Love it or loathe it, Brexit is happening
Yesterday in Rome the EU celebrated its 60th anniversary, and it behoves a friend and neighbour to say “happy birthday”. But there are good reasons why the UK voted for Brexit, reasons that became apparent during the ceremonies. Donald Tusk said: “Only a united Europe can be a sovereign Europe.” Britain wants no part of a sovereign Europe, so we are right to leave the EU.
The EU began with the best of intentions. Most Britons who voted to remain in the Common Market in 1975 did so in the belief that it was a free trade area that would promote peace on a divided continent. Since then, however, the project has grown out of proportion. At the same time as Britain has moved towards deregulation, lower taxes, exploiting emerging markets overseas and the devolution of power at home, the EU has crept towards a fossilised unitary state.
Europe has so often been the author of its woes. The euro has helped ruin economies. A complex, contradictory approach towards immigration has made it doubly difficult to handle the refugee crisis. It is far too resistant to free trade.
And when David Cameron came to the EU in 2016 to negotiate a new relationship, with the warning that his countrymen might otherwise vote to leave, what did the EU offer him? Some trifling opt-outs that depended far too much on the goodwill of the rest of the EU. If Europe’s leadership had given Mr Cameron something concrete, Britain might have voted to Remain. The EU’s stubbornness, its inability to adapt, is a major reason why the UK voted to Leave.
This week, Theresa May will trigger Article 50. Negotiations will begin in earnest. In a sense, the British contingent that joined yesterday’s March for Europe are living in the past: Brexit, love it or loathe it, is happening. Douglas Carswell, who has announced he is to become an independent MP, underscored the change when he resigned from Ukip on the basis that he believes it has done its job. The question is no longer “Brexit or no Brexit”? It is “what kind of Brexit?”
Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the EU Commission, has called Britain’s departure a “tragedy” and, predictably, blamed it on what he regards as our country’s tendency to pin every problem on Brussels. This is an inaccurate reading of British politics; he would do better to examine why Euroscepticism became the majority view. Britain’s voters are not irrational. They took a long hard look at the costs of the EU project and its direction – and decided it was no longer for them.
