There is no such place or political space as ‘being outside’,
or ‘being without’ defined, agreed international relations with other countries,
particularly one’s neighbours. You either have them or you are not a
functioning state in the world trade, financial, movement of people, energy,
security, etc., systems. To that extent, ‘exiting’ or ‘leaving’ the EU is a
terribly misleading term. It’s a bit like saying ‘leaving society’. You simply
can’t exist as a functioning human being without a substantial amount of
co-ordination with the other human beings around you. You can’t ‘leave’ society
therefore, you can only renegotiate and perhaps change the way you interact
with others within it. Some people might have thought they were voting to ‘leave’
the EU on June 23rd, but what they were actually voting for was an undetermined
‘change’ to the UK's formal relationships with the EU and the rest of the
world.
Now, it might have been possible to define in some detail
what the UK’s vision for that change was in advance of the referendum. The
Scottish Government did it before the Scottish independence referendum for
example. The Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish devolution settlements were all
defined in legislation before their respective referenda. The European Economic
Community was a living, breathing entity when the UK voted to continue its
membership in 1975.
The official ‘leave’ campaign could have done the same in June
2016. It could have defined the UK’s future membership of this organisation
here, and its non-membership of that one there; this change to immigration
policy here, that change to trading terms there; this co-operation to continue here,
that one to end there. It might have been comprehensive, or it might have been
illustrative. It would have been ‘draft’ only of course, as all new relationships
need to be agreed by all parties, as unilateral, self-interested actions rarely
result in long-term stability or success (even the most powerful of super-states
understands that). But it might have been a start, and it would have given its
supporters a degree of authority to say on June 24th, ‘Brexit means
[…], and the British people support it’. But that didn’t happen. Nothing was
defined, not even informally. The referendum mandate was therefore for ‘change’,
but what on earth too?
Were our relationships, arrangements and rules of engagement
with the rest of the world of little consequence, it might be reasonable to
just allow the UK Government to crack on now, define this brave new world,
renegotiate something with all parties, set up new systems, and move on. But
they are not inconsequential; no, quite the opposite I’d argue. They are existential,
even constitutive perhaps. Our formal international agreements define what it
means ‘to be the UK in the world’ just as much as societal rules define what it
means to be an individual in society. They will affect everything from how we
do business in the world, where we trade and on what terms, the shape and size of
our economy, how we educate ourselves at university, conduct research, go on
holiday, receive emergency treatment abroad, pick grapes in Italy before going
to college, get married to someone from Poland, etc., etc., literally et bloody cetera, ad infinitum. We know how we do all those things now.
Brexit means that we don’t know how we will do them in the future.
It could be that the scope of change is quite limited in the
end of course (angering hard brexiteers) and our lives remain pretty much as
they are now. It could be enormous (angering remainers and soft brexiteers) and
our lives change in incalculable ways. It could be that a fair majority of UK
citizens believe the change to be acceptable and desirable in the final
analysis. It could be that a fair majority think it is not. We just don’t know
yet, and can’t know until a proposal is put forward and a negotiated, agreed
package arrived at with our international partners. It is fair, I believe, to say that we did agree to reject the current definition
of ‘us’, but we have no idea what the new ‘us’ is going to be, and who can put
their hand on their heart and say that we’ve agreed ‘to be it’ yet?
When people say there is a mandate for Brexit, what they
mean is there is a mandate for change. And as a remainer I’d agree with that.
The UK Government is entitled (and even obliged) to set out a new vision for
the UK’s place in the world and negotiate its particulars with the
international community.* It does not have a mandate to press the start button
and put that vision into practice however. In what parallel moral universe, for
example, would it be right that a government could claim, ‘you said we could do
something, so we’re changing everything’?
It should surely be inconceivable to any democrat,
therefore, that unknown changes of such potential enormity could be imposed on
the citizens of the UK without a second referendum. Brexiteers within and
outside the Government will no doubt dismiss and scoff at the idea, but it will
not go away. In the absence of a pre-referendum blueprint for ‘Brexit’, it is morally
imperative to seek the British people’s endorsement of the final proposal. If
David Davis is so confident of building his new British Shangri-La somewhere in
the mid-Atlantic, I would have thought he’d relish the opportunity of celebrating
its establishment with the roaring approval of the people, wouldn’t he?
*I respect the different mandate given by the people of
Scotland and Northern Ireland and they and their political representatives are
entitled to determine their own positions vis-à-vis the EU either within the UK
or outside it. The Welsh Government has a permanent and continuous obligation
to protect the Welsh national interest within its areas of competence and to
lobby and negotiate on its behalf outside of them. I would expect them to do
this vigorously in respect of the post-Brexit landscape. The people of Wales
have a permanent and continuous right to change the nature of their relationship
with the UK (and other countries) should they choose democratically to do so.
The EU referendum result in Wales in June does not change that in any way.
