How do I feel now that article 50 has been triggered? I feel sad that so many good people in Britain will feel so disappointed when they realise that Brexit has not helped them “take back their country”. I feel alarmed that, driven by Brexit, EU leaders chose its 60th anniversary, last Saturday, to embrace a “multispeed” Europe amounting to nothing more than a formalisation of the EU’s disintegration – which, in typical EU-style, was proclaimed as a new step towards its … strengthening. But I also feel determined to react constructively to Brexit and the EU’s descent into ignominy. How? By campaigning for a post-EU European unity both within and without the UK.
Within the UK, the Democracy in Europe Movement I co-founded, DiEM25, is determined to utilise the Burkean Brexiteers’ strongest argument: the imperative of restoring sovereignty to the House of Commons. This means that the future arrangements between the UK and the EU must be debated and endorsed by the next parliament, whose members (unlike the current ones) will have the necessary mandate.
As the two-year countdown that just began is insufficient, our argument will be that the government must eschew any negotiations now and simply request an interim Norway-style, off-the-shelf, arrangement until the next parliament decides on the longer term. Only in this way will Brexit and the call for making parliament sovereign again be fully honoured.
In the rest of the EU, we are campaigning for a European new deal that includes all European countries, independently of whether they left, stayed or never even joined the EU.
Yanis Varoufakis is a former finance minister of Greece, and co-founder and spokesman of DiEM25 – the Democracy in Europe Movement