I have about twenty years or so left on this planet. I very much hope that before I shuffle off, the UK will have rejoined the EU. I think it will be touch and go whether we manage it. Apologies to our more enthusiastic Europhiles if that disappoints you, but I think it is realistic.
The EU needs to see a steady majority in favour of joining over a period of time. We don’t have that stable majority yet, though I expect we will. It will then need to remain stable for a number of years (particularly important for us, given Britain’s current and immediate past tendencies towards exceptionalism and fascism). Then the process of accession will take several years even if, in the meantime, we have laid the groundwork by joining the EEA, rejoining the single market, rejoining Horizon, or whatever we choose to do.
It will take a lot of work, and although we are enthusiastic about this ourselves, it is very difficult to persuade other people of an objective that may be fifteen or twenty years off. So it is not necessarily helpful to make a greater noise about wanting to rejoin, as some would have us do. It may make more sense for us to stand for an intermediate objective, one which is necessary for this country, as well as necessary if we are to have any realistic prospect of rejoining.
If we are to hope to rejoin, we need to make this country different to what it is now. We actually need to do that anyway. Regardless of our chances of joining the EU, I do not want to live in a country where millions rely on foodbanks to fend off starvation while the Prime Minister changes the grid to have electricity delivered to his swimming pool; a country where a previous Prime Minister seeks to ennoble his wife-beating father; a country where the Home Secretary uses language about asylum seekers reminiscent of 1930s Germany (yes, I will say that, because it is true); a country where the heroism of NHS staff is rewarded with applause but not with a pay rise.
So I propose a slogan: “Let’s fix this country”. Let’s fix things so that they actually work for the people and not just the elite.
- fix the voting system so that everybody’s vote actually counts
- fix the tax system so that wealth pays its fair share
- fix the benefit system so that people are treated with respect, not with contempt
- fix the housing system by allowing councils to build green affordable housing where it is actually needed
- fix energy use and storage so that we will genuinely be green in the foreseeable future
- fix all the privatised public services so that they are forced to put citizens before profits
There are many more fixes, I am sure, that others will want to add to this list, and it can be as long as you like because the idea is for a radical approach to changing this country to work for everybody. Putting it this way focuses the voters on what we’re doing for them. If we achieve it, or anything like it, over the lifetime of two or three parliaments, we will have made this country democratic, warm, respectful and liberal. And, almost as a by product, we will have slid into being a really good candidate to join the EU.
* Rob Parsons is a Lib Dem member in Lewes. He blogs at http://acomfortableplace.blogspot.co.uk. He curates Liberal Quotes on Facebook
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25 Comments
Excellent piece and a good list of things where Britain needs fixing.
I agree with the realism of what it would take for Britain to join the EU, especially the need for a stable political consensus supporting an EU membership application. I made a similar point myself in my piece Britain can never rejoin the EU, it might join it.
Thanks, Mohammed. I like the point made in the title of your piece – “rejoining” is a non-existent option; we need to think about “joining”.
I cannot envisage the British public ever accepting the Euro , & giving fiscal control to the ECB… Turnout at euro elections were woeful – on a par with the PCC which are bad enough …The only time the British public fully engaged, was when given a chance to vote to leave. That why previous govts avoided referendums – they knew a huge swathe of the British public are naturally Eurosceptic….Joining the EU fully is not a viable option …
The other issue about joining the EU is – what will it be like when (if) the UK is ready to apply again? If the likes of Le Penn and Orban are in charge we (ie Lib Dems) may not find it so attractive. That said the current government might find it rather attractive.
Despite the governments own data revealing the damage of Brexit, despite (Rees-Mogg’s lawn mower aside) the total lack of any worthwhile benefits from Brexit, doctrinaire Brexiters cling to specious straws – a supposed everlasting mandate, – claims that British people would brook whatever privations before acknowledging a colossal error, – or that ‘the EU’ (airily used as a sort of blanket term) would never let us back. We all know if there were any benefits to speak of, we would hear of them ad nauseam.
Unfortunately it is all too evident that the Conservative Party and a tabloid media riddled with obsessive extremists can and do set the agenda (over-reaching themselves with the Lineker furore).
It seems to me that we need to change the dial and push for a new referendum to mandate negotiations for a closer relationship with Europe. I do not think a referendum is avoidable so we should be pre-emptively setting the agenda. I have recently written more fully about the issue here. I wrote it before the Windsor framework and for a little while wondered whether it had made a difference, but other than show that the UK at some point has to face up to realities, it is evident that without a decisive shift the UK will remain economically and politically hamstrung by Brexit.
