How should the old Brexit Slogans be Updated for 2021? (Quora)

I hesitated to answer this question, since the five-year-old ashes of the referendum campaign are stone-cold and blown away by a great wind called Covid that neither side foresaw.

In the wake of the genuinely catastrophic damage done to the world by that wind, the hyperbolic 2016 claims of Brexit catastrophe should ideally be quietly forgotten and the widely-foreseen adjustment problems of leaving the EU pale into insignificance. I don’t think efforts to blame Brexit for worldwide phenomena reflect much credit on those concerned.

Suffice it to say that nearly all Remain slogans should today be amended by the addition of a single word. The word in question is ‘not’. I’m sure you can work out for yourselves where it needs to be added in each case.

There really was only one important Leave slogan: ‘Take back control’. No-one seriously expected British politicians overnight to become hugely efficient paragons of virtue. In fact, we expected it to be quite tricky to take over from the remote pilot that had been charting our course for so long. But the crucial thing is, if British governments mess up, we can get rid of them.

As it happened, the first result of taking back control was the UK’s much-condemned, but in the event astute, decision to go it alone on the development and distribution of Covid vaccines. This led to an early start to the recovery of economic growth that outpaced the rest of the EU.

Major economic changes, like any long-term investment, usually have their costs front-loaded and benefits delayed. In the circumstances, the UK has been fortunate to see some early benefits. Before the pandemic, Leave-favouring economists tended to estimate five years or thereabouts to break-even. It may turn out to be slightly less; we’ll see.

But for better or worse, it’s done. What on earth is the point of seizing upon every piece of news that, unremarkably, tells us there are costs as well as benefits?

We need to go forward, not keep looking back to the road not taken.

Identity Politics

We are told that in the aftermath of the European Referendum Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish First Minister, felt deprived of part of her identity. This, it seems, caused her to think about how 'No' voters in Scotland might feel if ever those favouring independence gained a majority.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to think on this again before stirring up another dose of the tribalism that attended the first Scottish Referendum. In many cases this internecine hostility has yet to subside, at least partly because the demagoguery employed by the 'Yes' campaign was so shameless.

A second concern is clearly illustrated by the aftermath of both the Scottish and the EU Referenda; the losers won't give up. Just as nationalists will not accept the decision of the Scottish majority, so Remainers will not accept that the UK is leaving the EU. Some are conducting more or less open guerrilla warfare, for example claiming that parliament (with its large Remain majority) must be able to supervise the withdrawal negotiations or re-interpreting the referendum to claim that the vote did not require the UK to leave the Single Market. Ms Sturgeon claims that the UK majority cannot impose its will on the Scottish majority who voted to remain.

Withdrawal would be far easier and more likely to achieve prosperity if it enjoyed wholehearted public support; anyone can see that. But of course it does not. Remoaners even continue to allege that Leavers were too stupid to understand what they were voting for and hence their votes should not be respected.

I suspect that any majority which might in future be obtained for Scottish independence will never be overwhelming. How would the nationalists respond to almost half the population resisting the result of such a referendum?

I may have lived more than half my life in Scotland but I am British. I shall remain British. My British citizenship is integral to my identity. I shall not be deprived of it by any law passed in Edinburgh.  

No More Referenda

As a general rule I am not an enthusiast for referenda. Experience shows them to be socially divisive blunt instruments, reducing complex shades of grey to simple black and white and arousing passions that are not easy to quell after the event. General elections give almost every voter some sort of stake in the outcome; few are left utterly without representation. By contrast a referendum is winner takes all, however small the majority.

The EU Referendum eventually became necessary because all the major political parties of the UK supported membership and for forty years opponents had no opportunity to vote against a process that steadily and deliberately eroded the sovereignty of their country. I suspect that a large majority of voters would still support membership of the sort of Common Market that we were told we were joining in 1973.

Inevitably the ordinary citizen, who has his own life to live, is not as expert in political matters as someone whose speciality is politics. The failing of our modern system of representative democracy has been the emergence of a class of professional politicians with no experience of the normal world in which their constituents live.

How else can you explain the geographical division of English voting between London's Remainers and the rest of England's leavers, or three quarters of parliament being Remainers when the country as a whole votes Leave?

Given that almost all the political, commercial and financial elite spent months predicting chaos if the plebs were stupid enough to vote to leave, it is a tribute to the resilience of the UK's economic system that the immediate aftermath of the Referendum was not greater instability than in fact occurred.

Just as in the Scottish Referendum, the losers are immediately enthusiastic for a re-run. Economically speaking, nothing could be worse. Prolongation of uncertainty is a self-inflicted wound which the country can do without.

Let us look for the opportunities of the future rather than hankering after a vanished past.