Brexiteers are heading for a sharp dose of reality

The guesswork, the flim-flam, the nonsense, the evasion, the jingoism—all that ends today. With the handing over of a piece of paper triggering Article 50, the campaign is finally over. No longer are we drifting in a hypothetical space of promises and assertions about the nation’s future, about its bargaining power and ability to “take back control.” All of that is now gone. It’s done. There can be no more tub-thumping statements about what Britain’s future looks like. It’s too late for that now.

Reality has returned—and no matter how well-financed your campaign operation, no matter how well-honed your lines of attack or persuasive your arguments, there can be no escape from its unforgiving glare. Promises made in campaign mode and the reality of delivering them are as we know two very different things. Nationalists such as Nigel Farage have claimed excitedly that 2016 was a year of international political renewal and gives as evidence the twin victories of the Brexit campaign and Donald Trump. In recent weeks, campaign promises made by Trump on immigration and healthcare reform have suffered a headlong collision with the granite-hard foundations of political reality. Reality won. Trump’s administration is in tatters.

Those who urged Brexit on Britain are heading for a similarly sharp interaction with the real world. It will shock them terribly, all the more so because so many who made the “Leave” case did so on the basis of a grievous misunderstanding of Britain’s history and identity. At the core of their argument was the idea that Britain must break free of the shackles of external influence—that we must “take back control”—and return to a former state of liberty, of self-governance and puckish, scrubbed independence—“The UK IndependenceParty.” In this way, a vote for Brexit was nothing less than a vote to restore Britain to its rightful former glory. As Boris Johnson put it in a pre-referendum campaign speech: “If we vote ‘Leave,’ we can take back control of our borders, of huge sums of money, of our trade policy and of our whole law-making system… If we vote ‘Leave’ and take back control, this Thursday can be our country’s Independence Day!”

This nationalistic version of history ignores the fact that Britain has never been independent. The country has never stood alone. It has always sought to fix itself to a larger bloc of other countries. Before the Second World War, Britain was the capstone in a global Empire, nestling on the comfortable economic cushion provided by the output of India, the Caribbean, vast tracts of Africa and more. In the aftermath of the war, Britain withdrew from its arrangements with one set of nations and began its long process of integration with Europe. The idea of the buccaneering independent Britain is a mirage—there was never such a time. Nationalists shout about Churchill and how Britain stood alone against Nazism. But the 1930s and 1940s were an era of global catastrophe, hardly a reasonable guide to how a modern peacetime nation should see itself.

As the government sets off on this mission to return the country to a fantasy British past, we can expect a period of uneasy calm. No 10 has passed a piece of paper to the EU stating that it wants to begin the process of withdrawal. The British government will be desperate to get stuck into trade talks. The EU’s negotiators will be less hurried. The first step for them will be to arrive at an agreement between all 27 EU member states about the terms on which Brussels will negotiate with Britain. To be clear—the terms on which the EU will speak to Britain about Brexit have not yet been decided. The reason for this apparent laxity is that they are not the desperate ones.

The Prime Minister, who we should remember did not campaign to leave the EU, will then have to broker an impossible deal: one that is acceptable to both the member states of the EU and to the nationalists in her party who regard themselves as representing the will of the British people, and who demand an immediate return to a past that did not exist. If she “caves in” to the EU on immigration or any other symbolic issue, then her back benches will scream “betrayal.” If she follows the logic of the hard Brexit brigade and Britain drops out of the EU without a deal, the economic and political consequences would be catastrophic. The Conservative Party’s record of dealing with the politics of the continent is not a good one—Europe destroyed Thatcher, Major and Cameron. Now it’s May’s turn.

The politicians who campaigned for Brexit made big claims—very big claims—during the campaign about what Britain could achieve outside the EU. They won. But as they will now discover, that’s not the same as being right.