Brexit is still a topical and divisive topic, so I will begin by stating my own position on the issue. I will lay my cards on the table from the beginning.
I think it is only fair for the reader to be made aware of an author’s position on an important issue like this. At the very least it could prompt them to be on the lookout for inconsistencies which could help evaluate whether the author is providing an accurate record of events or is a biased and unscrupulous propagandist peddling misinformation.
So, did I vote leave or remain? At the 2016 referendum I voted to remain in the EU. I voted remain for one reason: the UK economy had been hollowed out by forty years of right-wing neoliberalism and in 2010 the Tories had started imposing austerity, causing further damage. In my view the UK economy was too weak at that time to leave the EU without suffering major economic repercussions.
The referendum
The referendum question was straightforward. It was a simple binary choice: should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?
The question offered two options, either remain a member of the EU or leave the EU. There was no equivocation in the question but there was an opportunity for supreme equivocation in the answer because leaving the EU meant different things to different people. Politicians, particularly the Conservatives, vigorously exploited that ambiguity and sought to influence what people thought in order to align them with their own agenda.
Remain lost the referendum by 52% to 48%. However, that isn’t the most important statistic of the referendum, the most important statistic was the constituency breakdown. 65% of constituencies voted to leave the EU. The UK is a majoritarian parliamentary democracy, parties need to win a majority of the seats in the House of Commons to gain power. It follows that any party which tried to overturn the referendum result would be guaranteed to lose a general election if the electorate was largely made up of the same voters who voted in the referendum.
I immediately accepted the referendum result because I am a democratic socialist. As a democrat I respect the results of all elections. The only time I would stop accepting an election result would be if an application to challenge a result was made to the Elections Petitions Office and that challenge was successful. No challenge has succeeded against the referendum result, so the result stands.
The Tory Brexit deal
Following the deeply divisive referendum, the political class had a duty to bring the country back together again by finding a post Brexit arrangement that was acceptable to all parties. Unfortunately the debate was dominated by the extreme and uncompromising views on both sides, which drowned out and shouted down more reasonable voices. Many MPs, including the current Labour leader, Keir Starmer, refused to accept the result and tried to stop Brexit. As there was not a majority in either the country or Parliament to remain in the EU, that campaign was doomed to fail and paved the way for the Tory deal.
It was always obvious the Tories would deliver a bad Brexit deal. Perhaps good for the Tories and their donors but bad for everyone else. The best Brexit deal option available was the deal negotiated with the EU by Jeremy Corbyn, which honoured the referendum result while minimising the impact of leaving the EU. The EU had agreed in principle with Corbyn’s deal, so there was no excuse for people in Labour who claimed to support close relations with the EU to not support the terms of that deal.
Did the Tories get Brexit done?
If Brexit means did the Tories agree a thin trade deal with the EU then the answer is yes. Yet even that deal will not be completed until the Northern Ireland question has been solved. However, if Brexit means the UK being an independent nation, as many people do think it means, then the answer is no. The UK is no longer a member of the EU but it still does not have an independent foreign policy. It followed US foreign policy before Brexit and continues to do so.
A nation cannot claim to be independent unless it has its own independent foreign policy. Until that happens, Brexit will not be complete in the way most reasonable people would probably understand Brexit to mean.
Conclusion
Leaving the EU meant so many different things to so many different people that it required the political class to find a tolerable solution to that problem. Instead, politicians on both sides of the Brexit debate have ruthlessly exploited the equivocation over what Brexit means for their own political ends. Rather than use Brexit as an opportunity to unite the country, they divided it for short term, electoral gain.
Brexit also revealed that our political class thinks it is above democracy and can ignore democratic ballots. As a democrat I find that deeply troubling. Just think about the anti-democratic brazenness of it for a moment. In 2017 82% of MPs were elected on a manifesto commitment to deliver Brexit. After being elected hundreds of those MPs tried to stop Brexit. They showed a complete contempt for voters and for British democracy.
All of these problems combine to give the strong impression that there is a deep-rooted culture of MPs and parties putting their own interests above the interests of the UK. I believe if this culture is not changed it will continue to diminish and corrupt our parliament and our democracy.