UK: From Margaret Thatcher to BREXIT

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by Laura Lai/ Essay

To have or not to have a deal on March 12^th, 2019 in the UK House of Commons? This is the question! To have an extension of the Article 50 or not to have an extension of the Article 50? This is another question. How long should the extension be? This is a secondary question, but not lacked of importance, because in the ‘extended’ time period, the pro-EU activists can push for a second referendum. And a referendum after referendum until one gets the results which suits him best is not only undemocratic, but the country itself cannot stand anymore as an example of liberal-democracy to be studied by political science students in political transition countries.

To leave on WTO terms is more a suggestion than a question in this context, which changed since Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013) was UK Prime Minister (1979-1990). Although the UK had initially declined the invitation to join the European Coal and Steal Community (1951), which became the European Economic Communities (1957), it became interested in joining in the 1960s. Its strongest motivation was trade. After constant opposition from France, the UK succeeded in becoming its European membership in January 1973. Nowadays, 46 years later, the UK is trying to leave the EU (the former European Economic Communities). One of its strongest motivations is freedom to trade with the US, the Commonwealth and with the world.

Margaret Thatcher had constantly argued that working together does not necessarily needs to imply a concentration of power in the hands of ‘some bureaucrats in Brussels’ willing to create a super-state to exert ‘dominance’ (For a complete definition of the word ‘dominance’ and its synonyms, please click here.). Her opinion was that Europe is stronger if ‘France is France’ and ‘Britain is Britain’, etc. Despite her opposition to the creation of a European Parliament above the national parliaments, of a European Commission as a European Government and of the European Council as a European Senate, these institutions have been created, have been functioning and have been paid from the UK tax payers’ money, too.

            And if she were still among us nowadays, she would learn that another institution has been created: The European Prosecutor’s Office (April, 2017), with the power to investigate fraud with the EU money, which means fraud with all the European tax payers’ money. No, this prerogative was not added to the already existing European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), but the creation of a new super-state institution was preferred.

            The creation of the European Prosecutor’s Office is a public acknowledgment of the fraud with the European tax payers’ money. The question is: Who is manipulating huge amounts of European money? A jobless drama student? A rough sleeper? An old lady selling flowers at the corner of the street?

Sooner or later, when the UK will leave the European Union, it will be the first of all Member States to have exerted its democratic right to make its own financial policy decisions and to run its own external and trade policy. It will remembered as the only EU former Member State to have brought a substantial contribution to the reform of the European Union: The Common Agricultural Policy. However, on its way out from the Union, the UK stumbles on the so-called ‘backstop’.

            This concept, which entered in the political vocabulary from baseball, refers to the only land border that the UK will have with the EU after BREXIT: the border between Ireland (a EU Member State) and Northern Ireland (UK). Both the UK and the EU want to avoid a return to the hard border between the two, meaning a physical checks of traded goods, which would also imply time and, consequently, border lines, delivery delays, etc.

         A recent Irish proposal can make the UK the first country with an e-Border. According to this proposal, all companies and drivers transporting goods between Ireland and Northern Ireland must first register in a database of ‘trusted traders’, after having previously passed all standard quality requirements. All goods’ checks are done at the companies’ premises or by so called ‘mobile inspection units’. At the border, the lorries are surveilled by CCTV cameras or Automatic Number Plate Recognition. The driver is identified through mobile phone identification system or the Radio Frequency Identification. The driver gets its permission to pass on its mobile phone. And the import country gets a notification on this issue.

That would be the e-Border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. But the flowers at the border will be real. No question about it!