As the Prime Minister signed the letter triggering Article 50 –the "divorce clause" in the EU treaties that provides the only legal route for the UK to withdraw from the EU— we reached the end of the beginning.
For nine months the UK and the EU have been in limbo. In the days and weeks following the June 2016 referendum, those who advocated leaving the EU were quick to claim that the much-heralded economic disasters threatened by George Osborne and David Cameron in “Project Fear” had not occurred.
Unhappy Remainers were equally swift in their rebuttals, as proponents of the two camps seemed determined to replay the arguments of their respective referendum campaigns – and in some cases the arguments of more than four decades.
Certainly, while the value of sterling might have dropped and inflation begun to rise, the economic indicators are far from the nightmare scenarios invoked during the referendum. But that scenario was based on the idea that Cameron would trigger Article 50 immediately upon a Leave vote; in practice, he left the field, and his successor delayed the fateful act.
These last nine months have thus been little more than a phoney war. The UK has barely begun to outline its negotiating objectives, while the other 27 member states made clear they would not engage in discussions before the UK formally indicated its intention to leave the Union. That day has now come.
The nature of the UK’s future relationship with the EU remains unclear, although the Prime Minister’s construal of the vote to leave the EU as a sign of popular support for curbing immigration has led to one clear red line: that the UK will not seek to remain in the single market.
This decision is perfectly rational and logical if one accepts the Prime Minister’s premise regarding the reasons 17 million people voted to leave, since free movement of people is a prerequisite of membership of the single market.
Yet, there is good cause to believe Mrs May is misguided in her interpretation: there were myriad reasons for the leave votes, whether to reclaim sovereignty or reduce payments to the EU, all neatly encapsulated in the beguiling phrase “take back control”.
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Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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