Martin, while you’re right in much of what you say, you seem to be missing Rob’s point: that unless we prepare the ground by modernising the country, a referendum may well be lost again, and even if it isn’t Britain won’t be a very good participant in whatever the EU is by the time we join it (which incidentally is also Layla Moran’s line). Rob is effectively saying that Brexit is the symptom of the problem, not the problem itself – unless we make our country a modern, self-respecting state, we will never play a full part in Europe, and the EU will probably not let us back anyway. That’s why his piece is so interesting. I don’t think we should get into timelines, as things can change quickly and demographics will eventually create a more Europe-friendly UK electorate, but we do have to ‘fix’ our country, both for general and EU-specific purposes.
EU remains low down on voters’ priorities. If we end up focused on EU at the GE, we will do very badly.
Rob, good article. There is so much groundwork to be done before any possibility of return to the EU. LDs need to show some strategic and psephological awareness. And offer an approach that interests and engages the electorate. Not just its own members.
Martin, going into the GE calling for a Referendum would be a huge millstone around our neck. No appetite whatsoever for that in the country. A real negative. Let’s not establish a precedent about referending all sorts of issues. Any sensible government will seek closer relations with Europe.
As for Brexit voters, my experience with the many I know personally, borne out by polls, is that those who accept it’s going badly attribute this to Tory bungling. Only a couple now accept it’s a bad idea in itself.
Chris Bowers:
Perhaps I should have addressed Rob’s points more directly. The grip of quite assertive right wing extremism that currently has the upper hand in the Conservative Party and the media (much more marked since 2016) has successfully prevented the country from addressing the realities, the real problems that Rob outlines. They have an inflated influence; the bubble has to be burst.
Martin, I agree completely with your point at 8.16 a.m.. We could clearly add fix the obsession of the press with telling lies and of the BBC with “balance” to the list of needed fixes.
Getting closer to the EU is inevitable and therefore LD’s as most pro-European party should be leading the conversation on this.
The referendum was a vote between staying in EU and push for reforms or leaving in wholly unclear fashion. In 15-20 years the EU will have been developing without influence of the UK. Heck, it might even be the thing that Brexiteers thought it was in 15-20 years time, so I would suggest not talking about re-joining at final goal.
I do think that many leave voters were told to blame the EU for things which were failures of the UK government. Yes Prime Minister jested (many a true word…) that this was a trick played by the right for many years and therefore I would agree that fixing the UK’s house so blame game is harder to play is probably needed or else we’ll be doomed to repeat Brexit in 50-70 years time.
What was so great in those areas that voted heavily to leave prior to 2016 ? ….Asking those to accept the status quo , was never a great selling point of EU membership…All those things listed in this posting were real to so many, EU membership or not…It didn’t make one iota of difference to their lives …FOM a one way ticket , Erasmus – they’d never heard of it – two things the metropolitans love to go on about , ultimately the former facilitated Brexit – huge mistake from NL . With stronger controls we could of held onto more of the socially conservative vote . There’s no going back, not for generations …We need to be realistic & not nostalgic…
@Martin Gray – “ The only time the British public fully engaged, was when given a chance to vote to leave”.
The singled biggest reason cited by Leave voters for voting to Leave was “immigration” – so it’s clear that most Leave voters were casting an anti-immigration vote in the referendum.
And of course as the majority of our immigrants were and still are from non-EU countries and those numbers had nothing whatsoever to do with the EU, the vote was first and foremost a reaction to U.K. domestic decisions on immigration.
So your conclusion that the British public are somehow “anti-EU” doesn’t stand up, particularly in light of the large number of voters who now recognise that Brexit is an abysmal failure and it was a serious mistake to leave the EU.
Paul R 16th Mar ’23 – 9:04pm:
The singled biggest reason cited by Leave voters for voting to Leave was “immigration” – so it’s clear that most Leave voters were casting an anti-immigration vote in the referendum.
You’d need to cite a source for such a claim. Ashcroft’s survey, conducted at the time, found that regaining national sovereignty was the primary reason for voting Leave…
‘How the United Kingdom voted on Thursday… and why’:
http://lordashcroftpolls.com/2016/06/how-the-united-kingdom-voted-and-why/
@Paul…
Nearly 18 million British voters – voted to leave …
EU election turnouts were absolutely woeful, the third lowest in the EU & on a par with the PCC elections .
