It’s not very long ago that advocates for Brexit were making the forceful case that if the European Union were really serious about hanging on to the UK it would be prepared to seriously rethink what our membership would mean. They had a point. If David Cameron had been able to return from his Brussels negotiations with the kind of indisputable headline concessions that would have won over some waverers in parliament and muted the Eurosceptic press – specifically, an “emergency brake” on migration – it is very possible that the integrity of that union would have endured. Four months later, the failure to accept that price begins to seem tragic.
Weird, then, that the very people who pointed out that problem are now in danger of committing exactly the same mistake themselves. Today, Theresa May will hold talks about Brexit with the leaders of the devolved governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and while that initiative is welcome (and overdue), much of the mood music around it betrays exactly the same magical thinking that has infected so much of our response to the referendum result.
Amid warnings from the Institute of Government that a failure to reach agreement with the devolved leaders over the terms could lead to a constitutional crisis, the most substantial concession May appears to have been willing to make is the offer of a “direct line” to David Davis for Nicola Sturgeon et al. Thrilled though they will surely be to get his number, this is ultimately not the sort of concession that is likely to build a consensus. Instead, as the Sun on Sunday quoted a Downing Street source as saying yesterday, May “will make it clear that this is a decision for the whole UK and that she is in charge”. Well, if Downing Street Sources want a critique of that rhetorical approach, they would do well to ring up Vote Leave Sources from about June, who will patiently explain to them that no decent government would meekly subordinate the interests of the people it represents to some abstract appeal about the greater good of the wider union.
In particular, the Scottish government’s case for a flexible Brexit – Flexit! – for different parts of the UK may be hard to swallow, and to execute; but if there isn’t at least a willingness to talk about such a step (and May has shown none), Scottish people will listen much more closely to Sturgeon’s case that their interests are simply being ignored. Instead, an anglo-centric Conservative government is making tubthumping appeals to its own constituents, and putting the future of the union at risk. It’s hard not to think of the spluttering apoplexy of those who thought that Unilever’s position on Marmite was unpatriotic, or that the remaining EU nations will be doing something wicked if they choose to make it difficult for us to leave pour encourager les autres. Each of these arguments is based on a blind faith that the interests of the UK (and, in particular, English people) are somehow a universal benefit, a goal that should be a priority for every relevant actor even when they clash with their own best outcome. If we’re going to have a bearable Brexit, this rhetorical myopia has to end quickly. And if it doesn’t, the future of our own union may be just as blighted as the future of the European one.
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