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“I told you so” has to be the most irritating phrase in the English language. It represents a claim to foreknowledge when, in truth, none ever existed. Take those now crowing that the failure of the EU vaccine roll-out demonstrates how right we were do decide to leave the EU. Of course, it doesn’t. Back in June 2016, not even the wildest imagination could have predicted Covid-19 and its consequences.
And what rankles most about all this Brexit triumphalism is that it distorts the reasons why many of us voted to Leave. I had no idea whether Brexit would be “a success”. And I didn’t vote for it because I thought it might be – I voted out of sheer principle: for me the nation state is the upper limit of democratic legitimacy. Others believed that co-operation was intrinsic to the European project, and voted for that. I respect that view, even though I don’t hold it.
Even more problematic, though, is how an essentially moral decision – and a clash of different principles – has been turned into a kind of glorified guessing game. One in which how things turn out is the only basis on which a decision should be counted as morally commendable. After all, if you save a child from drowning, and that child goes on to be some mass murderer, you don’t conclude that the saving act was a morally bad one.
The trouble is, if a decision is to be judged solely on the basis of its consequences, then we consign moral success to the swirling darkness of the future, with all its unknown unknowns, all its unintended and unexpected twists and turns. So we can never be confident that we have made the right call. In any case, at what point in the future might we judge a decision the right one – after a year’s consequences, after 10 years, a century? When do we close the book on a decision’s consequences, and proclaim some final judgment? Consequentialists don’t tell us because there isn’t an answer. In other words, they don’t have enough respect for the utter mysteriousness of the future, enough humility before the unknown.
Kant understood the alternative — that we make many moral decisions on the basis of principle and not consequences. As he put it: “A good will is not good because of what it effects or accomplishes, because of its fitness to attain some proposed end, but only because of its volition, that is, it is good in itself … Usefulness or fruitfulness can neither add anything to this worth nor take anything away from it.”
This basic principle applies just as much to many who voted to Remain as it does to Leavers. I take it that many Remainers believe the basic principles of the EU are so morally commendable that they would regard their decision to vote as they did to be right, even if, over time, its “usefulness” seemed to tell against them. To this extent, I do not believe that the failure of the EU vaccine roll-out has anything significant to tell us about the rightness — or not — of the decision to leave the EU.
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SubscribeNo, nobody foresaw Covid and the pig’s ear that the EU have made of it, but Brexiteers knew that the EU Commission was bloated with power, arrogant, incompetent and slow. We also knew that the supposed ‘rules-based technocracy’ was somewhat selective – that the law was weaponised by them.
These failings have been amply demonstrated of late.
I agree completely. I really don’t like saying “I told you so”, so I’m not going to, but the EU’s inability to deal with Covid in a unified and efficent manner is an example of why many people voted to leave – not everyone granted, and maybe people couldn’t vocalise their feelings very well.
The predicatable result of this mishandling of Covid will be “closer integration” for the EU, the spinning off of national governments making descisions that are different to the EMA (and wrong) will be used to show that the national institutions aren’t as good as the EU ones.
If that comes true then maybe I will say “told you so” – as I explicitly have said it beforehand.
Yes Giles’ argument of it being fundamentally a moral decision about democratic control is only partly true. Many people had other motivations and reasons for voting leave one being the inefficiency of the bloated bureaucracy. Many voted remain in the belief our economy would otherwise suffer and they may be able to say told you so at some point in the future and why shouldn’t they. Leavers would then choose how to reconcile that perhaps declaring the democratic principle is more important anyway along with any number of other rationalizations, maybe some would say you need longer to make that claim, some might even agree and think perhaps their vote to leave was a mistake after all. This is how politics always works we like to think we are right and are pleased with ourselves when it looks like we were and when not look for alternative assessments and just occasionally admit we were wrong.
Others voted to leave because the referendum in 1973 was about membership of a trading organisation. The British people were never asked if they accepted the additional political attachments which over time, successive Prime Ministers signed up to.
EU membership was of no benefit to the UK and the single market at £10 billion a year, too expensive. No doubt some international corporations have gained from EU membership at the taxpayers’ expense but for the British people, apart from freedom to travel, the EU has been of no benefit.
And the freedom of movement has mostly benefitted EU citizens (5 million of them in the UK) and British middle class metropolitan types who care not for their country anyway – or pensioners on the Costas who should really have gotten their residency sorted out by now.
Health including public health in the EU, as Britons will remember, is a national responsibility, and the Union or the Commission haven’t had much to do with vaccination for CoVid or anything else. There is only the option to participate in common purchasing. Thus, if Britain was still a member, it could have chosen to purchase – and roll out- as it liked.
People across the EU as elsewhere will be drawing lessons from the pandemic. The common purchasing has worked well apart from one major supplier failing to meet some delivery dates, future contracts will be tightened to ensure suppliers don’t play countries off against each other when there are shortfalls. No indication that common purchasing will become compulsory, though. Expect there will be moved to have sole EU level pandemic warning and strategy system, there’s not going to be a merger of national health services though, nobody even imagining that. EU institutions will remain an additional layer that must meet the test of adding value, as they generally do. So it’s not appropriate to make comparisons between Britain and the EU.
Important also to note that no other European nation tried a quick fix vaccine approach as the UK did. They believed vaccines would become available more gradually and aimed to complete rollout before this autumn. None faced the desperate winter situation Britain did either and many had only mild social restrictions. Even with the arrival of new variants, priority is generally being given to completing each person’s two shots rather than going spreading the butter more thinly. Very early to draw conclusions from the different choices made, it will all be evaluated later in each country, there will probably be some learning by comparison where situations have been similar, certainly not going to be some top down solution imposed from Brussels or anywhere else.
A bit naive to say oh we could have done it alone anyway – that’s not reality. The pressure for the EU27 to conform is strong. Look at the EU’s attitude towards Hungary saying sod this we’re getting in a load of Russian vaccines..
France, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy were together making a deal with AZ when the EU decided that, no, this must be an EU-wide effort with them in charge. They then wasted 2 or 3 months bickering and trying to get the price below cost!
The EU, as an organisation, is entirely the author of the member states’ woes over this.
It doesn’t help that the EU appears to be the dumping ground for politicians who haven’t come up to scratch in their own countries – a lack of talent – put there because they will do as they’re told and for people like Merkel to hide behind when things go wrong.
“The common purchasing has worked well apart from one major supplier failing to meet some delivery dates”. Good try TJ but just not true. Supplies of the Pfizer vaccine may be being delivered on schedule to the Commission but that schedule is way behind the UK.
UTTER RUBBISH.
The EU has utterly failed to organise the common purchasing of vaccines. That is why they have vaccinated at about 25% of our UK rates. You’d have to be delusional to have written what you did. They have failed in EVERY respect and systematically undermined confidence in AZ BECAUSE it was invented in the UK. NONE of their undermining announcements had any basis in science. NONE! If the reason for their risible vaccination rates was the failure of supply by AZ, why are there millions of doses in storage in the EU?
“The EU’s abysmal vaccine failure doesn’t justify our vote to leave”: Oh Yes It Does. Giles Fraser argues that Kant’s Fundamental Principle of Ethics means that people who voted to leave the E.U. can’t be deemed to have made a correct moral choice unless they treated their decision as a moral question. I am not a Kantian myself; more of a Benthamite, however I can understand that a professional cleric like the Rector of a C. of E. Parish might want to argue that it is purely an ethical question, and the actual consequences don’t count. [Although we can never be too sure where Ministers of Religion sit. As Sir Humphrey Appleby once pointed out to Jim Hacker: “You can’t assume that the Bishop of B. actually believes in God”.] However, Giles Fraser makes a useful contribution by raising the topic of Immanuel Kant. It reminds me that part of the E. U. problem may be that far too many of its officials in their younger days spent too long studying the impenetrable philosophy of Immanuel Kant and thereby impaired their brains. This could easily explain why the E. U. makes irrational decisions.
Completely agreed.
It’s not an “I told you so” as much as it’s a clear cut case of what we have been talking about for the past 5 years.
No it’s not because we’re closet racists, or hate Europe, or pine for empire. It’s this
“The EU’s vaccine failure doesn’t justify our vote to leave”
Since the latter preceded the former, it would be very odd if it did. But it does signal that the UK had a very narrow escape as far as the vaccine goes, as it had the flexibility to do what it needed to do, while EU members did not.
Be happy for your own situation with the vaccine and sad for your European neighbors, hoping they will get it together. Seeing everything through the lens of Brexit is going to make for very boring journalism from here on out. The future lies ahead.
btw, you can’t be a remainer anymore, you’d have to be a rejoinder now.
“Seeing everything through the lens of Brexit is going to make for very boring journalism from here on out. The future lies ahead.”
Couldn’t agree more.
The same is true about about seeing everything through the lense of race and gender.
Fat chance of escaping dreadful “journalism” either way.
The UK as an EU member would have had exactly the same flexibility it does now, and it would probably have done exactly the same as it did – not least because it started down that path while still enjoying all the benefits and obligations of membership.
If that were true, then EU members wouldn’t be in the shape they’re in today vaccine-wise.
Had the UK attempted to demonstrate any flexibility while still in the EU it would have been attacked mercilessly by the BBC, Guardian, Sky, Ch 4 media mob, the Labour Party, the SNP, the UN and pretty much everyone else you can think of.
I seem to recall that it was anyway.
Every Remainer I know was decrying our non participation in the EU vaccine programme as the final proof of Brexit stupidity; they are strangely quiet now.
Of course Macron et all are desperately trying to cite these British perfidy as the cause of their vaccine malaise.
Most unlikely, Paul. Had Brexit been aborted or never started the establishment pressure to conform to EU centralised vaccine policy would have been overwhelming. It did, after all, cause Germany, Italy, Netherlands etc to back down. Had they not turned tail their people and others would have been protected by now.
The UK could act as it did because (a) we had the flexibility, both when we were members and after we had left, and (b) because the UK had the necessary expertise.
