Creeping Colonialism

Brexit is a political earthquake.

Earthquakes are caused when tectonic plates are meant to have shifted but haven’t. The longer the build up of pressure, the bigger the earthquake.

While many have accused Brexiters of fantasy in how they perceive an exit from the EU, the real fantasy is the one Britain has been collectively living in for the past 40 years of EU membership:

That fantasy that we are still an independent nation.

The earthquake is our realisation that we are not.

Till now, we have mostly all believed that our journey as a society is being decided by our highest power — parliament with its two chambers.

The reality though is different, our journey is being decided largely by Europe and increasingly by other international rule making.

The most advanced laws and the bulk of decisions on innovation spending are coming now from Brussels not Westminster.

You only have to look at how the European GDPR law on was mirrored entirely into British statute as the Data Protection Act 2018 to see how little impact British lawmakers have made on the new laws that affect the cutting edge of our economy.

So while the latest thinking, and with it the power that matters, has been transferred to Brussels, our representation within Europe has been under used, under valued and under voted for.

We have lived in the belief that we are really an independent nation and that the political conversation in Brussels is not the main event.

We have avoided stepping up.

We have not recognised the value of our seat at the table.

And by doing so, we have assumed the identity of colony instead of equal partner.

Britain has let itself become a colony of Europe.

Let’s look at this by the numbers: general election turnout, votes for our own UK parliament, has hovered around 2 in 3 people voting for a long while.

So 2 in 3 people believe that who represents them in the UK parliament is worth the time to make a vote.

But for European elections the turnout is half that — around 1 in 3 people voting.

That’s 2 in 3 people who have now stayed away.

It shows we do not believe Europe matters. We do not believe we have power in Europe. We do not want that power.

We have shown that we believe ourselves to be a colony — by which things in Europe are done to us.

But this is a path we have chosen ourselves. We have chosen to abdicate decision making to the European “technocracy”. A word that simply means we can’t be bothered to take the time to engage in the conversation.

And our only political response we can formulate, is to leave entirely.

Instead of engaging in European questions like privacy, anti-trust, integration of migrants and so on. We have simply ducked the discourse, sticking only to our binary “in or out” debate.

You can see this viewpoint reflected in the make up of MEPs appearing on Question Time in recent years. They haven’t been invited on to discuss a European response to shared issues, no they’ve been invited to discuss whether Britain should be “in or out”:

However, simply asking to leave doesn’t stop the European political machine from continuing to drive the agenda.

Closing your ears to an important conversation doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.

The tragedy of Brexit is that we now risk replacing our enfranchised status in the Europe— “our seat at the table” — with one of disenfranchisement.

Now with Brexit almost upon us, we plan to become an actual colony, receiving and obeying rules in which we have no control, rather than just thinking like one.

Being outside of Europe doesn’t stop us having to obey European laws.

For example, GDPR doesn’t stop being a law we have to comply with whether or not we are in Europe or not. If we want to do business with Europeans then GDPR must be complied with.

The greatest tragedy of Brexit will be losing UK representation in Brussels.

Laws will be made in future to which we must comply but have had no say in.

And now, by leaving, we have become what we always thought we were (but actually weren’t) and become a colony of Europe.

Maybe our colonial status has crept up on us and the earthquake is long overdue, but never let it be said that it wasn’t of our own making.

The phrase “use it or lose it” has never rung truer.

The irony of Brexit is that we are about to exchange a status of partner and a belief of colony with a status of colony and a belief of partner.