Brexit brought no Independence Day celebrations - if all that Brexiters had said about Brussels Raj was true, or felt like truth, you’d think it should have.
Britain now, as they see it, is free of pernicious EU ways, it has now “taken back control” that the Brexit slogan promised. But going by all the sentiment that surfaced, this was Heartbreak Day more than Independence Day for at least half of Britain, and very likely more: only about a third of people ever actually voted to leave.
Among them some apprehension seemed to have put the brakes on any celebration. Who can read with authority into silence, but watching two EU officials remove the British flag respectfully in Brussels, the question seemed to arise for most around the country: ‘what have we gone and done’.
Brexiters have had their triumph, and so arguably need say no more. But celebrations are never a need, they are an outpouring of exuberance, and of that Britain saw none.
Silence sat across public space in Britain, unexpectedly inconsistent with the shrill rhetoric against Brussels through the Brexit campaign. Britain is now past the finishing line that Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised.
Some ask just what all that may have finished, and all are uncertain what lies ahead. Uncertainty brings no joy. Slogans, we all know, have a way of falling short of the glory they promise.
Johnson has promised that Brexit brings the dawn of a great new era. Maybe it will, but all that’s dawned yet is a disconnect between Britain’s difficulties and the compulsion to blame Brussels for them.
Exactly what will now become so wonderful for Britain? Better wages? More business soon with the US to the West and India to the East? The promised new trade agreements either side are nowhere in sight, not even the beginnings of any. Business with the EU which is more than half of all of it, stands threatened.
Britain has fallen off the cliffs of Dover without a parachute, former minister for Europe Keith Vaz tells CNN-News18.
Vaz, who now chairs a new think tank, the Integration Foundation, does not see a deal coming up with India even distantly in line with promises. “If we want deals with India, we will need to work hard to get them. How many visits has the British PM made to Delhi over the last four years? Not many. Knowing the economic writing was on the wall, the first visit of a new PM should have been Delhi, not Paris or Berlin.”
To the West, President Donald Trump has offered a “tremendous” and “very big” trade deal with Britain “very soon”. He’s been saying this sort of thing for three years now.
And up north in Edinburgh, the Scottish Parliament voted to continue to fly the EU flag at its building "as a practical demonstration of our regret" over leaving the EU.
Demands are rising, and impatiently, for Scotland to break free of Britain to join the EU as an independent country. The Scottish National Party that won overwhelmingly in the last election has doubled its budget to prepare for that.
If Scotland exits Britain, it won’t be Britain as we know it that exited the European Union. Scotland is up in fury, if not in arms. Looking for new deals around the world, Boris Johnson faces ‘Azadi’ slogans of another kind of citizenship rising in Edinburgh and other Shaheen Baghs around Scotland.
Last Debate in Brussels
The last debate in Brussels turned out to be a lost debate for those who sought it most – for now in any case. The debate on the Citizenship Amendment Act went ahead, but India supporters within the European Parliament managed successfully to have a vote on it postponed to late March.
By then, the face of the debate would have changed and the faces of the debaters would have changed. British members of the European Parliament are now all gone. The disappearance of these members is one of the few immediate consequences of Brexit, the rest will be a year coming.
The attack on the Indian government was led primarily by former British members of the European Parliament - John Howarth, Ainslie Scott, Mohammed Shafaq and Phil Bennion.
Only two of the Indian government's critics who spoke up were non-British. True, the two from Britain who backed the Indian government – Dinesh Dhamicha and Neena Gill — will also not be around anymore to vote for India.
But the Indian government found support from several EU members who will continue within the Parliament and presumably for India: Michael Gahler, Thierry Mariani, Anna Bronfrisco, Jamet France, Silvia Sardone and, of course, the EU High Representative Helena Dalli, who spoke up for India supportively on behalf of the EU executive.
But some effective firefighting for now helped by the disappearance of significant opponents is still not a diplomatic battle won; the Indian government has, at best, gained some time.
Dalli told the European Parliament that the EU executive has taken up the CAA issue with the Indian government already, and it will most certainly do so again at the India-EU summit in Brussels next month that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is due to attend.
Shaheen Bagh is beginning to have a diplomatic fallout, and the Indian government has a job on hand to calm protests within the country and to contain their fallout outside.
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