The referendum – where to Guv?

The shock wave

There is a frenetic rush to bring out the next horrendous story in this British cataclysm. The Telegraph reveals a French plot to topple the City. The Guardian recounts that Standard Life has shut its property fund. Why the UK is plunging towards an economic nightmare, clarions another. These are testing times, agreed, but in the midst of all the noise, the thinking process has begun.

The BBC reports that “lawyers acting for a group of business people and academics, said it would be unlawful for a prime minister to trigger Article 50 without a full debate and vote in Parliament ...because they would be overriding the 1972 European Communities Act that enshrines UK membership of the EU ...constitutionally only legislation can override legislation and an act of Parliament is required to give the prime minister legal authority”. Or, again, will Britain have to invoke Article 50 before starting to negotiate terms as a European commissioner has suggested? The details of our new relationship are going to take years to settle; what we don’t need is interminable legal debate about whether we are in or out.

Agree or disagree with the referendum result, we need a government and we need an opposition, asap. Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage are no longer candidates for anything. The Tory leadership election is underway. The Brexit worthies in the party seem to think that only a candidate who supported leave can do the job; that is probably Mr Gove or Mrs Leadsom. I don’t follow this; it’s an odd kind of logic. The future leader and Prime Minister will do what is best for the country and must be chosen on merit. Are they saying that a candidate who voted to remain is somehow going to commit only half-heartedly to the job or might even sabotage Britain’s negotiations? Is this an example of Mr Gove’s superior intellectual powers of which we hear so much? Mrs Leadsom no doubt has many qualities, but I know nothing about her;  mea culpa I’m sure. Mrs May has far more experience at home and abroad than all the others put together. Mr Corbyn’s Labour party will eventually re-organise, with or without tears. Sooner would be better than later because Her Majesty’s opposition is a vital part of our government process.

While we get our house in order, as we shall, we should remember that our European allies have their own problems. Belgium’s Le Soir says it all; the whole of Europe is feeling the shock waves from Brexit. Frau Merkel has her own immigration sword of Damocles to dismantle. France has so many concerns, it doesn’t know what to deal with first. Apart from terrorism, unions and an egregious unemployment rate, among others, Monsieur Valls is currently having his own spat with the European Commission about the Bolkestein Directive, voted in the European Parliament in 2006, which France has always hated. It began with the Polish plumber and in 2013 Ryanair was fined by the French government because its Marseilles operation was using Irish contracts to save on social charges. France has very high costs to employ, so it doesn’t like cross-border provision of services where a European employer toes the line on the minimum pay and health and safety regulations of the host country but pays the lower social contributions of the service provider’s country. The Le Figaro newspaper said yesterday that it would cost less to employ a French worker on the national minimum wage than a Polish worker. Just in case anybody has forgotten, Europe has its own troubles to sort out.

The status of EU citizens living in UK and vice-versa has also rightly drawn attention. They must not be used as pawns in any negotiation, this is self-evident and I’m sure they will not be. But negotiations will take place and this provision for continued, unchanged residence will have to be ratified. In this context, Germany has proposed dual nationality for British citizens. This type of solution is pleasant but nugatory.

Britain needs Europe and Europe needs Britain. The task now is one of re-design and both Europe and Britain will have to rethink some of their tenets. The word negotiate derives from two Latin words for not and ease. Lines are drawn, there is much posturing and sucking of teeth. Hand-wringing and hair-tearing are not acceptable. We have lots to negotiate with and the future is unwritten. We shall be involved in something like a game of chess where checkmate will never be reached. Only a draw.