There are times in politics and in life when it is best to take a step away from your problems, set them in a bigger picture, and see them as no more than, in Harold Macmillan’s glorious phrase, “a little local difficulty.” There are other moments when doing so veers into denial, as when James Callaghan sauntered back from an international summit and castigated reporters for taking “rather a parochial” view of the unfolding Winter of Discontent, earning him the deadly headline: “Crisis? What crisis?”
Looking at the four years of Brexit wrangling, a dash of the Macmillan nonchalance might not have gone amiss. Strange and unfamiliar passions coursed through the nation regarding Britain’s relations with the European Union, previously an abstract and technical question about which only cranks could muster much emotion. We might all have done better to remember that the world would continue to turn irrespective of this deadline being missed, or that “meaningful vote” going down. After all, nothing changed when we did at last formally leave the club in January, and everything that’s happened since has reminded us that the world has bigger problems than Brexit—from a deadly pandemic to a US President openly seeking to thwart the smooth running of a free election (see Sam Tanenhaus).
[su_pullquote]“The truth is that very few of us are giving much thought to precisely what changes kick in at the year’s end”[/su_pullquote]
But here’s the thing. We are now weeks away from the end of the transition, the moment when “leaving Europe” moves out of the domain of legal theory and into the realm of practical fact. And while there are bigger problems around—most notably the virus—they are only going to make the disruption harder to handle. To adopt an Olympian attitude at this point looks less like a Macmillanite correction for earlier obsessions, and more like Callaghan-style complacency. And yet the truth is that few of us, including those running businesses and other institutions that will be directly affected, are giving much thought to precisely what changes kick in at the year’s end.
Esteemed Brexit experts Jill Rutter and Anand Menon join forces to remind us that—however the Brussels trade talks go in the coming weeks—we have ended up with a very hard Brexit. A year ago, the collective yearning in relation to the interminable European argument was: “just make it stop.” That was why Britain bought into Boris Johnson’s promise to “Get Brexit Done.” The devil-may-care character of the Prime Minister (which Philip Collins dissects) was hardly a secret, but the public was in no mood to worry too much about the details. The upshot is that just when the country has lost interest, and indeed faith, in Brexit—Peter Kellner traces the evolution of attitudes—the facts of it have become more consequential. If things go right over the next few weeks of talks, form-filling, delays and barriers will soon affect myriad types of cross-border working; if things go wrong, there could be trade tariffs on top.
None of this was inevitable when a divided country narrowly plumped to walk away from EU institutions in 2016. In looking back over the story of how the chance of a soft Brexit was killed, Rutter and Menon pose awkward questions for people on all sides of the argument, as well as about a political culture that regards compromise as a dirty word.
Beyond the looming economic effects, there will be profound and continuing consequences for the party system (see Patience Wheatcroft) and the future of Britain as a nation state (see Philip Rycroft). But there can be no returning to the monomaniacal discourse of the last few years. With a second wave of the virus and lockdown biting, the world will not let us forget that there is more to life than Brexit.
David McAllister brings us the latest data on an even more pressing question: when will we get a vaccine? I examine the increasingly fraught argument about who should foot the bills of Covid-19 through the prism of the Greater Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham. Meanwhile Hephzibah Anderson offers a eulogy to one victim of the virus whose demise will affect more day-to-day lives than any other—the office.
Don’t, then, forget to put Brexit in proper perspective. Instead do exactly what HM Government like to advise in other circumstances: stay alert. Control the consequences.
