There have been many u-turns since the UK voted to leave the European Union. Seemingly every promise from the Leave campaign has in some way been retracted or reversed, leaving many to wonder, what actually are we leaving for?
First, infamously, it was that bus. £350 million big ones being pumped back into the NHS. What was there not to love about that? Free health for all Brits, paid for by diverting funds from those nasty Europeans! Details? No, don’t worry about those; they’re for the boring experts! Hang on, is that Net or Gross…? Shhh! It was one whole HOUR after the referendum result was confirmed that Nigel Farage struck this lie down as a ‘mistake’. 60 minutes.
Second, there was the desire to wrestle away from the undemocratic, unelected European Commission – eugh! Without knowing too much (anything?) about how the innards of the EU actually works, people flocked to oppose this evil-sounding, despotic institution. Well, once the Leave result was announced, we had a fortnight of dramatic comings and goings at the top of Government. In the end, both the PM and the Cabinet didn’t really represent the will of the people from the last election at all. The very thing Leavers campaigned against came about because of them. No bother – we were Brexiting!
Third, there was Parliamentary Sovereignty. Once more the Leavers clamoured against the EU’s governing body for implementing laws in Britain; nasty things like Human Rights and preventing overfishing in the North Sea. Fair enough, I can understand this rhetoric of making accountable decisions and people having the chance to vote for Parliament’s mandate – it’s patriotic and democratic, right? However, the very first opportunity Theresa May and her Government had to try and restrict Parliament’s input into the Brexit process she took, although it took another British Institution, the much maligned Courts, to prevent that from happening. An unelected Prime Minister denying influence from elected Members of Parliament while heaping disdain on qualified, neutral judges? That wouldn’t do for all those Patriots!
That’s three pretty big components of voting Leave overturned. Not to worry, we can always fall back to immigration. Bloody immigrants, coming over here, stealing our (NHS) jobs. Vote Leave to close the borders, right? Wrong. Yesterday, David Davis confirmed that after Brexit, “from time to time we’ll need more [migrants], from time to time we’ll need less migrants”. In other words, the Government minister responsible for negotiating Brexit and what it entails doesn’t know whether migration will go up or down, as a result of Brexit. The last bastion of the Brexit playbook lies in tatters; shredded unsurprisingly by an undemocratic, power grabbing political elite against whom much anger during this referendum and aftermath was directed.
Have we really given up the ties of allegiance with our European neighbours and all the benefits of working together for a peaceful, prosperous, environmentally friendly future to just leave? Surely a referendum result where even most of the ‘winners’ will lose should cause pause for thought?
I won’t be the only person who’d happily add a fifth u-turn to this list, and it wouldn’t be the most outlandish one either: to mark an end to this sorry chapter in our history and overturn the decision to leave the European Union and Remain.
The Warm Up 