by Richard Coulson
The word “Brexit” only became popular three years ago, meaning Britain’s exit from the European Union after 42 years. The United Kingdom (UK) of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Island is now scheduled to separate —or maybe not— effective March 29, or maybe at some unknown future date.
I certainly can’t make sense for Bahamian readers how or why this chaotic outcome is fast approaching or may be resolved. Even Britain’s smartest pundits and toughest politicians seem baffled by the complexities, while spinning endless speculative theories. But here are some personal observations.
After the end of World War II, France and Germany and the other major continental nations recognized that a similar human catastrophe was unthinkable and began to create a unifying structure, initially a piecemeal federation but evolving into precise customs and monetary links and “open borders” for free migration of their citizens. Clearly the UK, although traditionally remote across the 25-mile wide moat of the English Channel, became motivated to join the European Union (EU).
Working in London in the 1970s, I had a front-row seat to observe the unification process. I was fortunate to know Geoffrey Rippon Q.C., the jovial but hard-working House of Commons member who caught the eye of Conservative Prime Minister Ted Heath and was appointed the minister in charge of negotiating the UK’s entry into the Common Market, as it was then popularly called. His efforts involved endless hours of meetings back and forth to Brussels exerting his legal and political skills, often relaxing over a late night drink at Annabel’s with congenial friends. I naturally became an enthusiast for joining, together with most Britons, although the Labour Party voiced token opposition.
Thus it was no surprise that on January 1st 1973 The Act of Accession became effective admitting not only the UK but also Denmark, Ireland and Norway to the European Union, and in 1975 a referendum showed UK approval by a margin of 67% , with 66 of 68 constituencies voting in favor. Rippon was knighted for his efforts and upon retirement from active politics was granted a peerage as Lord Rippon of Hexham. In the following years the membership of the Union grew to a total of 28 nations.
Skip forward to June 2016, when under political pressures Conservative PM James Cameron called another referendum, rashly assuming that the existing order would prevail. He was wrong. To general astonishment, the UK chose to withdraw from the Union, by a narrow majority of 52% to 48%, and Cameron was forced to resign into political oblivion, succeeded by Theresa May as the new Conservative leader.
Why had the UK electorate changed so radically from 1973 to 2016? Voting patterns showed that the bulk of the “leave” votes was concentrated in a generally blue-collar industrial region of northeast England, (while Scots voters opted heavily to “remain”). Many old- fashioned insular citizens had become upset with nit-picky regulations imposed by “Brussels bureaucrats”, but the last straw was the immigration of millions of foreign-language strangers allowed under the European Union open- border policies, allegedly taking jobs and eroding age-age old English customs. The “leave” leaders adopted a shrewd advertising campaign preying on these fears, using many false or misleading statistics to convince credulous voters.
No matter. A bare majority won the day, a British version of Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” faction, and Mrs. May was left with the hapless task of negotiating the complex details of how to “leave”, none of which was spelled out in the simplistic referendum terms. The most intractable issue has been the 310-mile border dividing Ireland. On one side is Northern Ireland, firmly ensconced within the UK, while on other side is the separate Republic of Ireland, a sovereign nation in the European Community. Theoretically there should be a “hard” border between the two, but that would mean the destruction of the Good Friday Agreement so painfully reached in 1998 ending the grisly sectarian conflict and encouraging totally free passage, now irreversible for both parties. Mrs. May has never resolved this dilemma, only fudged it with a series of so-called “backstop” measures.
Faced with innumerable views splitting both the Conservative and Labour parties, after nearly three years she has been unable to cobble together a parliamentary majority capable of presenting the national position, just days before the official departure date of March 29. The straightforward path of cancelling the referendum, favored by many Brits, seems politically impossible, although Parliament is said to have supreme powers in the absence of a written constitution. Mrs. May will not propose a “no-deal” Brexit with its incalculable consequences, so must hastily negotiate a last-minute extension acceptable to all 27 member nations, no easy task.
England’s highly literate opinion leaders have had a field day commenting on this debacle. One of the most influential is the on-line “InFacts – a journalistic enterprise making a fact-based case against Brexit.” Its chairman and lead writer is Hugo Dixon, whom I first met as a precocious schoolboy the 1970s, the son of my friends Piers and Edwina Dixon. Piers was briefly a Conservative MP, and Edwina is the flame-haired granddaughter of Sir Winston Churchill and now a successful artist in the USA. With this “establishment” background, Hugo enjoyed a top education, first at Eton then taking a first-class degree at Balliol, the most intellectual of Oxford’s colleges. Later, he wrote for the Financial Times, becoming editor of the acute and widely read “Lex” business column, before going independent. With his kind permission, I provide this acerbic except from his “InFacts” column of March 14:
We’ve had three victories in three days—against the prime minister’s deal, against crashing out with “no deal” and now for extra time. But like a cockroach her deal is coming back again. And we’ll have to squish it once again. Today’s victory wasn’t as complete as it might have been. This is because the government’s motion proposing a delay to Brexit contained the suggestion that MPs should have another go at passing her deal. . . But the good news is that the motion accepts that government would ask the EU next week for a longish delay if it fails to get through by Wednesday. We would then have enough time to hold a People’s Vote. The prime minister will of course fight tooth and nail to stop that.
Whatever works in the UK Parliamentary system, we in the Bahamas may learn a different lesson from the long-running UK mess. We should be wary of any referendum or plebiscite stemming from the “popular will”, which can be capricious, misguided— or just plain wrong, as with Brexit. With all their faults, our elected legislators give better guidance to public policy.
Mr. Coulson has had a long career in law, investment banking and private banking in New York, London, and Nassau, and now serves as director of several financial concerns and as a corporate financial consultant. He has recently released his autobiography, A Corkscrew Life: Adventures of a Travelling Financier.
The views expressed are those of the author, and not necessarily those of the WeblogBahamas (which has no corporate view).
