Remarks by Professor Conor Gearty

Date01 January 2019
150
Remarks by
PROF. CONOR GEARTY*1
is entire Brexit can be summed up by the section of the EU Withdrawal Act
which boldly states ‘e Charter of Rights is not part of domestic law on or aer
Brexit day’ while the next bit of the very same section in essence says ‘please can we
have it back’. In essence, ‘let’s please the fools and ‘let’s stay the same way as we are’.
On the notion of Parliament ‘taking back control’, this nonsensical position was
produced by people who may be well-educated but who are in other ways intensely
stupid - and stupidity is underestimated as a factor in Brexit – it is the entry point
into the public square for puerility, facetiousness and confected passion. e
UK Government was forced to explain in a White Paper why they had le the
European Union or were proposing to do so. In that White Paper, produced by
civil servants desperately trying to square political demands with factual reality, it
says that actually, parliamentary sovereignty had not been eroded by the European
Union. It just ‘felt’ like parliamentary sovereignty had been eroded and this is
literally contained within a government White Paper. It is feelings that drive the
suicide of a country.
Aer a long delay, explanatory Brexit ‘Notes’ were published by the UK
Government; these would have gone down well in a cult that had relocated to some
inner-Brazilian rainforest so as to kill itself. At the time of this talk, y-six such
notes have been published and collectively these explain why there is going to be
a catastrophe in the case of a ‘Hard-Brexit’. e best of the idiotic explanations
of the supposed (by Brexiteers) hardening of the Irish Government position as
Brexit nears came from the UK Minister whose invention of universal credit has
caused such misery in Britain, Ian Duncan Smith MP. is former leader of the
Conservative Party (and it is surprising quite how many Brexit leaders are sacked
former Tory ministers) said around November last year, when asked about this
perception of growing Irish intransigence, that ‘it’s all about the Presidential election’.
It was a bizarre position and yet, Ian Duncan Smith MP is one of the architects of
Brexit. Presumably he believed it when he said it.
I have four points to make to you on the theme of this Annual Lecture, a more
polemical oering I fear than the usual august academic fare with which this usual
society is familiar.
e rst point is not a point. It is a kind of introductory remark which is a cheat,
a type of preface, and it is this. e Spectator magazine in the week of this lecture
had a front page which I thought was terric and this included a map of Ireland
and Britain, while Jean-Claude Juncker (with his glass of wine) and Michel Barnier
* Conor Gearty is Professor of Human Rights Law at the London School of Economics.

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