Gully Foyle: Why I Voted to Leave

This fourth entry in our Brexit Book Festival is by author and Britain Unbound contributor Gully Foyle, whose book “75 Brexit Benefits” has received critical acclaim since its publication last September. The following text is based on excerpts from that book, which in turn were based in part on posts made on X/Twitter in 2017

I am not the creator of these benefits, nor have I been even tangentially connected to any avenue or medium of government that would allow me to be such a thing. I am an observer and an avid researcher. Someone who reads a headline, and then actually reads the article. Then reads the source material that the article refers to. Then the article on the same subject but published by the newspaper that leans the other way on the political spectrum. I know, right, shock horror.

I spent years being subjected to ridicule at best, derision and hatred at worst, for making a decision that I was asked by my government and my country to make. A responsibility that I took very seriously, and one in which I deployed my efforts of research into equally seriously.
One can quite reasonably make different decisions in life on the same set of data, due to one’s own outlook in life, one’s own priorities and values. But what one cannot do, is deny that that data exists.
The only reason I felt compelled to bring this list into existence is because there are those who deny that the contents of this book exist. They clearly do.

Let me take this opportunity to give a little background into my thought process in 2016, and how it led to me over the course of a decade to write this book, to become an author.

Firstly - I consider myself European. I am lucky to have been able to travel to and through nearly all the countries of continental Europe. If I were to choose a foreign city to live in, it would probably be Strasbourg. I am a Francophile. I bear no ill will at all towards the rest of Europe.

Secondly - I accept a few things about the UK’s relationship with the EU:

• That the UK chose to join on mostly economic reasons, in contrast to the primarily political motivations of the continent (to prevent war through interdependency)
• That the UK always acted as a reluctant member

I make no judgement on whether it was right for the UK to keep the rest of the EU at arm’s length, staying out of Schengen and the Euro. People have their opinions of course, as I do - but the fact of the matter is we will never know. As we are where we are.

When it came to deciding how to vote I tried to think of the long term and not just the current status quo of remaining. The EU had made it very clear that their trajectory is an 'ever closer union'. The UK had made it very clear that it was (and still is) in no way interested in that long term aspiration.
If you accepted the position as I did that the UK and EU wanted different things in the long term, then two things were almost guaranteed:

1. That the UK would veto things that the rest wanted to do
2. That the UK would suffer in some small or large part over time, from being politically tied to a bloc that it was ever increasingly not a part of

The above all led me to a simple conclusion - that leaving the EU, rightly or wrongly, was inevitable. At some point in the future the line would be crossed that the UK could not countenance, and we would choose to leave. Once that thought had emerged, the decision was easy.

That once you accept that leaving was inevitable, then the next thoughts are:

• Does leaving get more difficult, the longer you are in? YES
• Does leaving after a certain point become so complex as to make it almost impossible? Probably as that is the whole point of the EU

Then it was a case, for me at least, that if it was going to happen anyway then better to do it in 2016 when it was still possible. That way the pain could be lessened and sit on my shoulders, rather than for it to happen in 10-20 years and sit on the shoulders of my children.

Now you will note that none of that is about immigration or economic policy or freedom of movement or the ECJ. I wrote this knowing that my opinions are far from the expectation of the stereotype, but my opinions are not unusual. They just do not fit the lazy argument typically used, that Leave voters were and are ignorant racists and xenophobes.

Gully's first book, "75 Brexit Benefits: Tangible Benefits From The UK Having Left The European Union" is available now from Amazon and all good bookstores.