“Remain” is the option for failed negotiation, not no-deal Brexit

We were told by the Right that the economic crash was the fault of Labour spending yet for years after Labour failed to dispel this untruth. Now we are told that Brexit is the “will of the people” and nobody has the courage to deny this either.  Labour must, if it is ever to win again, learn the lesson that it must gainsay the mantras fed to the public by Lynton Crosby et al.

We are told that the Brexit negotiations are aimed at minimising the negative impact of leaving the EU.  By implication as well as by all available evidence, any other future model will be worse for the rights of citizens and worse for our economic future. Brexit “hard” or “soft”, Norwegian models or joining EFTA are all worse than where we are now, so why not say so? The negative impacts can be avoided completely if we stay, yet our leaders fail to say so, terrified of gainsaying “the will of the people”, the latest mantra of the xenophobes.

The referendum should not have been allowed to go unchallenged. Cameron should not have been allowed to decide that a simple majority could change our Constitution for ever nor that the vote should be mandatory. These went unchallenged and were accepted into Labour thinking, so much so that they joined forces with the Right to enable the signing of Article 50. This brought Brexit back into Parliament’s aegis and rendered arguments about the referendum’s validity redundant. We know that most MPs are Remainers yet allow them to continue to act as if we must now accept a second-best future or worse.  Anyone who dares to suggest that “the will of the people” makes Remaining impossible is shouted down. Are they all so pathetic that none will stand up for what they actually believe in and for the country’s best future?

Perhaps it would help those with vestiges of backbone if they were to see the triggering of Article 50 not as about accepting whatever outcome this weak government can negotiate but as being about starting the process of negotiation, to see if an acceptable deal is feasible. Thanks to Gina Miller, Parliament will have a say before we actually leave. To make this have any point, surely we have to have the option not of “no deal is better than a bad deal” – ie exit on the worst possible terms – but of staying a member of the EU – of saying, “we have tried to find a future outside but failed”? The EU will welcome us staying and so, one suspects, will a majority of the people by then.

Tom Serpell

We ARE European, even the Leavers

Brexiteers frequently talk of protecting “our culture”, demanding that newcomers subscribe to it, pass tests in it or generalising that “they” do not understand it. Do those who have been born and brought up here understand even what it is, ourselves? Do we have the right to talk about “us” as if there were still some race of Britons who form the core of the population, which is gradually being eroded by the pollution of immigration?

What can “our culture” be? This is a hybrid country, a federation of nations with their own cultures, mixed with a long history of new ingredients contributed by arrivals from many and varied parts of the world. The truth is that this is a nation composed of a huge variety of ethnicities, forming a culture enriched by each and all of these. Whenever there was a British tribe, it was before the histories taught even in our most reactionary institutions. Angles, Jutes, Vikings, Romans, Huguenots, Irish, Jews, West Indians, Bengalis, Somalis, etc – these are the ingredients of our happy melting pot.

What are the fixed points, then, which we build on, using these new ingredients? The weather – for this occupies minds, typically? Nothing to be proud of there. Chaucer and Shakespeare – but how many citizens are familiar with them? Our history – largely related as kings and queens, wars and battles, imperialism and theft? Our sports – which may have been invented here but at which prowess is far from unique?

The truth is that whatever we can identify as indigenous, our political and moral philosophies are rooted in ancient Athens, our science in the Arab world, our art in Italy. More recent cultural icons in this country are not home-grown. Are not Dante, Beethoven, Voltaire and Leonardo influences on or of our culture?  Our museums and galleries are packed with the works of great artists from all over the world, to be admired and even [though I am not in favour] retained as national heritage against repatriation claims. This is not to decry our home-grown national treasures, merely to declare that we are a part of a Western European culture over 2 millennia old; and that to focus on home-grown alone is to narrow our appreciation of what makes us tick or the world a better place.

The mantra “British x is the finest in the world” is mere propaganda put about by those who lack the experience or learning about the wider world. It is bandied about nonsensically in relation to our army, our football, our beef, our healthcare, and more. Put any of these to true comparison and perhaps the jingoism will prove hollow. This country is a fine place to live, with fine people and much to celebrate but it is not so very different and doubtfully superior to others. Rather, it is a part of the cultural mix of a long-evolved international society, which it is folly or tragedy to deny. To claim superiority for it is sheer hubris.

 We could [and this seems to be where Brexiteers would take us] define our heritage on ethnic purity but this has been tried before, with disastrous results. We must not go there again. Anyway, who wants a dreary diet based on what our geology, climate and “true Brit” talent might allow us?

The Will of the People

Remember “taking back control” and “America First”? Meaningless yet seductive slogans which opponents failed to counter. Now, “the will of the people” has taken over, sucking in not only the very people whose will is to be obeyed but almost every opponent of Brexit, so much so that the official Opposition imposed a 3-line whip to support the government, in favour of what most of its own voters rejected.

Of course, in a democracy it would seem that the will of the people should be paramount. But should it, when those same people and their ancestors have won the right to delegate their decisions to elected representatives? Then there is the breath-taking idiocy of presuming that “Yes” or “No” to a simple question can represent the will of the people over the most complex political issue they will ever face.

Now, this 2016 Yes/No “will of the people” is to be exercised regardless of the outcome of two years or more of multi-faceted negotiations. If the Prime Minister in 2019 or 2020 says she has a satisfactory parachute for our flight into the unknown, adopting it will be called “the will of the people”. If she says that she does not and we must leave Europe via ejector-seat, this too will be “the will of the people”. Two utterly different solutions, both ascribed to the Leave vote. Whatever one person, the PM, says, will be treated as “the will of the people”.

Not only is this palpable nonsense but it is alarming in two further respects. First, there appears to be no significant opposition to it, leaving us as if in a one-party State. Second, it removes all vestiges of democratic legitimacy from the greatest change to our governance in decades. This stands to add UK to the growing list of countries being run as unopposed virtual dictatorships: Turkey; Zimbabwe; Russia etc. What are we doing to our children’s future; and all for a slogan? Who will dare to go against the so-called "will of the people"?

Tom Serpell