The ever excellent UK in a Changing Europe is interviewing the key Brexit players and making the transcripts available online, at https://ukandeu.ac.uk/brexit-witness-archive/
The interviews are fascinating and cover both sides of the debate. But let’s just concentrate on the long term issue of the UK’s governmental relationship with the EU. I think several interviews highlight just how bad it was for a long time.
The relationship, it seems to me, was narrow and shallow. The UK’s failure to promote foreign language learning was a disaster, with hardly any politicians and few Civil Servants with fluency in even one foreign language. To work in Brussels you need fluency in two foreign languages, there is a reason for that and the UK failed to understand or even notice the problem.
Secondly what expert knowledge there was seems to have been held by very few people, and these were compartmentalised inside departments. Agriculture had a few but they stayed in that department, transport the same and so on, these people should have been moved around, trained and developed, to gain wider expertise and knowledge. There is a sense that EU expertise was ghettoised. Even the Foreign Office seems to have had relatively few people who had spent years working with the EU or on EU issues, was Brussels just seen as boring? Whatever the reason the UK just didn’t have the contacts or depth or width of knowledge necessary.
As a result sherpas, experts, advisors, spads and ministers, who actually understood how the EU worked were in short supply. Compare this to Ireland or France or quite a few other countries; which have spent decades training specialists, honing language skills, developing contacts and manoeuvring for positions and influence.
The final move just added insult to injury, after the referendum the few experts the UK had on the EU were seen as tainted by association. Their accurate predictions and warnings were ignored and dismissed as remoaning, which meant Brexit negotiations were doomed from the start by cakeist fantasies. For instance the idea that the UK could split off EU countries one by one and wreck the EC negotiating strategy, was just ignorant.
Now the UK is outside looking in it might be nice to think this no longer matters, but it does. The UK desperately needs contacts, expertise and skills in just these areas to develop its new relationship with the EU and I doubt it has them.
https://jonty.substack.com/
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing" ....... especially in the hands of a journalist :)
I shall not worry about the Brexit archive no one is interested in my contribution. The fact I won Brexit single handed. LOL
"The UK’s failure to promote foreign language learning was a disaster." Every school in the UK promotes language typically, French, German, Italian, Dutch and Spanish. But other languages are coming into play now. I get by on English and pigeon French. How many languages do you have Jonty I'm guessing fluency in English and French like many? The horse has bolted and you are remoaning? Get over it move on.
When I worked for a French company the UK team of 6 would turn up to a teleconference, and the French would send half the company to ensure they had the skills there they needed, some would see that was good, others would see it as resource wasteful. Depends on your point of view.
When I worked for German company we were always talking at cross purposes. What we meant on this by a statement and what the Germans wanted was something else. A common language doesn't always ensure understanding as the cultures will not necessarily be the same and there meaning subtly different. The Germans would sit there is a teleconference very straight and miserable. I found that I could completely change the mood in the room by switching the subject to football, it was like a light went on in their heads and they switched from being automata to real human beings. Connecting with people is more than understanding a language, you need to understand their culture and they yours. Specialists who understand nuances of Treaty documents are anoraks and probably have had more of a personality by-pass but hey that is probably important to you so I must be more respectful. Sorry. My little knowledge certainly was useful in getting the team talking and relating to each other as human beings and I did all that in English!