Brexit is messy, complicated and increasingly bad-tempered. The government seems clueless, parliament is rebellious, and the EU is being typically rigid and inflexible. There is much to bemoan. But perhaps there is a silver lining. We’re learning. A lot.
There’s a moment in the film Shrek when the eponymous hero is debating the nature of his species. “There’s a lot more to ogres than people think,” he tells Donkey. “Layers,” he adds. “Like onions, ogres have layers.”
And it’s the same with Brexit. Peel back the skin from any apparently simple Brexit-related issue, and layers of complexity emerge. Brexit, it transpires, is like an ogre. It has placed all of us in the UK on a steep learning curve. And learning not merely about the process of leaving the EU, but also, more broadly, about our country, our political system and ourselves.
Ironically, it has taken the process of delivering Brexit to clarify for many in the UK what EU membership means. Because of Brexit, we might come to understand the rights and obligations that spring from it.
We all know, for instance, that we pay quite a lot for that membership. Indeed, this is not something we are likely to forget in a hurry after the last couple of years. What was less well-known, perhaps, was the fact that the EU protects its own members. The fate of the whole withdrawal deal depends on a satisfactory resolution of the Irish border issue. The 27, despite their vastly differing perspectives on the issue, have remained united. Being a member of the EU, in other words, entitles one to protection from other member states. We ourselves have benefited from this in the past.
Consider the primacy of the City of London when it comes to the clearing of euro-denominated instruments – some €250bn worth of them daily. The European Central Bank (ECB) has never liked this situation. Indeed, why should it tolerate so much euro-denominated business being done outside of the eurozone? The simple answer is: because of EU law. In 2011 the ECB published a plan to bring an end to this. But this had to be dropped after the British government challenged this decision before the EU’s general court. The protection the European court of justice (ECJ) offers to the Brits is not a phrase we hear too often in this country, but it is something we may come to miss.
But our learning goes further than the EU itself. All those involved in the Brexit debate – including many MPs and peers – have been on a crash course on international trade of late, learning about issues as varied as customs unions, regulatory alignment, rules of origin and phytosanitary certification. Most of those who follow the debate have heard enough about customs unions to last a lifetime.
Meanwhile, Brexit has served to underline the limits of our knowledge. It would be fascinating to know what the public thought about the various trade choices that confront the country. But finding out is hard because it is very difficult to formulate a survey that both digs deeply enough into the issue and is comprehensible to the average voter.
Others have also had to learn very quickly. I’ve heard stories of chief executives having to do some rapid homework about the state of their warehouses and the arcane details of their supply chains – often prior to popping in to see David Davis to let him know what Brexit means for their firm. And Brexit continues to teach us about our own country.
Most people are now starting to realise that Northern Ireland enjoyed a unique position within the British state, and that unpicking this might have damaging consequences. EU membership provided a means of allowing for the smooth operation of a complex and highly differentiated devolution settlement. With many formally devolved powers essentially falling under the competence of the EU, the disruption to the internal market of the UK that would be provoked by their exercise in Cardiff, Belfast and Edinburgh was avoided.
And the constitutional lessons do not end here. The EU, in fact, provided a constitutional-type bulwark against the erosion of rights. Not only is EU legislation extremely hard to amend or repeal – requiring majorities in both the European parliament and the council of ministers – but the incorporation of the charter of fundamental rights into the Lisbon treaty provided a genuinely constitutional guarantee of certain rights such as the right to equality.
The relative inability of the British system to enshrine and guarantee rights has been clearly revealed since the Brexit talks began. Little surprise that the EU initially insisted on a continuing role for the ECJ in enforcing the rights of EU citizens here. Britain’s “elective dictatorship” effectively prevents the enshrining of such rights beyond the reach of a parliamentary majority.
So much for the system. We’ve also had our eyes opened about the nature of the country itself. Those living in overwhelmingly remain areas of the country have learned that there exist a significant number of people who do not agree with them on key issues (leavers, I suspect, already realised this). The Brexit tribes have noticed each other. We are a country divided and have only just noticed.
Divided, indeed, not merely by political outlook but also economic performance. Another outcome of the Brexit vote has been a renewed interest in economic inequality between both groups and places. Government departments and academic economists are learning at a rate of knots about the nature of our trading relationship with the EU, the supply chains affected by it, and the regions most exposed to its disruption.
What really matters about knowledge, of course, is how – indeed whether – it is put to use. There are already signs that our newly gained self-knowledge at least is changing the way we talk about things. The geographical divisions Brexit exposed are reflected in renewed debates not merely about the powers of the devolved authorities, but also about the need to give other regions greater autonomy. Fairness – whether geographical or intergenerational – is front and centre in political discourse.
None of which, of course, is to suggest anything will actually get done. Brexit might be teaching us things, but it’s also consuming political time and energy – not to mention public money – to a worrying extent. Let us just hope our new-found knowledge will not be squandered in the process. Brexit, after all, presents us with an opportunity to learn from our mistakes and to recognise the errors of our former ways. Failing to do so really would be tragic. Like when Shrek lost Fiona.
• Anand Menon is director of the UK in a Changing Europe and professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs, King’s College London
