Politics

History shows that the Brexit ultras always demand more—they will never be satisfied

If you give someone an inch, they’ll take a mile. What happens if you give them a country?

February 20, 2018
Hardline Eurosceptic Jacob Rees-Mogg. Photo: Yui Mok/PA Wire/PA Images
Hardline Eurosceptic Jacob Rees-Mogg. Photo: Yui Mok/PA Wire/PA Images

Brexit has claimed many scalps over the course of its unhappy two-year rule: not least the traditional British pursuits of liberalism, internationalism and a decent reputation. But it seems that the British value most despised by the hardline Brexiteers, and therefore one of the first to be condemned, is compromise. No matter how many carrots, concessions or victories the prime minister drops into their outstretched hands, these flag-waving Mick Jaggers just can’t get satisfaction.

The last 30 years have seen a steady accumulation of Eurosceptic demands. Some, such as Britain’s European Union rebate in the 1980s, were fully endorsed by the government of the day. Others, such as the total rejection of the Maastricht Treaty, were not. Today, the main battle is not about degrees of integration but about whether we accept any deal at all. The Jacob Rees-Mogg wing of the Tory party—which threatens a formal take-over in the event of any vacancy for prime minister—is determined to walk away from the EU at any cost. How did we get here?

In a sense, the hard Brexiteers took their cue from the prime minister herself. The rot set in from the moment Theresa May announced her bid to be Conservative leader. Knowing that she could only succeed with Brexiteers’ support, she declared that “Brexit means Brexit”—and for months afterwards ignored Remainers and their concerns. The referendum had been a 51.9-48.1 per cent split, and as such demanded an inclusive approach. Instead, the government and media developed, in tandem, a narrative of “metropolitan elites,” “citizens of nowhere” and “Remoaners.”

May, along with the right-wing press, worked hard to place these inauthentic global citizens in opposition to the “people” whose will, however abstractly expressed, had to be religiously obeyed. Any effort to stay in the single market or customs union, or implement real-world efforts to preserve the invisibility of the Irish border, was scorned not as compromise but sabotage. The eventual government climbdowns over money and the transition only came because the EU forced them. On the rare occasion now that the prime minister does appeal to Remainers, she merely tells them that everything will be alright, and never explains how.

The principal reason for the government’s dogma—and cowardice—is fear of the hardline Brexiteers. Locked in a symbiotic psychodrama of co-dependency, May and the Brexiteers have supported each other through each side’s terror of collapse if they do not. For this reason a government of, for the most part, individual moderates now speaks only for a wing of fundamentalists.

The past week’s series of government speeches has neatly illustrated their predicament. Boris Johnson assured Britons that they would still be able to enjoy stag weekends and retire abroad; May extolled the benefits of an unprecedented security treaty based on existing instruments; and David Davis has just called for a comprehensive agreement of mutual recognition that will allow Britain to set its own standards and preserve totally free trade, while remaining outside EU frameworks.

All three speeches struggle with the reality that Brexit can’t give its proponents what they want without taking what they have. Only cakeism permits the call to regain sovereignty while still enjoying all the benefits of pooling it. The truth remains that Brexit demands painful compromises. If we want to trade with the EU as now, we must follow their rules and regulations. If we want to enjoy EU rights, we must reciprocate them. And if we want to participate in EU instruments and agencies, we cannot expect to shape them. That these ministers demand only the first elements without the second demonstrates the expectation of compromise from the EU alone.

“If people make unreasonable demands and keep winning, they will see no reason to stop”
History shows that Brexiteers always demand more. After the battles over the rebate and Maastricht (which of course came with key British opt-outs), hardliners set their sights on opposing the euro, then the Lisbon Treaty. After David Cameron bestowed the concessions of future referendums on any new EU treaty, and then the 2016 referendum on EU membership, they also opposed his renegotiation package. After they won the referendum, any talk of soft Brexit was quickly supplanted by ever-harder demands for the separation. As even the prospects of dialogue, cooperation and shared participation in mutually beneficial projects now become intolerable, it is reasonable to ask the hard Brexiteers what kind of pure sovereignty they ultimately want, and why.

We might have expected Brexit to become more inclusive as it drew more converts. But indeed the opposite is true. When Brexit occupied an obscure niche on the British political fringes—a situation which endured until only a few years ago—lifelong Brexiteers never talked about the policies we are now enacting.

Specifically, the key objective of Brexit appeared until very recently to be a Norway-type solution. On an episode of Question Time in 2013, Nigel Farage mocked the pro-EU line that it would be “terrible” to be like Norway (in the single market) or Switzerland (which follows many tranches of EU rules and implements free movement of people). “Really?” he asked. “They're rich. They're happy. They're self governing.” David Davis also said in 2013 that he wanted to stay in the Customs Union, while Boris Johnson—admittedly a late convert to the Brexit cause—affirmed until shortly before the referendum that he wanted to stay in the single market. Notably, this was many years after the famed Polish plumbers had settled in Britain under the single market’s free movement laws that now cause the Foreign Secretary such distress.

It perhaps does not matter if a hard or no-deal Brexit was part of a grand 30-year Eurosceptic plan, or if it is simply the product of human nature. If people make unreasonable demands and keep winning, they will see no reason to stop. If the compromise is all one way, why settle for any at all?

The point is that if a government exists to satisfy people who cannot be satisfied, it must stop trying. The Brexit it is currently pursuing, with so many ruinous and unimplementable red lines, cannot please Remainers, or the majority of Leave voters, or the people who have demonstrated for decades that they will never be pleased. And if Brexit dismantles the economy and jobs, it will not spare the government or the Brexiteers. Like an insatiable monster, it will eat everything and then itself.

If you give someone an inch, so the expression goes, they’ll take a mile. What happens when you give them a country?