I refuse to celebrate Brexit

When Margaret Thatcher was invited to Paris for the bicentenary celebrations of the French Revolution she reportedly asked President Mitterand what they were celebrating. She had been told or believed that the Revolution was a bad thing. Some French people might have agreed with her. I have come upon a few who refuse to celebrate the fourteenth of July, Bastille Day.

A good many of us, around half the adult population of the United Kingdom indeed, echo her question when invited by Boris Johnson to celebrate our departure from the European Union. For us the triumphant note he strikes rings hollow. A majority in London and other English cities, in Scotland and Northern Ireland voted Remain in the referendum and still regret the result. Moreover it now seems that the government is bent on what has been called a hard Brexit, even the hardest of hard Brexits. We don’t like it. We don’t approve. And there is no reason why we should.

Johnson has spoken of the need for a time of healing, of his wish to bring us together as we enter this new stage in our history. These are words intended to soothe, but there is nothing soothing, nothing unifying, in the planned celebrations of Brexit day. Big Ben may not after all be sounding – too expensive it seems – but Johnson is still putting on a show for what to him and, one must admit, millions of Leavers is VoE-Day – Victory Over Europe Day. “We won” is the message, and don’t you forget it.  It’s Cromwellian language, the way Hilary Mantel’s hero might have spoken to Papists, or the previously better known Oliver to Royalists on 30 January 1649. For devout Church of England men and women January the thirtieth would be the Day of King Charles the Martyr. No Remainer will of course be martyred on 31 January 2020, but, even in the hours of defeat, some will remember that Cromwell’s Republic was short-lived and the King, Charles II, was restored in 1660, brought back not by Royalists long excluded from power, but by the Cromwellian General Monck and the Rump of the Long Parliament which had managed the Civil War against Charles I.

Of course historical parallels are rarely more than amusing mental playthings. One might have fun wondering which of today’s Brexiteers might play the part of Monck a few years down the line. But this could only – for now anyway – be an after-dinner game, and in any case one should remember that the Republic looked secure until Oliver died in 1658, every bit as secure as Brexit looks today.

Meanwhile set aside for the moment Johnson’s decision to celebrate Leave-EU day, an understandable decision because his troops demand it, and consider instead his call for healing and reconciliation. Many surely welcome this, many in both camps, one supposes, for the last three years have been divisive, unpleasant and bad-tempered. We all have to live together in what is still the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and its survival as a United Kingdom may even depend on such healing and reconciliation.

This is going to be difficult. The division between Leavers and Remainers is deeper and more clearly defined now than it was in 2017.

First, nobody knew then what form Brexit would take. There was talk of the “Norway” solution, a semi-detached position, the UK remaining in the Single Market and Customs Union but no longer obliged to accept freedom of movement for workers, or of the Canada solution, perhaps three-quarters detached. Well, the Johnson Government seems to have opted for complete detachment, a house standing in its own grounds. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has said there will be no alignment with EU regulations and standards. This may of course be only a negotiating position, though, if this is the case, it seems foolish to make it public. Be that as it may, the hard line will please the Tory Right and that part of the electorate which has for a long time been very hostile to the EU – people who have voted for Ukip and Farage’s Brexit Party at least in elections for the European Parliament, elections that are a better gauge of opinion on this subject than any General Election has been.

Conversely it will dismay and anger Remainers who will not be easily appeased, for one of the unforeseen consequences of the Brexit arguments over the last three years has been the development and strengthening of pro-EU feeling. There is especially, but not only, among the young, an enthusiasm for the EU rarely manifest before, certainly not at the time of the referendum when you never saw placards declaring a love for the EU. Many have become aware that they have a European identity, as well as a British, English, Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish one. There would now be votes for a pro-EU version of Farage’s party.

Johnson may judge that this enthusiasm may fade once Brexit is a reality, that people will become reconciled to it when negotiations have taken place and the terms of our future relationship with the EU have been settled. So indeed it may if the more gloomy forecasts of the consequences of Brexit prove unfounded or at least grossly exaggerated. If we enter a period of prosperity – as Brexiteers have promised – then pro-EU sentiments may fade as in the eighteenth century Jacobitism faded on account of political stability and prosperity. Remainers, or whatever they come to be known as, may still drink to an equivalent of “the King over the Water”, but they will be as politically insignificant as Jacobites were after the ’45. Yet if these promises prove false, Remainers’ regrets will turn to sharp resentment.

Meanwhile, for the time being, the matter is settled. Johnson has a handsome majority in the Commons, sufficient surely to enable him to get whatever agreement is reached with the EU on our future relationship through Parliament with none of the difficulties John Major experienced over the Maastricht Treaty. His majority gives him the freedom to govern, but, if he is wise, he will remember that a Commons majority is not reflective of majority opinion in the country and that not even all the 43 per cent who voted for him are enthusiastic Brexiteers; he owes the scale of his majority to the first-past-the-post system, to Jeremy Corbyn, to the ineptitude of the Liberal Democrat campaign, and to the split in the Remainer vote.

It won’t all be plain sailing. There is rough water ahead, first the disgruntlement of the betrayed Unionists in Northern Ireland, then, next year, the Scottish Parliamentary elections. If the SNP wins 50 percent of the vote and an overall majority of seats on a manifesto calling for a second Independence referendum, it will be difficult to continue to say “no”.

At the moment everything is going his way. The election was his personal triumph, rather than the party’s. But, however the negotiations with Brussels turn out, some will be disappointed, others aggrieved, others angry. Finally, given that there is a pro-EU majority among under-forties, even perhaps under-fifties, he would be wise to eschew triumphalism and walk warily.

As for us Remainers, we should be humble enough to accept that Brexit may not turn out too badly. We may be wrong about it, just as Margaret Thatcher was wrong about the French Revolution which, despite the Terror and a generation of European Wars, got rid of the absolute monarchy and a host of feudal privileges, bringing France greater Liberty and Equality, if not always Fraternity. Fraternity is hard to foster as Johnson is likely to discover.