Yahoo Finance Now there is no plan for Brexit except obfuscation
‘Neither Labour nor the Tories have a credible plan for Brexit,” declared Lord Macpherson, former top official at the Treasury, on Twitter. This distinguished civil servant, who has seen ministers of both major parties grapple with economic crises, went on to ask: “Have the British people ever been so ill-served by the two main parties?”
It is no wonder that the EU negotiator, the estimable Michel Barnier, finds himself, week in and week out, having to point out that all the imaginative solutions with which he is presented by the British have, indeed, to be left to the imagination.
Theresa May’s “leadership” of the Conservative party, and, alas, of the nation, has become an exercise in obfuscation. Remain MPs emerge from private meetings with the premier to speak of reassurances, then are treated the following morning to a rather different spin being put on the meetings by No 10 – after, that is, enough of them have voted to save her parliamentary skin.
The commentators inform us frequently that the reason why the prime minister is in such an ambivalent position is that she is trying to reconcile the two wings of her party. But this conjures up a false impression that the Leave and Remain wings are of equal weight. They are not. It is common knowledge that the majority of MPs are increasingly of the view that to go ahead with Brexit would be a mistake. It is just that the prominent Brexiters manage, well, to be all too prominent.
As the economic news gets worse and worse, Brexit would, to use an old classical metaphor, be “to pile Pelion upon Ossa”. Since the referendum, our economy has slowed almost to stagnation, with industrial production actually falling in the latest three-month period. Within two years we have gone from being the fastest-growing of the major European economies to the slowest, with the Bank of England repeatedly having to eat its words about prospective increases in interest rates because the wage inflation it worries about keeps failing to materialise.
The outgoing president of the CBI, Paul Drechsler, could hardly have been franker last week in saying what a mess the Brexit nonsense has created for businesspeople who, unlike the Brexit brigade, think plans have their uses.
None of the alternative 'soft Brexit' options is anywhere near as satisfactory as the position we are already in
Drechsler said: “In the world of business, we’re frustrated. We’re angry.” Business was interested in the economy, the politicians were “playing politics”. Now, obviously politicians are by definition in the business of “playing politics”; the problem for UK plc in 2018 is that the leaders of both major parties are putting party above country when country faces the biggest economic crisis of my entire career.
Now, losing no time in backtracking on the interpretation put on her Tuesday assurances, the prime minister has said that the latest “new amendment” would not permit parliament to “direct or micromanage” the final stage of exit talks. “I cannot,” says the Brexit-means-Brexit prime minister, “countenance parliament being able to overturn the will of the people.”
The “will of the people” comes up time and time again. Insofar as it means anything, it means that on 23 June 2016 there was a referendum suggesting that 37% of the adult population said they wanted to leave the EU. In other words, this was the will of 37% of those eligible to vote (just over a third) and 51.9% of those who turned out to vote: the will of half the people.
My point is that the 51.9%, or 37%, should now be asked, as the economic cost of even the prospect of Brexit becomes more evident, “did you vote to become poorer?” As a letter-writer to the Times wrote last week: “I cannot imagine that the vast swaths of voters in the north-east voted for a lower level of living standards and higher unemployment.”
Now, although many commentators give the impression that most Brexit voters were deprived working-class people worried about immigration, I know plenty of well-heeled upper-middle-class voters who voted on the basis of a misunderstanding of the degree to which “Brussels” supposedly impinges on our sovereignty. But they can afford to become poorer, or take precautionary action: many have marvelled at the cheek of my old friend Lord Lawson taking up formal residency in France, and that oddball Jacob Rees-Mogg setting up an investment vehicle in Dublin.
None of the alternative “soft Brexit” options is anywhere near as satisfactory as the “have your cake and eat it” position we are already in. I had hoped, and still do, that our elected representatives can come to the rescue. Meanwhile, Barnier and our continental friends are to be encouraged in their efforts to try to save Britain from itself.
