I still have my original black British passport somewhere. When it was over, the passport office asked if I wanted the old one returned – and I said yes, for emotional reasons (so I could lay my hands on it longingly and look at the surprised teenager in the photo). He had no idea what life would bring him).
It’s a nice thing, the old passport – if not the bewildered youth – was made of cardboard that felt as solid as oak and coated in a dark, almost glossy black, giving it a sense of rugged reliability, like one Morris Minor – another. Proud British emblem – capable of inspiring its owner. I used this document to travel hassle-free to the continent when the UK was in the European Union.
One of the few pure benefits I thought we would enjoy when Brexit happened (a vote for which I took responsibility, because I foolishly imagined it would get us a better deal) was that we got to see the back of flimsy maroon European passports. and let’s go back to the old model. However, like the Morris motor car that looked like a boiled egg, it too went down in history.
(Incidentally, some time after Brexit it turned out that there was no such thing as a mandatory standard size and color for a European passport; Mrs Thatcher accepted this because she considered it such a trivial matter that it was not worth ruining the single market project just for the sake of it.)
I now have a new UK passport, not all black but dark blue, and not only does it look like a building society passbook, it doesn’t work. To the great dismay of around 100 British travelers each day, it is no longer possible to enter the EU unless your passport was issued less than 10 years before your date of entry (so check the date of issue) and until it is valid for 1000 years. at least three months from the day you plan to leave (so check the expiration date). You may also be asked if you have enough money to support yourself. Cheek!
Is this the Brexit we voted for? Yes, in the sense that we wanted to end free movement and ended up with the best possible deal, even though it was failed by Boris Johnson and David Frost.
As we are now discovering, the not-so-free movement of humans is a two-way thing. Of course, if we don’t mind the pesky passport rules and queuing at the barrier once we arrive in CDG, VCE or BCN, we can always rent a boat and paddle down to Calais to start our European journey. But we do not do this because we know, or should, that Europeans have as much right as the United Kingdom to control their borders and regulate who visits, works or lives on their lands.
This mostly applies to goods, especially food, transported across the English Channel. Europeans had no problem removing barriers to British cheese and Scottish salmon crossing borders, at great cost. But the British find the idea of customs checks so onerous that we still have not been able to implement them and probably never will; This causes anger among British farmers.
As the passport issues and border controls debacle shows, the UK has somehow managed to engineer for itself a Brexit that represents the worst of all worlds. We do not appear to be very effective at controlling who and what enters the UK, and we face expensive and seemingly insurmountable difficulties when we want to transport ourselves or some shellfish to France or Belgium.
Considering the farmers’ tractor protest in London, we must also acknowledge that we have some rotten trade deals with countries like Australia (and by “we” I mean Johnson, Liz Truss and Kemi Badenoch). A large part of British agriculture.
Next year, regardless of who is in government after the general elections, the EU will impose even tougher rules. More precisely, enact the agreements we freely signed in 2019 and 2020.
So to enter the EU (except Ireland) you’ll need an electronic visa waiver called an Etias (which is essentially a type of three-year visa in practice) and there will be a modest fee. But this is even more bureaucracy and there is no guarantee that the situation will not get worse. And of course, in the post-Brexit world, you’ll also need to take extra care about health insurance and driving in the EU.
The EU has said next year’s UK-EU Brexit review will not be an opportunity to renegotiate Johnson’s deal, and that all still sovereign nations that make up the EU reserve the right to impose their own residency rules. A tax imposed on UK citizens who wish to live or work there.
In other words, Brexit is the evil gift that keeps on giving, and given that the democratic majority voted for it in 2016, we shouldn’t actually complain when the guy in the peaked hat at the airport sends us to the detention area. We will return to where we came from on the next flight. After all, we’d gladly do the same.