So. Will Brexit be good or bad for us? That’s the question nobody knows the answer to, just as nobody can say whether it’ll rain on the Twelfth of July this year. But we can hazard a guess if we read the signs and come to a conclusion based on evidence and thought.
Nobody, to the best of my knowledge, has ever done a survey of what way our various politicians voted in the Brexit referendum. Parties have had an official position but I don’t remember anyone asking a particular politician if s/he voted for or against. We can only guess.
And my guess is that a number of unionist politicians, all of whom now say that they are behind Brexit, voted to Remain. And while it’s a secret which way Arlene Foster voted, I can only report that the first time she faced the cameras after the Brexit vote, as she turned to make her way to the microphones, Arlene Foster briefly looked like a woman on the way to the gallows. Immediately she reached the line of mikes, of course, she was sunny and expressing her deep satisfaction that Brexit had occurred. But I have a suspicion that, in common with some of her colleagues, Arlene didn’t want Brexit to happen and didn’t expect Brexit to happen.
Even if the EU hadn’t benefitted our NE Nest financially, there is a strong argument that says we need desperately to be exposed to people on the wider European stage, as a counter-balance to our tendency to be tediously parochial. There’s a whole big continent out there, and to think that our encounter with the wider world needs to stop with Manchester or Birmingham or London is to be living with the cultural far-sightedness of a Mr Magoo.
And the economic argument also speaks loudly. If you look at the roads in the south, once a subject for northern merriment, you see how the EU can change lives. And ask any farmer on either side of the border, if he’s within a donkey’s roar of being honest, he’ll tell you that the EU has been very, very good for his sector.
Yes, the EU needs democratising. The experience of the south since the financial crisis is testimony to that. The EU can help out small states but it thinks nothing of putting them through the financial ringer. That said, socially as well as economically the EU is a godsend to all of us. It provides a wider vision of the world. It reminds us that there are other big and powerful states besides Britain, that we have historic ties with France, Germany and so many other European nations. And that this contact with that wider world is of real benefit to us, in that we have a chance to literally broaden our horizons, and to the EU, in that Ireland has much to offer socially, culturally and yes, economically. Which means that finally, after centuries, we have a way of by-passing, should we so choose, our frequently arrogant and over-weening next door neighbour.
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