From the first I have argued two things. The first is that the most likely scenario is that the day on which we leave will turn out to be the most massive non-events since the millennium bug. A messy compromise which leaves the UK shadowing much of what the EU does has always been the most likely start point. Though never discount the possibility of an enormous cock up on either side producing queues of lorries for badly organised customs checks.
The second thing I have argued is that it is actually possible to get a number of improvements to life in the UK in a number of areas if we take the right actions. Regional policy and agriculture being the two most important ones. I have just never believed that the Brexiteers have the remotest intention of using any new freedom of manoeuvre that they get in a positive way. Instead I think they want to use Brexit to lock us into a nostalgic vision of the past that cannot work in a global economy and that this will make ordinary people more vulnerable.
I also though Brexit would unleash some unpleasant attitudes that would damage the country both socially and economically. I don’t think for one minute that the vast majority of those who voted leave did so because they thought we could get great new trade deals from around the world. I think that many of them thought wrongly that it would free the country from globalisation and its pressures. A dangerously high proportion of people also thought they could rid ourselves of Jonny foreigner and that when they did so the factories would re-open, their communities would stop reeking of neglect and police would start riding bicycles again. That is certainly very close to the emotional outpourings of hope that I encountered on the streets during the referendum campaign.
The real risk of Brexit is therefore not that we will crash out of a customs union with our biggest trading partners, or that we will have to be subject to most of its rules without having any control over it. The real risk is that those who felt left out and neglected enough to invest enormous hope in the change will react very badly when they realise they have been betrayed and something even nastier will emerge.
In a rational world those who were promised £350 million a week for the NHS and the return of a golden age of British economic power would simply turn on those who made those promises as soon as it became clear that the UK would be paying to leave and that new trade deals will result not in more sovereignty but in more foreign corporate lawyers policing the new deals and telling the UK government what it can and cannot import and how it can and cannot not help British business.
That emotional turnaround hasn’t been happening. Despite all the mounting evidence that Brexit is a waste of time and effort that leaves the UK weaker and more vulnerable, the opinion polls have stayed stubbornly the same. Remain is narrowly ahead by the kind of margin it was at the start of the referendum campaign. The Prime Minister of the UK has been forced by economic realities to go cap in hand to Brussels and agree to every one of their terms. Yet 47% of people still believe leaving the EU is helping to strengthen the country.
A rational mind says that the problem is that we have been lied to and there is no practical alternative in the modern global world to being part of messy international collaborative arrangements with your most important trading partners. A rational mind sees more and more countries across the world working hard to club together and the constant stream of nations wanting to join the EU and asks why we are heading in the other direction.
We are not, however, always dealing with rational minds. Those who hold a blind faith in the hope that with one simple Brexit escape plan they can have all their problems solved seem determined to see every one of the real hard practicalities as simply extra reasons to be frustrated with the EU instead of one more reason to recognise how badly they have been lied to and betrayed by far right, and not a few far left, British politicians.
It has become a truism that the areas which voted most heavily to leave were the neglected inner-city parts of the UK. The anger that has been stoked up by generations of under investment in those regions is likely to get a lot worse in the next few years. A sensible government would have seen that anger and immediately after the referendum got on with implementing a massive regional development programme to kick start opportunity in the inner cities. It would have launched an incentive scheme to help people renovate and modernise run down housing stock and provided developers with funding to turn old disused mills into modern housing or modern industry. Instead of doing that the UK government has let developers free to build on cheap green field sites so that they don’t need to bother with difficult inner-city ones. A sensible government would have invested in schools and hospitals in inner city areas in response to obvious concerns that the service there was simply not working properly. Instead it has cut funding in real terms per child and per operation and transferred funding away from inner-cities towards the shires. Most of all a sensible government would have provided major incentives for modern forward looking industry and for service sector employers to set up in poorer regions of the country and invested in the transport infrastructure to back that up. Instead May’s government has produced one of the most rambling and incoherent industrial strategies I’ve ever read.
The neglected regions issued a massive cry for help in the referendum. A lot of them placed their hopes and their faith in a set of wild promises that their needs would be met via the simple means of Brexit. Now that faith is turning out to be seriously misplaced it would be nice to think that there will be a massive backlash against Leavers and a recognition that Remainers got it right. That simply isn’t happening. The Liberal Democrats are running at 7% in the polls and the Greens at around 2% and they are the only two parties who have been prepared to consistently say that Brexit was wrong.
It is not enough to offer people who have been badly neglected the opportunity to stick with the status quo. What is needed is a clear programme to revive our regions and a determination to create a balanced and sustainable economy that has several successful economic powerhouses and doesn’t rely on one over-heated financial centre occupied by incredibly wealthy exiles from dodgy regimes around the world. I believe that the Greens are offering the best ideas on how to do that but I also think this should not be a party issue and regional policy should be taken up urgently across the political spectrum.
In amongst all the noise last week it was revealed that yet again the UK balance of trade in goods and services had got even worse. The country bought £6.9 billion more than it sold in just 3 months despite the pound falling badly which should have made us more competitive. The country is falling badly behind other nations and we urgently need to be investing in a transformation to the next generation of technology and making sure the neglected regions are at the forefront of that transformation.
Instead we are leaving the regions to rot, investing in fossilised approaches like fracking and putting at risk our major international market. Do not expect the anger in the regions to go away. The consequences of a further growth in the conviction that the needs of these areas are being ignored will be very serious indeed. People of good will from all political parties need to get down to the hard work of devising and implementing policies that will turn neglect around.