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Here, I thought I would write a few observations having recently talked to several people who supported Brexit.  Conversations that were as civil as if they had happened in a church vestry.

Although the language used in published Brexit document, either from Whitehall or the European institutions is dull, measured and technical it’s soon turned into emotive hyperbole by the media.  The mundane horse-trading that is part of normal negotiations is hijacked by brain numbing capital headlines.  Sterile legalistic words suddenly become personal attacks and vengeful actions.

Its like there’s an insatiable need to turn administration into high drama.  None of this media magnification and political hype helps the process one little bit.  Its happening and all parties are doing it, but the aggression and sharpness is greater on the pro-Brexit side.

What I find astonishing is the emphatic and dogmatic way in which some of those who voted to Leave the EU speak and write.  Language is coloured by absolutes.  There’s little attempt to understand that a considerable number of people disagree with leaving the EU.

Gross stereotyping is happening on both side of the argument.  If anything, this just has the impact of hardening the attitudes of those committed to each camp.  Leavers are accused of being xenophobes.  Remainers are accused of being disrespectful.

Finding words to characterise the situation, what comes to mind is that it’s like a mock civil war being fought in thick mud.  Life changing and messy but recoverable if some good will can be found.

It seems both camps agree we have an incompetent Government implementing the process.  Upheavel without benifit is a costly way to roll the clock back.

As huge generalities, a couple of points are clear to me.  These get more acute the older people get.  One: the British people never like being told what to do especially when its written down.  Order is preferred over chaos but don’t make too many rules.  Two: complaining is not the natural British way.  Bottling up unhappiness’s until they explode is far more the British way.

Brexit will fail because its twisting and turning and tying itself up.  Most fundamentally it’s not dealing with the real reasons for people’s unhappiness.   The public will give their vedict in the end.  In fact, they may do that sooner than the pudits think.

These notes may be extremely useful if there is a referendum on the final Brexit deal.

Transformations often occur without any grand plan.  Worlds change, events come and go, and chance plays its hand.  Leaps forward in technology have give us a level of interconnection that few imagined only a decade or so ago.  But there it is, social media is a part of our landscape like it or not.  And its not going away.

Having participated in the debate about Brexit for the last couple of years certain thing become evident.  There not all negative but the trend is a dangerous one.

The “liberal” hope for technologies like the INTERNET has always been that communication would give us a greater understanding of each other.  The benefits for education are huge.  From that a well of good would bring people together rather than push them apart.  Like the benefits of travel.  The more we know about our neighbours the more we would find common cause.  This is true but there’s a flip side too.

Whereas face-to-face lots of social norms come into play, in the electronic cloud this is not so much so.  Rudeness and vulgarity are still not acceptable in public.  Stupidity is shunned when met in the flesh.  Bigotry is questioned.

A side effect of all the technology we have accumulated is that it requires so little of us.  Immediacy and proliferation means throw away comment and clicks of approval or disapproval costs nothing. In the worst cases people can hunker down in isolated corners and bombard the world with their prejudices and narrow-mindedness.

In politics, the fences surrounding camps are strengthened.  Impenetrable walls are erected to preserve cherished beliefs.   Although some of this is not new it does make it more difficult to cross boundaries and explore original ideas.

Ironic that these liberating technologies bring out the most illiberal instincts.  To throw in a solution would be a step too far.  The road of travel is a dangerous one but somehow, we must learn to behave differently.  It’s a continuous learning.

In addition, having said that, policing plays its part.  Means are needed to put a cost on bad behaviour.  Persistent trolls and campaigns that dive to the depths of vulgarity should be under pressure.  Free speech is not freedom to say anything.

Characteristically Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson’s speech starts off with a set of misrepresentations.  Faking the appearance of reaching out to: “those who still have anxieties” seems empathetic and understanding.  But, in my reading it’s just more show over substance.  Before the referendum vote of 23 June 2016, I campaigned on the High Street of Uxbridge and meet his constituents.  I can understand how many of them have become concerned about their MP’s hardened stance on Brexit.  After all it is a U-Turn.

He talks about three “fears” in the set-up of his speech.

Strategic: The cartoon characterisation of Britain’s place in Europe as a flight from the world for the protection of the European Union is wholly wrong.  The reality is that, along with France and Germany, we are a great leader within a union of common interests.  To leave is to give-up the advantages we have in both Europe and the world.

Spiritual: The Brexit vote has given a huge boost to nationalism, small-mindedness and xenophobia.  It doesn’t matter what the intention was in calling the vote the outcome is a ghastly polarisation that promotes the right-wing of politics as top dog.  This outcome is as anti-liberal, uncivilised and not the pragmatism that the world cherishes as so British.

Economic:  Objectivity is needed on this technical subject.  All the trustworthy indicators from responsible organisations point one-way.  This is not emotional “anxieties” or “fears” it’s just plain cold fact.  If a smaller percentage of commentators criticise the single market or the customs union then that’s a normal part of normal debate.

