Forty Days and Forty Nights - to Brexit

This isn't an early blog about Lent. Easter is late this year, so Ash Wednesday doesn't fall till the 6th March.

No, this is about the time that's left to us before Brexit Day on the 29th March, forty days and forty nights. That's the same length of time as Lent (if you take out the six Sundays of Lent which don't count towards the total as Sundays are always feast days). Less than six weeks. Or put it another way. In 1939, war was declared on the 3rd September. If that were Brexit Day, then by now it would already be 25th July.

That's frighteningly close to an event that is probably Britain's biggest crisis since the last war. By now, whatever your hopes or fears about leaving the European Union, you'd have thought that the shape of our nation's future after the end of March would be looking clear. But not at all. Thanks to Theresa May and her government, the past two and half years since the referendum have resulted in a negotiated deal that has twice been comprehensively voted down in Parliament. It is baffling beyond belief to Leavers and Remainers alike, not to mention our frustrated EU partners, that she persists with this fantasy. One EU negotiator speaking today put the likelihood of the UK crashing out of the EU without a deal as around 90%. That would be terrible for trade and business, for police and security co-operation across Europe, for travel, for cultural and environmental collaboration and a whole lot else.

You don't need me to rehearse the litany of probable woes. Indeed, it's already a litany of actual woes. Each day it seems that another business announces that it's relocating its headquarters to the continent. Today Flybmi has gone into administration citing Brexit uncertainty. Here in the North East, the news that Nissan will not now be manufacturing the new X-Trail model at its Sunderland works has come as a heavy blow. The stockpiling of essential supplies including medicines has begun. There is talk of civil disorder, and plans to evacuate the Royal Family. The billions Brexit is already costing the nation are only part of the price we are paying. And our hapless Prime Minister and her cabinet hurl themselves like Gadarene swine towards the cliff edge dragging the nation in their slipstream. No wonder we are the laughing stock of Europe. It's hard not to feel ashamed of the way we have conducted ourselves since the vote.

Standing on this threshold of a Lent-length forty days' journey to Brexit, I ask myself what's to be done? I've nothing new to offer here, but I guess that the more people who try to challenge the Brexit groupthink and speak some sense into this bizarre and dangerous situation, the better.

The first thing is that we must defer Article 50. It is a nonsense to think we can safely depart from the EU at the end of March with no road-map even for the short-term future, no consensus about what our key relationship with the EU is going to look like after Brexit. You don't take off from the runway without knowing where your aircraft is taking you and how you are going to navigate the weather that lies ahead. You don't complete on a property purchase if the survey has thrown up matters that need resolving first. Or in the parables of Jesus, you check that you're building your house on rock, not on sand. You don't embark on a project without first counting the cost. Mrs May’s brinkmanship is making a hostage of this nation’s future. This close to B-Day, we must give ourselves more time. And while we are about it, Parliament must rule out no-deal as an option and get serious about negotiating realistically with the EU.

The second thing is that having deferred Brexit Day, we must go back to the electorate and hold a People's Vote to establish beyond doubt that leaving the European Union is what the nation wants. ,I've no patience for the riposte that says that having voted once on this subject, it would be a betrayal of democracy to do it again. On the contrary. Given the divided nation and Parliament that we are, it would be a betrayal of democracy not to check what the "will of the people" is now, in 2019. Democracy means that it is permitted to change our minds.

This is critically important when we all know so much more about what Brexit would entail than we did in 2016. There was so much that was wrong with the 2016 referendum, not least excluding 16 and 17 year olds from the vote, excluding UK citizens who had lived abroad in EU countries for more than 15 years, and not stipulating that a majority of 60% or two-thirds of votes cast would be needed to effect such a major constitutional change. A People's Vote would allow those mistakes to be corrected. One of the options on the ballot paper would obviously be to remain in the EU as we are, on the current terms. I've no idea whether it would secure a safe majority to reverse the disastrous 2016 vote. But it's important to find out. Democrats have nothing to fear from this. If Brexiters are convinced that the case has been made for leaving the EU, let the public endorse it if that is what it believes. Why are so many people, even MPs who voted Remain in 2016 (like my own elected member) afraid of doing this?

