31/03/2018
A bank holiday is often deadly for blogging, and never more so when writing about Brexit. If it wasn't for the coincidence of the first anniversary of the Article 50 notification â with just one more year to go before we leave - the politico-media nexus would have virtually nothing to say about the issue.
Yet, even without bank holidays, this is going to become more of a problem for them as time goes on. Mrs May has virtually given away everything she can, and we're now into the slow decline to October when negotiations will be wound up and the process of "ratification" will start.
Gradually, it will dawn people that Brexit day will be a non-event and, following the frenetic celebrations on the day, it will be business as usual for the next 21 months while we work out our extended notice period.
As for what follows, there is only so much one can talk and write about possible outcomes. In generic terms, when it comes to our trading relationship with the EU, we either opt for a multilateral arrangement (Efta/EEA), bilateral agreement(s) (Switzerland or CETA, or any variation thereof), or we settle for "no deal", the so-called WTO option.
There is then the pretend option, where we negotiate a series of micro-deals, which might include aviation and MRAs on conformity assessment, bundled together (possibly) with agreements on tariffs, all of which fall short of a comprehensive free trade agreement. Whatever you wish to call that, it will actually be a weak bilateral arrangement.
When it comes to the rest of the world, we're getting so many conflicting (and incoherent) statements â not least from Liam Fox â that it's anybody's guess what will happen. We might see agreements made on the hoof so to speak, with an extended period of chaos as exporters (and importers) try to deal with a confused situation that nobody actually understands.
That actually strikes me as the most probable template. We won't plan Brexit, any more than the Second World War was planned, start to finish. We have a group of politicians and administrators who don't have the capability or the understanding to look ahead and devise the necessary responses. Instead, they will react to events, taking the paths of least resistance, dealing with crises as the emerge.
When you think about it, this is the way government generally works. We don't have Stalin-style Five Year Plans, or grand strategic visions. Intellectually, governments are on autopilot. They simply manage events as they arise. And if that is when they do generally, it seems unrealistic to expect that they will handle Brexit in any other way.
On that basis, Mrs May and her lacklustre group of close advisors probably have no more idea of what they will be doing a year hence than we do â no more than they knew a year ago what they would be doing now. Government is all about expediency.
The thing about this is that this "vision-free" idea of government is probably a function of our membership of the European Union (in the first instance) and an effect of globalisation.
Gone are the days when, for instance, we could define ourselves as a nation of Crusaders, launching distant expeditions to save the Holy Land from the barbarians. Nor can we present ourselves as the chosen few, bringing civilisation and benign government to an Empire on which the sun never sets.
It is said of the days when we were considering joining the EEC, that our ruling classes â after the debacle of Suez â had lost faith in themselves and, in the words of Dean Acheson, had lost an Empire and not yet found a role. For many, such as Ted Heath, joining "Europe" gave us a new role, even if an unwilling population was not entirely convinced.
But now we are on our way out, the vacuum returns. We've lost the Empire and we're no longer part of that great adventure of building Europe. We are a nation without a higher purpose â once again a nation without a role.
This may suit the likes of the Danes, the Dutch and the Swedes, whose idea of existence seems to be to get rich and have comfortable lives. But we're British, damn it! God's chosen people. There must be something more to life than peace, prosperity and creature comforts.
Short of going to war, however â which is hardly a good idea given the parlous state of our armed forces â there is very little which one can turn to as an obvious substitute for the greater vision of building Europe or bringing civilisation to dark-skinned savages. A "global Britain" doesn't quite cut it, if all that means is lining up a series of trade deals to replace what we've just lost.
Nor indeed is the prospect of selling more Range Rovers to the Americans, thus to boost the already considerable fortune of the Tata dynasty, particularly alluring. And the chances of taking the rest of the world by storm, with a wave of innovative products and services, seems something of a pipe dream.
On the other hand, one could always internalise the nation's ambitions. Instead of spreading our advanced civilisation to the rest of the world, we could concentrate on turning our National Health Service into the best health service in the world instead of the parody of the service that it now is. We could even develop the most efficient border force in human history, making sure that not a single unwanted immigrant so much as gets a lung-full of British air.
Somehow, though, this doesn't seem adequate compensation for the loss of something as noble as keeping the Germans from invading France and preventing them slaughtering the denizens â or
vice versa. If we are dumping this vision, then many might argue that we need something of similar stature to replace it.
The trouble is that we are no closer to defining what that might be than when Dean Acheson made his observation. Dumping "Europe" does not automatically turn the world into our oyster or provide and clues as to our next move.
For all the millions of words that will be written over the next year, therefore, none can be expended better than on a search for a national roles. It is this, possibly above all else, which will make leaving the EU worthwhile.
For my part, I remain convinced that expansion of international trade is potentially the most powerful force for peace, stability and prosperity that the world can deliver, but on a multilateral basis rather than the deal end of proliferating bilateral free trade agreements.
It might be enough, in my view, for the UK to cultivate a position not so much as a leader of a new renaissance of global trade, but a catalyst which revitalises the global, multilateral trade system, centred on but not confined to the WTO.
For this to happen, though, it is essential that we secure our home base. The UK with its domestic economy in tatters its going to be no use to anyone â simply, a sad "lion" of the cartoon, with a tail that anyone can twist. And that means coming to a stable settlement with the European Union before we start considering any more ambitious adventures.
But it also means that the nature of the debate has to change. Not for nothing have we argued that Brexit is not the end of a process but the start â an enabler rather than an objective.
If we start thinking in terms of what we achieve with our new status of an independent nation, then the tenor of the debate shifts from one of discussing damage limitation to a discussion of our future role and the best way of achieving it.
Thus, if Brexit reopens the question which our post-Suez politicians failed to answer â other than to take us into a "Europe" which we have now rejected â then it also affords us another opportunity to find an answer.
It might have been better if we have known that answer before we embarked on the task we have before us, but there is no point in indulging in recriminations. We are where we are. The Empire of Dean Acheson is long dead and, now that dreams of "Europe" have been binned, we need urgently to find a role.
