In the 19 months I have been Britain’s High Commissioner to Malta, there is one question I have been asked more than most: “Are you really leaving the EU?” followed by “You’re not really leaving are you....? There’ll be another referendum and we can all go back to where we started”.
I always answer clearly and unequivocally that we are leaving and that we are going to make a huge success of it.
From the agreement reached at last week’s European Council, the direction of travel is plain to see. The UK is leaving the EU. One year from now, the EU flag outside my office in Ta’ Xbiex will be coming down for the last time. I don’t mind being blunt about it; sometimes we need to get straight to the point and see things as they are.
Let me resort to a cliché: “We are leaving the EU, but we are not leaving Europe.” Among the many phrases and slogans doing the Brexit rounds, this is the one that means the most. It’s not about cake or cherries, but about the reality of a democratic decision taken by the British people.
It’s about taking back control (there’s another one)... taking back control of our laws, our borders and our money. In short, it’s about sovereignty. It’s about the ability of the British Parliament to make laws against which members of Parliament can be held accountable to the British people. It is certainly not about pulling up the drawbridge and withdrawing into an isolationist cave; it’s not about turning our back on the world and our friends, especially friends like Malta.
The British vision of Brexit flows easily from this. We will no longer be members of the institutions of the EU, but we will have forged the closest possible relationship with the EU on all manner of things.
We want a relationship which enables us to keep trading with each other; we want a partnership which allows us to continue to catch criminals together and to stop terrorist attacks; we want to ensure that the security of Europe is a joint project in defence of our values and against the threats we all face.
That’s why Prime Minister Theresa May has said that our commitment to Europe’s security is unconditional, as she set out very clearly in her speech in Munich a few weeks ago.
Crucially, we are not going to let our departure from the European Union do anything to set back the historic progress we have made in Northern Ireland. We don’t want a hard border and we have consistently put the Belfast Agreement at the heart of our approach.
In her Mansion House speech more recently, the Prime Minister turned to our future trade relationship with the EU, setting out realistic principles for what we and the EU need to do. We have been saying for a long time that Brexit is unique.
It doesn’t lend itself to the Norwegian model or a Swiss one or a Canadian one, or any other existing model. We are not browsing the shelves; we are establishing a brand new relationship, based on an extraordinary level of existing regulatory convergence. The EU and Canada spent seven years seeing how close they could get their respective regulatory systems.
Brexit is happening and we will make a success of it. No one said it would be easy and I don’t claim it will be a seamlessly smooth ride
We don’t have to do that; we are already there; we have regulatory convergence. Our rules don’t differ. Our question to the EU is: “Do you really want to create trade barriers?” I keep hearing about a solution based on the Norway model, but I have to say that an arrangement which involved the British Parliament accepting laws with no say in their construction (as it would have to do for the Single Market, for example), would simply not be acceptable to the British people.
I can hear the next question: “If you want to be so close, why are you leaving?” Yes, I’m asked this one too, but I’m afraid it misses the point. We can be a sovereign nation with a close relationship with our friends and we can do this without disrupting the arrangements our friends have between themselves.
We have no wish to disturb the integrity of the EU’s own structures. We have been making clear for months that we have no wish to compromise the principles of the four freedoms of movement (of people, goods, services and capital).
As the Prime Minister made clear in her Mansion House speech, we will be giving these up. But she said something else of crucial importance to understanding the British position: she said that it would be up to the British Parliament to decide how close we wanted to maintain our regulations in line with the EU’s laws and if it chose regulatory divergence in any given sector of our economy, it would do so in the full knowledge of the possible consequences for our access to markets.
The agreement just reached at the March European Council will allow us to negotiate and sign free trade agreements around the world, deals which will come into play the moment we leave the EU.
Beyond that, it establishes a clear implementation period running from the day we leave the EU (a year from now) until the end of 2020. This will be good for businesses and good for the citizens of the EU, who will have the certainty of knowing how to plan for their futures.
The time has now arrived when we need to get on with agreeing our future partnership with the EU. Let’s put in place a bold and ambitious trade agreement, with neither tariffs nor quotas, based on the principles of free trade and the pursuit of prosperity for all of us. And yes, let’s include financial services. No one should be fooled into thinking that a bad deal for the UK on financial services would be a good deal for the EU. London’s financial sector is a wonderful British asset, but it’s a European asset too.
To take just one example, of the €8 trillion of assets managed in the UK, €1.5 trillion are managed on behalf of European clients, including pension funds in the European Union. The financial sectors of the UK and the EU are deeply interconnected. And that includes Malta, whose financial services sector is such an important part of its economy. A good deal for the City of London will be a good deal for Malta too.
Brexit is happening and we will make a success of it. No one said it would be easy and I don’t claim it will be a seamlessly smooth ride from now on, but look how far we have come. We now move into settling our future partnership with the EU, looking for ways to create a unique arrangement in all our interests.
We will be a sovereign nation, outside the institutions of the EU, but with a deep and special partnership with the EU and all its members (especially Malta!).
Stuart Gill is British High Commissioner to Malta.