At least I can agree with Boris Johnson where he says it’s the government’s duty to advocate and explain.  However, the explanations in his speech offered nothing new and took for granted that the 16 million who voted to Remain would just be irritated further by his arguments.  In fact, it took Johnson few words to get to emotive language about the so called: “pro-EU elite in this country” and “the Euro-elite”.

Moving on, he has, to some extent recognised that those who voted Remain have entirely noble sentiments, a real sense of solidarity with our European neighbours and a desire for the UK to succeed.  To me that goes without saying.  True, there may be a minority of both Leave and Remain voters who wished to recklessly damage the UK but most acted in good faith.

Johnson persisted with his table of three “fears” or “anxieties”.  This pedestrian structure is laboured through most of the speech.  Security, Spirituality and Economics are taken in turn.

On the first, everything he says could be achieved as a strong Britain IN a strong EU.  His whole point is null and void because it makes no case for leaving the EU.  As expected Johnson steers clear of any reference to the downside of leaving our established partnership in Europe.

Yes, the British are European and global, but we have all that inside the EU.  Again, Johnson fails to highlight any advantages of Brexit.  He’s rather more comfortable talking about “cheapo flights to stag parties” as a journalist might be in newsprint.  But this is a Minister standing at a lectern.

One line concerns me greatly, namely: “If we get the right deal on aviation.”  Yet again doubt is thrown into the mix as to what deal might result from UK-EU negotiations.  “If” is a big word.

Myths continue to be perpetuated as he rambled on.  Up rears the nonsense that somehow Brexit is a matter of regaining something we have lost.  Then to compound the mythmaking Johnson ran down the rabbit hole of European integration.  The more he continued the further he seemed to be stoking up fears and anxieties rather than allaying them for people.  The more he continued the less sense his vague view of Britain’s future seemed to make.  The more he continued the more he made the case to exist Brexit with haste.

Change doesn’t come for free.  It’s a common misconception that moving from one way of doing things to another can be done without a lot of effort.  Over simplification is used to persuade people to make a change because their reluctance may be difficult to overcome.  This is drama being played out big time in the Brexit debate.  Week after week, Brexit supporting politicians come up with bland statements to try to offer assurance and comfort to their supporters.  Last year, Liam Fox said; the Brexit deal will be the “easiest thing in human history”.  David Davis was criticised for his “simple and easy” Brexit claim.  Former Ministers have said trade talks should be “easy”.

Rather than relief this insipid populism sends a shiver down the spine of anyone who has had to do serious negotiations in the past.  Agreements and Treaties, by their nature, bond those who sign for a significant period.  If they didn’t do that, they would be worth the paper that they are written on.  All Treaties between States are, in fact, a pooling of sovereignty.  Such arrangements bind States to act and behave in a consistent manner, even in disputes.

As if it was a business, signing a mediocre contract can be an impediment and a danger to future success.  So, words matter, and they matter even more when they are put down in public to a loud fanfare.  That said, every practical business has contacts.  Every successful State has Treaties.  It really is an embodiment of the John Donne’s words: No man is an island entire of itself.  We do not thrive when isolated from others, especially neighbours.

For all the reasons above the attack on British civil servants, over the weekend, was one of the most short-sighted folly’s that hard-line Brexit MPs have made so far, this year.  At a time when huge efforts are going to be needed to act with agility and creativity to draft a vast array of detailed texts, its not wise to hit the people you need.  It shows that those MPs who acted in this way have little comprehension for the impact of their actions.

In summary, this year has started with little achieved and a long journey ahead with not much time remaining.  All in all, a time when doubling or tripling of efforts are going to be needed rather than the insipid populism that is coming from senior politicians.  If Brexit happens under these circumstances, then some experts’ negative predictions wont just be predictions.

The image of Britain standing in world wars against German domination has fed Euroscepticism in the UK.  Yes, German Ambassador, Dr Peter Ammon has a good point.

Being 57 years old, I can see the root cause of a degree of Euroscepticism in my generation and the one above me.  Please treat this observation as its intended.  Its not hostile.  There’s no way I’m saying that there is something inherently bad about everyone who watched TV or the movies in the 60s and 70s.

Many of the most wonderful films of my childhood are war stories.  Great drama and daring acts captured our imaginations in grainy black and white.  Often the theme has the undertones of David and Goliath, where huge odds are overcome to escape peril.  Danger on all sides as charismatic British actors portrayed heroic characters winning out.  I’ll just list a few classic movies that come to mind: The Flight of the Phoenix (1965), The Hill (1965), The Great Escape (1963), Ice Cold in Alex (1958) and A Matter of Life and Death (1946).  Love them all.

That was the setting.  The Sunday afternoon TV matinee movie was watched by many.  There wasn’t the proliferation of choice that the media present now.  No wonder many British people see the world through a prism of 20^th century history.

Even wider than that, several of my Secondary School teachers revelled in telling stories of their war time experiences.  As children and young adults, we lapped up those stories even if they did generate occasional humour.  We would mock and mimic repeated tales in the manner of Monty Python.  It wasn’t being disrespectful.  It was a sense that the past and the modern world were inevitably in a tense battle for the future.  The future that we were to be a part of.