The third thing is that we should use these forty days to try to clear our heads. Groupthink is a dangerous mentality because you can never argue against it, never persuade anyone that there is another side to an issue. Our government has got it into its head that there is only one direction in which to travel, and that is out of the European Union. For all the counter-arguments, all the evidence that this would damage not only the UK economy but also its standing in the world and its networks of influence and collaboration, for all the threats that we face, this government has only one song to sing, which is that "the people have decided" and the referendum outcome is sacrosanct.

I want to ask, respectfully but plainly, what would it take to shift this government's mind, break out of this slanging-match we are in that becomes more hysterical by the day, and instead, get a grown-up conversation going? How dire do the threats have to be before Mrs May notices? What evidence would need to be presented for her to revisit her beloved red lines? What arguments would it take for her at least to contemplate changing her mind? If only she could show a modicum of self-doubt! If only she could think it possible that she was mistaken, could entertain the idea that our nation had misjudged things. If only she could admit that it's allowed to step back and think again. Prudence at a time of crisis is a virtue in leaders. This is just such a time.

If only... if only... Well, in the Bible, forty days and forty nights are often set aside as a period of preparation, self-examination and prayer. Think of Moses and Elijah on the mountain, think of Jesus himself in the desert. That's one of the reasons we observe Lent. Wouldn't it be a good idea for our elected representatives to try to do this in the spirit of a pre-Brexit Lent, to take time to ponder, reflect, and yes, in desperate times - if they can - to pray. And ask themselves if it doesn't make sense to step back from the brink while there is still time.

But what Lent is chiefly for is to prepare for Easter, for the commemoration of Jesus' death and resurrection. Right now, I can certainly see a death lying ahead on the other side of these forty days of Brexit. But no resurrection, I'm afraid, no new life or even the promise of it. Just a no-deal abyss into which we are destined to tumble if we do not come to our senses. It's utterly reprehensible that our leaders have allowed this nation to sleep-walk into disaster. Deferring Article 50 and holding a People's Vote seem to me to be the only way of averting it.

You can tell that I'm writing with some feeling. That's because I'm deeply afraid of the future that is rushing down the slipway towards us next month. In my view we have been badly let down by our leaders. I want to believe that it's not too late to change course. I wish my waters were telling me that it's likely to happen. Do I believe in miracles that can win minds and hearts? I suppose I must at least believe in the power of persuasion, for otherwise, why am I even bothering to write? I don’t believe in praying blindly that some deus ex machina will get us out of a mess for which we only have ourselves to blame.

I just can’t see how this can end well. I’m proud to be European. And I’m proud (on good days - there aren’t many of those just now) to be British. But I confess to sending this blog out into the world with a very heavy heart. If the lights go out at the end of March, my generation won’t see them lit again in our lifetime.

Brexit, Mountain Madness and Waiting for Angels

There's a lot of "magical thinking" around at the moment. The clock is ticking ominously towards Brexit-Day next March. The Prime Minister clings stubbornly on to her Chequers plan which politicians of all hues, not to mention EU leaders tell her has little hope of flying. Canada and Norway are back in the frame as possible Brexit models. There's talk about how a no-deal Brexit could do the nation a power of good. So much busking, so little planning, still no clarity - it isn’t looking good.  When was a modern nation as confused as this, as exposed to European ridicule, as diminished in its standing on the world stage? It's sad to watch any country agonise like this. It's tragic when it's your own.

Much of the Remain perspective on Brexit draws on metaphors of height. "Falling off a cliff edge" is a favourite. "Staring into the abyss" is another. To me, the government’s confusion is redolent of mountain madness. Above a certain height (is it 7000 metres?), your capacity to think clearly and make sound decisions is significantly lessened, which is why climbers die as a result of poor judgment. Your ability to calibrate risk, assess the weather conditions and the passing of time (how much daylight have you got left?), your physical and mental condition, your stamina levels can become dangerously skewed. Not to mention your ethical judgment when it comes to helping others who have got into trouble in high places. How many mountaineers have died because they didn't recognise the moment when they should and could have turned back?