Not all countries had the expertise and a pharma industry, so not all EU countries were in a position to use their theoretical flexibility.
Not all countries had the UK’s political tradition of standing outside of EU initiatives when necessary. The UK opted out of Schengen (maintaining its own border controls and visa regime). We opted out of the Euro. There would have been no problem opting out of the EU vaccine operation – because we did, and there wasn’t. Of course, in a democracy, some would argue against – that’s how democracy works. But if we’re arguing about that, you’ve conceded that we did have the flexibility as EU members, and thus that vaccines are not a victory for Brexit.
It’s still a triumph for the UK – just nothing to do with Brexit.
Yes I think the UK theoretically could have gone its own way, were it still in the EU. But it wouldn’t have. The EU has in its usual fashion pressured members into towing the line.
Given how the UK dealt with the early pandemic this time last year, few in their right minds would not have gone with the European consensus.
Happily for the UK if not the EU, this would have been very wrong.
And Germany – which runs the EU – went out and bought extra vaccine for themselves in secret. Probably knowing that vdL would screw things up and her assorted Communist side-kicks would screw things up.
Merkel – very much a ‘you must do that’ person while going her own way. You must stick to the rules, we change them if they inconvenient.
Yes Paul, the UK opted out of some pretty major initiatives on the path of ever closer union. That is why we had to leave, we were becoming ever more marginalised and irrelevant to the core but still greatly affected by decisions taken for its benefit. Eurozone bailouts spring to mind.
The idea of concentric circles of membership was floated by the previous EU President, Junker, but he wasn’t serious and it never got further than a conjecture in a State Of The Union address.
Had the Union permitted nations to be more or less integrated, to decide which orbit around the superstate they wanted to occupy the UK would almost certainly have chosen an outer ring and remained (sort of). Some suggested the EEA was the answer but it didn’t satisy some key objectives such as border controls and ECJ supremacy. We had to go or commit to integration.
Delors promised co-determination of rules with EFTA, the second EEA pillar but then retracted. I supported that route out as I thought then (and even now) that other states would also leave and join/ rejoin EFTA allowing a major rebalancing to take place.
EFTA court and FOM positions for EFTA members are more nuanced than generally believed. All water under the bridge.
We did have the option to go with the EU procurement and declined to do so. This decision was lambasted by the left at the time and heartily mocked.
I think you missed the point that it was a procurement exercise (PPE anyone) that was screwed up. Then the screwup was compounded by claiming contract terms that didn’t exist. Followed by standard bully tactics!
Euro membership Is compulsory from 2022,”Ever Closer Union is NOT Flexibility.. and EU27 will have more ”Greece Style” theft of their currencies by Germany..
The MHRA was unequivocally the science engine behind the EMA, which contracted services from it. When the EMA left London, the MHRA had surplus capacity which allowed it to work alongside AZ/Oxford, running parallel approval processes. So, yes Brexit did help, but only obliquely.
Yes and no. Britain could still have gone its own way as a member – true. But imagine how badly that would have impacted the internal relationship. It would have been the cherry-picking narrative on steroids.
German did both. Joined the EU programme and bought their own vaccine in secret. So much for those “inviolable” EU rules.
The temptation is to go with the usual “Germany can do anything it wants” trope. But in this case, it wasn’t true. Germany got roundly criticised for that move.
Did that stop them?
Get your sentiment Paul – but cast our minds back to this time last year and only a fanatic would have trusted the UK govt over the European consensus given how we dealt with the early pandemic.
In short the pressure to follow suit with Europe would have been insurmountable, with good justification.
But now we are heading rapidly in the other direction. We are not out of the woods yet, but credit should be due at the UK’s handling of vaccination. They got (well-deserved) criticism for their earlier handling, but it should go both ways.
Reason Vaccination has been Going Well. in UK is because Army medics and Health board ,Was booted out of Procurement
Heard that so many times and each time is dafter than the last. Obviously and demonstrably untrue to the point of silliness – just ask the Germans.
Paul still plugging his Remainer line. He never gives up.
However, I agree with the main thrust of the article that Brexit is not about short term “wins”, but a principle, and longer term outcomes. The EU has effectively made a unilateral declaration of war on the UK – an economic war, that is – and I am sure we will face a few setbacks before we escape completely from their hegemony.
“The EU has effectively made a unilateral declaration of war on the UK”
True, it’s called the “Continental System” and it failed last time Europe tried it too.
Continental System, in the Napoleonic wars, the blockade designed by Napoleon to paralyze Great Britain through the destruction of British commerce. The decrees of Berlin (November 21, 1806) and Milan (December 17, 1807) proclaimed a blockade: neutrals and French allies were not to trade with the British.
Ah but those naughty Russians ultimately refused to go along with it and thus within eight years the Corsican pygmy was transported to St Helena.
Game over!
how are those UK to EU exports coming along? how are you, as a SME owner who exports to Eu countries, coping at the moment?
Short term, my dear, short term. The EU wants to shut them down while maintaining its exports to the UK. This was always to be expected. What I would have liked to have seen was transitional grants to affected businesses, but Covid has confused the picture. The grants are there but not for transitional assistance.
I’m coping just fine thank you. Frankly the covid disruption has been more of a headache than Brexit. I planned for Brexit, but the government response to covid was unprecedented and therefore I had no plan B. The disruption to freight – especially air freight – has been a nightmare. My supply chain has blown out from 1 week by air to 8 weeks by sea. Nothing to do with Brexit. The consequences of the blockage of the Suez canal will reverberate for months if not years. Private enterprises will do what they do best and mitigate the disasters of covid and the Suez (I call Brexit an inconvenience, not a disaster) while governments sit on their hands, point fingers, and pontificate.
The UK as an EU member would have had exactly the same flexibility it does now, and it would probably have done exactly the same as it did.’
You might not be aware, but the various EU member states currently legally have ‘the competence’ to arrange their own procurement deals when it comes to health, not the EU.
Despite this, at EU insistence, and despite many of them individually being further advanced than others, not least due to varying degrees of competence and desperation, they were all required to stop what they had been (or not been) doing and partake of the EU’s plan to assume this competence fully for itself.
What this subsequently meant in terms of delays, given the EU’s insistence on driving down prices and uniquely requiring these pharma companies to assume full liability for these vaccines in the event of them presenting future health problems one can only speculate on, but there is little doubt that, if we accept the premise that these vaccines are vital and time is of the essence, that lives were knowingly put at risk and time wasted as a result.
Theoretically you are correct – Poland & Hungary (I think its those two) have bought vaccine from China and Russia.
Must say I’m a bit surprised that in the best EU traditions they haven’t shared with the other 25.
Not a cat in Hell’s chance Paul. Yes, we had the flexibility but, as several others have commented, the political reality was it would have been an impossibility to act on our own. At the time, even with the UK out of the EU, the noises from the Guardian, Labour etc. for not joining the EU’s doomed procurement exercise was bad enough. I thought the very British, ‘apologies, we lost the letter LOL’ was an extraordinarily polite, self-deprecating and undemonstrative piece of diplomacy.
True, legally we could have acted the same. Our government actually did join the scheme, but pulled out when it realised that it was required to cede ALL participation in the process, and concluded it was going slowly. Other EU governments could also have done so, but didn’t. They surely had the same information, but they were Believers.
The reason we made the decision was because the government was a Leaver government, and possessed sufficient self-confidence after the recent election win. A Remainer government like Mrs May’s, or a weaker government such as Johnson’ before the election, is unlikely to have done so.
Let’s start national Brexit gloating Friday: this would involve standing outside our houses/ apartments/ tents/ dugouts at 7pm and gloating for 3 minutes, followed by the youngest member of the household dancing around a medium-sized cardboard box painted blue with stick-on gold stars for 2 minutes involving pelvic thrusts and high-pitched cries, climaxing in a vertical leap landing on the box to crush it. Variations could include Morris-Dancing, scottish country dancing (involving multiple couples) Dewali, fire-eating, belly-dancing, symbolic fasting during daylight hours (according to personal/ cultural choice.)
I quite fancy that, better than all these lachrymose Remembrance Sunday lookalikes anyway
Profound contribution to an otherwise intelligent discussion.
Giles is Part of ”Nationalised Church of England” They are so trendy,”They Don’t even believe in God!” If they don’t how can they expect Ordinary mortals to?…Boring again he needs a Jab ..
Rejoiner. Predictive text strikes again I suspect.
You can’t predict what crisis will hit next, but it’s a pretty good certainty to predict that the EU will f*** up their handling of it.
Show me an example of a crisis that the EU has handled well.
I voted on the same principle, but also on the purely practical consideration that even if you don’t care that Brussels has no democratic legitimacy, it matters that in practice it is incompetent and corrupt.
Why? I am not allowed to do anything else that is fun now, so gloating at the idiocy of the EU fanatics like Andrew Adonis, James Obrein and the staff of the BBC is one of the few pleasures I have left. And boy are they stupid fanatics.
Adonis and O’Brien are particularly repulsive. And Adonis is actively deceitful. A few weeks ago I heard him saying that joining the EEC enabled the UK to recover from being ‘The Sick Man of Europe’. In fact, I don’t think this phrase was coined until after the had joined the EEC, and it was Thatcher who fixed the UK’s economy, not the EEC/EU.
Aren’t they just? I would go so far as to say that they are both genuinely mentally ill.
I happen to think that joining the EEC was the right decision at the time, but times change and the EU is not the EEC.
“I happen to think that joining the EEC was the right decision at the time, but times change and the EU is not the EEC.”
I disagree. It was a terrible decision because it handed ‘control’ of Europe to the French and the Germans, and now basically the Germans. We should have stuck with EFTA and had we done so the EU would not have developed as it has. This has been a disaster for all of Europe, particularly by allowing such nonsense as the Euro.
….and how is “control of the EU” working out for Merkel and Macron??……
The law of unintended consequences
They were always in control. The EU is a criminal enterprise at all levels.
