If I am going to admit to partiality, I am predisposed to side with Britain, because I believe in national sovereignty, which is odd, because I don't know where that bias even comes from. Why should a country not have the power to solve it's own problems and conduct it's own affairs according to its own judgment? I dunno. Should we have allowed Hitler to conduct his own affairs? I guess it's conditional depending on the situation. But my knee jerk reaction is to support sovereignty until I have reason to believe a country doesn't deserve it.
But it has remained sovereign. Even Brexiters admit as much. All they said is that it didn't 'feel' like it was sovereign.
“The sovereignty of Parliament is a fundamental principle of the UK constitution. Whilst Parliament has remained sovereign throughout our membership of the EU, it has not always felt like that.”That's taken from the Brexit white paper. Now I'll readily admit to not having read the entire thing. So I hope I'm not quoting it out of context, but still. Perhaps it's a bit of an unfortunate phrasing, and I do understand the underlying sentiment. They don't want to be told what to do. So they want to employ their sovereignity, which was never in doubt, to now not adhere to the EU rather than using it to adhere to the EU. It does show however their sovereignity never was in question, just that up until recently they used it to agree to be part of a Union, in which you do have to have common agreements, because that unionisation brings different and greater benefits. Like weighing into negotiations as a +500 milion people market rather than a -70 million people market. Or having a market without customs.
And as problematic as that might be for us; they are allowed to choose to quit. And if they don't have a deal to propose that is better for the Union than trading with them under basic WTO rules, we'll have to agree to that. It sucks for us. (And them, becaus they'll be bound to trading with us under WTO rules too.) It makes trading that much more expensive and tiresome. But we have no choice if they choose to go down that road, exactly because they've Always been sovereign.
The thing to keep in mind here though, is that the benefit of our free single market and freedom of movement and trade is not a fundamental right that we are refusing here. It's the benefit for the trade-off in financial contributions to and compromise to the rules on trade and immigration we require to build this Union. A trade-off each party-nation sovereignly chooses for, or doesn't choose for in the case of the UK. And the EU will protect the benefits and the wellbeing of the members of the Union, when it comes to trade. This would be like asking to stop paying your membership to a country club but still showing up every day expecting to be served brandy and a cigar in your lofty chair. All the while us having less funds and brandy and cigars to offer the paying members. We can't be that unfair to our members who actually make a contribution. That's not us being unfair or difficult to the UK; that's us doing what we've been doing for decades. (The reason for our unifying in the first place.) Now we just have to do it with one less member.
Important too is that I don't think the UK nor the EU is going to self-destruct come the beginning of april. Spending power is going to go down. Some businesses are going to go bankrupt and there will be a rise in unemployment. In the beginning. But both sides will survive, worse off than they were two years ago, but they'll march on. And at the cost of those problems, the UK will be able to make their own rules, though they already could (Belgium too makes it's own laws and rules), and won't be bound to follow EU trade and migration policy. (That last part will effectively be different.) And if there are other rules the UK was pressed on they can't wait to see banished: I'd love to hear them.
But they will still be bound to take in account the rules of different markets and trading partners and the rules set by the WTO. As everyone is, without effect on your national sovereignity.
Perhaps, if they don't like the WTO, they can have a referendum to quit that too.
