No, seriously, forget about the politicians. I think I’ve come up with a sensible solution to the steaming pile of ordure that is the Brexit problem?. Please excuse me, as I’m no expert, but that probably won’t be much of a hinderance seeing how we don’t want experts anymore. If you are one of those perverse people who want experts I’ll leave it up to you to find ones whose views confirm your own viewpoint as is the modern way. Mr Marina Wheeler QC (AKA Alexander Boris Johnson) has compared the question of the Irish border after Brexit to the congestion charge border between Islington and Camden. Building a wall between Brexitland and Remainia would probably cost many more times the amount wasted on the theoretical garden bridge, and administration of hard borders can be time-consuming and callous. Really the highest walls are in our minds anyway so I’m proposing we use clever technology to install a cheery two-state cybersolution and settle the Brexit question once and for all. Brexit won, we Remoaners lost. Let’s get over it. How about we use clever technology to identify and sort the Brexiter sheep from Remainer goats to give each side what they truly want? It would mean the introduction of ID cards that people would have to carry at all times but such is the lasting peace achieved by my solution that I don’t think people would mind that much. Besides, Facebook and Cambridge Analytica and Big Google and goodness knows who already track our every move anyway: think of your car registration and NI number and all the juicy gossip they carry about which Disney Princess or which type of Italian soft cheese you are. We could use these ID cards to prove we are who we are when we click and collect or to buy booze in a pub and to replace free travel Freedom Passes on the buses. You see, several layers of administrative cost savings already! Now, credit card sized ID can be fiddly and easy to lose so I propose that the cards are colour-coded according to Remain or Leave leanings. Remainers’ cards would be red and those of the Leavers would, naturally, be blue. They could even call them passports if they wished and they would of course be printed in the UK, and hang the extra cost. Then, when accessing goods in shops or travel or any local or national government facilities, we could tap our contactless (surely that’s a misnomer – it should really be called contactful) and we could get what we all voted for and everyone would be happy. How about that? Perhaps it wouldn’t take much to persuade the EU to accept this solution if it results in peace. I mean, I know that some of us have flounced out slamming the door on the EU club, but surely Brussels would accept this if it preserved the rights of the 48 million of us who didn’t vote to Leave, including the 3 million non-UK EU citizens who weren’t even offered a vote in the country to whose income tax take they contribute so handsomely. Just think of all the hassle it would avoid at customs posts; the Open Skies agreement could be preserved and the EU could get to sample our most innovative jams without first having to negotiate an agreement. Provided, of course, that the jam was made by a red passport holder. So I’ve sketched out below how I see this working in practice. Be aware please that this list is neither comprehensive nor exhaustive since we still have no idea of the wonderful golden unicorns that the disgraced former defence secretary Dr Liam Fox is going to secure for us the very second that we leave the EU, but it might be a start.
Remainers could continue to enjoy the full rights conferred by citizenship of the EU: Freedom of Movement; employment rights; wrapping ourselves in the blue flag with the stars on it; the Eurovision Song Contest: all that stuff. We’d continue with our 0.6% tax contribution to the EU but in return we’d keep our access to special clean beaches; our fish would be subject to quotas but at least we’d know that they hadn’t been fished to extinction and we’d be able to buy goods that conformed to strict safety and hygiene rules. Our supermarkets would be stocked with Reblochon and Parmigiana, and Dijon mustard that comes from Dijon. Our toothbrushes would have to conform to their 23 regulations; we would be able to buy proper chocolate and we’d be able to employ Polish plumbers or doctors to look after the things that needed doing to us and our houses. We’d be able to get on a plane from the UK to anywhere in Europe without having to apply for a visa and, through our EHIC cards, access emergency health care should we fall ill while on holiday or living in France or Spain or whatnot. We’d be secure in our European citizenship. Nothing would change for us, which was the whole point of a Remain vote in 2016. How would we do this? By tapping in to special stations outside shops and hospitals and at airports just as we do with our Oyster cards when we go up to town.
Conversely our friends the Brexit people, who all know exactly what they were voting for in the Referendum, would be able to have their cake and eat it if they wanted to. For a small premium, they wouldn’t have to listen to any foreign languages being spoken in their special train carriages. They would be free to go off and pick their own fruit and vegetables before they rotted in the full knowledge that no-one was taking their jobs. They could enjoy the luxurious taste of chlorinated chicken, banned by the evil EU, and they’d be free to wear fake designer clothes and make up and counterfeit Raybans like the ones here that I found in non-EU Bosnia. It’s true that blue card types wouldn’t be able to access food from other countries in supermarkets for a while and then have to pay heavy tariffs on them, but chances are that they don’t want that foreign muck anyway. They could buy British all the time, as long as the things they wanted were produced in Britain. If they wanted goods from overseas, they wouldn’t have to wait long for the instantly-materialising trade deals. Seven years or so isn’t that long to survive on leeks, potatoes and turnips, after all. It probably won’t take long to negotiate access to Euratom or the Galileo satellite navigation project or to train up British doctors and nurses to deal with British people. We’d make sure that their car parks, refuse collection services and transport were owned and run by British organisations, after a transition period that’s easily managed with a little extra charge. They might be more expensive but people are happy being a bit worse off for a few decades to secure borders and sovereignty. There will be inevitably be casualties but they surely understand that they are a price worth paying for freedom! Employers would be able to require blue card people to work until they dropped and all crime woiuld be solved by the reintroducton of the Death Penalty, outlawed by pesky Brussels bureaucrats. The sunlit uplands would be populated by gambolling unicorns and there would be an unending supply of carrot cake. I’m not advocated seperate geographical areas for blue or red passport people. I mean, they exist already and people only learn to get on by engaging with each other. Chances are, though, that red passporters won’t really want to live among blue people.
Now, if you think this is a tad far-fetched, and I wouldn’t blame you if you did, well maybe reflect on how eager both the main parties and their supporters seem to be to sign up to a deal that no-one has negotiated yet. Let’s repeat it here as there’s a chance it might go in: The EU Referendum was an advisory vote, which is why there was no Supermajority, something usually required for an act that changes our constitution to such an extent. 3 million non-UK EU citizens settled here for years were not given the vote, though settled citizens of Commonwealth countries were. Sixteen and seventeen year olds, who will arguably have to live with this decision the longest, were excluded from this gerrymandered vote. Far too many people, all of us in fact, had no idea what we were voting for and the vote was swayed by disgraceful lies and data management. The bus promising £350 million evey week for the NHS? We know it was a lie. For every 17 people who voted to Leave and turn our country upside down, 16 people voted to Remain and not change a thing, though there is plenty that does need changing about the EU. Yet we shall no longer have any influence and, if we are ever to export our goods and services, we shall have to be a rule taker. The poorest and most vulnerable people in the UK will be hit hardest by this decision, which exists only to benefit non-doms and billionaires. How is this acceptable? It seems to me that if you want to take back control, you should also take back control of paying for your decisions. In comparison, then, my scenario doesn’t seem that outlandish, does it?