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Entitled Isn’t Exceptional: Why Brexit Will Fail, part 4

by Ian Shires on 5 December, 2019

Image result for Richard Flowers Lib DemFor readers joining this series late, here are parts onetwo and three

So far this week, I’ve discussed the lies and indecision at the heart of Brexit that make it impossible for Johnson to deliver on any of the grand promises he makes.

The biggest lie of all is British Exceptionalism, the lie that we tell ourselves that Britain is somehow special, because of our history, because of the Empire, because of the ubiquity of our language, because of the “special relationship”. The dangerous delusion of “Empire 2.0”.

Johnson in particular, refers to Britain in towering, cod-Churchillian terms, forgetting what Churchill knew – Britain never “stood alone” in World War Two, when we had the support of India, Australia, Canada, and African nations. We only won when we made alliances. And Churchill, after the War, was one of the biggest voices speaking for a united Europe.

His ministers too will often cite that Britain is the “fifth largest economy in the World”, overlooking that our economic status depends in large part on our trade with and through the very EU they are ripping us away from.

Because here’s the thing: every country believes they are “special” and none of them care a hoot about Britain.

Large parts of the world blame us for the partitions and wars that afflict them. The Commonwealth, in particular, is full of countries that resent Britain for imperial colonisation. The Chinese who have spent a good couple of thousand years believing they are the most civilised nation on Earth and rightful rulers thereof, still remember the Opium Wars and have not forgiven the humiliations of the Twentieth Century. Our European friends we are in the process of snubbing. The “anglosphere” aren’t going to rescue us – to the Americans we are somewhere between quaint and irritating, the Australians stopped taking us seriously during World War II when Britain could not defend them from Japan, even the Canadians are losing respect for us. Our list of friends grows short.

Johnson, I am sure, imagines that a post-EU Britain will enter the world economy much as he entered a children’s game of touch rugby in Japan, snatching up the ball and knocking down 10-year-olds, flagrantly ignoring rules, decency and frankly sense.

He could not be more wrong.

What is more like is if he were to find himself facing the victorious South African world rugby champions. Imagine the damage they would inflict upon him. That’s what Britain’s economy could be heading for.

Or even, as Europe turns inwards without us, and the US and China face off, making the Pacific not the Atlantic the World’s dominant arena, we could just be left dangling, like Johnson on his zipwire, with no one interested in us at all.

2000 years ago, Yemen, as the only source of the frankincense vital for temple rituals, was the richest country in the Roman World. And then trade routes to China and India opened up, and the World just passed Yemen by. And for 2000 years, it’s been a desert.

Sometimes economies just die.

No one owes any country a living. Not Yemen. Not the UK. And if we don’t make ourselves a part of this World, quite possibly it will turn its back on us the way it did Yemen.

In the Nineteen-Forties, countries responded to the Wall Street Crash by retreating into Protectionism – the Brexit of its day – and the result was a decade of Great Depression, and a spiral into Nationalism.

Today, the country that most seals itself off from the World is North Korea. And it is famously not a land flowing with milk and honey or freedom for its millions of suffering citizens.

Over and over, it is the lesson of history that countries that lower barriers to trade and migration are hugely successful, and the ones that sink into isolation are not.

Seventy years after we won the War and lost the Empire, Britain still needs to decide our place in the World. We need to stop thinking that our past makes us special, and instead look at how we can become special in the future.

Liberal Values are about looking forward to a future where we reach out to our friends and allies to make peace and prosperity together.

Together, European countries built a peace that has lasted seventy years. That is exceptional. Together, the global science community has built the International Space Station, are planning a base on the Moon, are taking our first steps to the Stars. That is exceptional.

To be exceptional, we need to BE exceptional.

Beside that, Brexit is merely entitled. And that is why Brexit must fail.

Brexit Will Fail – But Britain Doesn’t Have To

Change is coming.

Just as the first post-War paradigm, the “Butskellite consensus”, broke down over the course of the Seventies, the last decade has seen the second post-War paradigm breaking down too. The 2008 banking crash was a mortal blow to low regulation, free market economics. Thatcherism is dying. That, more than anything, is at the heart of the chaos that is gripping the UK (manifested in Brexit), the US (in Trump) and the World.

Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party wants to take us back to the 1970’s. But the first paradigm broke in the Seventies because of the fundamental (and very Labour) flaw that it was based on the Government knowing best. It doesn’t.

Boris Johnson’s Tories want to take us back to the 1980’s. But the second paradigm has broken because of the Fundamental (and very Tory) flaw that it was based on the Government doing nothing. It mustn’t.

It is essential that the new paradigm, when it comes, is a Liberal one. We must, must shape it to bring balance to rich and poor, worker and employer, indigenous and migrant, north and south, Freedom and Fairness, laying foundations of the rule of law, and truth, so that we build a better, fairer, freer future for everyone.

* Richard Flowers has been a Party member for 20 years. He’s campaigned in many an election, stood as a local councillor, and Parliamentary candidate, was Chair of Tower Hamlets Liberal Democrats, and in 2020 will be Liberal Democrat candidate for the Greater London Assembly constituency of City and East. Thanks to Liberal Democrats in government, he is married to his husband Alex Wilcock. He also helps Millennium Elephant to write his Very Fluffy Diary.

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