25th November 2021
Brexit, we are often told by its supporters, was about taking back control – especially control of our borders.
But think about borders for the moment.
For every border there is – perhaps axiomatically – another side.
Else it would not be much of a border.
This means that if you take back control as an exercise in unilateralism then you may lose control – or influence – over what will be happening to your border from the other side.
And so you will not be taking back control – but losing control.
For an effective border usually requires there to be shared policies on both sides.
Therefore, without cooperation, you lose control or influence over what will be happening to your border.
This is obvious – if you think about it.
The issues with the borders in the island of Ireland and in the English channel both have a common basis in that Brexit-supporting politicians underestimated the importance of cross-border cooperation and shared policies in making borders work in practice.
Control of any border is rarely achieved – at least without lethal enforcement.
And even the borders of totalitarian regimes dissolve.
The policy of the current governing party of the United Kingdom used to be about bringing down walls and promoting shared policies – the Single Market owed much to Lady Thatcher and Lord Cockfield, and the expansions of both NATO and the European Union was promoted by successive Conservative governments.
Short of repression, the only way to take (or have) control of any border is by cross-border cooperation and shared policies.
And so, in this and many other ways, Brexit is an expensive and painful exercise in the United Kingdom government finding out just how interdependent things are in a complex world.
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It is the old story. The UK, because of it diplomatic influence, gets to make the rules. Then it gets upset when it does not win the game.
And does not realize that when it wins the majority of the time, the losses are a necessary price. It’s like the gambling house deciding that they won’t take the house cut, but just never pay out at all.
‘No Man is an Island’
No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
John Donne
I wish you could have instead written “Brexit is an expensive and painful exercise in the United Kingdom government learning just how interdependent things are in a complex world.”, however rather like the staging of a horse by a trough, learning is a process that requires the student to acquire information and to modify their conceptions.
So “finding out” it is. Perhaps the short version is: the complexities of the world have found the UK govt out?
No idea if this is originally mine or someone else’s but always upheld the opinion that borders create conflict and is the main reason for the success of the EU in maintaining peace in Europe.
Well said and your point is very important. Borders create barriers. The EU has been an amazing success for Europe. This should have been more widely understood in the U.K. However our media has distorted life in the UK for many for years.
An example of co-operation was a common set of regulations for processing asylum seekers adopted by members of the EU. These regulations included the right for a country to return an asylum seeker, who had previously had the opportunity to claim asylum, to the country where they had that opportunity.
The usual way of proving the previous opportunity was when fingerprints had been had taken in another country and were therefore available to all members of the EU. This was a rare occurrence.
The regulation was not often used by the UK as, for understandable reasons asylum seekers did not divulge such opportunities. Also, until quite recently the majority of asylum seekers arriving in the UK travelled in lorries and their arrival was not nearly as noticeable as being saved at sea or arriving on a beach. When challenged about how they travelled the usual reply was they had boarded a lorry in Turkey and from then onwards were under the control of the smugglers and without the opportunity to claim elsewhere.
Co-operation with our neighbours, and in particular France, enabled the flow of asylum seekers from Europe to be reduced and it has been in the past two years that the arrival of asylum seekers in boats across the Channel has caught the attention of the media and therefore the general public. The actual numbers are rather less than in previous years but being far more noticeable it has raised awareness.
The problem for the government is how to stem the flow.
I venture to suggest that leaving the EU has blocked the opportunity for the UK to return many of them to France. Whereas previously those coming by lorry could explain their failure to claim asylum previously it is rather more obvious that now they have boarded the rubber boats on the beaches of France and it is rather more difficult for them to claim they did not have the opportunity to claim asylum there.
The co-operation provided by common regulations is no longer available to the UK and it has to bear the consequences.
Very well said.
Yes – this complex world is not only interdependent but also interconnected and international, despite what our internecine Brexit supporters might like to think. Northern Ireland was always the Achilles heel of the “take back control” project where all those “inters” met. Too much Brexit belief in the fantasy of “this scepter’d isle” and not enough in the reality that it has been leased out “like to a tenement or pelting farm”.
When you were in the Eu you did have the benefit of the Dublin Agreement which its was easy to criticise because ,like all agreements of its kind ,it would never be perfect and gain universal acclaim.
You have had over five years to sort this matter out and have failed to achieve anything.
If the French set up camps on their own territory to process people it would resolve little even if the camp were to be paid for by a levy on your citizens legally crossing the Channel. Refugees would simply disappear into the dunes when faced with deportation and find even more hazardous routes.
The majority of people who have left their countries of origin are dealt with within mainland Europe. This issue concerns a minority who are often very desperate and also very determined .
Even if there was goodwill (which there is not) Europe cannot keep this problem from your doorstep and this is the point.
Plainly Brexit has achieved nothing apropos borders – or anything else. However we could quite easily fix the main reasons why immigrants want to come to the UK – English. English has become the lingua franca of the world and the internet but – according to Priti and certain blogs – it brings us a big problem, immigrants. Now any fule no that locks, passwords and borders mean nothing to those intent on getting in – so what to do?
Simples – we change our language to say – Old Norse. A spot of anthropological encryption. A few textbooks, a few online courses and in say two years time all the law courts, contracts, judges, parliamentarians, council offices, road signs etc etc etc move to Old Norse. Should not be too difficult. Something of an advantage to traditional English types – we spoke it a while back, it is in our memory somewhere. Anyway I look forward to Boris and Priti and JR-M debating in Old Norse. Meanwhile the demon du jour – Macron – will find himself lumbered – result at no? cost to us.
Thank you, Jim: your comment has cheered me no end!
Who’d thought that ‘taking back control’ of our borders would cause Boris Johnson to realise that he needs the cooperation of the French/ EU in the end to try and control our borders.
It’s a shame Johnson and Patel haven’t had a light bulb moment yet with International Law and the safe passage for human beings seeking help. Especially since the UK’s role in the chaotic fall of Afghanistan let people down and who are now trying to seek refuge in the UK. Both are adding 2+2 but getting 5.
As ever, a thought provoking article. Clicked on the video though. OMG. l had blanked out the Hoff. But l remember the fall of the Berlin Wall. We watched as Students on my little black and white portable TV. It even had a loop aerial!
We need the subtlety of Robert (not Lord) Frost.
Mending Wall
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbour know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbours.”
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbours? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.” I could say “Elves” to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbours.”
I like observations that state the bleedin’ obvious, when the bleedin’ obvious hasn’t occurred to me.
A border without agreement on both sides is a basis for conflict.
Duh!