Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

The Brussels drama ended better for May than might have been the case, as EU leaders made a serious attempt to appear more sympathetic and accommodating. However their position remains unchanged on all the key issues. They have conceded that they will work out how to conduct trade negotiations in the future, which, because they like planning ahead, they have already been doing unofficially anyway. But it gave hope to May. In turn she has got the message that the UK has to come up with chapter, verse, and outline figures on all the financial commitments it is willing to honour, in order move the negotiations forward. She was boxed in and she had to give. Parts of her party, including some of her cabinet, will be aghast. Yet it will not matter. There has been a sea change.

It is hidden from view and unremarked. But if you delve deep into the psyche of mood both here in the UK and in the EU, you find that something has happened. The hard Brexiteers have lost. Their failure to invest the time and energy over the years of their campaign to have ready a properly costed, legally analysed, practically workable and economically and socially advantageous plan to give life to their Brexit dream, has cost them all. For it is now clear there are only two possible outcomes moving forward.

The first is that a deal is negotiated for a soft and sensible Brexit which will leave in place the main aspects of the economic structure, as well as most of the rights for free movement, residence and EU citizenship. This will mean more or less open borders and some form of contributions to associate membership of both the customs union and the single market. Co-operative joint initiatives over all sorts of things from space explorations to drugs licencing will remain in place. Almost all the EU regulations now in force will continue to apply and there will be an acknowledged role for the ECJ, perhaps some sort of joint panel with the UK Supreme Court.

If that cannot be agreed and the only thing left is the hard Brexit, the people who got us into this mess crave, then the whole project will implode, because nowhere, either in the UK, the EU or the rest of the world, is there a majority for such a reckless leap into the unknown. It would take twenty years to sort everything out and set Britain back on an upward path, causing a whole generation to miss out. Even if the final outcome is indeed better, the price to get there in one nobody is willing to pay and the risk of disaster is one nobody is willing to take.

And for the hard Brexiteers? Sorry my friends. You had your chance and you blew it.

Set in the mid nineteen nineties, this fast moving thriller lifts the curtain on sex, sleaze and corruption in high places as the long reign of the government totters to an end, following the ousting of the iconic Margaret Thatcher. Tor Raven’s novel captures the mood of those times with a host of fictional characters who engage in political intrigue, money laundering and murder, pursued by an Irish investigative journalist and his girlfriend, the daughter of a cabinet minister found dead in a hotel room after bondage sex.

Amazon.uk

Amazon.com

The Spanish authorities now have no choice. Majority public opinion, across all regions and parts of Spain, demands that Catalonia be brought back into the framework of the Constitution and the rule of legitimate law is restored. The Catalan government did not, as it claims, obtain a mandate for independence. Only 42% voted at all and while 90% of those did back independence, that makes only 38% of those entitled to vote. That is not a mandate. It is certainly a fact that there was heavy handed violence from the national police to try and prevent voting, but that is not an excuse. The Catalan authorities deliberately went ahead, in defiance of the Constitution and a court order, with an illegal poll, knowing it would be divisive and the outcome ambiguous.

This blog has already pointed out that unilateral declarations of independence rarely succeed, because at the heart of the democratic notion of independence two things are critical. One is near unanimity and the other is international recognition. Catalonia cannot even muster a bare majority for its reckless project and no significant country in the world will recognise it. The EU will not even mediate. Hundreds of companies have already moved their headquarters out of the region and back into Spain.

Having said all that, it was a big mistake for Spain not to agree to allow a legal referendum, since a majority would have voted No and the whole project would be over for a generation. So it must now be conciliatory in taking back control over this confused region and make clear that once the dust has settled and full orderly functioning of the governance of the region has been restored, a legally authorised referendum on independence will be allowed. Not tomorrow or even soon, but one day. That is how the bubble of Scottish independence was burst. No force, no fluster, just the freedom to choose.

Because that is how democracy works. That is what it is. Spain is a democracy, although a relatively new one. It must gain the confidence of its convictions. All the democratic world will support it.