Last Friday I went along to a networking coffee morning for small businesses in Glasgow. It’s always worthwhile to meet people you wouldn’t otherwise cone into contact with and I had some really interesting conversations on a variety of topics. However, there was one issue which kept cropping up…Brexit!
Not one single person I spoke to had anything even remotely positive to say about Brexit and there was a clear consensus that leaving the European Union has been an unmitigated disaster on every level. So why is nothing being done about this by our political leaders?
As far as the UK’s two main political parties are concerned Brexit is the proverbial elephant in the room in that they seem to think that if they ignore it for long enough then the problem will miraculously just disappear. I’m afraid that things don’t work like that in the real world.
It’s surely no surprise that the Conservatives don’t want to revisit this issue. They’ve been at war with themselves over Europe for more than 50 years and so far this century two Conservative Prime Ministers have been forced out of office by their own party as a result. It’s much easier for them to continue pretending that Brexit is a success, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary.
Labour’s position is a little bit more difficult to understand. Most prominent Labour politicians were Remainers, so their reluctance to even talk about the UK’s relationship with Europe seems perplexing. I suspect that they fear that coming across as being pro European might alienate the Daily Mail readers that they seem so intent on appealing to.
To be fair to the SNP, they have always said that an Independent Scotland would seek to rejoin the EU at the earliest possible opportunity. Given that Indyref 2 seems unlikely to happen anytime soon, that doesn’t look a very realistic prospect at this moment in time.
The forthcoming General Election is likely to focus on the issues that politicians seem obsessed with (immigration, culture wars, etc) rather than the economic issues that impact on the lives of most voters. I’d like to think that I am not the only member of the electorate who would vote for a party which committed to at least reopening the debate on EU membership. Sadly, that isn’t going to happen as the two main parties continue to ignore the presence of that big elephant in the room.
Take Care.
ends
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