The people are never wrong, but I am still finding it hard to genuinely accept that idea this weekend. We have entered a future filled with risk and uncertainty. In particular, I feel it was reckless and cavalier to put the residency rights – one of the most basic rights of all – of millions of British and European citizens at risk through this process. This is before we get to the questions of Scotland, Gibraltar, Northern Ireland and the economy.
However: the people are never wrong. And in the coming years, we most definitely cannot afford to be.
We do have a model for what to do next, and that model is Singapore, a city expelled from Malaysia in 1965. It was a bleak island, defenceless, and denied any trade with its former partners, a land whose prospects seemed hopeless. It thrived, and in thirty years was wealthier than Britain. We don’t need to copy Singapore’s authoritarian governance or any particular policy solution. We do need to copy its habit of very clear thinking.
Singapore was led for that 30 year period by Lee Kuan Yew, and one sentence in particular from his memoirs stands out:
A soft people will vote for a soft way out, when in truth there is none
Here will be the test of the coming months: did we vote for the soft way out, trying to run away from the world, or have people voted against the soft way by consciously embracing all the risks of Brexit? The decisions we make now, and how we make them, will be the test of us . We will need to take hard decisions, and take them quickly, to focus on them with much greater clarity than we have before.
If we are to get into the habit of clear and direct thinking, here are five thoughts from me of what we can do in the next week:
- This is a shameless steal from Rohan Silva in the Sunday Times today but worth repeating again and again: slash corporation tax to 10%. This is a clear way of stating the UK will ensure it is still a good place to do business. It could be announced this week.
- Commit to a new London runway: if Britain is closing one door to the world then we need to announce we are opening another. Again, it should be done this week. Boris needs to be the big man and take the hit on this one and accept he will not get his way.
- A review of the welfare state: it is my firm view that a lot of working class voters, particularly those who do not vote in General Elections, turned out for Leave because they feel they compete with immigrants to access to council housing, and to a lesser extent other welfare. It is a damning indictment that our public administration could not get its act in gear to design a fair system of allocating welfare that commanded public confidence. I am conscious that this is my mushiest recommendation, so I propose sticking the word failure in the title to concentrate minds.
Having just been pretty direct, borderline rude, to our neighbours it is time to be very nice indeed. Two thoughts:
- A big and generous budget contribution offer to the EU: access to the single market is worth a lot to us and we will have to pay for it. Let’s put ourselves on the moral high ground and practical front foot, by announcing early, within days, that we will make a big contribution to structural funds. By big I mean properly big: as large as our current net contribution. The money can be taken from the foreign aid budget if necessary. Personally, I happen to think supporting the economic development of Eastern Europe a good cause anyway.
- A big and generous offer to EU citizens: any EU citizen here on the day we formally leave has the right to stay, end of. Yes, there is the risk that this might flood the country with people, but that would be a good sign, showing that people are voting with their feet for Britain’s economic prospects. This also puts us on the front foot morally regarding the rights of UK citizens in Europe. Finally it is in fact the only practical solution, and if you waste time and energy trying to avoid that fact, then you are soft.