They are not Greece ….
I part agree with Andy’s reply to you. The way I differ is that I consider we should have developed the Commonwealth. Our mindsets are probably more similar than the EU’s – even if they hate us for colonial days.
I think you should gloat as much as you want.
I wake every morn with a happy glow inside knowing that the UK is no longer shackled to the nefandous EU.
And if I close my eyes and listen very hard I can almost hear the sound of remainers tears splashing, damp and forlorn, onto some trembling page of the Guardian… honestly, it’s like a prayer.
Moreover feel no guilt for gloating; for I can assure you that they would have been as graceless in victory as they have been in defeat.
‘I voted out of sheer principle: for me the nation state is the upper limit of democratic legitimacy.’
I must say I broadly agree with the thrust of this piece, and that sentence sums up in a nutshell the underlying reason for leaving the EU.
The UK leaving the EU was, first and foremost, a long term positive political act.
Personally, I’m uneasy about crowing specifically about the UK vaccine success vs the EU’s failure too much, not least because I’m still not entirely convinced that it was the correct answer to a question that needed answering given how society reacted to previous coronavirus pandemics in the latter half of the last century ie not by burning down the granary whilst putting pretty much all their energies into looking for ‘a cure’.
On a more general, far more revealing note, what the vaccine debacle has shown the peoples of Europe, the world even, is that the EU is not ‘nice’ and that this self-styled apparent beacon of rectitude was effectively prepared, again if one accepts the premise of the need for a vaccine which the EU so very clearly does, to sacrifice the lives of its citizens on the altar of its own political project through its parsimony and avoidable delays under the guise of European solidarity.
I reluctantly voted to remain, but I believe a bit of crowing by Brexiteers is warranted after several years of unreconciled remainers aggressively asking for “concrete benefits” of leaving and sneeringly predicting that the UK won’t be able to cope outside the comfort blanket of the EU.
The UK’s vaccine rollout is not a benefit of Brexit so much as a benefit of the UK’s expertise in pharma and health, together with the flexibility it already had while an EU member. We also benefitted from abandoning the “contracts must all go to our mates” dogma that made Serco Test and Trace such a shambles.
Still waiting for a concrete benefit, I’m afraid. I do hope there are some, and that they outweigh the costs.
I don’t recall anyone saying that UK wouldn’t be able to cope outside the EU – just that it would be harder and more expensive. This seems to be borne out so far for meat and fish exporters, and anyone trying to ship stuff across the Irish Sea.
I hope it gets better.
Ah, so the benefits have to be “concrete” in italics to be considered valid.
I do. The remain campaign was not “there will be a bit more cost and paperwork if we leave the EU” – it was “If we leave the EU, the UK is doomed to economic collapse, irrelevance and backwardness”.
You are right, Tom. Arguments for Remain did feature many dire prognostications, including that the UK would have to go crawling back to the EU on its hands and knees, and accept any conditions for re-admittance.
And the sun wouldn’t shine, we would starve to death, and foreign criminals might return to their own countries!
WW3, don’t forget WW3.
… And who will make my cappucino/ latte at Pret?
Also don’t forget Donald Tusk, the Historian, suggesting that Brexit would destroy Western Civilization as we know it.
But the point of Brexit isn’t about money – not everything can be reduced to such crude terms. It is and was always about identity, democracy and Law.
Not to Remainers though. To the Remainers it was always and only about money (and money’s proxies: being able to afford a second home because they’re really cheap in Dalmatia, having more cleaner hours because Lithuanians work really cheap).
Remainers were persuaded to their position by arguments that carried no weight at all with Leavers, and of course vice versa. Remainers inferred that Leavers must all be stupid racists. Leavers thought Remainers were supercilious quislings.
But the majority of Remainiacs ‘Know the Price of everything and the Value of Nothing’.
What you’ve said is for Remainers it was always and only about money and then that they thought Leavers wanted to leave because of racism.
So, it wasn’t all about money.
No, it was all about money for Remainers. They couldn’t fathom why Leavers weren’t persuaded by their arguments about money, so they concluded that Leavers must be racists. Nothing else could possibly explain voting Leave.
To persuade Leave voters to change their mind, Remain told them that they were thick racist plebs who should vote as Remain told them to. Surprisingly, this didn’t work.
I thought it was about Borders, Money and Law. That’s what we were told.
Youtube… Referendum 2016 & Debates Nick Clegg V Nigel Farage,who Won …etc..Most Remainiacs said uK is too small outside EU,but Not Scotland for non-independence..
“Still waiting for a concrete benefit”
And as a remainer/rejoiner, regardless of your claim otherwise, you will always be waiting for that.
I voted to Leave and then was told by many why I voted to leave. No one asked me including close family members, but it was assumed by those that had voted to remain that my reasons were pretty selfish, racist and despicable, how often did I hear Little Britain.
I do agree there is no benefit or plaudits in crowing over any win.
The attitude and behaviour of the EU bureaucracy and Messrs Merkel, Macron and Draghi simply confirms, I made the right choice. Its bad to make a mistake but to multiply and repeat is the action of fools.
As most of Giles’ writing this is considered and considerate. 2016 me transported to now would have thoroughly agreed with him.
But I voted leave because I trust a government democratically elected by the British people and I saw that the EU was a bloated, corrupted and out of touch bureaucracy which was highly risk adverse, uncaring about its citizens and inclined to make bad policies. Because of this belief I was called ignorant, racist, thick and yearning for the days of Empire by the media I used to read/watch, the politicians I used to vote for, the majority of academics, and most hurtfully by my close friends and family members.
I’m sorry but after that a feeling of ‘I told you so’ if fully justified and I sometime find myself questioning why I am not shouting it across social media like I had to put up with for the past 4.5 years. Probably only because of the immense suffering the EU’s failings are causing.
This article is nothing else but a subconscious reflex of a dead body which still responding to electric shocks while being actually void of any signs of life. ‘Brexit’ is our reality and sooner all ‘remainers’ overcome their denial the better it is for all of us. Life itself demonstrates that we are better off without this federalists bureaucratic misalliance, which will inevitably end up in the same way as any other ‘union’ of that sort.
Let’s face it most Reomoaners are suffering from that wonderful disease
known as PTSD, for which fortunately there is no known cure!
They face a life of misery, angst and excruciating frustration, interspersed with preposterous outbursts of rage.
Perhaps there is a God after all, although personally I doubt it. After all how could anyone really have been so cruel as to sanction Brexit?
The theological argument from a Christian Remainer standpoint might be that Brexit is the instrument of God’s Judgement for Britain’s pride.
Or in the classical tradition: “whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.”
In the classical tradition: “whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.”
Just take a look at The Guardian. Some of them have truly “gone mad”
Ah the sainted Enoch used those words during his prescient lunchtime speech in 1968, as you may recall.
The question is who are the ones being driven mad, one year after the event?
A much and falsely maligned man, as was Keith Joseph.
Yes, the ‘Mad Monk
How we need him to see through this miasma of Covid nonsense,
It’s not remainer PTSD, it’s remainer Hostage Syndrome with a dash of hyper-manic narcissist disorder (HMND) plus a taste of moral tourism thrown in.
I bow to your superior authority.
Oops down voted you by mistake. Fat fingers were trying to hit reply. I was trying to say it more like Stockholm Syndrome but then realised that was what you had said anyway!
Giles Fraser has been clear on his vote for Brexit and its benefits for the past 5 years, he mentions it in this article. This isnt ‘remainer denial’ its a pragmatic call to his own side to show some magnanimity and humility.
Hence, my response Adam. Britain’s independence from the EU is our reality. There is no need to say ‘it is because of Brexit’ no matter what way it sways. We would be better off in any case simply because we wanted so.
I think it would be fair to say that there isn’t a government on the planet that can claim they’ve navigated the pandemic issue without getting a bit of mud on their shoes but the article, in my view, skipped the main point.
Perhaps it’s a quaint anachronistic notion these days and certainly dictators, demagogues and despots don’t have to be bothered with it, but democratically elected governments have a duty and responsibility to do right by the people they serve.
In this case there was one job to do. “Get a vaccine for your people” Countries that adopted that mission statement, stuffed cash into suitcases and went shopping are now leading the world in vaccination rates.
Other countries, or country clubs in the case of the EU, are lagging far behind because “Get a vaccine for your people provided certain guidelines are followed and certain conditions are met” isn’t in fact a mission statement at all but an ambiguous and vague panacea for bureaucratic inertia and policy failure as they struggle to preserve or even enhance the perceived sanctity of their chosen political ideology.
No doubt there are many little Boris dolls being mercilessly pricked with sharp pins over conduct of the Covid response and Mr. Fraser is correct, not every Brexit venture will be a win, but any government that at least acts like it knows who it serves will likely provide more wins than losses.
There’ll be a lot of tough economic slogging ahead, both Brexit and pandemic-related, but the dragon of certain Brexit doom has been, if not slain, at least given a bloody nose. This surely has given a boost to morale and optimism which, along with vaccine, aren’t in very abundant supply on the Continent at the moment.
The EU vaccine debacle perfectly embodies many of the reasons people voted to leave:
– ineffectual bureaucracy and excess regulation
– blind faith in more Europe as a solution to everything
– criminal like behaviour towards innovators and risk takers
– unity/solidarity at all costs, in this case human lives
So yes it is a told you so moment and one that we should use to ram home the reasons why we rightly decided to get out of this sh1tsh0w. Well done to all the people who had the foresight in 2016 of how ineptly the EU would deal with the next crisis, Covid or not.
All very valid, except for one thing. When HMG announced last year that the UK would not be joining in the EU vaccine programme, although, as ex-members we were apparently allowed so to do, the Remainer commentariat was up in arms. Brexit was “literally a death cult”, lives were being sacrificed to dogma, etc.
It is understandable if people on the receiving end of that take the opportunity to turn it back on its originators.
