The making of a eurosceptic

By Pete North - July 1, 2020

As Brexit goes off the rails to become the shambles I feared it would be, I find it necessary to remind myself why we are here.

I was there almost from the beginning of Ukip. Just me, dad, Alan Sked, and a handful of people in a meeting room. I was young, and largely oblivious as to what it was all about. I learned a new word though. Sovereignty.

It was a nebulous term even back then, but ultimately it was about the ability to make our own laws. Of all the fads and theories that passed through euroscepticism, sovereignty was the one constant.

I learned that the Common Fisheries Policy was a disaster for fish conservation. I learned that the Common Agricultural Policy was an inefficient mess. That much is still pretty much true.

I also learned about a quiet revolution. A move to an alien system of European regulation. A slow transformative creep without really understanding what was happening or why. All I knew was that businesses were having to stump up huge amounts of cash to comply with badly formed regulation and subject to draconian enforcement.

I remember one of my first exposures to the world of regulation, being dragged along to an appeal hearing, to watch a slaughterman plead to keep his business open. He was ordered to make £100k worth of modifications but his operating hours were restricted to three days a week. I then remember the EU commission publishing one of it’s “Euromyths” articles saying that the EU was not responsible. That’s when I had them down as liars.

There then came that question of whether the EU was a democracy. It certainly wasn’t a democracy in the American sense where the outcome would decide the direction it was going in. You can reshuffle MEPs but the pace and destination remains the same and you don’t get a say about who’s running it. This is, arguably a case for further federalisation, but only if you fancy the idea of a European super state – and I didn’t. And still don’t. I would prefer Europe to remain a region of sovereign allies.

But then the EU was only really half of the problem. We didn’t really have a say in it. Labour, Lib Dems, and the Tories claimed euroscepticism in opposition but became fully committed Europhiles in office, signing us up to yet more treaties without a referendum.

There was also that small matter of opening the borders to all comers from the EU without a public debate, and by the time we realised what was in play it was already too late. And that’s how they’ve always played it. They act first and only occasionally ask permission after the fact.

Being that there has always been a cultural divide between the public and our political class, the public were never really represented in these such matters. Parliament saw its role as one of ruler not servant. That mentality still prevails. That’s why winning the referendum wasn’t sufficient. We had to fight two subsequent general elections to ensure Brexit happened.

So as much as the EU wasn’t a democracy the real problem was a contempt for meaningful democracy at our end of it. We were getting the change whether we wanted it or not and it was going to happen by stealth as politicians downplayed the significance of what they were doing. That’s how they did it before and were it not for the public’s rather inconvenient intervention in 2016, they’d keep doing it to us.

What that means in real terms is more power for them and less for us, where we all become spectators in our own democracy with ever more competences falling under the control of the EU where laws were imposed on us without us having a means to modify or repeal.

The thing about us primitive savages is that we value that more than we value convenient passage through airports and other perks. There can be no question that we have in some ways benefited from EU membership, though there is little agreement on what those ways are, but ultimately, if you’re a democrat, then none of it means a damn.

This, incidentally, is why the remain campaign failed. It’s no use telling us that leaving will cause enormous damage. The main reason it will cause so much damage is because of the depth of technical integration. Integration that happened without our knowledge or consent. Moreover, if we didn’t take the opportunity to pull the handbrake, it would not stop there. For sure we had a referendum lock but that meant trusting an establishment that was simply unworthy of it.

After all, David Cameron said he had secured far reaching reforms to the EU when he implored us to vote to remain. But that wasn’t true. It was, at best, marginal tinkering, and nothing bankable. It was nebulous in nature and in no way was it a reform of EU institutions. Put simply, our own government is less trustworthy than even the EU. Where the Eu is concerned they just keep lying to us. This, incidentally, is why Brexit is only part of the solution.

More recently, it has become apparent that , for various reasons, our academic institutions are vulnerable to ideological contageons, producing the kind of authoritarian censorious ghouls we have seen on the march just recently. That they end up working in the civil service and the EU Commission is reason enough to slam the brakes on. Once the Social Justice ideology along with the “trans” agenda worms its way into the EU (as climate change ideology did) there is no going back. It looks like we are leaving in the nick of time.

That Brexit is now becoming something of a disaster is less to do with the decision to leave as our mode of departure. The whole process has been bungled, firstly by way of May’s cack handed misapprehensions and latterly, the ideological zeal of the Tory right. That classic blend of ignorance and arrogance that only a Tory could muster.

Even among the eurosceptics there has never been a technical appreciation of what we were embroiled in or the difficulties that would come with disentanglement. That, though, does not invalidate the decision to leave. In many respects it reaffirms it. Our system of government under the EU is remote, unaccountable beyond the comprehension of mere mortals. Without that sense of understanding there can be no sense of ownership or affinity.

That, of course, does not excuse the dismal performance we have seen but it causes one to ask whether our half century long experiment is in some way responsible for the complete absence of statecraft.

Unlike most Brexiters I’m not rejoicing at the prospect of cutting negotiations short and leaving with a threadbare deal. I’ve always known that Brexit would not deliver what was promised and even before the referendum that a well handled exit process meant not much would change. I didn’t anticipate it being handled quite this badly and I think even fervent remainers have been left aghast at then new found levels of ineptitude.

Being that we are making every avoidable error, Brexit is set to be a bloody nose when we can least afford it. Even without Covid it was a major headache but now it’s going to take years to claw our way back to any sense of normal, if ever. Notionally Brexit means we can make substantive reforms, but I fear the momentum is now lost and has been overtaken by events. This political malaise is far from solved.

Looking back I’d say that Brexit was just one battle in what will be a longer war, where the progressives will stage their own fightback for control over the agenda. Moreover, with the onset of global technocracy, Brexit of itself doesn’t even resolve the greater sovereignty question. There needs to be a confident reassertion of the nation state, but that may prove difficult with a nation as deeply fragmented as ours and without the moral, spiritual and political leadership we are so desperately in need of.

In 2016 we thought we’d seen a real moment of change that would eventually settle into a new normal, but there are now other forces at work which may ensure we live in turbulent times for decades to come. The West is not presently at peace with itself and has yet to reconcile itself to the new order of things, whatever that may be. The post war settlement and its institutions are collapsing and western power is gradually eclipsed by China and other hostile actors. We lack the clarity and purpose to act in unison.

By next year we will be living with the full consequences of Covid, the lockdown and Brexit, whereupon we shall have to reckon with the many decisions that got us where we’re going. There are many chickens coming home to roost on either side of the Channel and the Atlantic. I suspect only then will we truly understand what we have done and where we go next. By then it will demand a new politics because our present system and the people it produces simply aren’t up to the job. History will sweep them aside. Only then will we know what Brexit really means.