There’s never been any deep affection for the EU for millions of Brits – to state otherwise Paul is being disingenuous…
Sadly what’s being proposed now – was deemed unacceptable in 2019 , & with that stance – it was instrumental in handing Brexit to Johnson…
“……the total lack of any worthwhile benefits from Brexit….. if there were any benefits to speak of……”
Is it all about benefits, in the material sense, though? There is a good case to be made that Canadians would have more material benefits if they joined the USA and all became Americans; and that Kiwis would be better off if they became Australians. Yet, there isn’t any significant desire in either country for this to happen. On the face of it, there is no obvious reason why not. Their languages are the same, the cultures are almost the same, and many of us in the UK just wouldn’t know one individual from another as we probably would with, say, French and German people.
The citizens of these countries do want good political and trading arrangements. They want to be close but not too close. So if we accept this is the case for them why would we expect the various countries of Europe with their different languages and different cultures to be any different? The feeling that the EU powers have grown to be far too pervasive isn’t confined to the UK.
It may seem like a trivial example but I notice that Jeremy Hunt claimed he wouldn’t have been able to introduce a differential rate of alcohol duty to help pubs under EU rules. It is this kind of petty interfering in the internal affairs of other countries which hasn’t done the EU any good at all.
Thanks to Martin, Paul, Jeff, and Peter for your comments.
I think it does us no good refighting the 2016 battle. We know the EU is not perfect, but I take it as a given that we are still better off inside it than out. People will always find things like the beer tax to rub up against it.
The question is why did those arguments have so much resonance with the voters.
In my view we have to take a long lens to our history. The voting population was softened up for brexit by a forty year campaign of lies and distortion from the right wing press, never properly countered by any sensible voice. At the referendum they just went on lying. (And the Remain campaign was the feeblest political campaign I’ve ever been involved in, but that’s a whole different story.)
So Leave voters’ resentment was genuinely felt but falsely based. We need to deal with the actual causes of the resentment which is the inequalities that have been baked harder and harder into our system since the eighties, and the impunity of lying that right wing voices enjoyed throughout that whole period. There’s no point refighting Brexit, but we do need to fix this country.
@ Rob Parsons, “….. We know the EU is not perfect , but I take it as a given that we are still better off inside it than out.”
Why? You can argue that the pros, of EU membership, outweigh the cons but that’s not taking “it as a given”. We should never do that. A lot can change over the next couple of decades. The sensible approach, as you suggest, is to make the UK work as well as it can, and compare this to how well the EU is doing over the same period.
The difficulty for those who do “take it as a given” will come if the EU isn’t doing well. The immediate problem for the EU will be to make the eurozone work effectively. There haven’t been any recent clashes between the EU commission and member countries over their economic policies for the reason that the fiscal rules of the so-called Stability and Growth Pact were suspended at the start of the Covid epidemic. The sensible approach would be to keep them suspended or at least significantly modify them to allow governments to have a more flexible approach.
This is unlikely to happen. The rules will start to be enforced this year and carry on into next. This could be a problem for most countries but an insoluble problem for Italy – and the EU. It could be like 2015 and Greece all over again but this time with a much larger economy.
Fair point, Peter. Loose use of language by me there. You’re quite right that we should make Britain twenty years better and then compare being in and out. My language was based on finding it very difficult to conceive of conditions in which we’d be better off out. I can see that the EU may well get rockier, but we’re already rocky, and if things in the EU get worse, they’re pretty much bound to make things worse for us too. Brexit has not succeeded in defying gravity, and never will, so it’s better to be in a place where we have a say in making the rules than not.
Yes, the UK has things to do before it can apply to join the EU, including items on Rob Parsons’ list. It also needs a written constitution and an educated population.
Almost all countries have written constitutions. These typically have rules for how the can be amended. Changing a constitutional arrangement (membership of the EU) on the basis of 36% of the electorate supporting change was an own goal. Supermajorities or requirements that 50% of the electorate vote for change and not just 50% of those voting are fundamental to protecting constitutions and nations. For a hotch-potch nation such as the UK constitution should require a majority of the electorate in each of its four constituents parts. (Scotland and N.Ireland voted to remain).
Similarly, we need an electorate that knows how political decision-making works. In the UK generations have grown up with no idea of how parish councils work, never mind local authority, our houses of parliament or the EU. We remain woefully ignorant.
This is displayed in the comments here, with silly talk of the EU turning to the dark side. The right-wing media pretended the European parliament voted en bloc against the UK. How many British people knew that in the European Parliament MEPs did not sit in national groups but in broad political affiliations? We remain knee-deep in ignorance even as a clear majority of the electorate now realise leaving the EU was pointless.
