How I Could Have Turned Into A Leaver

I haven’t really kept up with this blog, mainly because my business has been rather busy.  Despite Brexit of course.  But it is also because it hasn’t really turned out as I expected.  I thought that it would basically be a question of the shape of Brexit gradually emerging and then being implemented in a fairly monolithic way.  I thought that the drama was over once the votes were counted.  The political problems initially failed to materialise.  It is hard to remember now, but Mrs May’s original proscription of ‘Brexit means Brexit’ was quite a decisive stroke at the time.  We weren’t going to carry on arguing about it.  We were going to leave. Brexit meant, well, Brexit.  We didn’t know the details but no doubt they were on their way.


Now I was in a way quite happy about this and quite grateful for it.  I didn’t think the result was sufficiently decisive on its own.  But with a firm will behind it it could be made to work.  We had to do something.  This was something.  And as the alternative was continuing to argue about what we should be doing it seemed something that could be got behind.

I remember I had said on a forum related to my line of work that I would be happy with either project so long as it was supported.  Brexit could be an interesting project.  The EU seemed a much better one, but I could get on board with either.  And I think if things had been handled differently I could by now be saying things like ‘I didn’t much like it to begin with, but I have come around’.

The trouble is that especially since the snap election it has become clearer and clearer that nobody has the faintest idea of what Brexit actually is. There has been a lot more clarity about what both sides don’t like.

There have been a couple of things that have come up that are along the lines that might have won me over.  The much despised Liam Fox suggested that we should have as a target exporting 30% of our GDP. That sounds really interesting.  I could get behind that as a plan.  It would solve our balance of payments problem and do a lot to create a demand for labour that would be good for most sectors of society.   A very different comment from Jeremy Corbyn was that the resources saved from the EU should be focused on building the infrastructure and capabilities of the left behind areas of the country also struck a chord.  Interestingly, these two suggestions aren’t only compatible but could turn out to be mutually necessary.  You can’t help an area for long.  You need to get it paying its own way in the end.   And you can’t export without the skills and infrastructure to support it.

So if these ideas had been taken a bit more seriously and been turned into proper plans I might have been happy to be going along with them.  At the very least, they would be something to aim for.  Potentially they could change the country in a positive way.

As it Brexit seems to mean making life harder for immigrants and er, not much else.  Count me out.