We now see the shape of Prime Minister Theresa May’s compromise on Brexit, and it’s fair and reasonable to call it the mildest form of leaving possible. It’s like divorcing by agreeing to only be married 23.5 hours a day with the single bit happening when all are safely asleep, in dreams.
This isn’t what we all worked for, and it’s not what we voted for.
And when I say “we” I do mean we — I’m so biased on this issue I previously worked for Nigel Farage and stood as a candidate for the U.K. Independence Party, the pro-Brexit political party. Except I’d not call it bias of course, nor prejudice — just an acknowledgment of reality. Britain isn’t part of Europe in any real cultural or economic manner. It doesn’t make sense to bind ourselves to that European system.
The example I always use is that a British policeman cannot demand your papers. Nor, assuming you’re not actually carrying the bloodied axe and severed head, is he allowed to even demand the reason for your presence at that place and time. The correct and full answer to “What are you doing here?” is “Going about my lawful business, constable.” And that’s the end of it.
Whenever I retell this story to a non-Brit I get a look of complete incomprehension — on this side of the Atlantic at least. For no one does get that basic British bargain that is our political setup. We institute government in order to do the things that must be done with the aid of the state’s monopoly of force. And that’s it — it’s us doing the scut work of society by appointing people to do it. Nearly everywhere else we the people are the proles to be managed, forcibly often enough, by the state and bureaucratic classes. It is this that leads to the European system being a complex and thorough set of rules and regulations for all eventualities while Brits (used to, sadly) have just a small and simple set of rules that must be and were obeyed in the large and everything else left to societal interaction.
The Britain that was actually ran, even if not on paper, like that essence of America described in the Constitution. Actually, it was rather like the what the U.S. had before the expansion of the federal government after President Franklin Roosevelt, but without quite so much of the racism.
Thus my deep, abiding, and total insistence that we must leave the European Union. All this just so you understand my position.
The implication of all of this is that it is absolutely the freedom from EU regulation and restriction that is the very point of the Brexit exercise. Sure, free trade with Europeans would be nice, but what do we have to give up to get it? Submit to their regulations? Well, any exports we send there will obviously do so, just as a Rolls-Royce made in Goodwood, West Sussex, U.K., meets U.S. auto standards. But must we submit our entire economy to their dictats in order to sell Europeans cheddar cheese?
Do note that whatever happens to our imports after Brexit is entirely up to the U.K. The only part to negotiate about trade is what restrictions they’ll place up themselves buying from the U.K.
The current deal negotiated does none of this. In fact, it insists that we’ll remain under the EU regulatory system, hugged in its embrace, without being able to influence what it is. It’s a deal to be rejected.
Of the available options, crashing out without a deal at all is the best there is. We leap free and they can go do as they wish.
Yes, agreed, there’s a lot of detail skipped over here, and much political analysis to be navel-gazed at your leisure. My basic belief is that the EU is bad enough that we should jump ship even at that possible cost of a dunking.
What’s actually going to happen? Hazarding a guess, as predictions are difficult, especially about the future, I’d say that May’s compromise isn’t going to get through parliament. Also, there won’t be a second referendum, because there’s no time. The U.K. is going to end up leaving in chaos and having near terminally annoyed every politician upon the continent.
That’s fine, because what’s important is that we leave. We can clear up the details at our leisure. Just to remind you — the American Revolutionary War was won in 1783. Alexander Hamilton and others were still arguing how the new country would be won in the Federalist Papers in 1787. Then as now, leave and sort the rest of it out later.
Tim Worstall (@worstall) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a senior fellow at the Adam Smith Institute. You can read all his pieces at The Continental Telegraph.
