirement incomes had met popular resistance.
Only in Britain, however, has the political class had the hide to try to run the election again, to the increasing irritation of those who refuse to admit they made a mistake in the first place. Only 38 per cent are in favour of a second vote, according to recent polling, although the number rises steeply around London and university cities south of Birmingham.
If political and bureaucratic ineptitude was an Olympic sport, it would be gold, silver and bronze to Team UK. Much as Britain’s Waitrose-shopping classes like to sneer over a bottle of Chianti about those dreadful Americans, the Trump administration wouldn’t get anywhere near the podium in this game.
The only good news in recent weeks, apart from the departure of Theresa May, is that the People’s Vote movement appears to be collapsing under the weight of its own hubris. Leaked emails show the People’s Vote people to be at war among themselves. Should they out themselves as Remainers, which they must be, or they’d have been content with the vote in the first place? Or should they feign neutrality, and pretend that it’s up to the voters to decide?
The greatest agreement over Brexit is found among the intelligentsia. The experts are in agreement, as experts so often are, since they are frequently considered to be experts because they uphold the establishment opinion. The experts are the ones who BBC presenters find most agreeable to interview and are mostly allowed to state their case without rude interruption.
A random exchange from the corporation’s flagship Newsnight program last week illustrates the point. Rod Liddle, a former BBC news and current affairs producer who went rogue, was interviewed about his latest book on Brexit, The Great Betrayal.
Emily Maitlis: Would you describe yourself as a racist?
Liddle: Well no, obviously not. But I am used to going on BBC programs and being accused of such things.
Maitlis: When all you do is write about suicide bombers blowing themselves up in Tower Hamlets …
Liddle: Do you have to, at every possible juncture, show the BBC’s grotesque bias? Get a grip, Emily.
The presumption of the experts that the process of leaving the EU is far too complicated for the chuckleheaded populace to understand is central to the argument that the referendum should be overturned.
Complexity was assured when the Conservative government responded to the vote by setting up a Department for Exiting the European Union, since simplicity is antithetical to the interests of any bureaucracy. The Brexit department has ballooned to employ 720 people on an average wage of £60,000 ($106,350). To give credit where it is due, the department has performed a herculean task, preparing 530 pieces of legislation for parliament, 95 per cent of which has been passed. Sadly, the Withdrawal Agreement is not one of them, which is hardly surprising since, given an unencumbered choice, the majority of MPs would vote to remain.
The tortuousness of the process has obscured Britain’s long-term interests. Is Britannia best served as a cog in the Eurocratic machine, tying its fate to a bloc of post-industrial European countries, or as part of the Anglosphere, signing trade deals and building ties with the fast-growing economies to the east?
There were good reasons to imagine Britain would prosper when it joined the EU back in January 1973. The economies of the six existing partners had grown by an average of 4.8 per cent per year in the previous decade, while Britain — which was still trying to pay off the debt it incurred freeing the rest of Europe from tyranny — was falling behind.
Today it’s a different picture. Growth in the expanded EU has barely averaged 1 per cent since 2008. Meanwhile the Commonwealth, the trading nations Britain shunned in its hunger for French butter and Danish bacon, is thriving. GDP growth in the largest 24 Commonwealth economies excluding Britain has been averaging 5 per cent in the past decade. Yet Britain is unable to negotiate trade deals that suit it with these dynamic nations unless it leaves Europe, otherwise it will be held hostage, largely by French insistence on protection of French farmers.
To return to such clear, first-principle arguments is to invite ridicule from those who see the world in complicated terms, those who believe that a centrally planned, government-mandated solution is always preferable to the chaos of evolution.
Veteran Leave campaigners such as Peter Lilley, who argued that Britain should have simply upped and offed from the start, were branded as naive. Yet a variant of a no-deal Brexit now seems to be the only way out of this mess.
The British economy, which remains comfortably in the top 10, serving 66 million relatively affluent people, will not come to a full stop, whatever the doomsayers might predict. World Trade Organisation rules will cut in and trading with Europe will continue.
When it comes to falling behind in global rankings, it is not Germany or France that Britain must fear. In the past year, the British economy has been overtaken by India, a former colony which has a larger English-speaking population than Britain itself.
The 20th century belonged to the US and Europe. The 21st is still up for grabs.