Remainers are right that Brexit is a bad idea, wrong about why

The fundamental problem is the pointlessness

by Alex Dean / May 11, 2018 / Leave a comment

Photo: Victoria Jones/PA Wire/PA Images

Departure from the European Union is the most gruelling constitutional challenge faced by a British government in living memory. Two years on from the referendum the sense of national fatigue is palpable. The process of disentangling ourselves from 45 years of European law is proving immensely draining. A huge sum of political energy is being expended. What will be the end result?

Listen to hardcore Remainers and you’d think that Britain was heading for catastrophe. They have spent the years since the 2016 vote prophesising doom. Brexit will send Britain into meltdown, the thinking runs. The economy is headed for collapse. We are erecting barriers with our biggest trading partner, which will devastate small business. We are doing irreperable damage to our transnational alliances. British security is being undermined. These were the warnings during the campaign and still they come.

It’s one way of looking at it, and there is certainly some truth to the reading. There is right now lots of uncertainty in the system. The kaleidoscope has been shaken. Remainers are right that Brexit is a bad idea, but they miss something fundamental. The real problem isn’t that Brexit means chaos, at least not in the long term. The real problem is that it’s pointless.

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Comments

S C.
May 12, 2018 at 23:08
Of course Brexit is pointless, it always has been. In any transnational arrangement the decision making process in resolving disputes must be independent of either (or any) state involved. The idea that in leaving the EU the UK would somehow 'take back control' of interstate trading arrangements was always chimerical: disputes will not be resolved according to UK law and in the UK, but according to the treaty's disputes procedure, which is likely to be neutral. One aspect of the EU was to cut across the possibility of differing dispute resolution mechanisms and provide a unitary way of resolving disputes within the EU, in a consistent manner. Inevitably that meant submitting to a foreign (i.e. EU) jurisdiction. Quite why this stuck in the throat of so many is a matter of wonderment. Hardly any international agreement is going to provide that disputes over it are to be resolved in the courts of one or other party. And if we are to trade with Europe - the majority of our trade, unsurprisingly, as our nearest neighbours - it is improbable that we could ever do so profitably by ignoring or deviating materially from EU norms. Quelle surprise!