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This is not a blog which opines on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers to muse about our social endeavours.
So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

The Bucegi mountains - the range I see from the front balcony of my mountain house - are almost 120 kms from Bucharest and cannot normally be seen from the capital but some extraordinary weather conditions allowed this pic to be taken from the top of the Intercontinental Hotel in late Feb 2020

Friday, December 14, 2018

The Nine Lessons of Brexit

Anyone making an honest effort to explain what’s going on in the UK to a foreign audience faces a major dilemma - namely that we know either too much …. or too little…Let me explain…..
If you’re one of the few who really understands the ins and outs of the arguments and issues of Brexit over the past 3-4 years, you will effectively have become an “expert” and therefore (as Steven Pinker has so eloquently explained) unable to convey your message clearly to your audience – whether in writing or speech.
You will suffer from what is called “the curse of knowledge” - unable to put yourself in the shoes of the average person who has difficulty understanding jargon such as “single market”, “WTO rules”, “Red lines” or “the backstop”.
If, on the other hand, you know very little, then you shouldn’t be trying to explain things to other people!

Most British journalists fall between these 2 extremes – they know enough to be able to pretend they know more than they do. Don’t take my word for it – just read the website of Richard North, one of the original Brexiteers.
It was his site that alerted me to the speech earlier this week by one of the few real experts on Brexit – our erstwhile Ambassador to the EU from 2013-2017, Sir Ivan Rogers. Rogers had just been knighted when he wrote a memo, subsequently leaked, warning that a settlement with the EU could take as long as ten years to achieve….Such unpalatable advice was not acceptable to the government and he chose to resign when it got out….
Since then his speeches (and appearances before parliamentary Select Committees) have proved to be a thorn in the government’s side.

Earlier this year Ivor Rogers gave a lecture at Cambridge University entitled Brexit as Revolution which he has now capped with a lecture entitled Nine Lessons. It’s 22 pages long and my initial reactions were very positive – this, I felt, is that rare expert who can actually put himself in the shoes of the average citizen and help us understand…Unfortunately he couldn’t sustain this focus and….. about half way through…I fell by the wayside or – as we say - “he lost me”..
But I will persevere – and now try once more this technique of translating arguments into language I can understand – but this will take the rest of the day….So I will leave you for the moment with the 9 arguments as he expressed them……The Guardian nicely summarised the nine lessons here

Brexit’s Nine Lessons

1. Brexit means Brexit

2. Other people have sovereignty too. And they too may choose to “take back control” of things you would rather they didn’t.

3. Brexit is a process not an event. And the EU, while strategically myopic, is formidably good at process against negotiating opponents. We have to be equally so, or we will get hammered. Repeatedly.

4. it is not possible or democratic to argue that only one Brexit destination is true, legitimate and represents the revealed “Will of the People” and that all other potential destinations outside the EU are “Brexit in Name Only”.

5. If WTO terms or existing EU preferential deals are not good enough for the UK in major third country markets, they can’t be good enough for trade with our largest market.

6. the huge problem for the UK with either reversion to WTO terms or with a standard free trade deal with the EU is in services.

7. Beware all supposed deals bearing “pluses”.

8. you cannot, and should not want to, conduct such a huge negotiation as untransparently as the U.K. has. And in the end, it does you no good to try.

9. real honesty with the public is the best - the only – policy if we are to get to the other side of Brexit with a healthy democracy, a reasonably unified country and a healthy economy.


By the way, if you;re read this far you might well want to pose the question of where I lie in what might be called the "spectrum of ignorance". That's what they call a "leading question" to which I'm happy to answer that I am neither an expert nor totally ignorant.......which just goes to show...how tricky dilemmas are!

Other References
The Causes and Cures of Brexit (Compass 2018)

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