{"id":202578,"date":"2019-02-17T04:15:57","date_gmt":"2019-02-17T09:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=202578"},"modified":"2019-02-17T04:15:57","modified_gmt":"2019-02-17T09:15:57","slug":"in-brexit-limbo-uk-veers-between-high-anxiety-grim-humour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/02\/17\/in-brexit-limbo-uk-veers-between-high-anxiety-grim-humour\/","title":{"rendered":"In Brexit limbo, UK veers between high anxiety, grim humour"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
May is now seeking changes to the Brexit deal in hope of getting it through Parliament before March 29. EU leaders say they won’t renegotiate, and accuse Britain of failing to offer a way out of the impasse. (File Photo<\/a>: Theresa May\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LONDON \u2014 It’s said that history often repeats itself \u2014 the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. Many Britons feel they are living through both at the same time as their country navigates its way out of the European Union.<\/p>\n

The British government awarded a contract to ship in emergency supplies to a company with no ships. It pledged to replace citizens’ burgundy European passports with proudly British blue ones \u2014 and gave the contract to a Franco-Dutch company. It promised to forge trade deals with 73 countries by the end of March, but two years later has only a handful in place (including one with the Faroe Islands).<\/p>\n

Pretty much everyone in the U.K. agrees that the Conservative government’s handling of Brexit has been disastrous. Unfortunately, that’s about the only thing this divided nation can agree on.<\/p>\n

With Britain due to leave the EU in six weeks and still no deal in sight on the terms of its departure, both supporters and opponents of Brexit are in a state of high anxiety.<\/p>\n

Pro-EU \u201cremainers\u201d lament the looming end of Britons’ right to live and work in 27 other European nations and fear the U.K. is about to crash out of the bloc without even a divorce deal to cushion the blow.<\/p>\n

Brexiteers worry that their dream of leaving the EU will be dashed by bureaucratic shenanigans that will delay its departure or keep Britain bound to EU regulations forever.<\/p>\n

\u201cI still think they’ll find a way to curtail it or extend it into infinity,\u201d said \u201cleave\u201d supporter Lucy Harris. \u201cI have a horrible feeling that they’re going to dress it up and label it as something we want, but it isn’t.\u201d<\/p>\n

It has been more than two and a half years since Britons voted 52 per cent to 48 per cent to leave the EU. Then came many months of tense negotiations to settle on Brexit departure terms and the outline of future relations. At last, the EU and Prime Minister Theresa May’s government struck a deal \u2014 then saw it resoundingly rejected last month by Britain’s Parliament, which like the rest of the country has split into pro-Brexit and pro-EU camps.<\/p>\n

May is now seeking changes to the Brexit deal in hope of getting it through Parliament before March 29. EU leaders say they won’t renegotiate, and accuse Britain of failing to offer a way out of the impasse.<\/p>\n

May insists she won’t ask the EU to delay Britain’s departure, and has refused to rule out a cliff-edge no-deal Brexit.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Brexit has clogged the gears of Britain’s economic and political life. The economy has stalled, growing by only 0.2 per cent in the fourth quarter as\u00a0business\u00a0investment registered a fourth straight quarterly decline.<\/p>\n

Big political decisions have been postponed, as May’s minority Conservative government struggles to get bills through a squabbling and divided Parliament. Major legislation needed to prepare for Brexit has yet to be approved.<\/p>\n

Britain still does not have a deal on future trade with the EU, and it’s unclear what tariffs or other barriers British firms that do\u00a0business\u00a0with Europe will face after March 29.<\/p>\n

That has left businesses and citizens in an agonizing limbo.<\/p>\n

Rod McKenzie, director of policy at the Road Haulage Association, a truckers’ lobby group, feels \u201cpure anger\u201d at a government he says has failed to plan, leaving haulers uncertain whether they will be able to travel to EU countries after March 29.<\/p>\n

McKenzie says truckers were told they will need Europe-issued permits to drive through EU countries if Britain leaves the bloc without a deal. Of more than 11,000 who applied, only 984 \u2014 less than 10 per cent \u2014 have been granted the papers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will put people out of\u00a0business,\u201d McKenzie said. \u201cIt’s been an absolutely disastrous process for our industry, which keeps Britain supplied with, essentially, everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

He’s not alone in raising the spectre of shortages; both the government and British businesses have been stockpiling key goods in case of a no-deal Brexit.<\/p>\n

Still, some Brexit-backers, such as former Daily Telegraph editor Charles Moore, relish the prospect of a clean break even if it brings short-term pain.<\/p>\n

\u201cPerhaps it is time for a Brexit recipe book, like those comforting wartime rationing ones full of bright ideas for dull things,\u201d Moore wrote in The Spectator, a conservative magazine. He added that he and his neighbours were willing to \u201cset out in our little ships to Dunkirk or wherever and bring back luscious black-market lettuces and French beans, oranges and lemons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brexit supporters often turn to nostalgic evocations of World War II and Britain’s \u201cfinest hour,\u201d to the annoyance of pro-Europeans.<\/p>\n

The imagery reached a peak of absurdity during a recent BBC news report on Brexit, when the anchor announced that \u201cTheresa May says she intends to go back to Brussels to renegotiate her Brexit deal,\u201d as the screen cut to black-and-white footage of World War II British Spitfires going into battle.<\/p>\n

The BBC quickly said the startling juxtaposition was a mistake: The footage was intended for an item about a new Battle of Britain museum. Skeptics saw it as evidence of the broadcaster’s bias, though they disagreed on whether the BBC was biased in favour of Brexit or against it.<\/p>\n

Some pro-Europeans have hit back against Brexit with despairing humour.<\/p>\n

Four friends have started plastering billboards in London with 20-foot-by-10-foot (6-meter-by-3-meter) images of pro-Brexit politicians’ past tweets, to expose what the group sees as their hypocrisy.<\/p>\n

Highlights included former U.K. Independence Party leader Nigel Farage’s vow that \u201cif Brexit is a disaster, I will go and live abroad,\u201d and ex-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson’s pledge to \u201cmake a titanic success\u201d of Brexit.<\/p>\n

The friends dubbed the campaign \u201cLed by Donkeys,\u201d after the description of British soldiers in World War I as \u201clions led by donkeys.\u201d The billboards are now going nationwide, after a crowdfunding campaign raised almost 150,000 pounds ($193,000).<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a cry of pain, genuine pain, at the chaos in this country and the lies that brought us here,\u201d said a member of the group, a London charity worker who spoke on condition of anonymity because their initial guerrilla posters could be considered illegal.<\/p>\n

A similar feeling of alienation reigns across the Brexit divide in the \u201cleave\u201d camp.<\/p>\n

After the referendum, Harris, a 28-year-old classically trained singer, founded a group called Leavers of London so Brexiteers could socialize without facing opprobrium from neighbours and colleagues who don’t share their views. It has grown into Leavers of Britain, with branches across the country.<\/p>\n

Harris said members \u201cfeel like in their workplaces or their personal lives, they’re not accepted for their democratic vote. They’re seen as bad people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m really surprised I still have to do this,\u201d she said. But she thinks Britain’s EU divide is as wide as it ever was.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere can’t be reconciliation until Brexit is done,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Whenever that is.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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