On Nov. 21, 2013, the government of Ukraine, led by then Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, announced that the long awaited Association and Deep Free Trade Agreements between Ukraine and the European Union would not be signed. It was the catalyst that lead a restless nation into a revolution that would last for 93 days. Next week sees the anniversary of the bloodiest days of that revolution, when protesters were mowed down with bullets fired at them by then President Viktor Yanukovych’s security forces.
Ukraine’s attempts to get to this improved state of relations with the EU had a long history. A political dialogue aimed at deepening ties between Ukraine and their wealthy neighbors started, formally, with the signing of a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement way back in 1994. Under then President Kuchma, talks on an Association Agreement started in 2002, and Kuchma stated (hopelessly optimistically, of course) that Ukraine would be ready to sign the Association Agreement by 2003/4. He also said, even more hopelessly optimistically, that Ukraine would meet all requirements for EU membership by 2007/11.
Notably, all of these discussions were held transparently, and no objection was raised at any time by Russia. It was, in the words of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukraine’s business. Also notably, the then EU Enlargement Commissioner, Gunter Verhuegen, was less than enthused, stating that EU prospects for Ukraine did not necessarily imply membership in the next 10 to 20 years.
So let the canard of the EU sneakily pulling Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit die, now. Also of note, last week a constitutional majority of Ukraine’s members of parliament voted to make future EU (and NATO, BTW) membership a formal and unbreakable part of Ukraine’s foreign policy objectives.
Now to June 23, 2016, when by the smallest of margins and with now-proven law breaking and an astonishing disregard for fact or logic, the United Kingdom voted to terminate its membership of this same institution that Ukraine had been trying to crack into for decades.
From our perspective, that decision is lunacy, 100 lives were lost in Ukraine because those who died in the winter of 2013/4 participated in a movement that had, initially, been called EuroMaidan. Also, from the perspective of any actual experts on what may be the outcome of the UK’s decision to leave the EU, what that small majority of UK voters had green-lighted would turn out to be a monumental act of self-harm.
The warnings were dismissed. The experts themselves were dismissed. Any rational voice attempting to alert voters to what would be the ramifications of a vote to leave was dismissed as Project Fear. The voters were told a myriad of variants of what a successful Brexit would look like, so much so that it is fair to say that no two Brexit voters thought they were getting the same deal. No two Brexit campaigners said the same thing.
The two main “separate” Leave campaigns (actually, they colluded, which is part of law breaking that achieved the result, alongside overspending) said different things. Leave.EU said that there would be a 350 million pound weekly financial windfall for the much beloved but underfunded NHS, the day after the Leave victory one of Brexit’s leading campaigners, the serially-absent-from-his-day-job MEP Nigel Farage admitted that the other campaign probably shouldn’t have said that because it wasn’t going to come to pass.
Two-and-a-half years after the UK’s vote to leave the EU, we now know the cold hard facts about what Brexit looks like, and what it is going to mean to the country. So, for the record, here are a few of those cold hard facts.
If you believed the promises of sunlit uplands and a globally resurgent UK striking brilliant trade deals all over the world, forget it. It’s not going to happen. Let’s look at this question with just a modicum of logic. Is the UK, on its own, going to get a better trade deal, with anybody, than the trade deals that have been and can be negotiated by the much larger and stronger combined negotiating position of the European Union? Nope. Not for a second. Anybody who suggested that this would happen was speaking from a position of either absurdity, or ignorance, or both.
What Prime Minister Theresa May has accomplished, alongside humiliating herself, is a framework showing, roughly, what it means to now be considered by the EU to be a third country. And it does not look better than being a member of the EU, for certain, 100 percent.
What Labour Party “leader” Jeremy Corbyn has played at is pretending that he wants the UK to remain in the EU, pretending to campaign for the Remain side. But Corbyn, never in fact a fan of the EU, has simply been playing political games behind the scenes, no doubt egged on by his deeply flawed Director of Communications and Strategy, the egotistical Seumas Milne.
The Labour Party actually has a Shadow Brexit Secretary, who was in recent days involved in the drafting of an important letter to May. When it arrived at the desks of Corbyn and Milne that letter closed with the words that, unless Corbyn’s (also terrible, for the country) Brexit terms were not agreed to, then the party’s official position would be to back a people’s vote (as a new referendum is being called).
But by the time that letter had been fired off to 10 Downing Street, that wording had disappeared.
Corbyn wants you to believe that it was “forgotten” about. This cannot be true. It is another lie, and an insult to intelligence as well.
Why are Corbyn’s terms terrible, for the country? Well, on the upside he is demanding that the UK remain part of the Customs Union, which is a good thing. The Customs Union is a key piece of the architecture of the EU, allowing member nations and others to freely and seamlessly move goods around, an inherently sensible relationship to have with your neighbors who you do (because, logically, they’re right next to you) a lot of trade with.
However, by remaining in the Customs Union but not being a member of the EU, the UK would be in a position of having to accept to abide by the rules and laws of the EU while having no ability whatsoever to opine on or shape how those laws are made. While continued membership of the Customs Union does help avoid the very real possibility of borders in Northern Ireland reigniting troubles there, it’s not smart to remain in a union where you will have no say when you currently actually do have a say.
The UK would go from rule maker, to rule taker. And, rounding out the deserved criticism of Corbyn, his only goal in all of this is to manipulate the situation in any possible way so that he can become the occupant of 10 Downing Street on the back of May’s disastrous handling of, well, basically everything.
We here in Ukraine, millions of us, fought hard to earn our place (back) in the European family of nations, my advice to those in the UK who now seem to be sleepwalking into a disastrous “No Deal” car crash, is to fight harder to keep the place you have got.
A few more home truths for you, dear Britain.
1) You actually don’t have to do this. Article 50 can be unilaterally revoked at any time.
2) There is no Brexit that delivers any advantage to the UK when compared to the advantages staying in the EU brings.
3) You were lied to about the 350 million pounds a week. You were lied to about lots of things actually.
4) The conmen who sold Leave did so without a plan on how to deliver the snake oil they sold. Why? Because there never was a plan. How do we know this? Because they have still not delivered it and have had two-and-a-half years to attempt to do so.
5) Yes, you are going to need a second referendum to sort it out.
6) No, a second referendum is not undemocratic at all, never in history has asking people to make an informed decision been undemocratic.
7) The UK was never at risk from, or put under pressure by, migrants coming from the EU. The people who sold that lie veiled their bigotry very, very thinly. The UK economy, and especially the NHS, has greatly benefited from the contributions made by EU citizens residing in the UK.
8) No, voters did not, in June of 2016, know what they were voting for. Nobody voted for this mess.
9) If you go ahead with this, it is no longer “the will of the people” as every single credible poll in the UK says that the majority (now better informed) simply do not want Brexit.
In the face of these facts, going through with Brexit is the most obvious exercise of national folly in history.
What price a little humility? A sober statement of, “look, we messed up, sorry, we’re calling this thing off,” is all that is needed, and this whole sorry affair can be closed. This humility would actually cost nothing and at the same time be priceless.
The name of Ukraine’s revolution evolved, from initially being called EuroMaidan to being more commonly known as the Revolution of Dignity. That’s what the UK needs right now, to restore dignity, and international standing, by admitting a mistake has been made, and not continuing with this madness.
