- By Arnav Sampigethaya
If you’ve followed World News in the last 5 years, you would have heard of Brexit whether you wanted to or not. The deal finally went through after 4 years of being thrown around in the British Parliament, among three different Prime Ministers (BBC, 2020). I was strongly anti-Brexit for a long time until I read about pro-Brexit protestors in Sunderland. After doing a lot of research, the flawed nature of the EU and Britain’s argument seemed to make a lot of sense. So here is a deep dive into Brexit and what the implications are.
What is the EU?
I’ll let them answer that themselves –
“The European Union is a unique economic and political union between 27 EU countries that together cover much of the continent.” (The European Union)
What they don’t say is that the EU is a highly political body that exists to promote the image of ‘peace’ among European countries. They act as one economic body for many sectors and have fairly open borders as well. The Chancellor of Germany and ‘de facto leader of the EU’, Angela Merkel has been instrumental in keeping this organization together since she took over in Germany back in 2005.
They have strict policies about trade and immigration. The ‘Euro’ currency is shared by most members, other than the UK which has maintained its Pound Sterling.
Source: Nations Online Project
What is the UK?
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland consists of four countries England, Scotland, Wales (Great Britain) and Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is a small country to the north of the Republic of Ireland. This is important because it was one of the key reasons Brexit took so long.
What is ‘Brexit’?
Brexit (pronounced Brex-it/Breg-zit) is a portmanteau of the words “British” and “Exit” (Ketchell, 2017). The United Kingdom joined the predecessor to the current-day EU in 1973 and remained a member until January 31st 2020. The process of withdrawal from the EU is what ‘Brexit’ refers to.
How did it come about?
There had been opinion polls since 1980 contemplating Brexit in the UK. Seeing this, then Prime Minister David Cameron announced in an interview with Bloomberg that if elected in the 2015 general elections, the Conservative Party would hold a national referendum by the end of 2017. It seems that none of them expected UK citizens to vote to leave based on opinion polls that had shown ‘Euroscepticism’ to be relatively low. Based on this, the Conservative Party won the general election, and they inevitably held the referendum in 2016.
The UK showed up with 72% voter turnout and 33 million people voted in the referendum. The people of the UK chose to leave with a 51.9% majority. This was shocking to everyone: the 48.1% who voted to stay, the world media and the Conservative Party themselves, which resulted in Prime Minister Cameron resigning. The trend showed that those highly impacted by economic decline, high-suicide rates and in neighbourhoods with high crime rates voted to leave (Carreras, 2019). It took almost 4 years since the referendum for the UK to finally withdraw from the EU.
Why did it take so long?
Theresa May was appointed the new Prime Minister after Cameron’s resignation. She started negotiating with the EU in 2017. There seemed to be three prevalent options for Brexit, and they each had their own complications –
Maximum Brexit
In this scenario, Britain would cut all ties with the European Union forming a hard border and becoming like any other non-EU nation. This would mean that there would be a hard border between Northern Ireland and The Republic of Ireland (a full member of the EU).
What is the problem with this?
For that, we need to take a quick detour to the 1960s and explore an ‘irregular war’ called The Troubles.
The Troubles were a war between two groups of people within Northern Ireland. One group, the Unionists wanted the country to remain a part of the UK and the other group, the Nationalists wanted the country to become a part of The Republic of Ireland. What ensued was a bloody battle that cost the lives of many in tragedies like the “Bloody Sunday”.
This dispute went for almost 40 years, with a lot of bloodshed and violence, finally ended with ‘The Good Friday Agreement’ of 1998 which stated that no border could be put between The Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, on the condition that Northern Ireland remained a part of the United Kingdom.
Brexit without Northern Ireland
In this scenario, all of the United Kingdom other than Northern Ireland would withdraw and only Northern Ireland would remain a part of the EU.
What is the problem with this?
No country would want to put a hard border within the territory of their own country. Additionally, goods transported to and from Northern Ireland into Great Britain would be taxed under EU tariffs which is not ideal for either economy.
Northern Ireland leaves the UK and joins The Republic of Ireland
For this to occur, a referendum would have to be held in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which they are obliged to do under The Good Friday Agreement.
What is the problem with this?
The UK does not want to let go of Northern Ireland, as Scotland might be inclined to leave if they succeed.
It is also quite expensive to hold a referendum across two countries and this would add to the pre-existing instability in both countries.
