Brexit is difficult - as a bureaucrat, I get that. There are a whole series of competing demands, made yet more challenging by the existence of a series of red lines that constrain the range of solutions yet create even more problems.
Is this the best deal that could be obtained given Theresa May’s stubborn, if inconsistent, stance on met inward migration? It possibly is, though that in itself is hardly a convincing reason for agreeing to it. After all, she was the Home Secretary who failed to keep even non-EU migration under the global 100,000 target she arbitrarily set. She couldn’t even persuade her own colleagues that it was credible or viable.
And let’s set aside the foolishness of setting a target in isolation of the needs of the economy.
But it is a deal that nobody wants. For those demanding control/sovereignty, it actually subjects from our influence level, taking away our votes at European Council and Parliament, whilst requiring us to adhere to the terms of trade agreements and directives. In terms of democratic accountability, it is an outrage. Young Rees-Mogg and his Committee for the Eighteenth Century have every reason to reject it. As for the Free Traders, they have less than they had before. At least our interests were represented...
For those who want to control our borders, and hadn’t noticed that we were outside Schengen, the fact that we have never lost our right to limit those coming into the country from beyond the EU, and have chosen not to do so (and I again turn towards you, Theresa), seem not to be particularly interested in defining why we need to get be up a bunch of rights in order to do something we could already do. Indeed, whilst they’re abundantly clear about what they want in the generality, the specifics are somewhat lacking. In those terms, the deal on offer offers little specificity. I’d be intrigued to see the net migration figure for the European Union, suspecting as I do that it isn’t that high.
And so, it’s all about Project Fear. No, not about what happens if we leave, but now about what happens if we don’t leave at all, or if we don’t sign up to the deal on offer. If we leave without a deal, we are told that medicine supplies can’t be guaranteed, and that food rationing might be necessary. That isn’t exactly what the British people were promised. Blood, sweat and tears, possibly, but someone else, not mine - “There may be some setbacks along the way but, in the end, it’ll be worth it.”. If anyone was going to suffer, it wouldn’t be you and yours.
If we don’t leave, we are threatened with the emergence of far-right political forces. I dimly recall Margaret Thatcher facing down what she described as the far left, and any administration confident in its actions will do likewise with the far right. “We don’t negotiate with terrorists.”, she said. Chris Grayling evidently lacks that sort of will. He’ll find that the British people do. Besides, if your democracy is so vulnerable to a handful of extremists, it isn’t a democracy, it’s a hostage.
In a Parliamentary democracy, Parliament gets to decide. I, and the rest of the voting public, get to decide who makes up Parliament (albeit that the system for doing so sucks). Anything that gets passed by Parliament is, by extension, what we decide and, if we don’t like that, we can theoretically throw out the person we last sent and replace them with someone else. We don’t threaten the peace of the kingdom if we don’t get what we want.
So, Project Fear, Mark II, be damned. If Parliament allows itself to be cowed by a theoretical threat of violence, our country is far more screwed than any impact of Brexit. And for the likes of Chris Grayling, a reminder - it was a democratic process which put you where you are, and you’re not willing to defend it, you ought to step aside for someone who will.
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