A chance encounter on social media today got me thinking about this image of surviving at a dangerous height.  In H.G. Wells' famous short story, a traveller finds himself in a secret, enclosed mountainous land where because of some inherited genetic condition, everyone is blind. Ah, he tells himself, "in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king". It proves otherwise. He attempts to escape by climbing his way out of this kingdom where no-one can see except him. But the heights are fraught with danger and he doesn't have the equipment or the skill to scale them safely. He falls to his death. That seems like an eloquent image of our political leaders struggling to keep their heads clear when they are well above their safety zone, where the Brexit air is too thin and conditions too treacherous for them to keep their footing.

One image from the Bible stood out as I thought about it all today. It's the well-known story of Jesus' temptations. Two of them are about high places, as it happens, but here's the one that struck me forcibly.

Then the devil took Jesus to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, 'if you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, "He will command his angels concerning you", and "On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone."' 

Many people who are not in the least suicidal report that same irrational pull towards danger-at-a-height. They feel some strange, unaccountable instinct to do precisely what Jesus is tempted to do, throw themselves off. It's as if there is something enticing about the cliff-edge or mountain-top, the tower of a great building, a parapet of high bridge, the rim of some chasm in the ground. We can be seduced into thinking we are safer than we are. "Our interest's in the dangerous edge of things" says Robert Browning in one of his greatest poems, "Bishop Blougram's Apology". I sometimes wonder whether our leaders are increasingly finding themselves in this fraught terrain.

What strikes me in the gospels' temptation story is how uncannily accurate the devil is when he suggests what Jesus might do. "Throw yourself off, because you know the angels will come and rescue you." Really? How can he possibly know that, whether he is the Son of God or not? It's an absurd temptation, and yet Jesus takes it seriously. Is this because he knows himself, knows his demons (so to speak), knows that the absurd is exactly what so many of us find ourselves doing when we lose our ability to think clearly? Knows that blind faith is never reasonable, never makes any sense, despite the specious appeal that irrationalism of every kind always holds out for a life that is happy and painless and filled with certainty, and trouble-free.

That's to speculate, of course. But there's no speculation about how Jesus sees off this temptation to do what makes no sense. He focuses on where his own rationality and self-knowledge lead him, back to the God from whom he draws his identity and his sound mind. He answers the devil, 'Again it is written, "Do not put the Lord your God to the test."' In other words, let faith and trust in God be informed, not by idiocy or self-interest but by a reasoned discernment of what God requires of us. And if I read the gospels aright, among the ways God wants humanity to know him and serve him, thaumaturgy, overt dramatic displays of supernatural power are not among them. Rather, he wants us to be sound in mind so that as disciples ("learners"), we make good judgments about what is in our own interests, and even more important, what is in other people's. It's what the Bible calls wisdom.

I think there is a clear strain of irrationalism in a lot of the pro-Brexit rhetoric we are hearing. The increasing shrillness of it is evidence here - shout louder because the argument is weak. It's been abundantly clear from before the referendum that the EU as a rule-based organisation could not compromise its four freedoms, and that any credible Brexit proposal from the UK would have to honour them. Instead, there is still talk about unrealisable ways of managing the Northern Ireland border, some of them recklessly putting the Good Friday Agreement at risk. We were told during the referendum campaign that achieving trade deals with the EU would be straightforward when we knew that Canada's has taken a decade to be realised. No-one can tell us how this country is going to recruit people to the NHS, the hospitality and agricultural industries. Warnings against Brexit by those whose business it is to understand and manage the economy are contemptuously disregarded as fear-mongering. This wearisome litany could go on and on.

So I'm thinking: are our leaders perched on the high pinnacle of some building of the mind, an edifice they have imagined for themselves where the rules of real life don't apply, where they can step out into empty air and look forward to being rescued by the angels? Are they so locked into the Brexit group-think ("the will of the British people", "what's best for Britain", "no People's Vote") that they can no longer see the risks they are running? I think I can safely say that there is no angel waiting to bear us up, no divine intervention that will protect us from our own folly. Why should there be? The stones our nation may dash its feet against will be unforgiving and hard. God gives no command concerning us.