” leavers may have been lucky — for now”
No, this was the disaster that was always going to happen eventually.These shambles happen all the time in the EU but rarely get coverage.
The fact that the brown stuff hit the fan so openly, if not so sad is comedy gold
The fate of 250 million people in the hands of a commission of 28 politicians that their countries wanted shot of. Look at our best Kinnock, Mandelson
Health ( a minor post ) went to Cyprus, Oops.
BTW in 2016 the prediction was if we left EU, rioting, famine and WW3 would happen
EU Nations Will invade Gibraltar,how Will Remainers view that?..I gloat BBC,CH4,iTV ,Grauniad,New Statesman ,The Observer,Owen jones,Aj Ayling have ALL been proved wrong …Blair,Clegg,Clarke&Lords in 1999 insisted UK must join Euro to survive..etc…
The Great Big Treat on TV which we all sorely miss is a programme which parades all of the above, the Adonises, the Gina Millers, the entire crew of bullying argumentatively dishonest hardline Remainers, all those people who talked us into joining the ERM, who told us it was a life and death necessity we should adopt the euro &c.
In ideal perfection, they would be live on the screen, interviewed at this present time and asked how they now view their prophesies and jeremiads of yesteryear.
Yet I would comfortably settle for an entertainment in which the Beeb or Sky ran films of their harangues in time gone by; and left it to the audience to have a sort of growling chuckle.
This would not be merely a malice-fest. It would deter bone-headed assertions of invincible intellectual superiority from today’s awful Ruling Caste in future. At least to some extent.
Luck is always a big factor. The point of principles is to nudge the likely outcome in our favour over the long run. By doing what is right we might have individual costs in the short term that net out in aggregate over the long term. Giving up on principles for short-term expediency or a quick win often has long term costs.
Leaving the EU was always going to have a negative cost short term (to both the UK and EU). Whether it works long term depends on how the UK can achieve better things without the EU, and how both sides adapt. This we won’t know for a couple of decades.
So the second thing about luck, is that people learn and change based on experiences. Crises, catastrophes and bad decisions often bring greater learning and insight than business as normal. Improvement comes from fixing mistakes. Modern mores are forged through struggle.
‘So the second thing about luck, is that people learn and change based on experiences. Crises, catastrophes and bad decisions often bring greater learning and insight than business as normal. Improvement comes from fixing mistakes. Modern mores are forged through struggle.’
Couldn’t agree more, and the only thing I would add there is that one is far more likely to learn from one’s mistakes if one experiences their consequences first hand and/or one knows that one will ultimately be held personally accountable for them…..
I voted with a lot of hesitation. The three reasons that tipped me in that direction were, in ascending order: 1) the democratic deficit 2) the need to manage migration and 3) (top of the list) a feeling that the EU as presently constituted and functioning was simply not fit for purpose. I don’t gloat, but I do feel that the lack of fit for purpose, which was a bit hard to explain at the time, has sadly proved only too true. The stormy seas of a crisis always rocks the boat and that’s when it needs to be well designed and constructed to keep it afloat. At other times inherent weaknesses can be covered up.
In what sense did you consider the EU to be ‘not fit for purpose’? The purpose of the EU is to create a European superstate governed by unelected technocrats and apparatchiks etc in Brussels. Thus the EU is eminently fit for purpose.
So long as Remainers remain Remainers attached to vassalage under a foreign entity – and especially one as serially inept as the EU – gloaters will gloat; if indeed pointing out that we made a good, rational decison to leave really is gloating. There are lonely souls in Moscow who still hanker after the Soviet Union and in Vienna who are bereaved by History’s decision to shut down the Hapsburg empire. But they mostly keep it to themselves, which is polite. Remainers want everything for the foreseeable future to be a verdict on Brexit. Sad people whose greatest wish is that their own country should fail.
How ironic that the people who for four years accused leavers of ‘wanting to return to the days of Empire’ which of course was utter bollox, find themselves crying for a return to a wannabe empire.
It is not a case of crowing, it is a necessary antidote to all those remainers who never miss an opportunity to unflattering compare their country to the EU and denigrate any citizen who does not see the rightness of their cause. The really seem to be unable to bear it when the boot is on the other foot.
No one cares to remember how the MSM turned on the government for going it alone on the vaccine, particular those members of the MSM who sensed an opportunity to Brexit point score and who automatically assumed that EU solution would be a shining success that would shame third world blighty and its decision to leave Camelot.
In fact I get the sense from the article and the comments below that some people would prefer that the UK vaccine programme had stumbled and that the EU programme had been an unqualified success. Of course had this happened they would never have let us hear the end of it.
Finally, it is not a wholly unfair question to put to these remainers but how many lives would you be prepared to sacrifice on the alter of the EU, since this seem to have been the calculation made by the member states on boarding the EU vaccine train, a calculation they now appear to be doubling down on. Having said this, however, the reference to member states in this instance should probably exclude France and Germany. They seem to have been motivated in large part by their protectionist inclinations, which translates as France and Germany organising matters so as to protect their pharmaceutical sectors at the expense of other member states, only this time the cost is not only measured in only monetary terms.
Who (apart from France and Germany) would want to be a member of such a club.
Mr Fraser says ‘I voted out of sheer principle: for me the nation state is the upper limit of democratic legitimacy.’
Quite right too. I voted Leave for exactly that reason.
But I think he misses a point, which is generally not recognised across the board.
There is a really good reason why Leave-voters should currently crow and for some little time yet (not indefinitely or for ever).
Everyone ought to bear in mind that Brexiteers were patronised and bullied by ardent EUphiles for decades. They were constantly told that belonging to the ever more federating European Project was good for everybody – and never allowed to vote on the issue. Basically they were told to shut up whenever they made a solid point and reasoned, with proofs, that contradicted the notion of the EEC, the EC and more lately the EU being a Wonderful Thing.
Eventually, thanks to Nigel Farage and UKIP biting into Tory votes, we got a referendum in spite of the conspiracy of the Ruling Caste in the western world to deny and withhold it from us.
When a majority of those taking part in this plebiscite voted to leave the EU, the Establishment, devout Remainers all, swung immediately into action and conspired to reverse the score, subvert the decision which both the Conservative and Labour Parties had solemnly promised to respect and to honour as public policy.
The hardline Remainers, very much in office and in power, to that end kept changing the terms of the debate we had had during the Referendum Campaign, they misinformed and lied, they staged a coup in which Treason May was catapulted into the premiership with the task of pretending doughtily to take us out of the EU while actually turning us into a captive rules-taking serfdom of it; and they poured a Niagara Falls of bile and scorn and insult upon all Leavers.
We were all apparently (including highly informed university professors like Robert Tombs of Cambridge) ignorant xenophobic jingo-nationalist THICK redneck hicks.
There is already a lot to celebrate positively in respect of our departure from the awful EU. Liz Truss has been quietly getting trade alliances and deals rolling all over the world: scores to date. All manner of shackles and fetters are falling from our industry, trade and commerce. The EU keeps blundering and many businessfolk worldwide will now be thinking that the way to enterprise in this part of the Earth is to concentrate on doing their thing in the United Kingdom rather than in a protectionist bloc which tears up all rule-books when it feels like it.
But you cannot blame Leavers for spending some time mocking their torturers of the past 40 years (and of especially this past half-decade). This is part of a process of healing, of getting over the beatings and bruisings they have been given.
Some scores have to be settled if there is to be closure of a big wound; and ideally they are settled bloodlessly; and once and for all.
If hardline Remain opinion at present has to eat a slice of humble pie, if Leavers rejoice in their own decision, we can close this unhappy chapter; and – who knows? – perhaps the hardest-line Remainers of all, the people still filling most of the benches of the House of Commons, nearly all broadcasting, academe, Big Money berths &c &c, will for the first time in their lives be visited by a vague notion that they are not always all-wise about everything and have nothing to learn from rational debate: a phenomenon which most of them have long seemed entire strangers to.
I normally agree with most of what you write Giles and I loved the Confessions Podcasts. But actually (gloating aside) it is perfectly OK to use the failures of the EU in the vaccine crisis to underline the arguments for Brexit.
That the EU is too slow and bureaucratic, that it overreaches, that it is hopelessly idelogical even at the expense of lives. That nation states provide the optimal level for democratic accountability and trust. That democratic national governments are able to move quickly, take decisions more rapidly, and execute plans far more effectively. That flexibility and pragmatism is a superior approach to governance than a rigid idelogy applying a single answer to every question.
When push came to shove HMG (not immune from mistakes) asked itself what it needed to do to move as quickly as it could to getting a vaccine developed and rolled out. The EU by contrast focused on the opportunity to promote the ideology and to prove that “more Europe” was the solution. It sought to demonstrate that it had the buying power to get a vaccine at a lower price. That its medical regulators were superior and had higher standards. That they would proceed at the pace of the slowest country, to demonstrate superficial unity.
So Sorry Giles. The EUs approach to all this and its current attitude is a perfect case study in why Brexit was a good idea and the benefits it reaps.
And now we should do everything we can to rescue dying European citizens from the chaos that the EU has inflicted upon them. Will they be grateful for the benefits that Brexit brought the continent? I doubt it. But we should do it anyway.
What are you talking about? Of course nobody knew this would happen, but it’s a very good example of why it was a good idea to get out.
The EU’s vaccine failure doesn’t justify our vote to leave
What does one have to do with the other? A vote was held, the result is in. Move along.
The problem is that neither Remainers OR Leavers can leave Brexit and the EU alone. As an EU citizen I accept totally the Brexit decision by the British people. Now can ye move on, forget the EU and look to the rest of the world.
I think you’ll find wherever you go looking for trade deals, the EU have been there before you and will have already gained more access at lower cost than will be offered to a smallish economy like the UK.
Certainly as far as I can tell most EU exporters have lost much interest in the UK market – they’re looking at vibrant expanding markets in Asia and elsewhere.
