Good arguments against Brexit

It is useful in honest debate to not only observe the principle of charity, but to seek out the best of one’s opponents’ arguments.

One of the best arguments I have heard against Brexit is that Westminster is no bastion of freedom and the EU keeps its worst excesses in check.

The Home Office is no friend to freedom. Immigration restrictions abound: I hear of papers presented at conferences with their lead authors absent because of problems obtaining visas; I have met Indian computer programmers who have to pay a health surcharge to come and work here; others are messed around to the point that it is no longer worth it. There is no shortage of enthusiasm for homegrown meddling, be it a new Office for Tackling Injustices or sin taxes or filtering the Internet.

The inhabitants of Westminster are not exactly opposing bad ideas from the EU, either. GDPR and the copyright directive were met with support.

The EU does at least have a somewhat liberal outlook. The freedom to work in and trade with a large number of neighbouring countries is a huge benefit. The way that the referendum campaign for leave was run certainly attempted to appeal to those who might favour restrictions in the movement of people and goods. Left to their own devices, civil servants and politicians in Westminster might find more opportunity for meddling and restricting. There is no reason to believe that things will automatically get better.

I disagree with that assessment because I am an optimist.

Things will not get better inside the EU. The EU is almost impossible to change. A grass-roots campaign to oppose some new regulation has almost no chance of succeeding. First of all people would need to become aware of the incoming regulation in plenty of time, not when it is already a fait accompli as tends to happen. And then any campaigning would have to happen across multiple languages and cultures with different attitudes requiring different marketing strategies. It does not work. Instead the EU is a mysterious black box periodically emanating unpredictable decrees.

So we have to get out. And then the real work will begin. But at least Westminster is tangible. We do get to hear about bad ideas before they happen. There is a sense that writing to one’s MP has some small effect. Grass roots campaigns do change things. Outside the EU there is hope. Inside the EU the state is guaranteed to get bigger and more intrusive.

Updated: 12th July 2019 — 2:59 pm

13 Comments

  1. I find that hard to disagree with, Prof

  2. Broken record time — as an interested outsider, the amazing thing about the Brexit Saga has been the almost total lack of discussion about what happens the day after separation from the EU.

    Prof Paz says: “So we have to get out. And then the real work will begin.” Exactly! Given the absence of any serious attempts in the last 3 years by Brexiteers to build consensus on what that “real work” involves, there have to be some concerns about what will emerge post-Brexit.

    All power to Perry de H for starting this new site. Maybe there will finally be some serious discussion on uniting the highly divided people of the UK around some of the key changes required if Brexit is to live up to the hopes of the enthusiasts.

    (PS — For those of us who are crummy typists, an edit function similar to that on Samizdata would be beneficial!)

  3. “One of the best arguments I have heard against Brexit is that Westminster is no bastion of freedom and the EU keeps its worst excesses in check.”

    Even if that is true at the present time, and I’m not expressing an opinion either way, the Westminster government is at least an elected one. The real power within the EU is not elected and, if it were to turn very nasty some time in the future, cannot be unelected.

  4. “One of the best arguments I have heard against Brexit is that Westminster is no bastion of freedom and the EU keeps its worst excesses in check.”

    Good lord.

    “We have nasty tyrants ruling us, so let’s put another layer of tyrants – tyrants who, right now, sort of like us – above them.”

    Makes perfect sense to me. I see no downside.

    Unless, of course, you manage to displease that new top tyrant, or the two tyrants become friends, and then you have two nasty tyrants ruling you, and taxing you.

    It’s easier to fix one nasty tyrant than it is to fix two.

  5. bobby b: <I<"It’s easier to fix one nasty tyrant than it is to fix two."

    We are both disinterested (not uninterested) observers of the UK scene. Surely the point is — the people of the UK had singularly failed to deal with their one nasty tyrant before.

    The UK Political Class dragged the people of the UK into ‘ever closer union’ without consulting them. That obvious contempt by the UK Political Class for its peons is why Prof Paz is exactly right that separation from the EU is merely the start.