We are already on our own as a nation set on this course of action. Europe and the world don't owe Britain any favours. We have fewer friends abroad than we used have and that isn't likely to change soon - the hurt Brexit is inflicting on our partner EU nations will take a generation to heal as will the bafflement beyond Europe as to why the UK would want to walk away from hard-won alliances. Whatever judgment we make about Brexit, we are responsible for it and will have to bear the consequences not just for a few years but, if many are to be believed, for decades to come. And our children and grandchildren whose future we have robbed know all too well that they are the ones who will carry the sins of their fathers and mothers for much of their lives - sins not of Brexiters' bad intent (let's not judge motives here - no doubt they were sincere, they meant well and the idea was good) but of unreason and poor judgment.

So I call it mountain madness. I pray - but don't yet dare to hope - that we all get down to safer levels where we can breathe properly, see the hazards we've been facing, and think clearly again. Yes, of course nowhere in life is risk-free, but we shall be a lot better off where evidence and logic and realistic projection are leading us rather than up here among the perilously tempting eternal snows where the view may be magnificent but the dangers are very great. Even a small slip could cost us our lives. Better get back down while there's some daylight left. It's late in the day, but not too late - yet.

Brexit: The Prime Minister Speaks

So Mrs May has come back from Salzburg empty-handed.

Brexit-watchers can hardly be surprised. The Northern Ireland border was always going to be a tough challenge if the Good Friday Agreement was going to be honoured. As was finding a modus vivendi with the other 27 EU nations unless it was going to be on the basis of the Single Market and Customs Union. The impossibility of squaring the circle is the right metaphor. You can find as good a match as you want, and you can get closer and closer an infinite number of times. But you can never make the circumferences or areas exactly equal. It all comes down to π.

Salzburg is Mozart's birthplace. Its name literally means the Castle of Salt. Well, the EU leadership has certainly gone through the PM's Chequers proposals like a dose of salts. How she must have wished for some Mozartian Magic Flute to come to her rescue, confer wisdom, protect her against her foes, lead her into the right path! Instead, negotiations on these two critical points have reached an impasse. The EU is clearly in no mood to bend to her wishes. So she has no room to manoeuvre unless she compromises on both of them.  And as she keeps reminding us, there is no Plan B other than to crash out of the European Union with no deal.

The Prime Minister has just spoken to the nation. The robust tone was consistent throughout her short speech, the Leitmotif being "we cannot accept...". Some of her red lines will find ready agreement across the nation, such as "we cannot accept the break-up of the United Kingdom". Of course not. But as everyone can now see, this is a non-trivial risk for the Union, especially those who live and work in Northern Ireland. I don't suppose many people foresaw this when they voted Leave in 2016. Like the false prophets in Jeremiah, the cry was "peace, peace, where there is no peace". And the cavalier way some leading proponents of Brexit are ready to treat the Good Friday Agreement is both breathtaking, and desperately sad.

But what about her opening "we cannot accept"? She said today, "we cannot accept anything that does not respect the result of the referendum". This begs so many big questions, all of which have been fully rehearsed in the two years the nation has been debating the consequences of the vote. I don't want to plough in well-worn furrows. We were reminded ad nauseam by Brexiters that Parliament is sovereign, and this includes its powers to rescind what has been decided in the past - which is precisely why the referendum and Parliamentary endorsement of it was to reverse the decision first made by the nation in 1975 to confirm our membership of the EU (with the strong support of the Daily Mail - newspapers can change their minds too!).

Add to that the clear proviso that the referendum was advisory to Parliament, and it really won't do lamely to appeal to the referendum result as if it were set in stone like "the laws of the Medes and Persians that can never be revoked". This is immature politics that devalues the intelligence of voting people and infantilises them. In a democratic society, we are free to change our minds, and frequently do at general elections. As I've said, the second EU vote was itself a change of mind following the first.