“The EU’s vaccine failure doesn’t justify our vote to leave”
But it is perhaps evidence that a single nation can be more nimble and responsive than 27 nations yoked together.
Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams both pushed each other to greater running heights. I wonder how well they would have done yoked together.
I’m not gloating, and I would still believe in Leaving if the EU’s policy had been a bigger success than ours, but if it had been that way round, I am absolutely certain that SOME Remainers would have been gloating.
But was not the government heavily criticised by all opposition parties when it dropped out of the EU scheme? It was reported on the news as subordinating responsible, caring policy to Brexit ideology.
I am therefore immensely and naturally relieved, and will offer no apologies for that, even while I sincerely hope that the citizens of the EU will be vaccinated quickly, if they want to be.
A major reason I voted Leave was because I believe the decision-making of the EU to be fundamentally and seriously flawed. My main exhibit is monetary union, but there are others, this was another, and there will be more.
Spot on, my opinion too. Put unelected people in positions of power and you get Ursula and the “Peers”…
My remainer friends started saying told you so about a week after the referendum. I think it was over a fall in the pound or some other catastrophe. They literally have not stopped saying it since. In addition to calling all leavers racist, xenophobes etc I don’t feel it’s too unreasonable now for leavers to crack a half smile.
Hmmmm. 10’s of thousands of additional preventable premature deaths alongside hundreds of billions in saved additional costs seems like a pretty damned convincing justification for Brexit to me; not to mention the delicious experience of watching the EU in “action” on the most important crisis to face Europe since the Second World War. Bit of a slam dunk and there’s not a lot of point in trying to pretend otherwise. “Lucky”, you say? How convenient for you – no need to deploy an argument if everything is “lucky”, is there? How about you consider more deeply the possibility that it’s really got very little to do with luck and everything to do with the underlying structural contradictions and paradoxes in the EU? I mean to say, is that not, in the end, a much more likely explanation?
“The nation state is the upper limit of democratic legitimacy”, that’s not so much a moral position – but a simple structural fact! A high degree of abstraction can lead to an elitist antidemocratic effect.
Democracy as the government of the people, however with enough abstraction “The people cannot decide until someone decides who are the people”… thus true representation of the people’s will is lost.
We see it in Brussels, where unelected people have power, lack of accessibility to the ordinary citizen, or lack of representation of the ordinary citizen, and lack of accountability of European Union institutions.
The German Constitutional Court referred to a “structural democratic deficit” inherent in the construction of the European Union.It found that the decision-making processes in the EU remained largely those of an international organisation, which would ordinarily be based on the principle of the equality of states and that the principle of equality of states and the principle of equality of citizens cannot be reconciled in a Staatenverbund.
In other words, in a supranational union or confederation (which is not a federal state) there is a problem of how to reconcile the principle of equality among nation states, which applies to international (intergovernmental) organisations, and the principle of equality among citizens, which applies within states.[
A 2014 report from the British Electoral Reform Society wrote that “[t]his unique institutional structure makes it difficult to apply the usual democratic standards without significant changes of emphasis. Certainly, the principles of representativeness, accountability and democratic engagement are vital, but the protection of the rights of minorities is perhaps especially important. The EU is a political regime that is, in one sense at least, entirely made up of minorities.”
The only ‘gloating’ is perpetrated by MSM doing what they do best. Stirring the s*it at every opportunity, spreading falsehoods, and creating discontent. Most people in my circle ignore the froth, get on with life, and are much happier for it.
A good article, but …
”Back in June 2016, not even the wildest imagination could have predicted Covid-19 and its consequences”
I love the way so many people lazily trot out this statement, which is manifestly wrong.
It was predicted by the better informed and less ‘listened-to” professionals who are considered too dull for a clickbait-driven media.
A pandemic of this nature has been on the cards for years, ever since the advent of progressively cheaper world travel, and we’re lucky that it’s nothing more virulent than ‘bat-flu’.
Pandemics SARS1 in 2011 based Film ”Contagion” West nile disease New York State,but could have spread
Insurance companies have excluded pandemic coverage since the 2003 SARs episode as I found out to my cost when I inquired after my business interruption policy.
You are probably right, but I am enjoying myself too much to stop crowing just yet. I have four years of lies, dirty tricks, and constitutional knavery to make up for.
What an odd piece:
‘Of course, it doesn’t. Back in June 2016, not even the wildest imagination could have predicted Covid-19 and its consequences.’
So. If the EU had not been tested by this emergency it would prove to have been competent ?
Maybe the Reverend Fraser should stick to sermons where there are no questions asked afterwards.
Maybe. But the EU has shown itself to be a technocratic dictatorship and so unwieldy it is a danger to Europe.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/europes-panic-the-meltdown-over-vaccines
Frankly, they deserve our gloating.
Actually a ‘told you so’ is justified. The Brexiteers said all along this is how the EU operates – and they were right.
“…the failure of the EU vaccine roll-out demonstrates how right we were do decide to leave the EU. Of course, it doesn’t.”
I profoundly disagree.
The EU vaccine debacle demonstrates precisely what happens when power is unconstrained by democratic accountability.
It demonstrates what happens when an organisation is dedicated to the accrual of power to itself without regard to the wishes of, or impact on, the citizenry (and worse, labels those powers “competences”, when it is quite incompetent).
It demonstrates what happens when a serial incompetent like Ursula VDL is put in charge. Like the NATO exercises, she botches the preparations, and then leaves it for others (in that case, other NATO countries) to cover for her.
The outrage that is the EU vaccine idiocy is a perfect demonstration of what the EU is, at its core, and why so many of us voted to leave.
I’ve always thought of Zhou Enlai’s “It’s too early to tell” as a clever way of evading the question.
Was Nixon asked his opinion of some event in Chinese history?
Did he not also misunderstand the question, which he thought was about the Paris student riots of 1968, as opposed to the 1789 revolution?
Great piece as ever by Giles Fraser. The line about the nation state being the upper limit for democratic legitimacy is the most succinct summing up of the Brexiteer argument. As for the Zhou En Lai comment I believe it is now thought that he had assumed the question was about the street events in Paris in 1968 not 1789.
Yes, I too have read that Zhou En Lai believed he had been asked about ‘les evenements’. That said, one could argue that his answer was more accurate with regard to 1789 than to 1968, at least at the time.
Has anyone asked him what he thinks about Brexit?
But for those of us who voted to leave in support of the principle of subsdiarity, it’s a vindication, in that countries like Germany that would have wanted to make their own arrangements are suffering from poor top-down management by unaccountable federal authorities. Of course, there is no guarantee that local control would achieve a better outcome than from a decision taken by a centralised authority, but at least an autonomous authority would have the opportunity to assess and decide what was in the best interest of its own citizens, to whom it would be answerable.
It is very refreshing to read of (by) someone who sees their opinion as an opinion rather than a fact. So many people today see their own point of view as factual and the views of others as factually wrong.
“In any case, at what point in the future might we judge a decision the right one – after a year’s consequences, after 10 years, a century?
I’d say that having joined the EU in 1975, forty years is a fair basis on which to make the call that we’d got the decision wrong.
Yes and no, I agree gloating is poor form but we put up with so much insulting condescension from hardcore Remainiacs it is understandable – I couldn’t help but suggest to my Remainiacs friends that they must be so happy we left now they’re getting their jab. My reward was the frothing mouths I hoped for!
I also disagree in that, while we never could have foreseen a Pandemic, this is precisely the kind of hideous incompetence the model carries with it.
But finally, you are correct. Gloating is not nice and I must rise above that. Perhaps next week.
I’m the first person in three generations of my family not to fight in a World War. Almost all WW2 combatants are dead- you’d have to be 101 to have been 19 in 1939 so those in their 70s and 80s aren’t really qualified to comment on warfare. The EU has been an idea to counter war and combat post war Russian reaggrandisement. That said, let’s be very very clear, millions voted leave because they don’t like the cultural changes imposed on them by mass immigration- simply, no one asked them and successive governments used immigration to mask poor productivity and lack of training for British people, especially after losing old mass industries. Now that automation and IT will reduce jobs, we’re stuck with a densely populated island with a destructive and intolerant ‘diversity’. Multiculturalism means just that- so a central historically based identity is being unpicked incredibly rapidly. This is why so many voted Leave. Over the next decades as climate change emigration develops into the many millions it may prove to have been a wise choice if we can control borders more easily.
Just think. If Merkel and co had given David Cameron just half an inch on free movement, we would very likely still be in the club.
Maybe a thank you note to her is in order.
I read recently that the question to Chou about the French Revolution (and his gnomic answer) referred to the uprising of 1968, not to 1789. But we like to ascribe undue wisdom to the Mandarins.
It’s good to read a piece that touches on the morality of political decision making as I think it’s something that is vital to understanding why people hold different views on topics and why they get so upset when their views are challenged.
‘I voted out of sheer principle: for me the nation state is the upper limit of democratic legitimacy. Others believed that co-operation was intrinsic to the European project, and voted for that.’
However, I would take issue with Giles that his view on the nation state is a principle. Surely a principle has to involve some sort of moral meaning that can exist outside of a specific time and place? Support for democracy could be a principle but a preference for the particular size or set up of the administrative unit in which democracy is exercised is not a principle.
Choosing co-operation over competition is a principle. I’d agree with Giles there.
So being part of the Axis was a principle, was it?
I agree with this argument, primarily because when there are peoples’ lives on the line and it has unconscionable to crow about failure where life and limb is at stake. What the fiasco does demonstrate (unequivocally) is the EU view that ” only more EU can and will solve the problem” is a deeply flawed, incorrect assertion, “learning from, let alone admitting to making mistakes” is something Brussels has an inability to do, maybe because it will contradict the first law of the EU, and the ability for the EU to blame anyone else for their failures but themselves is beyond contestation. Right now they are exacting revenge, for their own mistakes, on the rest of the world, which is completely unethical. This is not an organisation I want to be part of.
