European vacation

I’m glad to see you back. I thought you were gone forever.

Nine years ago, 33 million adults in the United Kingdom went to the polling station to vote in the European Union Referendum. The turnout was 72% of the electorate, one of the highest in recent years. There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth ever since.

Just over 48% voted for the UK to remain part of the European Union, but just over 52% voted for it to leave, and so, the motion was carried. It was an issue that probably never should have been reduced to a simple choice, one way or the other. Even Margaret Thatcher, something of a Euro-sceptic in her day, once told a radio interview that the general public should never be given the chance to vote in a referendum on our membership, on the grounds that it was just too complex an issue to be distilled into a Yes or No vote.

But it was, we voted, just over half voted Leave, and leave we did. Eventually, but not before it cost Teresa May her Prime Minister’s role, catapulting Boris Johnson into power, and, later, a thumping great Parliamentary majority, on a promise that he would “Get Brexit Done”.

A lot of things were promised in the run-up to the referendum, many things that have never quite materialised, others that did. Anyone spotted that £350m a week for the NHS? No me neither.

This isn’t really the place to argue the ins and outs of, well, our in and out, that ship has sailed, and I think it was fairly clear at the time where I stood on the issue.

Now, though, nine years later, things have changed again. The Prime Minister, Sir Kier Starmer, has negotiated a deal which will bring the UK and the EU closer in economic terms, something he believes could boost the economy by £9bn a year. Among the benefits will be an end to the onerous checks on British food exports to the continent, and the ability – eventually — for UK travellers to use the e-gates at passport control, instead of waiting to have your little blue book stamped by a man in a booth. There are changes to agreement on fishing, on information sharing to counter crime and illegal immigration, on defence, on energy and on travel. Some things will be a clear ‘win’ for Brussels, some for the UK. Starmer is clearly hoping that the economic benefits will be so clear when they come, that they will mitigate any downsides. Ever the optimist. In any case, with trade agreements with the USA subject to the whims of President Trump, it surely makes sense to make it easier to trade with our closer geographical neighbours.

There are a great many people, some of them the usual talking heads that the news bulletins are so fond of, who are declaring that Starmer has betrayed the British people, that he has gone back on Brexit, that he has sold us back to the EU, and EU that the British people voted to leave. And so they did, 17 million of them did so. But let’s not forget that 16 million people voted to remain. Those people were told over and over again, that they lost, and that they should just suck it up, and get over it. So…