10

I recently shared a Daily Mail article on LinkedIn (here) that was written by a history Prof, something about 10 questions to ask rejoiners next time they kick-off at a dinner party. This led to me being asked to provide 10 reasons why we shouldn’t rejoin the EU.

This blog title fits perfectly with its namesake film (10), a comedy (rejoining the EU) about a middle-aged man (a rejoiner) who becomes infatuated with someone (the EU) who’s only using him for her own gratification (yup).

How about that – my intention to treat this very serious topic very seriously and respectfully fails in the second paragraph. That’s because If I didn’t laugh, I’d cry. Humour is my therapy, my distraction, my security blanket, my cloak and (self-defence) dagger.

Before listing the 10, let’s set the scene with an assumption that there’s a national shortage of peanut butter. The only way to secure future supplies is to rejoin the EU, but that would mean swapping a shortage of peanut butter for a shortage of Marmite, which is currently plentiful. Those who want peanut butter will vote to rejoin; those who prefer Marmite will vote to stay out. The message here is that people have different tastes, which doesn’t make anyone more wrong, more stupid or more nasty than anyone else, unless they’re John Bercow, Dominic Grieve and Guy Verhofstadt.

So, with Marmite soldiers lined up, my first reason for not rejoining is:

1. I don’t want to
Neither do a lot of people. While a recent opinion poll concluded that the majority now think Brexit was a mistake, this isn’t the same as wanting to rejoin. More pertinent is the fact that it is just one piddly little poll. There is no reason why this should prompt talk of rejoining, when a referendum of tens of millions was derided. In any event, polls before the referendum indicated a majority for remain.

2. Avoid alienating allies
A brief history of time: We begged to join and were rebuffed. We accepted rubbish terms and they let us in. We renegotiated almost immediately. We kicked and screamed for almost 50 years. We left. If we were to rejoin, would anyone trust us not to leave again, or not to be a spanner in the works? Would we be respected by anyone? If I were France, Germany or Belgium, I’d take advantage of our vacillation. If I were the Netherlands, Hungary or Greece, I’d think of Britain not as a strong-minded ballsy nation but as a lily-livered turncoat. If I were Israel, Oman or Saudi Arabia, I’d batten down the hatches. If I were the US, I’d re-set the special relationship, and not for the better. If I were a ‘colony’, I’d become a republic. If I were in the Commonwealth, I’d want out. If I were Zelensky, I’d throw in the towel and team up with Boris to become a double act on the speaking circuit.

3. The economy, Stupid
The risk of uncertainty and massive economic change were, for some, a concrete reason not to leave the EU in the first place, so I’m claiming it as a reason not to rejoin. Sauce for the goose and all that.

Regardless, some are claiming that Brexit harmed our economy. The smart money always knew there would be a temporary hiccup in some sectors; unfortunately, this is worse or dwarfed by Covid, Ukraine, and Government and Civil Service incompetence, exacerbated by sabotaging tactics by some remainers (e.g. cake). Interestingly, compared with our neighbours, our economy hasn’t fallen off a cliff as Project Fear predicted, we are more or less on a par. Even if we were to slip behind, it could take donkey’s years to rejoin and what would the respective economies look like then? Hang on a sec … would negotiations be protracted, or would rejoiner MPs and Mandarins do a Maybot and Cowardly Capitulate? Asking for a friend.

Seriously though (moi?) unless we know what the terms of rejoining would be, we’re peeing in the dark. Would we ditch the pound? How much would we contribute to EU coffers? How would the Common Agricultural and Common Fisheries Policies affect us? Economic forecasting is a mug’s game, as the Bank of England, OBR and IMF have repeatedly shown, partly because they all subscribe to Keynesian groupthink. Why should the same strategy always be the most appropriate for all economies at all times? It’s not, hence the poor track record of these failed institutions.

4. Tailored Trade
One thing is certain: rejoining would mean access to the Single Market, but it would prevent us striking new deals elsewhere, and we’d have to give up all deals with everyone else. Would our Brexit trade relationships be more advantageous than the Single Market? That’s a million-dollar question but at least our sovereign deals can be renegotiated, if necessary, for our benefit rather than for that of Germany, say.

5. Democracy rules UK
What would be the EU decision-making process, especially as more than a handful of other countries are set to join? The prospect of an increasingly bloated ‘federation’ has prompted the EU to propose an expansion of its powers and the abolition of national vetoes. Blighty would join an even less democratic behemoth than the one we left. Personally, I jump on this as a reason not to rejoin, but it amazes me how many Brits were happy for UK law to be made so remotely, by mainly foreign politicians whom we hadn’t elected, and without proper scrutiny by the UK Parliament that we had elected. Some are now complaining about the proposed bonfire of EU regulations not being scrutinised by Parliament. If you want UK scrutiny, you shouldn’t want to rejoin.

