Heading into Honfleur of an evening to eat, I was wearing my ‘Still European’ hoodie, noted positively by a number of people. But on the way I began to think about Brexit, and a major slogan of the Leave campaign: Take Back Control. A premise behind this slogan is that the big bad bureaucracy in Brussels has taken over all our decision-making processes so that we can no longer make any decisions for ourselves. I can see that lots of decisions that affect the UK are made in Brussels, but we have had a share in making them either through elected representatives in the EU Parliament or in the Council of Ministers. However, I do know that the EU is not a perfect bureaucracy and can never be, although it could be improved.

What occurred to me in the car as I was driving is that there are two other underlying premises that are always unstated and never examined by those who promote Take Back Control. These are:

• there was a time in recent history, before our involvement with Europe, when we had full control of our decision-making processes;
• if we leave the EU we will regain full control of our decision-making processes.

I question both of these premises and want to give them a brief examination to support my assertion.

When was the last time the UK had full control of our decision-making processes? I guess that depends on how one defines control, and the answer to this may vary from one area of public policy to another. But in the grand scheme of things, we have not had total control of our national life since before the Great War. That was also the era when the USA began to play a greater part in global affairs. Since America’s commitment to the Allied cause in both World Wars (not, it has to be said, out of anything but self-interest) the UK has not had total control over its decision-making processes – the indefensible Suez debacle in 1956 is a prime example, long before we were part of the developing European enterprise. Our existence among the global powers has been one in which we have had to take the opinion and policies of others into account, which means we cannot simply do what we want – we have not had total control.

That being the case, we are unlikely to achieve taking back control if we leave the EU, but the situation would in all likelihood be worse that it was when we joined. Since then, the commercial world has become more globalised: banks, manufacturers and IT companies will take their business to the place that’s best for them, and if we don’t have sufficient integration with other large markets, they will go their own way. Having sufficient integration would mean not having total control since we would have to adhere to the conventions/specifications of others to gain access to markets – we can’t just say, ‘We use Imperial measures: take it or leave it!’ Furthermore, having left the EU we will be in a much weaker bargaining position relating to trade agreements. Other nations, especially strong nations like the US, will make their demands upon us to achieve a trade agreement, which will inevitably mean not having control of everything that crosses our borders and into our markets.

There are few, if any, major aspects of public life over which we would have total control – even in the area of taxation, we depend on cooperation with others about how to tax large corporations spread across several continents. Taking total control is more likely to drive them away, rather than attract them. And if we structured our tax-system to attract them, we can be sure that other nations will seek to undermine that in ways that are beyond our control. In strategic defence, monetary policy, banking, taxation, trade and much else, we are, and will be, dependent on others for cooperation to make things work for us. We do not and will not have the kind of control that the Leave campaign assert we will.

Sadly, ‘Take back control’ is a good soundbite that appeals particularly to those of an Imperial mindset who do not realise that these are days that cannot be recovered, even if we wanted to. By the time it is realised that we cannot take back control, it will be too late, and we will have lost whatever shared control we had, finding that those with whom we cooperated are now our competitors. They will not go easy on us.