FRIENDS & FRICTION: Will Brexit spell the end of the Empire?

It is the usual London winter’s day, and the fog is not the only cause of the gloom.

Brexit is thick in the air.

“Unlike Trump,” says James, my UK colleague, “Brexit is going to last longer than four years.”

My sense is that something bigger is happening, and it is worse than the disintegration of the British Empire.

I wonder what former UK prime minister Sir Winston Churchill thinks up there in heaven, now that the Germans own Rolls-Royce?

In the grand scheme of things, there is nothing owned by the British any more – except, perhaps for the Union Jack, although the one I spotted in a tourist shop had a sticker with the inscription, “Made in China”.

The pound was one of the worst performing currencies in 2016.

The fog of political uncertainty thickened last week when the Supreme Court put a detour sign on Brexit by ruling that Parliament had to pass a new law triggering Article 50, the law that sets out the process by which member states may withdraw from the EU.

Things may get worse.

Volker Treier, deputy CEO of the German Chamber of Commerce, is worried that Prime Minister Theresa May may not push through a solid deal.

“Without clarity and predictability regarding Brexit, industry will hold back even more with investment,” he said.

Some, like May, have staked their credibility on the deal and say there will be no turning back.

Those who opposed it in the first place, such as Tim Farron of the Liberal Democrats, are laying new landmines to derail it or force another referendum.

And Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition Labour Party, who was lambasted for his lukewarm campaign to remain in the EU, is doing the worst fence-sitting you have ever seen.

He is trying to force May to publish her Brexit plan in Parliament in the hope that he can buy time to come up with a solution, as he has none to offer.

Amid all of this, the man screaming the loudest is the Brexit secretary of state himself, David Davis.

This week, he vowed to force through a bill within days and put an end to delay tactics, saying: “Do not thwart the will of the people” – because, we may conclude, “doing so would hurt my pocket.”

The two people who gave the prime minister and the entire nation a huge headache – by initiating legal action against the UK government’s authority to trigger Article 50 without a parliamentary vote – were not even born in the UK.

Gina Miller, the lead litigant, was born Gina Singh in British Guiana (now the independent nation of Guyana). Her co-fighter, Deir Dos Santos, is a hairdresser who hails from Brazil.

Both are UK citizens.

Now, some of their compatriots are furious and the two have become targets. Dos Santos has gone into hiding after receiving hate mail from Brexiteers.

But Miller, who is married to a financier, is standing her ground, despite efforts by the media to delegitimise the fight by digging up her past.

“A shameless self-publicist,” the Daily Mail called her. It went on to reveal that she has been married thrice, as if that was a scandal.

When they could not find dirt on her current husband, Alan Miller, they went for her former husband, Jon Maguire, and delved into his supposed controversies, only to admit:

“No evidence was found against Maguire, and he has always maintained he was unfairly treated by the authorities.”

Miller and Dos Santos are not the real problem. They were pedestrians crossing the road.

The court found that Westminster was not “legally compelled” to consult the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

This sounded like a judgment that “parents are not legally compelled to consult their children when they want to make another baby”.

Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland, is using this court ruling to whip up nationalist sentiment for a break-up.

All of this begs the question: Does Brexit spell the end of a country which was once called the United Kingdom of Great Britain?

Kuzwayo is the founder of Ignitive, an advertising agency