6. The environment (pronounced en-vye-ru-ment)
One lot of EU regulations to be bonfired relates to the environment. Remainers and Greenies (RaGs – I like the acronym so I’m sticking with the sweeping statement) had a meltdown when they realised that a plethora of EU enviro laws were being chopped, despite the fact that a lot of this regulation is duplicated or just not right for us, and we now have the freedom to tailor our own regulations to our own circumstances. This argument doesn’t cut the mustard (have you ever, physically, run a knife through a jar of mustard and cut it?) with the RaGs though, because they trust the EU to look after our environment better than we do. Really? One word: Luetzerath (pronounced Loots-ayr-at). That’s the German village that will be demolished to enable the expansion of the Garzweiler (pronounved Garts-vyler) opencast coalmine. Would that be allowed in Britain in 2023? I rest my case. By the way, it’s a totally different thing to the new coalmine in Whitehaven (pronounced White-haven).

7. Victorious vaccines
One Brexit dividend was our efficient rollout of the Covid vaccine, which would have been even more efficient had the EU not sabotaged it. It has been pointed out that EU law does allow individual member states to pursue their own vaccine policies, but do you think we would have done had we still been a member? No one else did, and look how badly the EU interfered in our sovereign roll-out. As for other Covid measures, the EU imposed a ban on non-essential travel of non-EU citizens into the bloc, but the severity and timing of other policies differed from country to country. As it happens, Britain’s Covid restrictions were similar to those of the EU’s, but our Freedom Day came a lot sooner. I wish we’d invoked a more nuanced quarantine policy but we didn’t, even though we could have done as the EU wouldn’t have been able to interfere.

8. Jaw-Jaw about War-War
The situation in Ukraine has revealed Brexit Britain’s ability to act unilaterally in times of conflict. The British-Ukrainian Chambers of Commerce said that Brexit had allowed the UK to cut tariffs, speed weapons’ shipments to Ukraine and move faster on targeting Russian fossil fuels than the EU. Granted we were a bit slow off the mark when it came to helping refugees and imposing sanctions against oligarchs, but legally we could have acted more quickly. It was the box-tickers who let us down.

9. The elephant in the room
Immigration, let’s face it, hasn’t been a Brexit success story. That, however, is not because of Brexit per se, but partly because of our supposed friends and neighbours not being friendly or neighbourly, and our own reluctance (why?!) to get a grip.

On the one hand, agriculture has been left short of seasonal workers. We’ve controlled our borders a little too zealously here. It’s easy to solve though – just up the quotas. We are the masters of our own asparagus-picking destiny.

Then there’s the swarm of illegal economic migrants and criminals who have no legal or moral right to be here and who are a danger to existing residents and genuine claimants. The latter, as well as being unfairly tarred with the same brush as the illegals, are having their applications delayed because resources are drained by the bad guys. The UK has an acceptable refugee / asylum-seeker policy and I’m happy to host those who play by the rules, not those who don’t.

If we rejoined, would we be better able to control our borders? Well, we’d probably regain our seat on Europol and have access to its database to help dismantle the people-smuggling networks. But continued membership of a universally vital security body shouldn’t depend on continued membership of the EU. That’s just petty. There was also the Dublin arrangement that meant we could ask other countries to take back people we could prove had passed through safe European countries. In reality, fewer than 1% of our asylum seekers were returned by Dublin transfer between 2016 and 2020.

In conclusion, the EU isn’t a panacea for border control. We need to stand on our own two feet and not rely on our ‘friends like these who needs enemies’ to solve a problem we have the freedom to solve in our own way. First step: stop funding the so-called charities with taxpayers’ money that is used to tie our hands and waste even more taxpayers’ money while we try to deport rapists and murderers. 

10. Trust in our own
The inconvenient truth for many is that every fact a remainer-rejoiner throws at a Brexiteer can be validly chucked back with a different analysis, or put into a different context, or countered with another fact. And back again. Ping-pong. Non-facts such as “all Brexiteers don’t care for any facts,” are, well, errr …. Help me out here, I’m trying to be polite!

It’s about Marmite and peanut butter, remember? It’s also about trust in my own fact-finding and analytical skills, and in my gut (thus speaks a policeman’s granddaughter). As regards Boris, Farage and the rest, I don’t automatically trust them on matters of detail. My trust is more ontological, sharing their ideology, if you like. There’s nothing wrong with that, given that ever-closer economic and political union of an increasing number of disparate and fractious nations is equally as ideological. My ‘ideology’ incudes trust in my fellow countrymen to have my back more readily than, for example, the French, Germans, Luxembourgers and Poles would. Sleaze in Britain, you goad. Qases of Qash in Qatar, I sqoff. Ping-pong.

So there’s my 10 reasons not to rejoin the EU. Some are stronger than others, but even the weaker ones are not sufficiently weak to justify rejoining. Still, I’m placing a bet that not one remainer-rejoiner will agree with any of the 10. When I collect my winnings I’ll donate them to a good cause, the RSPB perhaps, because an expectation of receptive debate on this topic, as with peanut butter, is for the birds.