The article seems to proceed as if in a vacuum. Of course, a one off failure by the EU and one off success for the British government does not justify Brexit. But there is no vacuum. The difficulty that the EU has in making and implementing sensible policies has long been apparent. Whether that justified the vote to leave is a balancing exercise of course. I feel that Giles Fraser is patronising the British public, again.
Dear Giles
Tee fuc*ing Hee
Love
N
Another wonderful article. UnHerd is really excelling itself over the past week.
I have often quoted Kant at people with regard to the morality of lockdowns. The end never justifies the means. So, governments effectively incarcerating entirely innocent people in their homes by law cannot be morally justified even if the end is to save other people according to Kant.
Whatever about Kant, my own consequencialist view is that the lockdown ‘cure’ will be shown to be much, much worse than the disease.
There are consequences to our actions and words both as individuals and as nations and they will be judged by God. But when it comes to more mundane judgements that can only be done after a lapse of time long enough to gain perspective. One reason why we have the judgement seat of History is that we might learn from it. Unfortunately, as somebody once said the only lesson to be learnt from history is that we never learn the lessons of history.
It’s not so much the failure of the EU’s vaccine procurement that justifies Brexit Giles, it’s the spiteful way they have behaved since their failure became apparent. And that’s not a case of “I told you so”, based on a prediction of what would happen after Brexit. It’s a case of “why couldn’t you see how badly they are behaving?”, as that behaviour was exhibited on countless occasions during our period of membership and not solely directed towards the UK either.
From where I am, those of us that voted leave and got continually insulted as stupid, uneducated, racist etc, can see the benefits. The vaccine rollout is just the start!
But Giles – we did know. The indecisive nature of the EU’s decision making procedures was blatantly obvious for years and has been seen many times. It was manifestly obvious to me that when faced by any kind of existential crisis in which decisive and effective policy was needed that it would fail.
If you did not foresee that, then you were not awake. No – we did not KNOW that a pandemic would come in 2020, but we have known for a long time that one would come sometime. We also know that one day, we will be attacked by some rogue state, perhaps it will be Russia – there is a very good chance of that, since we know we have seen multiple state sanctioned poisonings – even using nerve agents. When that happens, the EU WILL fail again, because it is too slow and too cumbersome and by its very nature with a need for unanimity, it is indecisive and bound to fail.
The reason we are pleased we left the EU is not so much their useless vaccine roll-out, though that does play a part, but their petty, spiteful, often illegal manipulations to foul up ours. They would rather punish us than get their citizens vaccinated. And what how insulting to try to negotiate down the price which was offered ‘at cost’? No wonder AstraZeneca have vowed never to supply at cost again!
EU membership was never a benefit to the UK. Leavers don’t need luck, they need skill.
Good –
Although I have to say that to me the idea of putting such weight on that nation state principle that it becomes morally acceptable in one’s decision making to “have no idea” about the other consequences of Brexit is… breathtaking.
The Loose Canon’s argument is spot-on: you can’t judge morality in the rear-view mirror. The EU’s vaccine problem isn’t because it’s the EU, but because of the poor contracts it agreed to. If it turned out great for the Europeans, would it have been a negative outcome due to Brexit? The two are not linked so clearly.
“The EU’s vaccine problem isn’t because it’s the EU, but because of the poor contracts it agreed to.”
Except, that mess arose in large part because (1.) Ursula VDL – serial incompetent – was put in charge with no democratic oversight, and (2.) the EU cares less about the citizens of the European countries than it does accruing power to itself.
Therefore, those poor contracts are because it is the EU.
Mr Fraser is completely wrong. The EU is like “The Life of Brian”: Let’s sit down and have a meeting?(!) Communism seeks to own the means of production which has been disproved time and time again; the EU’s response to vaccines from initial research onwards underlines both these points. No wonder Brexiteers gloat!
I too voted Brexit on principle. I do not lament the lack of facts though as political strategies are not easily converted into accurate forecasts. I suspect that the designers of the EU had no idea it would turn out to be so expensive but believe that in any case the benefits outweigh the costs. Brexiteers believe the other thing. Subsequent hindsight may flip flop between the two depending when and on what criteria it is judged. Dinner on the Titanic is better than sitting wet and cold on a life raft until you know about the ice-berg.
The EU referendum was nothing to do with ‘morality’. You might call your opinion on the nation-state a ‘principle’, but it’s simply a value judgement. There was no morally right or wrong decision to make, just as there’s no right or wrong outcome either way. Some results will be preferred by some people, some not. The vote was a punt on an unknowable future, not remotely like saving a chid from drowning.
. I agree with your sentiments even if the EU’s vaccine fiasco is symptomatic of that unieldy and divided organisation.
PS Zhou En Lai was wrong, it wasn’t too early to tell
“I voted out of sheer principle: for me the nation state is the upper limit of democratic legitimacy.”
The UK is not a ‘nation state’. It is a Union of former ‘nation states’ in which both of the main mainland terrritories forfeited their right to separate Government. All that officially remains of any ‘nation’ in the UK is their local legal systems and Churches.
‘Democratic’ legitimacy isn’t ‘legitimate’. It is a make-do method founded on random, shifting majorities, and as such always to liable to be corrupted by cobbled-together alliances between two parties against a third, in which no-one gets what they really think is right, but only what they can. Proportional representation is even worse.
I was going to post that this was a pretty silly article, and much too long for the point it was trying to make. As usual read the comments before posting as no point banging on if the same points been made (and made, and made). To my surprise the comments barely address the issue Gilles raises, and instead seems to have devolved to a Leavers vs Remainers donnybrook. Far be it for me as a North American to tell you Brits what to fixate on, but folks, it’s over. Move on.
You are right to suggest that we move on, but for a whole host of reasons we are not quite ready to do so. Maybe as a North American you will understand this better if I point out that whilst a clear majority of US citizens voted to get rid of Trump and install Biden, I am betting that in four years from now any subject for public debate there will still quickly descend into an argument over whether or not the election was ‘stolen’.
“You are right to suggest that we move on, but for a whole host of reasons we are not quite ready to do so.”
Many people are.
“whilst a clear majority of US citizens voted to get rid of Trump and install Biden, I am betting that in four years from now any subject for public debate there will still quickly descend into an argument over whether or not the election was ‘stolen’”
yes, but this is not an apples to apples comparison, Brexit was a matter of opinion, an election is a matter of fact. And yes, as more and more facts come out, these will be debated. But that is quite different. No one has claimed that the Brexit referendum was stolen based on irregularities in referendum voting, have they?
It’s not as trivial as you think. There are many out there, probably most of the establishment and the media, working hard behind the scenes trying to get us to rejoin. They point out as many disadvantages of Brexit as they can dream up – the Leavers are surely entitled to their own defence.
‘Christians’ who love the EU more than they love Jesus Christ. I really hate those guys.
Especially Christians who admitted to turning parishioners away from their church when at their greatest need in the pandemic. I won’t be taking anti-gloating lectures from good-time Christians like him.
I did get a bit lost going through this article, but what I was left with was:
1. The Brexit referendum revealed (NB: revealed; not created) massive social divisions within our country and our union.
2. These divisions need to be resolved and healed, and yelling “I told you so” across the chasms won’t help. (I speak as a Leave supporter, FWIW.)
God knows what will help, and I hope and pray He’ll guide all of us (yes, even the EC) through this in His infinite grace and mercy. As far as the UK’s concerned, I’d like to think we’ve got through worse than this in our history – at least we’re not having at each other with pike and musket (yet).
I voted for Brexit for the sake of self-determination of our traditional country. I’m a believer of building on history rather than starting anew on a blank sheet.
In that respect, Brexit is almost successful.
Note, it doesn’t need improved economics (in fact, it could be worse).
Stop writing about Brexit.
This entire piece begins with the premise that huge swathes of Leave voters are collectively gloating in public. I’ve seen little or no actual evidence of this myself.
The article is a non sequitur.
Giles Fraser should ask himself: would anything change my mind about Brexit? If he is true to himself, he will discover that the answer is no. Remain and Leave became articles of faith. No one knows the long term impact of either option. It was not a political choice but an exercise in self-determination. Some British see themselves as apart, others feel queazy at the idea of taking pride in one’s country and feel that Britain must merge into something bigger.
the rest is post hoc justification.
if Britain does well in the next few years, Giles will blame the pandemic for slowing EU in comparison. If Britain does badly he will crow: I told you so.
Whether anything would change your mind on Brexit presumably depends on why you chose it (or didn’t) in the first place. You’re probably right, for many people, that it was an instinctual thing, based on faith.
But there were pragmatists on both sides too, and even for those who acted on principle, they might not have intended their choice “at any cost” – so short and long term consequences can retrospectively affect the judgement. That’s not failing to be true to yourself – that’s real life. Of course it’s always possible that cognitive dissonance and a blame game could allow consequences to be mentally dodged – either in a fictional UK which had struggled or flourished in a post-Covid EU, or in our actual UK which has left and is now working out what the trading arrangements will be with Northern Ireland, the EU, and the rest of the world. Time as always will tell.
A minor criticism – you say:
I don’t think remainers on the whole “feel queazy at the idea of taking pride in one’s country”. Some may feel uneasy when politicians who previously never bothered, suddenly start to wave flags around – they themselves may have a more understated and quiet patriotism, and they may be cynical about those who suddenly convert to a flag-waving form of nationalism.
Rather than feeling “that Britain must merge into something bigger,” for many remainers the attraction of the EU was more about limited pooling of sovereignty to solve mutual problems, like common standards, or (more recently) regulating multinationals who might otherwise play individual nations off against each other.
The whole issue is a series of tradeoffs of principle against principle, and benefits and disadvantages on both sides – which is why people took different views. Even if some of the subtleties have been lost in the hardening of attitudes since 2016.
You are right about balancing principles, but wrong if you think EU was ever about “limited pooling of sovereignty”
Wrong again.
