I had a curious experience over the weekend. A Brexit-supporting journalist messaged to ask, in all sincerity, whether the events of recent weeks had turned me into a Leaver. It was the same question, in reverse, I could have asked him (but didn’t) at any point over the last five years.
It was a strange kind of gloating. While Brexiters observe the catalogue of unhappiness since December and ascribe the spectrum of calamities to the myopia or vindictiveness of the EU, Remainers consider the same events as a reflection of Brexit itself. Perhaps it is the confirmation bias of human nature. And yet we can all agree on this: the situation is bad, and likely to get worse.
Perhaps the most pressing issue is the one not specifically about Brexit. The current vaccine dispute, which this week has seen Boris Johnson lobbying European counterparts not to block exports from a factory in the Netherlands, is not a direct outcome of Brexit antagonism or the inadequacy of the UK-EU trade deal. While the UK is now a third country and therefore liable to a potential export ban, AstraZeneca is not a branch of the UK government and Brexit has played no particular role in either side’s vaccine rollout. And yet both wings of the British debate view it through Brexit’s lens. Leavers cite EU threats as a sign of bullying; Remainers note what it says about Brussels’ power. Either view crystallises something important about Brexit: the EU’s ruthlessness is the point.
A common myth of the last five years has been that Remainers see the EU as an entirely benevolent organisation. Certainly, most Remainers consider it a force for good. And yet the arguments for remaining within its orbit were not simply emotional or nostalgic: they were rooted in necessity. The modern world is organised into large powers and blocs. Nations around the world have assembled regional bodies to boost their political and commercial clout. The EU does so by pooling its members’ resources and rigorously defending their interests. For almost 50 years the UK benefited from that harmonisation and formulated the rules which disadvantaged outsiders. Now it has joined them.
This is, as much as anything, a question of geography. The need for vaccine imports from the EU again demonstrates our interconnectedness—not simply in terms of trade but socially, politically and in the sphere of public health. Britain’s coronavirus waves have followed the continent’s and the continent’s new wave is largely caused by Britain’s variant.
It originates in history, too. Britain’s chief foreign policy goal has long been to avoid a hostile bloc of neighbouring European states. This is not, thankfully, a question of war, but of daily, exhausting inconvenience. The UK is out in the cold and exposed, however unjustly, to the asymmetrical power of its much larger neighbour. Anyone who has feuded with their neighbour will know how stressful and how difficult it makes ordinary life. The personal is the geopolitical.
This is also about trust. The UK has demonstrated that it did not negotiate the withdrawal agreement in good faith. Indeed, emboldened by the EU’s own misstep in January, when it briefly moved to trigger the break clause in the Northern Irish Protocol in a panic over vaccines, Johnson has repeatedly threatened to do the same—as though one attempt at destabilisation deserves another. The EU is now taking legal action.
The UK has still refused to grant accreditation to the EU’s ambassador in London, the only country in the world to issue such a snub. Diplomatically, the post-Brexit relationship has been poisoned at birth. Successful countries depend on cooperation, solidarity and good faith. Britain is not big enough or popular enough to ignore these requirements.
But it is perhaps easy to forget that Brexit’s worst disruption has not been political. The Office for National Statistics has revealed that goods exports to the EU fell by 40.7 percent in January, and imports by 28.8 percent. Trade associations report lorries being stopped at the border for days, or travelling across the Channel empty. The Food and Drink Federation has documented a drop in the sector’s exports to the bloc of over 75 per cent compared to January 2020, including 98 per cent less salmon and 91.5 per cent less beef. Much shellfish can no longer be exported at all as the UK’s water is not pure enough to meet third-country standards—something which, despite the Environment Secretary’s protestations, was warned about before Brexit and ignored. While Britain’s farmers have been abandoned, its fishers—the group the government prioritised above all others—have been decimated.
As all this has taken place, the UK has deferred checks on goods entering its own territory until at least October. Conversely, British goods have faced comprehensive checks entering the EU since January. It is ironic that in taking back control, the government has imposed barriers on its own exports and kept them open for the EU’s.
Into the grisly vortex of geopolitics, diplomacy and trade comes Northern Ireland. Even some of the most hardened Remainers have been taken aback by the disruption Brexit has wrought on daily life and the political pressure it has placed on the Union. While the Democratic Unionists attempt to soften or renegotiate the Protocol, the nationalist community rejects any measures that undermine it. This is not simply about border checks at ports. These are questions of personal identity and political co-existence.
Remainers have long pointed to the origin of so much of this grief: that the government failed from the start to accept the consequences of Brexit. It has since also failed to accept the reality of what it negotiated. Many Brexiters judge the current predicament as vindicating their hostility to the EU. Both responses are, in this moment, a distraction.
We have left the EU but still depend on it. We need to make the relationship work. Now is not the moment to taunt the other side or ask people to change their minds, but to swallow pride, build bridges and work constructively. We will argue about Brexit for decades to come. But in the end it is not about politics, but people’s lives.