So, why am I not a Leaver?  I was too young to vote this the first referendum that took us into the Common Market.  That said, as a 15-year-old I was acutely aware of the debate.  In the West Country farming community, where I grew-up, it was a regular topic of conversation.  Local Conservatives were campaigning to stay in Europe.

From the day I left school, there’s been a European context to my further education and work.  I’ve been fortnuate to travel.  If I add it all up, over 40 years, and put the pros and cons on a set of scales they tip soundly in favour of being a part of the European Union.  Those scales tip that way whether I weigh-up facts or emotions.  Both my head and heart are convinced that Brexit is a dead end.  Let’s hope more and more people see it that way this year.

 

Anytime something goes badly wrong its human to look around for something or someone to blame.  It often a destructive emotional human response to a grim situation.  However controlled, objective and rational you maybe its remarkably difficult to hold back and think through what’s going on without the temptation to lash out.  The closer a person is to the event in question the stronger the response.  After all its one thing to watch an accident unfold on a smartphone and its quite another to see it impacting people all around you.

When something bad happens, there are a need not only to deal with the essential first response, like putting the fire out or the search and rescue activities but the emotions and feelings too.  Brexit can be described as a car crash in slow motion.   It’s a crash that involves more than 65 million people in Europe.  Its consequences go much wider than that and truly send ripples around the globe.  Advocates of Brexit, naturally don’t see it like that often because of their intense emotional vow to see the crash course through to the bitter end.  Unfortunately, what we are seeing now in the daily news is a welling up of finger pointing blame peppering reports left and right.

I’m astonished to read that the UK Chancellor Philip Hammond is playing the blame game at such an early stage in the new year.  In reports, accusing the others of paranoia, at a time when negotiations between the EU and UK super sensitive, is to invite finger pointing.  Conservative Ministers seem wholly unable to offer reassuring messages and project a positive vision of the future.

There’s no doubt that there’s a growing ground swell of opinion in the UK that wishes there to be a second referendum on the question of EU membership.  That is the fairest and most reasonable way forward in what is a situation that is going badly wrong.  The people should be given a choice based not on theory, outlandish claims and brash polemic shouting but on the hard facts of a EU/UK deal.

The action that is democratic, respectful of the scale of the decision and soundly based on clear alternatives is a referendum on the results of negotiations.  This would be a first referendum that transform and turn around a destructive phase in our history.  If the EU/UK deal was accepted by the electorate then the Country could go forward with some unity.  If the EU/UK deal was rejected our leadership role in Europe will be re-established and the focus return to fixing the NHS, housing people and ensuring opportunity for all.

So, lets’ ditch the blame culture that has engulfed Westminster.  It’s time for great vision.  Its time for clear choices and time to trust the people with the facts.

I keep seeing the word “bespoke” in articles written about Brexit.  It’s the unspoken strategy of the UK Government for a tailored outcome to negotiations that is unique in its advantages and unlike any existing agreements the EU has with third Counties.  On the one point, there’s no doubt the UK’s position is unique.  To have been a big player in the EU for 40 years and then to leave it without a compass or a map is a special situation.

The impression given by the EU side in the negotiations is that the softest possible Brexit is sought but with no special advantages given that would incentivise other Countries taking a similar leap into the unknown.  Often the catch words; win-win are used to suggest that there’s an outcome that would mean the minimum pain around but that comes with a price.

These high-level aspirations are fine and good except that the detail is always in the fine print.  That said, in the world of regulation there’s an awful lot of fine print.  It’s the case that hardly any industry or service is solely domestic, in that all its rules are purely national.  Regionally and globally rules, regulations and standards are in place to ensure that markets work, and failure get fixed.    There’s no council of perfection, some are better than others in achieving their objectives and often changing agreements is a gruelling task.

Back to that word “bespoke”.  In regulatory rulemaking terms, it’s implied that three categories are likely to arise.  One: UK wholly adopts and applies a complete EU rule.  Two: UK creates and applies a regulatory equivalence to an EU rule.  Three: UK creates and applies a disharmonised rule.  For the first two categories, if the minimum of disruption is sought, changes and modifications would need to be synchronised between the UK and EU.

The last case, number three in my list, doesn’t have that much mileage given that many EU rules are designed to comply with higher level international rules.  I’m sure the UK would have the same overriding objective to remain compatible at an international level.

It’s certainly the result that a “bespoke” settlement will not be simpler than the existing situation as a Member State of the EU.  Not only that but the administration of all the above for all the industries and services would be a responsibility of the UK.  Repatriation of these responsibilities is going to need many administrators and technical staff and a sound structure for them to do their work.  Once in place, this is not static, and a continuous process of updating would be needed.

So, if I was to offer career advice for a young graduate in the post-Brexit UK you might guess what it would be.  Yes, there are going to be the need to train up many new people to take on this activity.