Hating their own country and their own countrymen has been a point of principle for upper class lefties for so long the George Orwell wrote about it.
So Remainers on the whole were upper class lefties? 50% of the population upper class and lefty?
I believe he states clearly that he voted to leave.
There is a problem with:
and:
The economic flourishing of china, and the associated improvement of peoples welfare and lives would be considered the morally right thing to do, regardless of the consequences.
The fact that those consequences were that some people are tortured, abused, imporverised, murdered, and “reeducated” are a result of the action not its intent.
There is no doubt that Maxist theories are morally good in intent, it is their application (in all cases) that cause the harm.
The consequences of actions, whether or not something is morally right, should always be considered when deciding if you should do it or not.
That is absolutely the intent of Marxist/Leninist/ Maoist political theory. They all advocate exterminating class enemies. That is why they do it.
Of course, the terror is supposedly in pursuit of a long term goal of creating a utopian society – but they absolutely want to wipe out the people they regard as class or race enemies.
Also, the political repression in China is in no way the cause of China’s economic prosperity. It’s not that the means don’t justify the ends, it is that the means have no causal relationship with the ends.
When the Chinese Communist party pursued both left wing economic and social policies, the result was 10s of millions dead of starvation and horrific political repression. They dropped the economic policies only because if they carried on there would be no-one left to rule over. They kept the political repression not for the good of the people but only to keep themselves in power.
Taiwan, plus other Asian countries are still more prosperous that Communist China – in terms of average earnings Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Japan are way ahead – and they are all democracies which do not oppress their people.
Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Japan are ‘democracies’ to a greater or lesser extent. In particular, Singapore is a one party state ‘democracy’ which shows little truck with dissent.
I broadly agree with the article in most of its main points.
But a) Wishing the world to be other than it is is one thing but in the world as it is Remainers have banged on endlessly about things that show Brexit is failure that haven’t even happened. Or are things that will get better after he transition period of getting used to them.
But b) accepting the main points that the morality of something isn’t entirely depended on it’s consequences, and anyway the consequences go flapping on their butterfly wings down the centuries…if the target of the shooting is Hitler and you miss, or Einstein, or The bloke carrying the proposal for ARPA to a US Pentagon meeting etc… BUT here in this world politics is carried out and carried forward on a hyper speed news agenda in which the old fashioned broadcast and print media, and the new social media platforms are in a kind of sealed feedback loop that keeps accelerating and exaggerating everything in faster and faster cycles.
And while that remains so then this kind of annexing of anything and everything as (fake) evidence to validate the decision will continue.
I think with Brexit, and some other issues as well, the only way out of this is to get past the kind of antithesis stage of current hot button issues, in that thesis-antithesis-synthesis idea, and only when then their is that synthesis of the opposing views which in Brexit means acceptance of the fact it has happened, and won’t ‘unhappen’ for decades, will we get past this state of frozen conflict and over focus on every situation being a piece of evidence validating one or the other side.
A good argument, but there is no such thing as morality unless used in the Christian concept. So we fall back to anything goes provided one can get away with it. Those who voted to leave the EU, and I am another one who did, will only be justified in making this decision if it is eventually shown to have been to our advantage. So far so good.
And of course the typically communistic stance taken by the EU with respect to their failure to anticipate the urgent need for vaccinations against Covid 19, demonstrates the EU incompetence and inflexibility which like it or not has to be seen as justification for the occurrence of BREXIT.
“A good argument, but there is no such thing as morality unless used in the Christian concept.”
This will be news to many Jews.
Strewth. How complicated does the obvious have to be made for it to be denied?
The article presents good arguments against consequentialist moral viewpoints, such as utilitarianism. That doesn’t mean Kantian approaches somehow reign supreme. The article doesn’t counter the mad axeman problem, for example. I am far from convinced that moral issues trump pragmatic ones in the EU debate. And, insofar as they don’t, it is at least reasonable to conclude that vaccine performance weighs on the negative side of the scale, even if it doesn’t negate any perceived positives from EU membership.
Rather than focusing on the the EU’s (dismal) vaccine procurement, I’m more entertained by Giles’ rather clever sleight of hand, using the example of a drowning child to promote the idea of the purely moral decision over the consequential. Saving the life of drowning child implies two things; firstly, you have no way of predicting the outcomes of that child’s life, but secondly, this is predicated (although not explicitly stated) on you having no knowledge of this child prior to being confronted by their potential drowning.
Let’s try another thought experiment. You see someone drowning, who you know to be a serial offender, committing acts which are extremely damaging to others. This person has also been saved from drowning several times and has continued in their previous patterns of behavior. By taking the purely moral view of the sanctity of the life of the drowning person, you thus override the evidence based argument that by saving this person, you will almost certainly cause more harm to others.
Perhaps those of a higher calling can override experience and evidence to make purely moral choices. I doubt that many voters on either side of Brexit did.
This is a fair comment I think – no one will really know about the success of Brexit for years, and for many, that wasn’t the point. Pointing gleefully at early results is something that seems common now in public discourse, like many who pointed to numbers of covid deaths early in the first wave as justifying certain national strategies.
There are many people however who saw the decision as pragmatic, and not related to underlying principles, it makes sense they would look at outcomes to make a decision. And I think it’s fair to say, from comments that I have been seeing, that some who didn’t quite understand certain criticisms of the EU are now seeing where they were coming from, even if it doesn’t change their position.
Any way, mate, it can’t be so wrong to, at long last, leave those throwing dead fish back in to the water. That unexplainable always stuck in my throat. It went on for years!
What kind of people are these who insist in being so foolish? So that we did the right thing basing ourselves on the facts of the way the EU was behaving and where the EU was going, we did great, and the vaccination process only goes to show it wasn’t a bad idea that guided us. Our system works better when unshackled from theirs.
Read this days ago. Giles is putting out some good, thought provoking pieces at the moment and I’ve been trying to understand why I find myself increasingly in the same camp, if perhaps for slightly different reasons.
I’ve been on the losing side in two referendums now and yet my sky has not fallen down. As we move further and further into modernity and I look back through the decades I see more and more that fluidity, process and the ability of the individual to be able to grow and change within a framework of principle and self discipline is important. I’ve come to appreciate the insights and value inherent in loss within a democratic framework. In an age of rapid change, self discipline in the individual and a balancing of the dignity of the individual with community is vital.
I support the UK union and it’s place outside the EU now. Supporting Brexit was not so difficult given my euroscepticism and the fact that I voted remain out of cowardice and fear. I didn’t have the Brexiteer optimism about EU rationality on trade and always saw it as a nascent empire that would seek to prevent further secession by punishing Britain. Perhaps coming to embrace UK unionism was easier than it might have been too because I’m an anglophile as well as a eurosceptic. I’ve never admired the English and Welsh more than at the present. I’d like to think given neither of these positions that I’d still be strong enough to be on the side of democratic process. I’m not sure I would be, but I’d like to think so.
Democracy in and around the constitution needs to allow for settlement and should not be gamed for perpetual battle. States are are the tectonic plates upon which everything rests and if we won’t allow the ground beneath our feet to settle, if we are not up to using the most advanced civilization tool we have at our disposal to make these settlements, then we have failed as citizens, wherever our loyalties originally lay.
I can’t say with certainty nation states are the upper limit of democratic functioning. I don’t know what the upper limits of anything are looking at the future. What pains me more than thinking that states or people would change is the thought that they would change for the worse. As a Scot with a background in the traditional independence movement, almost born thinking in and around this question of what a nation is, I am frankly sick of it. I’ve seen good people I started out with on a democratic journey turn into unrecognizable monsters post 2014. You might say this is what nationalism does, but this wouldn’t be entirely correct. This is what trashing democracy does. SNP and Alba separatists are now strongly allied with the EU revanchists who are anti separatist. Their common bond is a refusal to hand in losers consent and they share a hatred of England. England’s or Britain’s self hatred is allied with Scottish separatist hatred, and now they are co-mingled into a slavish and uncritical devotion to Brussels.
We are maybe looking at this the wrong way around. A state is a state and they come in all shapes and sizes. City states, middle sized states and large imperial ones. These are the diverse entities we function in and interact with on the world stage. The modern fashion now is to look at the problems of intergovernmentalism, strike a vague visionary pose and maintain that we are approaching an age of empire where takeovers are necessary in order to cut down on it. As if hostile, continent sized colossus states with dubious democratic credentials were a natural step towards a peaceful utopia with minimal conflict. If you challenge this vague vision you are decried as a populist and an extremist.
For me it all sits badly with green thought. The idea that in complete ignorance of intergovernmental ecology you can sweep all away and create vast monocultures without destroying anything valuable. My instinct is to respect healthy, constructive divergence and strong democracy maintains a useful and productive tension between this and cohesion. If we don’t nurture the skills of intergovernmentalism at every level, what are the relations between our colossus states set to be? Quite frightening in my view.
Any new state that seeks to set democracy aside as an obstruction to it’s formation will not easily pick it up again. There is a lot of self deception with some EU supporters as they begin to move towards soft authoritarianism. The easy incentives to collectivizie, the positive benefits in terms of the single market have been granted. Now individual rights have to be handed to Brussels. Single fiscal and foreign policy adhered to. This is not popular and we are shifting gear from the era of the single market as carrot to the single market as the stick. The EU is beating Switzerland and the UK first to keep dissent within the EU under control.
If retention of full, healthy democracy seems incompatible with state building , then perhaps it is state building that needs to shift and not democracy. This for me is a liberating thought. There is a case for viewing state building as a potentially dangerous and anachronistic activity in our modern, democratic era. Wherever democracy isn’t taking you is not worth going to.
I voted to leave in order to have the necessary independence to create a sustainable, resilient and sufficient future for Britain. As far as I am concerned, this is slowly being achieved.
In this respect, my decision was both principled and consequentialist. Perhaps when deployed together, they are stronger than when deployed separately.
