What did I learn about the Remain case?
One of us was very concerned that the poorest Brits, the people most likely to have voted Leave, would be the people most hurt by it. He did however concede that it was impossible to tell what the economic outcome would be. It might be good for those at the bottom end.
One of us had some good examples how reversion to WTO tariffs might hurt British businesses such as farmers. 40% of British lamb is exported, he said. What would happen when tariffs had the effect of pushing prices up? The fact that lamb might then become cheaper for British consumers would not be much consolation for those engaged in producing it. I tried to suggest that British cars might be more attractive as tariffs made imports more expensive, but I admitted that some sectors would be affected.
There seemed to be acceptance that constriction of the supply of foreign workers might increase wages at the bottom end. How, one of us wanted to know, would that help the NHS? The only way to give NHS staff a pay rise would be to raise taxes.
(I wished I had asked at this stage whether my friend was suggesting low wages for all was preferable to low wages for some).
One of us was indignant at the suggestion that trying to stop Brexit was undemocratic or unpatriotic. I agreed to some extent, but said I thought the tone of the mainstream press actually was unpatriotic in its assumption that everything the UK government did was incompetent or thoughtless whereas (in a strange suspension of the rules of human behaviour) everything done by Barnier, Merkel, Juncker et al was sage and judicious. I thought the UK press had, on the whole, totally failed to grasp (or report) the extent of the EU climb-down over the Irish border issue.
As for undemocratic, I said I thought it very unfair at least that a process for deciding whether to Leave to be implemented, only for the losing side to argue for the process to be reopened because it didn't like the result. I thought the consequence of trying to subvert the process would be devastating for democracy.
One of us said that people only voted Leave because they didn't like foreigners.
For me this was the lowest point of the evening. It is palpably untrue and in any event insulting to Leavers present.
One of us was sure the other had only meant it as a joke. The other neither confirmed this nor apologised.
One of us has substantial funds invested in the stock market and stands to lose significantly if higher wages for the low-paid lead to lower dividends for shareholders and thus lower share values. Fortunately it did not occur to me to point this out at the time.
One of us said he was perfectly happy for a top tier of control to be exercised by the EU, in much the same way that a parish council might be subject to control by a county council and by Parliament. I told him he was the most pro-EU person I'd ever met.
I tried to say that voters in one part of the UK didn't mind people in another part having a say in what laws they lived by because they were after all part of the same nation and people. But a lot of us (me, for example) did mind being governed to some extent by people in different countries (and moreover had no desire themselves to tell people in different countries what to do). The existence of a supranational layer essentially operated to negate the distinctiveness and cohesiveness of nation states and cultures. This was after all the stated aim of the EU.
I might have added that the quality of decision making of the EU was very often poor - Schengen, the Euro, Mrs Merkel's refugee offer, the failure to accommodate David Cameron in 2016 - and when not poor was sometimes inflexible and draconian - see the sacrifice of Greece to preserve the Euro. Who would reasonably want such people exercising a degree of control over British life?
One of us voted as recently as 2014 for Scottish independence. He saw no conflict between this position and a fervently expressed opposition to the UK regaining some of its own.
Some injudicious words (carried on a modest tide of beer) were spoken on both sides, but it was an unavoidable and perhaps even necessary conversation. You can't go around pretending differences don't exist, and anyway there is much to be learned from hearing other points of view and having your own tested.