    We know that the people of the UK were seriously divided about the issue of leaving the EU, and there is nothing to indicate substantial agreement now among the UK people about what direction to take after separation. It is long past time for consensus-building to begin about how to deal with the remaining “nasty tyrant” in Westminster after Brexit. And those who supported leaving the EU should be leading that charge.

  6. “Surely the point is — the people of the UK had singularly failed to deal with their one nasty tyrant before.”

    I can’t entirely discount the people who kept Ms. Thatcher as their PM for eleven years. Unless, of course, that people has been replaced over the last thirty years.

    “And those who supported leaving the EU should be leading that charge.”

    Ideally, yes. But Brexit isn’t assured, and people still need to be putting all of their efforts towards attaining it. It would be great if there was time to plan out the post-Brexit period, but it would surely be a shame if that effort ended up diluting their efforts towards Brexit itself.

  7. Request for edit feature noted, Gavin.

    “Maybe there will finally be some serious discussion” — I hope so 🙂

  8. bobby b: “Unless, of course, that people has been replaced over the last thirty years.”

    Of course there have been significant demographic changes over that period of approximately half a human life-span. Just think of the changes there have been in the US over the same time period — and too often not changes for the better.

    From an outsider’s perspective, one might wonder if related demographic issues are part of the explanation for Brexiteers generally having avoided discussion of post-Brexit UK. It is well known that those who voted Leave tended to be older, and probably more traditional. If Brexiteers started talking about needed changes post-Brexit — say, replacing the House of Lords with a real second chamber — they would risk peeling off a part of their traditionally-minded support.

    Staying quiet about the ‘Day after Brexit’ may be a smart short-term move politically for Brexiteers — but there will probably be a price to be paid for the consequent lack of preparation.

  9. Julie near Chicago

    bobby, above:

    “Brexit isn’t assured, and people still need to be putting all of their efforts towards attaining it. It would be great if there was time to plan out the post-Brexit period, but it would surely be a shame if that effort ended up diluting their efforts towards Brexit itself.

    Also, plans for The Day After tend to have proven to be rather short-sighted. Was there even a plan for how the Colonies would align or ally themselves in the bitterly unlikely event that the War of Independence would be won by the Colonies?

    OTOH, I do think that promoting the possibilities of improved British Government for British citizens is an important facet of fighting the War for Independence from the EU; I’m not so sure that any detailed plans should be sold, at least not as part of the marketing campaign. Even so, remarks along the lines of “we might be able at least to do X” or “perhaps we can put together something along lines of Y” … “to help us achieve Z” would seem to me likely to be helpful. People tend not to want to step off a precipice unless they’re fairly sure of ending up safely on a secure landing spot.

    .

    Anyway, I can’t help cheering for you Brits in your Campaign for Independence. Go Brits!

    . . .

    I hope the html tags work on this here new site. And how about the neat common tags and smilies that are selectable as part of the works on Samizdata?

  10. Surely if our politicians were in any way competent, they would have spent the last few years setting up our trade arrangements in time for us to leave. They should have drawn up contingency plans as soon as the referendum was announced and been fully ready to go live on the day after we leave. If any of the rest of us were so utterly useless at our jobs we would have been shown the door.

  11. None of this is an argument against independence.

    The European Union does not discourage Parliament from doing bad things – it encourages Parliament to do bad things, and adds bad things of its own on top.

    An argument against independence would have to show that Parliament wanted to do various bad things – but was prevented by the European Union from doing so.

  12. The above being said – I still regard the hushed tones with which the word “Parliament” is used, to be deeply concerning.

    When an American uses the word “Congress” it is normally with a tone of contempt – and that is the correct attitude to have towards “legislative bodies”.

    As Mark Twain out it – “no man’s life, liberty, or property is safe – when the legislature is in secession”.

    In Texas (a place with a population of tens of millions) the legislature only sits a few days a year – why give it time to think up crazy ideas and turn them into laws.

    Although laws made by Civil Servants and “Social Reforming” judges are even worse than laws made by legislative bodies.

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