A Brexit nobody voted for
When Theresa May became Prime Minister in July 2016, she famously declared, “Brexit means Brexit”.
It was pure gobbledygook.
Brexit at that time didn’t mean anything – there was no consensus on what Brexit should entail, not among the electorate, politicians, or even Brexit campaigners themselves.
But on 17 January 2017, Mrs May unilaterally defined her version of Brexit in her speech at Lancaster House, London.
Paradoxically, she claimed that the referendum was, “not the moment Britain chose to step back from the world” but “the moment we chose to build a truly global Britain”.
The Prime Minister outlined her unequivocal red lines – closing doors on most possibilities before any negotiations with the EU had even taken place.
- No partial membership of the European Union, associate membership, or anything that “leaves us half-in, half-out”.
▪ No model already enjoyed by other countries.
▪ No holding on to “bits of membership as we leave”.
▪ No membership of the EU Single Market.
▪ No free movement of people.
▪ No to being part of the EU Common Commercial Policy (CCP) or the EU Common External Tariff (CET).
Michel Barnier, the EU’s Chief Brexit Negotiator, was ‘astounded by the sheer numbers of doors she is closing here, one after the other.’
In his diary entry for 17 January 2017, published in his book, ‘My Secret Brexit Diary’, he asked:
▪ Have the consequences of each of these decisions been fully thought through, assessed and discussed?
▪ Does she realise that, in doing this, she is excluding almost all models of cooperation we have managed to construct up to now with our partners, even the closest among them?
▪ Can we be sure that the referendum vote gave the British government carte blanche for such a total break?
He concluded:
‘In fact, for her to say all this, amounts to writing off not only membership of the European Economic Area – of which Norway, Iceland and Switzerland are members – but also the kind of partnership we have with Turkey, which has a customs union agreement with the EU.’
▪ My view today
No version of Brexit – be it Theresa May’s, Boris Johnson’s, Liz Truss’s, Rishi Sunak’s, or the as-yet-defined Brexit of Keir Starmer – has ever enjoyed the consensus support of the electorate.
Even Kemi Badenoch, new Tory leader and a staunch Brexiter, has admitted that the “no plan” Brexit approach was “a mistake.”
We’ve been had.
Successive Prime Ministers hijacked the simple word “Leave” and shaped it into THEIR visions of Brexit, none of which align with the public’s expectations or interests.
- A Brexit nobody voted for – watch 4-minute video