You can understand what the problems were with each solution. This was the gargantuan task faced by Theresa May. After days and days of negotiations, and many requests to extend the ‘deadline’, no agreement had passed in the House of Commons. Then came General Election season again in 2019, and yet again The Conservative Party won. In their internal election, Boris Johnson emerged as the winner, which led Theresa May to resign as the UK Prime Minister. Most of the withdrawal agreement had already been drafted at this point but had not been convincingly ratified.
What did Prime Minister Boris Johnson achieve?
The main motto of his campaign was to “Get Brexit Done” and that is what he essentially did. He won the majority in the House, which meant that he could immediately ratify the deal which he had written which went the route of Northern Ireland remaining in the EU with a soft-border rather than a hard-border. The ‘soft’ border would be a customs border which wouldn’t place tariffs on goods travelling within the UK, but it would place taxes on the good which are ‘at-risk’ of being moved into the EU. This deal was ratified and agreed upon by the European Union and the United Kingdom. It took effect on January 31, 2020.
So, what now?
Nothing much has really changed in the United Kingdom (other than the Coronavirus outbreak of course) because they are still in an 11-month transition period until 31st December 2020. Whether this period will be extended due to the outbreak is unclear. In this time, businesses can recalibrate their business models and re-think their strategies.
Source: The Sun
We understood how Brexit works. But why was it implemented in the first place? How does it benefit the United Kingdom?
The EU is like trying to fit one shoe for all sizes, the laws and economic propositions simply don’t benefit all countries equally. Germany under Merkel is very open to refugees but under EU law, those refugees could easily travel to the UK without restriction. A lot of the UK’s workforce is in the industrial sector. The refugees and foreign workers often take minimum-wage jobs and take advantage of the government minimum living-wage (which is supported by taxpayers) without paying tax. In addition to this, their high negotiability in wages makes them preferable to native British workers, which results in job displacement. Under the new Brexit deal, this effect will be reduced and it will promote local employment. Another benefit is that the UK will be free to trade and play by their own rules rather than follow the EU mandate, which is huge for corporations and they do not have to pay hefty tariffs for imports.
Source: The Business Insider
Why is most of the media against Brexit?
As I was scraping the internet for research, I found this video which discusses 'Media Bias against Brexit' and I expected to see smart meaningful debate but all that's there are people laughing at the 'absurdity' of the notion that Brexit needs a voice in the media. And some of the 'arguments' I heard made it very clear to me what's going on. Well-spoken, mannered, highly educated 'intellectuals' are the ones which are anti-Brexit because the negative impacts of the EU don't affect them at all. They aren't working in low-skill jobs, they aren't afraid of street crime, they aren't affected by high import tariffs. They sit in their high pedestals and talk about these 'Brexiteers' as if they're some lower strata of society because they can't articulate their opinions as well as these well-spoken individuals.
In the UK itself, there is severe media under-representation of pro-Brexit citizens, although they form a majority of the population. This leads to further under-representation worldwide because there isn't a strong voice coming pro-Brexit. People in the UK are also getting more and more cautious of speaking up about Brexit because the politics of it have begun to seep into the workplace causing people to judge each other based on their political opinion. The fact that the 'Get Brexit Done' campaign of the Conservative party won in the public's eyes shows that there is a large percentage of people in the UK who passionately want Brexit to happen but are far more subtle in voicing their opinions than the raucous and 'intellectual' anti-Brexiteers.
What can we learn from Brexit?
What started as an election gimmick could turn out to be one of the most important economic decisions of the 21st century. What we can learn from this situation is that we must not jump the gun or make plans based on uncertain outcomes because the repercussions can affect us and everyone around us in profound ways. We can see the dangers of what poorly planned government agendas and promises can lead to. Whether Brexit will turn out to be good or bad for the world economy is yet to be seen, all we know right now is that it was the will of the people of the UK and in the end, that’s all that matters in a democracy – of the people, for the people, by the people.
Works Cited
BBC. (2020, February 17). Brexit: All you need to know about the UK leaving the EU. Retrieved from BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-32810887
Carreras, M. (2019). ‘What do we have to lose?’: Local economic decline, prospect theory, and support for Brexit. Electoral Studies.
Ketchell, M. (2017, August 12). ‘Breksit’ or ‘bregzit’? The question that divides a nation. Retrieved from The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/breksit-or-bregzit-the-question-that-divides-a-nation-82278
The European Union. (n.d.). The EU in brief. Retrieved from europa.eu: https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/eu-in-brief_en#from-economic-to-political-union
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