Why Brexit is madness

The reality of Brexit is sinking in fast. It’s madness.

For over two years, the UK government under Theresa May, has negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the EU, just so that we can try and negotiate another agreement with the EU later on, to give us as much as possible of what we’ve already got as an EU member, but on considerably inferior terms.

If we don’t get what we want (i.e. the EU benefits we desperately want back after we’ve left), the new Prime Minister designate favourite, Boris Johnson, has threatened that Britain will crash out of the EU at midnight on 31 October, without any agreement, plunging Britain into deep economic crisis.

Does it make any sense? No, it doesn’t. Brexit makes no sense.

The EU is the world’s largest free trade area. As a member, we receive huge benefits worth enormously more than the net annual membership fee of only £7.1 billion* a year.

As a member, we enjoy tariff-free, frictionless trade with our biggest trading partner by far, right on our doorstep, where almost half of all our exports go to and over half of all our imports come from. Nowhere else in the world comes close to that.

The UK government has been desperate to continue to enjoy similar membership benefits of frictionless trade with the EU after we’ve left, because it knows that our economy’s survival depends on it.

In Parliament last year, the outgoing Prime Minister, Theresa May said:

"We're committed to delivering on our commitment of no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, and ensuring we have as frictionless trade as possible with the European Union."

That’s everything we’ve already got as an EU member!

Theresa May also said that, as an ex-EU member, she expects Britain to continue to enjoy EU membership benefits:

• without being part of the EU Single Market or customs union;
• without agreeing to the rules of the EU and its market;
• without being subject to the European Court of Justice to oversee those rules;
• without paying anything to the EU for access.

Unfortunately, the leader of the Opposition, Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, has also made similar fantastical claims that Britain can continue to enjoy EU membership benefits as an ex-member.

It’s not going to happen. Everyone knows this; Jeremy Corbyn knows this, Boris Johnson knows this, and Theresa May knows this.

Before the referendum, Theresa May stated clearly and persuasively:

“It is not clear why other EU member states would give Britain a better deal than they themselves enjoy.”

Yet that’s exactly what Brexiters expect the EU to offer us, and if we don’t get it, then of course it will be the EU’s fault for being so difficult. That’s just nonsensical thinking.

What’s the point of a club if you are going to allow non-members to enjoy the same or better benefits as members? What club allows that?

So, here’s the bottom line:

- Britain needs frictionless trade with the EU. We need free movement of goods, services, capital and people for our country not just to survive, but to thrive.

- We need to continue with the status quo: the arrangement we have now, as a full and leading member of the European Union.

Has this sunk in yet? Brexit makes zero sense.

• We’re leaving all the benefits of the EU, only to desperately try and get back as many of those benefits as we can after we’ve left.
• And if we don’t get what we want, Boris Johnson – almost certainly to be announced as our new Prime Minister next Tuesday – has said he won’t pay the £40 billion our government already agreed we owe to the EU, whether we leave or not.

(Such a move would lead to Britain’s credit rating and international reputation being trashed, and no doubt involve years of embittered legal wrangling with our European neighbours about the non-payment of money that the British government previously agreed to pay.)

This is complete and utter madness. It will be much better to just keep the current arrangement – as a member of the European Union. It will be cheaper, and we will all be better off.

As an EU member:

1. We have a say and votes in the running, rules and future direction of our continent.
2. We have full and free access to the world’s largest free marketplace.
3. We enjoy the right to live, work, study or retire across a huge expanse of our continent.
4. We enjoy state healthcare and education when living and working in any other EU country.
5. We enjoy free or low-cost health care when visiting any EU nation.
6. We are protected by continent-wide rights that protect us at work, when shopping and travelling.
7. We benefit from laws that protect our environment (and have, for example, directly resulted in Britain’s beaches being cleaned up).
8. We enjoy excellent EU trade agreements with over 70 countries, with more on the way, on advantageous terms that Britain is unlikely ever to replicate.

So, we’re going to throw all that away? Really?

Just so we can get an inferior arrangement with the EU, in which we’d still have to agree to the rules of EU trade (over which we’d have no say) and we’d have considerably less access to our most vital international customers and suppliers, on our doorstep, in Europe?

And for throwing all that away, what are we going to gain? Surely something?

No. All the reasons given to leave in the referendum were based on lies and false promises. There are no good reasons to leave.

• MORE SOVEREIGNTY? Nonsense. We’ll get less. In the EU, we gain a share of sovereignty of our continent. Outside the EU, we’ll still live on a planet and have to obey thousands of international laws and treaties. We share sovereignty with NATO, for example. Is that a reason to leave it?
• FEWER MIGRANTS? Really? Just think about it. Most EU migrants in Britain are in gainful employment, doing jobs that we simply don’t have enough Britons to do. So if they all left, we’d have to replace them with about the same numbers of migrants as we have now to get all those jobs done. What’s the bloody point of that?
• MORE HOUSES, SCHOOLS AND HOSPITALS? Think again. Without EU migrants, we’ll have fewer builders, teachers, doctors and nurses. Migrants are not the cause of our problems. Blaming them just excuses successive UK governments for not investing sufficiently in our country.
• GET OUR COUNTRY BACK? We never lost it. If being in the EU means losing your country, why aren’t the 27 other EU member states planning to leave? (Really, none of them are: support for the EU is the highest it’s been in 35 years).
• OUR OWN LAWS? The vast majority of laws in the UK are our laws and passed by our Parliament in Westminster. But in the EU, we benefit from laws for our continent that no single country alone could ever achieve. Could our UK government have got mobile phone companies to scrap mobile roaming charges across the entire EU? Of course not. It took the might of 28 EU countries working together to achieve that, and so much more.
• OUR OWN TRADE AGREEMENTS? We already have excellent trade agreements with over 70 countries across the world, negotiated through our membership of the EU. After Brexit, all those agreements will have to be torn up. Then what? We’ll have to negotiate them all over again, which will take years, and with no certainty that we’d end up with trade agreements as good as the ones we enjoy now, let alone any better. And for what? Can anyone point to any clause in any existing EU trade agreement that they don’t like?
• FREE OF THE EU RUN BY UNELECTED BUREAUCRATS? Another lie. The EU is run and ruled by its members, the 28 countries of the EU, along with its democratically elected European Parliament. The European Commission is the servant of the EU, not its master, and the European Parliament has the power to choose, and dismiss, the entire Commission.

We are leaving for no good reason, not one.

We are paying around £40 billion (money the UK has agreed we owe to the EU) to settle our debts with the EU, and then to have an inferior deal, or no deal at all.

We will be poorer, and with less sovereignty, fewer rights and protections, restricted trade, and diminished power after we’ve left.

What's the point? There's no point. The country really has gone nuts.

▪ Commentary and graphic by Jon Danzig

▪ Please re-Tweet, and follow Reasons2Remain on Twitter: twitter.com/Reasons2Remain/status/1152276273823178753

* Calculation of UK's net average contribution to the EU by the UK Statistics Authority. 

* Calculation of UK exports and imports to and from the EU. 

▪ Reasons2Remain is a grassroots campaign for a democratic reversal of Brexit. We believe that Brexit will cause Britain huge harm, and that we were not given the full facts in the referendum of 2016.