Sir Graham Watson, London The United Kingdom after Brexit Damage to the integrity of the UK

Damage to the integrity of the UK may be the greatest risk The United Kingdom after Brexit

by Sir Graham Watson, Managing Director, Global Policy Advocacy, Bagehot Ltd, London

Waking up on Monday 3 rd February, as business resumed after the UK left the EU on Friday 31 st January, I felt no different. My wife is Italian. My work is mainly in Brussels. Like other Brits who have the opportunity, we have rearranged our lives to cope with whatever challenges Brexit brings. We are aware, however, that for many UK citizens less fortunate than we are, particularly the educated young, there is a tangible sense of loss.

Might the UK tire of Boris and Brexit? It is hard to find a historical parallel for Brexit. Probably the closest one comes is 1649, when England chose to decapitate King Charles l and become a republic. There followed eleven years of bloody autocratic rule under the self styled ‘Lord Protector’ Oliver Cromwell before the people tired of him and restored the monarchy. Will the UK tire of Boris and Brexit? Much will depend on the state of the nation’s economy. A slow decline, widely predicted, may lead to the English frog being boiled alive before it senses the danger of the slowly heating pan of water. The economic damage has already been substantial, witnessed not least in the devaluation of the sterling. The Bank of England – whose Canadian Governor, Mark Carney, is leaving to deal with climate challenges for the UN – predicts that economic growth will be two digit percent lower than if the UK had remained a member. British business, generally, is worried. Investors are holding back. But the damage to the integrity of the United Kingdom may be greater. In Northern Ireland and in Scotland, both of which voted to remain, the speed of development of the debate about how to secure a return to the EU fold has been breathtaking. In the former case, most likely through reunification with the Republic of Ireland, in the latter, through independence and an application to rejoin. For the UK to leave the EU on the basis of so divisive a referendum result

“It is hard to find an historical parallel for Brexit. Probably the closest one comes is 1649, when England chose to decapitate King Charles l and become a republic.” Sir Graham Watson

is the Managing Director of Global

Policy Advocacy, Bagehot Ltd, Lon

don. Born in 1956 in Scotland, he

graduated from the University of

Edinburgh in 1979 with a Bachelor

Photo: private

of Arts in modern languages. He first worked as an interpreter before

starting work in 1988 with HSBC in London and Hong Kong. From 1994 to 2014, Sir Watson served as a MEP in the European Parliament and he was elected as President of the European Liberal Democrat party in 2011.

was always going to be a brave decision. Perhaps the greatest damage could yet be the global political ramifications. The American historian Robert Kagan, in his new book “The jungle grows back”, points out how active US and UK involvement in maintaining the institutions of global democracy which they did so much to create has ensured their survival. There is no certainty their strength will hold if both countries pull out. A Europe in which England’s choice were mirrored by Matteo Salvini’s election in Italy next year and Marine Le Pen’s in France the year after would look a very different place.

The future of the UK’s alliances As Ian Bond of the Centre for European Reform reminds us in a timely contribution, nobody works in the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office for long without hearing the dictum of 19 th century Conservative Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston: “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow”. Palmerston may have treated Britain’s relations with other states as ephemeral, but from the beginning of the Cold War until the Brexit referendum, the UK treated the preservation of its alliances as one of its perpetual interests. The UK’s current ‘integrated security defence and foreign policy review’ will “reassess the nation’s place in the world, covering all aspects of international policy from defence to diplomacy and development”. This could lead to a radical reshaping of the UK’s approach to its relations with other European powers. The ‘common interests’ and ‘close alignment’ which have dominated debate across the Channel in recent weeks may turn out to count for little. Thus is the task of those who believe that the English Channel is narrower than the Atlantic Ocean doubly important.