A decade on from the UK Brexit vote, the UK has learned that referendums are tricky beasts, especially when they deal with very complicated issues.
In Ireland, the first referendum on both the Nice and Lisbon treaties were both lost on narrow margins and low voter turnouts. In each case, it took a second attempt, and further debate, to achieve increased turnout and assuage voter concerns sufficiently, to pass both measures.
Although political parties debated and explained the different angles on these treaties first time round, people needed time to listen to the discussion and form a final view. In both cases Ireland had the time and understanding of its EU partners that allowed this complicated process to play out.
In the case of the Brexit referendum, it is now clear that most of the UK electorate are suffering from buyers’ remorse and would, if there were a second referendum, vote to reverse the earlier unwise choice. The hollowness of the Brexit promise is now a lived reality, not the myth dubbed “Project Fear”.
The referendum on Brexit was an example of how not to undertake such a process. Before the referendum was called, there was no proper preparatory work undertaken or published to tease out what voting to leave would mean. Ironically, in Ireland, the government had commissioned work on this issue the year before the UK referendum was called. Studies on the economic implications for Ireland of Brexit were published by the ESRI in late 2015.
Before the Brexit referendum, officially, the UK’s areas of contention with its EU partners had centred on the EU budget and foreign policy. The UK government rarely opposed legislation on the internal market, legal affairs, transport, environment or fisheries. Their pro-competition stance is missed today within the EU.
The problem with the Brexit decision is that buyers’ remorse does not have an easy remedy. It is not as simple as running another referendum.
First of all, it is clearly extremely difficult for even the current pro-EU UK government to psych itself up to formally raise the issue.
Secondly, and far more important, is the fact that re-entry would be far from easy. It wouldn’t just be a case of reversing the exit agreement. A whole new agreement on accession to the EU would have to be negotiated. EU members won’t want to make it easy for any other country to try to hop in and out.
The attention of many EU governments is also on other issues. Germany is focused on how membership can be expanded to the east to stabilise the EU’s eastern border, while still maintaining the effectiveness of EU decision making. There is not the bandwidth to even consider UK re-entry, much less negotiate new membership right now.
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For Ireland, a UK return to the fold would be very beneficial, not just because of the economic effects but also because it would stabilise the situation in Northern Ireland. With the UK outside the EU, there is always the possibility of a future Reform-led UK government abrogating the delicate agreements reached between the EU and the UK to prevent a hard land border on this island.
Given that Brexit will be a fact of life for years to come, the best that Ireland can hope for, and work to, is a closer alignment between the UK and the EU. We would welcome an alignment of the UK on food standards, which would further reduce the need for checks on goods coming to Northern Ireland from Britain destined for supermarket shelves.
With the changed security situation in Europe, there is a strong desire among other EU members for greater co-ordination with the UK on defence. As a result, there is also probably a greater willingness to agree co-operation in other areas, short of UK re-entry.
A substantial share of Ireland’s electricity, and most of our gas, comes from Britain. We would welcome UK alignment with the EU on carbon pricing, which would obviate the need for carbon “taxes” on this energy we import from Britain.
Ultimately, an important objective for the Irish Government is to encourage greater economic co-operation between the UK and the EU while, at the same time, protecting the interests of the wider EU membership and the European project.
Ironically, a side effect of Brexit has been to highlight for other EU members the benefits of being within the fold, and the huge costs of exit, with the loss of easy access to neighbouring markets. Even Hungary under Orban did not consider leaving – opting instead just for a policy of obstruction.