There's one more issue here, and I recall writing about it in an earlier blog. We know that the majority of elected members in Parliament were for Remain. Not just by a margin of a few percent like the UK electors, but a really significant majority. The point is this. If these MPs believed in 2016 that it was in the interests of the UK to stay in the European Union, what changed with the referendum result? Remainer MPs should be principled enough not to sacrifice their convictions on the altar of a public vote, especially when it is as close as the result was two years ago. They are not delegates who must vote as instructed by their constituencies. They are independent representatives who, having regard for the views of their constituents, nevertheless are free to vote, and indeed must always vote, in accordance with what their conscience tells them is in the national interest, without fear or favour.

What has happened in Parliament that even our Prime Minister, who is undoubtedly a woman to whom principle and conscience are important, is enslaved to this theory that the referendum result is inviolable and sacrosanct? Yes of course, to act with integrity, to follow principle and your own conscience in the face of fierce and loud opposition does take courage. It is fatally easy to be compromised when the stakes are so high and the pressures very great. And who appreciates the demands that are placed upon political leaders in times like these? I'm not at all defending the PM's approach to Brexit when I say that we can all feel for her in these ordeals she faces, not only among her EU colleagues, but (especially, I think) the brutal EU-psychodramas that the Conservative Party has enjoyed acting out for so many decades now. "Bastards", John Major called the far-right Tories when it came to Maastricht. You get the point.

I'm not expecting the PM to read this. But if by chance she were to, here's what I'd want to say to her.

1. None of this fiasco was of your making. You were landed with this poisoned chalice by your predecessor. Having promised he would see the consequences of the referendum through, he promptly walked away from his duty. I wonder how he can sleep at night.

2. Most of us do not want Brexit to be a disaster for the nation. We want you to succeed in your negotiations, not just to get the best deal for Britain, but what is best for Europe too, in the spirit of friendship, understanding and peace-building that is why this EU family exists in the first place. We want to go on being friends, partners and allies of the EU27. To crash out would sour relationships that are immensely important not only to our immediate neighbours and ourselves, but geopolitically too.

3. Don't underestimate how big a loss the UK's leaving the EU will be to the twenty-seven. It's not just the four freedoms or our payments into its budget. It's about the real and deep partnerships that have been so carefully built up across areas such as security, science, culture, environmental care and medicine as well. EU leaders are not punishing Britain for leaving, but they are sad about it, and that helps to explain some of the tough rhetoric coming out of Brussels. The parting of friends is always painful, and we are seeing this being acted out as we watch.

4. Please don't make our nation the laughing-stock of Europe and the world. What happened at Salzburg was humiliating, not just for you personally but for all of us who love our country and count ourselves fortunate to be British. Negotiation is what grown-up people do when things get tough. Whatever comes of Brexit, it needs to be with our dignity intact. I'm very much afraid that we have lost stature in the world during these past two years. Maybe that's good for a nation, not to think of itself more highly than it ought to think. But if it's respect that we've forfeited, shouldn't that make us think carefully about the course we've embarked on? I hope so.

5. Please, please, consider it possible that you may be mistaken about a People's Vote. I am no enthusiast for referenda in a representative democracy, but once that genie is let out of the bottle, you can't put it back again. I think the cry for a third referendum (not the second - that's what 2016 was) will become unassailable in the coming months. Please, please, consider letting the nation, especially its young who were disenfranchised in 2016, speak once more, with the option of remaining in the EU on the same terms as we currently enjoy. After all, if Brexit is really what the UK wants, then Brexiters have nothing to fear from going round the tracks in the light of what we have all learned in the last two years. Minds change, not because people are fickle or wayward, but because circumstances change and new evidence emerges. Previously unknown information, newly assessed risks, clearer perceptions of what Brexit would actually mean, all this comes from the intensive scrutiny Brexit has been subjected to in the last 27 months. Such a triage is a good thing. I'm sure you welcome it. I believe you have the courage to ask the nation in a People's Vote what it now believes about its future in the light of what it now knows. Don't be afraid.

6. It may be small comfort, but I want to assure you that the prayers of people of all faiths are with you. And the thoughts of many more.