In a week when the economy showed signs of faltering, the government lost several key votes in the House of Lords, the fallout out around ‘Windrush’ continued and the local government election campaign entered its final full week, Brexit continued to dominate the political agenda.
One prediction David Cameron made at the referendum that turned out to be correct is that if we chose to leave the European Union, the legislation needed to achieve Brexit would bog down Parliament and Whitehall to the exclusion of more or less everything else, and such is proving to be the case.
Theresa May fights hard to put other issues on the nation’s political agenda but it is an uphill struggle. Brexit is consuming not only time, but patience, goodwill and energy at Westminster. Maybe it needs to be this way. Leaving the European Union is a momentous thing to do, unravelling forty-three years of patient relationship building and partnership. The vote to leave was the start, not the end of a whole re-orientation of national thinking as well as direction.
The referendum vote was clear and the policy of the government is set to deliver Britain’s departure from the EU, and with all the polling continuing to show there is no Brexit remorse or regret, it is wearying to watch the acrimony and ill will that continues to dominate the withdrawal process.
The public may have instructed our politicians to alter our national course but the process is doing nothing to enhance Westminster’s reputation with its ultimate masters. If Brexit is a political fact, then the urgent need to raise the sights of the national debate is a natural follow-on. The domination of the detail of withdrawal is understandable but it is not sufficient to deliver the new national direction demanded by the decision.
The opportunities afforded by Brexit are in danger of being drowned by the important but enervating focus on immigration, the Customs Union, and other arrangements. Nor can the primary focus simply rest on business and trade, important as they are.
Britain’s membership of, and now departure, from the European Union are as much about political, philosophical, cultural and diplomatic issues as they are about trade. We have made the decision not just to leave a single market, pioneered by Margaret Thatcher, we are also leaving a grouping of co-operating nations. Imperfect and unsatisfactory as it undoubtedly is the European Union does foster a peaceful common forum for twenty-seven different nations to come together to discuss their interests and concerns.
Our future in a post-Brexit world needs us to be able to articulate a clear and powerful vision for Britain’s place in that world: who are partners will be; where we will enhance existing and build new relationships; how and where we will share our values and views; and above all how we will continue to play a significant role in world affairs. In her Florence speech, the Prime Minister made a very good start at doing this. Having lost an Empire and voluntarily withdrawn from one of the World’s biggest diplomatic organisations, we now must challenge ourselves, and our political leaders, to continue to raise the national vision and set out a new, compelling future for Britain.