A written constitution remains key to a democratic future for the UK.
Rob Parsons 17th Mar ’23 – 12:40pm:
…I take it as a given that we are still better off inside it than out.
UK GDP per head peaked in 2007 and declined by 10%. A quarter century in the EU ‘single market’ made us poorer…
‘Why has the UK trade in goods deficit widened in real terms?’:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/balanceofpayments/articles/whyhastheuktradeingoodsdeficitwidenedinrealterms/2018-09-24
The graph…
‘Trade in Goods (T): EU’:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/balanceofpayments/timeseries/l87q/mret
To pay for that deficit we borrow from abroad and sell off our best companies. Meanwhile our exports to the rest of the world overtook those to the EU (in 2010). Almost all economic growth is now outside the EU. That’s where we need to be if we want a prosperous future.
‘The EU is a Major Drag on the UK economy’:
https://www.briefingsforbritain.co.uk/the-eu-is-a-major-drag-on-the-uk-economy/
Rob Parsons 18th Mar ’23 – 10:49am:
…it’s better to be in a place where we have a say in making the rules than not.
Which is outside the EU. Consider trade. The UK is the world’s second largest exporter of services. They account for almost half (47%) of our exports and hit a record high in 2022. Yet, the EU trade deals don’t cover services – showing how little say we had in making the rules as an EU member.
We are now free to make much more ambitious bespoke trade agreements with fast growing markets and to replace our rolled over EU deals with countries like Canada, Israel, Mexico and Switzerland…
‘UK kickstarts work on new trade deal with Switzerland’ [April 2022]:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-kickstarts-work-on-new-trade-deal-with-switzerland
We have regained our seat at the WTO, are a founder member of the Ottawa Group modernising world trade, have developed a new ‘digital trade corridor’ with Kenya using blockchain, have agreed the world’s most advanced digital trading agreement with Singapore, and have just launched our new Developing Countries Trading Scheme (DCTS). The UK now has more of a say in making the rules.
@jeff – once again showing your inability to do analysis by simply focusing on the headlines and simplistic conclusions.
It isn’t the EU that is a drag on the UK economy, it is decades of Conservative thinking; inside or outside the EU the UK, due to decades of under investment and short term thinking, has little to really offer the world, so we will return to having a massive trade deficit, that will be assisted by the Brexit induced decline in financial services…
Roland 19th Mar ’23 – 12:24pm:
…once again showing your inability to do analysis by simply focusing on the headlines and simplistic conclusions.
The article I cited provides a very detailed analysis. It shows that our exports outside the EU grew much faster than those to the EU. That’s hardly surprising as the EU is in relative decline; within a decade or so, it is projected to represent less than a tenth of world GDP.
It isn’t the EU that is a drag on the UK economy, it is decades of Conservative thinking;
Most of the time we were in the ‘single market’ was under Labour (13 years) and Coalition (5 years) governments.
…inside or outside the EU the UK, due to decades of under investment and short term thinking, has little to really offer the world,…
The UK has lots to offer the world, as our record exports demonstrate…
Gully Foyle #UKTrade:
https://twitter.com/TerraOrBust/status/1636683132727377925
@ Christine – “Supermajorities or requirements that 50% of the electorate vote for change and not just 50% of those voting are fundamental to protecting constitutions and nations.”
You will of course be supporting a supermajority when the time comes to consider the fundamental constitutional change of applying to rejoin the EU?
@ Roland,
” It isn’t the EU that is a drag on the UK economy, it is decades of Conservative thinking; inside or outside the EU…..”
This is very true insofar as it’s possible to imagine an EU which was run according to sensible economic policies and didn’t have its own conservatives in charge. They may not be called Tories on the other side of the channel but their economic ideas probably are even worse than our home grown variety. There’s really no need to have such high levels of unemployment as we’ve seen in the EU in the aftermath of the 2008 GFC.
Naturally when workers have no jobs they’ll want to move to find them. This of course is a good thing and Govts should welcome and encourage movement. However, if there is too much movement it is a sign there is something wrong with the general macroeconomic framework. It doesn’t make any sense for us all to pile into the SE of England for example. Neither does it make sense for areas of the EU to become depopulated. The movement of labour needs to be counterbalanced by a movement of jobs and its only the central government which has the ability to achieve that.
Too much movement can, and does, create social problems. Social problems create other problems. Like Brexit for example.