Brexit has happened and will not be overturned, as a democratic decision, no matter how much I oppose it, and no matter how much i complain about the ignorance of large swathes of the electorate. (That is not an argument against the bona fide arguments concerned, but against the very bad and ill-informed ones – it’s about justified beliefs).
That the decision has been and gone doesn’t invalidate the concerns I might have with the resultant consequences. Science is, for this blog and many skeptics, a very important process, area, and discipline. However, without strategic funding, science (resulting in the UK’s disproportionately good status therein), science in the UK is truly threatened.
The BBC reported today:
A leading scientist has said UK science will suffer unless any post-Brexit agreement allows the free movement of people.
Prof Sir Paul Nurse said the country’s research was facing its biggest threat in living memory.
He added that researchers had to have a big voice in negotiations with the EU.
But Leave campaigners say the UK should be able to negotiate a deal to continue to receive European funding and still curb overall immigration.
British science was one of the biggest winners from EU funding. And so it is among those that have most to lose.
UK universities receive 10% of their research funding from the EU, amounting to just over £1bn a year.
Full membership of the funding body requires participating countries to allow free movement of people.
Sir Paul Nurse said that exit from the EU jeopardised the world-class science for which the UK was known.
It risked damaging the economy and could lead to a loss of skills and talent.
“For science to thrive it must have access to the single market, and we do need free movement,” he said.
The problem, of course, is that the Brexit Leave campaign succeeded on promising (at least in the eyes of most voters) to stop the free movement of people. However, this is, or has been, a non-negotiable part of the European single market. Some rumours abound that some politicians (eg the French Foreign Minister) are open to some kind of negotiation around this. Such negotiations would go against the very robust stance of the EU to date – that the single market = free movement of people, as well as capital and services. It all depends on the appetite of the remaining 27 countries. And this is where is gets interesting. There are grumblings, as I mentioned before in may writings, within Europe as populist movements gain momentum, and some of the more established members of the EU and defenders of free movement may be keen to appease these factions. Nurse continued:
“We could negotiate that outside the EU, which will probably end up costing more money and we would have little influence [in deciding research priorities].
“Or perhaps we should just reconsider this entire mess and see if there is something that can be done to reconsider this once the dust has settled.”
Leave campaigners maintain that there are things we can do, and options for negotiating. UK universities employ some 30,000 scientists. This is no small number, and they are worried. worried for jobs dependent on funding. Funding for scientists simply wasn’t on the agenda for the large proportion of Leave voters. It was immigration, immigration, immigration. As the BBC article concludes:
Dr Noemie Bouhana, 40, a French researcher who arrived in the UK 18 years ago, lectures in crime science at UCL and leads an EU-funded project to track terrorism and the radicalisation of young men, involving collaborators across Europe.
She said: “Never in a million years would I get funding from central UK funds for this type of project, which is international, interdisciplinary and involves a mix of engineering and social sciences.
“I was shocked and disappointed when I heard the referendum result.
“At first, I did not believe it.
“I checked on several websites to see if it really was true.
“I then knew that I would not be in an EU country, and I hadn’t realised how important that was to me, and I don’t want to live in a non-EU country.”
Mike Galsworthy, of pro-Remain campaign group Scientists for EU, said the country’s current full relationship with the EU brought huge added value for UK science “from our strong policy voice on academic and single market standards through to leading roles on the EU multinational research programme”.
He added: “We want to keep as much as possible, but, as the case of Switzerland showed us, negotiations will be complex.
“Much policy voice will be lost, and our renegotiated level of access will revolve around freedom of movement, the relationship with the single market, financial contributions and the interests of the remaining countries.”
Brexit will have far reaching consequences, even if the EU can survive the political fallout that is bound to challenge its very existence.