Dear Friends,
Just now people in England are much concerned with two related matters: a forthcoming general election and Brexit—the United Kingdom’s secession from the European Union.
The outcome of the referendum held on 23 June 2016 (to decide on our continued membership) was very close: 52% in favour of leaving to 48% against, with an unusually large turnout of 72%. One might have expected general acceptance of the result, and our politicians to have set about implementing the expressed will of the people. Alas, the reality has been otherwise.
The closeness of the result was one problem. If those who voted leave had travelled in coaches to vote, only one or two on each would have needed to change their mind for the outcome to have been quite the opposite. To complicate matters, the pattern of voting was not uniform across the Kingdom. Voters in Scotland and Northern Ireland preferred the remain option, the result provoking a renewal of the Scottish National campaign for secession from the United Kingdom, and fuelling unease in the nationalist community in Northern Ireland. Since the UK and Ireland joined the EU the border between them has been so open as to be merely notional for most purposes: a great benefit to both communities following decades of ‘the Troubles.’ A new ‘hard’ border is no welcome prospect.
A further, and perhaps more challenging, problem was in interpreting the result of the referendum: What did ‘Brexit’ actually mean? The terms ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ Brexit were bandied about to describe the various options, such as maintaining, or not, a customs union or a single market with the EU or making a clean break and building a new relationship from scratch with the EU. Those at the extreme ‘leave’ end of the spectrum of opinion declared that anything other than a ‘hard Brexit’ was no Brexit at all, and therefore the country had clearly chosen the hard variety, whilst it was clear that Members of Parliament who, whilst accepting the result of the referendum would have for the most part preferred to remain, did not accept this interpretation, declaring it to be potantially ruinous.
The first deal brought back to them by new Prime Minister Theresa May after negotiations with the EU was neither a fully hard deal nor a fully soft one. It was rejected repeatedly by MPs from both ends of the spectrum, and opinions were hardening all the time. At length Mrs May left office and a new Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, replaced her, promising to get the job done. He negotiated a modified deal which, although just approved by Parliament, brought new concerns which delayed its implementation—at which Mr Johnson called a General Election in the hope of increasing his majority and forcing the deal through.
After three-and-a-half years of delay here is much exasperation with the political establishment. To a large extent the usual political party loyalties appear to have been replaced by allegiances to the ‘leave’ or ‘remain’ camps. There are growing concerns about the nature of the Irish Border and indeed the future status of Northern Ireland, the prospect of Scottish secession, the possibilities for new trade deals and the outlook for British industry after Brexit.
In all this it is surprising that no-one has bothered to ask those one or two coach passengers whether they have changed their mind yet. Perhaps we should.