Your premise is confused. Political principle is not morality, even when the principle is based on a moral judgement. Politics is about the best method to guide a Polis or what the Polis is. Politics can only be judged by consequences. A political decision leads to good or bad outcomes. Intentions are irrelevant. Socialism and Communism had good intentions and disastrous outcomes. And the proof of the good outcome is re-election or a revolution. If it has a philosophical basis, it is Milne not Kant.
I defer to no one in my English nationalism or my support for Brexit. But even I do not see the EU as evil. Its founding principles are worthy, just deeply naïve and misguided. The nation state is the only polis – large enough to have worldwide agency and small/unified enough to be governed by true consent. That is a political principle and judgement, not a moral one.
As to your headline, we are in the midst of a Culture War. We have thrown off the EU but there are a large pool of socially prominent people aching to reverse that judgement. It is important that the outcome is a good one and shown to be so. For safety, the moderate internationalists need to be persuaded that the right decision has been made. Then it will become their decision too in their memory. When the January trade figures came out everyone of them was crowing about the decline in trade. You didn’t comment then. This is messy, dirty politics not philosophy. But it matters.
Yeah it turns out enough money can buy first access to vaccines, what a surprise. The UK government had to commit to this given their poor initial response to Covid-19, when the press started to give them a proper hard time. By all accounts they have been more effective since then, but don’t delude yourself that it hasn’t been bought at the expense of us (debt) and others (denying vaccine to others, it’s supply and demand baby).
This is exactly what I expected from Brexit, the UK throwing its weight around and making short-term self-serving choices.
Yes, the UK government contracted to buy vaccines, and the problem with this is???? How did this prevent the EU from also contracting for vaccines in a timely way? And exactly who is being denied vaccines?
You’re misstating the Remainer narrative which was that the UK would not be able to throw any weight around after Brexit. That it only mattered as part of the EU. Good that you now see that that Remainer narrative was always garbage.
I’m just saying it isn’t magic. We paid extra to get vaccines first, what do you think happens if everyone tries to do this? Do you think the UK will always be able to pay extra to get first service?
You didn’t pay extra. You signed contracts ahead of others. As did the US and Israel. The EU could have easily signed contracts in a more timely way. It didn’t do that.
https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n281
We did pay more than the EU.
Your link doesn’t say that though.
“The EU financially supported the development of the BioNTech and Pfizer vaccine and has obtained a lower price per dose ($14.70 than the US ($19.50).”
so if we add in what the EU put into the Pfizer vaccine, what would it look like?
“The Moderna vaccine’s development was subsidised by the US government, and it will cost the US about $15 a dose, while the EU is paying $18.”
okay so Moderna is cheaper in the US. It doesn’t say what the UK paid for Moderna, so how are you comparing?
“The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is much cheaper, although neither the UK nor the US can match the EU’s $2.15 deal: they are expecting to pay about $3 and $4, respectively, per dose.”
AZ isn’t approved for use in the US and isn’t being used in the US so this seems not to matter much.
“The Johnson & Johnson vaccine, expected to announce phase III results imminently, is also much cheaper, costing the EU $8.50, with each dose going twice as far as the other brands, since it is a single shot vaccine.”
this doesn’t say what the UK or US is paying so how are you comparing?
Thanks for reading. The figures that are comparable are for the AZ vaccine at $3 (UK) vs $2.15 (EU). As you note, we don’t have UK prices for the other vaccines so a comparison cannot be made.
‘an essentially moral decision ‘
Yeah, based on saying ‘too many foreigners’ at every single referendum debate
Your post is ignorant, pompous fiction.
Just went through the comments on this article. Why does everything on Unherd have to end up by Remainers and Leavers banging on about the EU.
As a citizen of a EU state I fully accept the decision of the people of the UK to leave. Now will ye move on, forget entirely about the EU and look to your voyage around the world on HMS Global Britain.
You may find that no matter what port you arrive at in HMS Global Britain that the EU have been there before you – and that the very best you can hope for is to do as good a deal as the EU has already negotiated. But try to ignore this, as you’re completely finished with the EU. Mostly, as a relatively small economy, you’ll do much worse as the recent deal with Japan clearly shows. But again just ignore this trivial detail.
In fact do as most exporters in the EU have already done by moving on from worrying about deals with the UK – they’re concentrating on vibrant growing markets in Asia and elsewhere.
So, please, please try to forget about the past and your relationship with the EU and concentrate on your future on HMS Global Britain.
Come on, Peter. The article is titled “Stop gloating about Brexit”, so do you really, honestly, expect the comments not to coalesce around peoples views on the three main players: Remainers, Leavers and the EU.
“You may find that no matter what port you arrive at in HMS Global Britain that the EU have been there before you – and that the very best you can hope for is to do as good a deal as the EU has already negotiated. “
Unless it’s Port Covid Vaccine
Elsewhere ?…I dont think Australia and other Nations outside of EU,Malign influence, denied Vaccines paid for ,.will NOT want to trade with them. Possibly China,even senile Biden in USA might take heed!
“Relatively small economy”
It’s the 5th (or 6th depending on who’s stats you read) largest in the world.
Its not New Zealand ( which incidentally is a tiny trading nation that has trade agreements all over the world and is doing quite nicely without being a member of EU)
Brexit was a daft decision, its execution incompetently bungled, to this day.
Covid policy consequences put lipstick on that pig, for now. Brexiteers just got lucky in that regard, as the economic damage is dwarfed by Covid policies and covered up by MMT, which otherwise likely would not have been made available for Brexit damages alone.
But another consequence of Covid policies is the now much more likely demise of the EU and €. In sofar, Brexit again looks like the right and lucky decision, although the consequences of that breakup would have been minimal for Britain anyway, and continued British membership would likely have prevented the Covid aid fund or restricted it to €zone countries only instead.
The decision to source and distribute the vaccines via the EU instead of by each country is a correct one IMO, but it was of course incompetently handled and the subsequent actions and threats by the EU leaders towards the UK were and are equally incompetemt, counterproductive and shameful.
Whether the vaccinations were and are necessary and will really be a success in the end is far too early to tell, for both sides and every country.
I still think the country would be better off in the EU, but the vaccine roll-out is mostly a win for the Brexiteers. If we were still in the EU, would there be the political will to move faster than the rest of Europe? Possibly, but probably not.
On the other hand, we might have been spared Boris’ massively cack-handed response, so we might not have needed to.
Please offer a few reasons why we would be better off in the EU? Boris’ ‘cack-handedness’ is no worse than that of most other countries in dealing with somethings that although predictable, was an unknown quantity. Be glad you don’t reside in Brazil!
The usual reasons- the majority of trade is with the EU, the majority of our food is from the EU, and anything that is wrong with Britain is primarily our fault rather than theirs. I don’t think people are stupid for disagreeing, but as far as I can tell the benefits of being within outweigh the costs.
As for cack-handedness- we’ve got the fifth highest deaths per capita of anywhere in the world. Were it not for the NHS we’d easily be in first.
I know criticising Boris or Brexit is thoughtcrime around here (despite the supposed “free thinking” tagline) but he utterly cocked it up in the beginning, and continued to c**k it up for many months after. Remember “eat out to help out”? Responsible for a massive spike in cases.
He didn’t go into lockdown straight away when the new variants were found, repeating the error that was made at the start. I forgave the government that error at the start because very few countries got it right; but making it again is not forgivable.
The benefits of hindsight eh? Given that this has been a mystery virus there has been a lot of experimentation and mistakes made, essentially revolving around keeping the economy moving vs protecting the NHS. Plenty mistakes made elsewhere across the globe. And as regards the UK death toll, it probably says a lot about the state of health of the population. Besides, having suffered badly in the first wave there’s a good chance fatalities won’t be so high in subsequent waves – exactly the opposite of what seems likely in the EU.
The 5th highest death rate is probably because of the NHS. It has never been any good at disease controls and a recent statistic seems to imply 40% of cases of the elderly were caught in hospital.
Make America big again, a patriotic idiotic behaviour, get brexit done ,other patriotic idiotic slogan ,capitalism&greed take British this way,,,and this is to be European,trusting in partnership, hope europe will try and not falling in a idiotic&patriotic&racist,,behaviour.
What?
I applaud Giles’ principled approach to Brexit, even though I don’t find his choice of principle particularly convincing. His assessment of the consequences is also unconvincing. Sadly, if Remainers wanted something to crow about there is already a great deal, and more may be on the way.
True, we now have a theoretical freedom to lower our standards and wages, but then we would lose tariff free (though hardly frictionless) access to the European market. I’ll not get into whether that would be good from a utilitarian or a principled standpoint.
On the other hand, the Northern Ireland protocol is causing problems for UK businesses on both sides of the Irish Sea, and for consumers in Northern Ireland. This will get a lot worse once the agreed controls are fully implemented (maybe not so much worse if we can negotiate a lighter touch approach).
If you’re in the fishing industry, the consequences of Brexit have not been particularly wonderful.
So I’m puzzled by Giles’ apparent belief that any negative consequences are in the future (“Consequentialist leavers may have been lucky”).
The broken record.
Annoying when reality just keeps intruding, isn’t it. Particularly if you work in fishing or meat exports, or trade with Northern Ireland, I suppose.
Idiot it is EU breaking International Law, Blair thinks his Pro-IRA surrender is the new Border ,it Isn’t ..December 7 1922 irish Free state &UK Government under lloyd George Agreed the border..Sinn Fein argue no matter what…As for Fishing,Again If We had principled MPs ,they would invoke 1964 maritime Act,So no Vessels from EU can be permitted,especially Hoover trawlers, UK agreed deals with iceland,Greenland,Norway,Faeoroes in two weeks,EU is still ignoring agreements..trying
Negative attitude = negative consequences
You think reality is a social construct? Or Brexit would have gone better if we’d believed more firmly?
I think it might have gone better if we’d planned better, but I’m not sure a failure to plan is what you meant by “negative attitude”.