OK. You disagree. I don't know what more you want me to say about 2016-2020 that will add any value to the discussion.
Will this do?
The negotiations and subsequent votes in Parliament didn't go as well as expected and eventually led to a majority government led by the current PM. He managed to push a deal through and we are now in the early stages of dealing with and adapting to the consequences of that deal.
Is that all you can bring to mind about the consequences of the last 4-5 years that are a non monetary effect of the Brexit campaigners and the choice made by 17.4m people?
'The negotiations and subsequent votes in Parliament didn't go as well as expected'
Many of us said the 2016 referendum vote did not have the required validity to be enacted simply because, since it had not been spelled out what Brexit actually meant, not one of the people who voted for Brexit knew what they had voted for. They all had their own utopian version of Brexit, but also a 'that's not my Brexit' too. It was therefore open to question whether people would have voted the same way had they known which version they were getting. Remember, no plan had been presented for scrutiny. Deliberately.
The
inevitable consequence of that was that the Government had to work out retrospectively what people had voted for. Without a clearly set out manifesto of what Brexit meant, they could only base this on what was said in the campaigns, which was confused, often impossibly contradictory, unrealistic and with real or possible consequences that had previously been dismissed or ignored, but now needed confronting and addressing.
Had Brexit campaigners set out what they actually meant by Brexit, fundamentally the new trading relationship we wanted with the vast, powerful economic behemoth on our doorstep that we were threatening to turn into a competitor we intended to undermine, and a careful, provisional, realistic timetable and plan worked out how to get there, then the Government would have been able to legitimately implement that plan and Parliament would not have stood in it's way. Theresa May was authorised to trigger Article 50 with a 498-114 vote in February 2017 remember.
Instead, we had stalemate in Parliament while everyone argued over what Brexit meant based on the promises of the campaigns and what it should mean based on the narrowness of the vote, not to mention the legality of it.
Brexit meant virtually nothing else happened in Parliament or addressed by our hamstrung Government for nearly
half a decade. It's extraordinary.
If you think that doesn't matter on grounds other than economic, let me give you one now hugely important ramification. We weren't remotely prepared for the pandemic, despite the many lessons and recommendations coming from the 2016 Exercise Cygnus flu pandemic simulation. We carried out an exercise, discovered some important lessons, then didn't get round to act on them because we had a government in virtual paralysis over one single other issue. Brexit. then, to top that off, Brexit led directly to not one but three Brexit governments, full of a conveyor belt of incompetent, corrupt entities who approached the pandemic with the sort of entitled, privileged mindset that you get when you continually reward rather than punish these very, very, stupid people with high office.
Then we have the impact on our reputation. As a people we used to be regarded as decent, tolerant, level headed. The world has looked on open mouthed. Their view of our decency and tolerance has taken a dive. Level headed? We are seen as having lost our minds.
As for our government and institutions. We now have a PM who lies to the Queen and everyone else. His government ignores conventions because they get in the way of its short term interest and it can, because Brexit exposed these failings. Brexit demonstrated our democracy can be easily and cheaply bought. Delivering on the promises of Brexit has been so impossible it has seen the UK government attempting to introduce legislation that would not only allow it to break international law but that was the intention of the legislation and it has led to the most senior legal officials in the land advocate this law breaking. Again,
extraordinary.
We have soured relations with our allies in Europe and America, while, for a time out of necessity, cosying up to allies of Putin, the Trumpian far right and China.
We have put UK citizens in the EU and EU citizens here through years of torturous uncertainty and more bureacracy, while at the same time removing rights some people were born with without even allowing them a say.
We have diminished UK security with our withdrawal from Europol, Egnos and Gallileo. We have put cancer patients at risk with our withdrawal from Euratom. We have diminished our Universtities and students with our withdrawal from Ersamus and our science suffered with our withdrawal from Horizon 2020 and the resulting uncertainty, while going forward although the deal struck gives us access to the EU funds, we have lost influence and any say in how the funds are spent.
Despite what people were told, the UK were the most influential country in the EU and we shaped the EU to follow our interests everywhere it mattered to us, from the inside, because we had exceptional diplomats and civil servants. Some have stayed with the EU. some have been sacked because their intelligence, experience and practicality meant they weren't 'brexity' enough and in any case, Dominic Cummings wanted more mavericks to come in, ffs!
I could go on, but I've tried to stay away from the direct financial costs, although everything above has had or will have financial implications to accompany the non monetary ones, as well as the opportunity costs, it is just that it will take years to be able to produce the graphs.
