I'll be straightforward on this: I voted remain in the EU referendum. Not because I greatly love the EU - there's no question that it has many flaws that are widely discussed elsewhere - but because it represents a massive step into the unknown, not to mention that, as a British citizen living in France, it has the potential to make life rather more interesting on a personal level than I'd prefer.
That being said, a referendum was had, and the vote came out in favour of leaving the EU (I hate the word 'Brexit' by the way: Possibly the ugliest portmanteau I've ever come across). This means that it is right and proper that the government pursues this direction with conviction and mindful of the future best interests of the UK in this context.
As time has passed since the referendum, there has been a growing clamour from erstwhile Remain campaigners for the so-called 'soft Brexit' option. As this has continued, I am becoming increasingly disturbed by the potential ramifications of going down this path.
Soft Brexit is essentially a proposal to leave the EU as a political entity, but remain members of the single market, on the argument that it will keep our largest market open to us under the current terms. I believe that if the government was to pursue this path then we could easily finish up with a situation far worse than either continuing as we were or pursuing a real Brexit i.e. complete severing of agreements and moving forward under WTO terms.
Why do I think this? For several reasons. Firstly, this approach would inevitably mean that any possibility of the UK pursuing new bilateral trade agreements on its own will be straight out of the window. Immediately, you've destroyed the one most significant potential advantage that Britain can gain from this process. On the other hand, you can argue that we'll still have access to our largest market, while pursuing trade with other nations as we do now, or under the terms of any further FTAs that the EU miraculously manages to agree without at least one member of the EU vetoing the agreement.
However, I think this argument misses a very important point: By pursuing the soft Brexit, we will no longer have a say in future legislation regarding the single market. It wasn't so long ago that the so-called 'Tobin tax' was on the cards - a tax on all currency exchanges. At the time it was proposed within the EU, it was widely considered to be a massive threat to the London financial services industry and could ultimately result in chunks of it moving to the continent. This proposal has not gone away. Angela Merkel was, and remains, a staunch advocate of the idea and without the UK in the ring to influence decision-making, the UK financial services industry could find itself still with the privilege of EU financial services passport rights, but nevertheless with a significant chunk of its activity moving to the continent. I've no doubt that there are a myriad other possibilities where the UK's trading competitiveness within the EU could be steadily eroded in a situation where the UK is impotent to influence the legislation to which it is subject.
Further to this, commencing article 50 negotiations with the EU from a known starting point that the nation is desperate to cling onto access to the single market is a terrible starting point when considering other areas of negotiation, such as free movement, which was undoubtedly something that strongly influenced voters towards a leave vote in the referendum. Starting from this position would be akin to going to a used car dealer on your hands and knees begging him to sell a car to you: You can guarantee you're not going to get a great deal.
We seem to be inundated with reports describing the mess the UK is in following the referendum, yet nothing truly disastrous has actually happened. The pound has had a sharp fall in value, yet Mervyn King has pointed out that this is something the Bank of England has actually wanted for some time and been unable to achieve, along with higher interest rates and lower property prices.
It is very early days, and no doubt the uncertainty surrounding the situation will cause damage, but one way or the other some form of certainty is going to come about. It's important that immediate concerns don't distract from ensuring that the UK's long-term position a non-member of the EU isn't the best it can possibly be. And if, as the two-year mark from the article 50 submission approaches, Britain's post-Brexit future doesn't look like a viable one from the point of view of the British public, then there's still the option of calling another referendum and withdrawing the article 50 notification, but not before the avenue has been explored seriously and with conviction. That much, at the very least, is owed to the people that voted for it.
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