Reset means Reset

Regular readers will realise that this isn’t posted on a Friday morning, as normal. For various reasons I’ve had to post early this time. In line with the new fortnightly pattern, the next planned post is still Friday 27 September.

In my previous post I wrote about the new government’s lack of a post-Brexit strategy, at least in public. Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum, so an inevitable consequence of this absence is speculation and criticism. What, beyond a ‘reset’ is the plan, and what does a reset mean? Recent examples include The Observer’s Andrew Rawnsley, suggesting that Starmer’s agenda risks antagonizing both pro- and anti-Brexit voters, whilst achieving little of value. Meanwhile, Luke McGee of the I identifies divisions within the Cabinet over how to proceed.

But it’s not just a matter of commentators trying to make sense of things. Political actors are also seeking to shape events. For example, the former leader of Labour MEPs, Richard Corbett, has outlined some of the steps the government could take within its ‘red lines’ whilst warning that these impose a caution which is at odds with the scale of what is needed. TUC leader Paul Nowak gave backing for Starmer’s re-set, but in doing so pushed for more extensive agreements on, especially, youth mobility than the government is publicly willing to entertain. And Labour MPs, along with those of some opposition parties, are pressing the government for clarity and action.

Talk about negotiations

There are some parallels with the period in 2016 when Theresa May kept insisting that ‘Brexit means Brexit’ prior to announcing that it meant hard Brexit. Now ‘reset means reset’. In both cases, in the background intense lobbying was going on within the UK. Meanwhile, in the EU, a steady process of consensus-building was developing about what Brexit would mean, and there are signs that something similar is happening now. A report of a leaked EU internal briefing document (£) suggested that Labour’s plan for a travelling artists’ mobility agreement would not be accepted, and its other publicly stated asks would not be straightforward.

Of course there are also important differences between these periods. Dealing with Brexit was the defining task for the UK government under May, and a major task for the EU. Neither of those things are true now. Moreover, then, there was the prospect (once Article 50 was triggered) of a defined negotiating process. Now, there is no equivalent. This makes a recent article in the Telegraph by Daniel Hannan, entitled “the UK has the whip hand in negotiations with the EU”, even sillier than his usual offerings. For, apart from the fact that it shows that the ‘they need us more than we need them’ fantasy still persists, in this case there are no negotiations with the EU over Brexit. Even holding them will be a UK request that may or may not be granted. In other words, Britain is a demandeur not simply within the negotiations but in seeking them.

Hannan and his ilk have less direct influence now, of course, but the continued existence of this kind of discourse can only feed suspicions in the EU that the UK polity as a whole has yet to purge itself of Brexitism. It’s tempting to add ‘despite the new government’, except that the fear that drives Labour’s timidity is itself a sign of the hold Brexitism still has.

At all events, there is little reason to expect any immediate clarity in what the reset is going to consist of, or achieve. That’s partly because even the first steps to that, of developing and improving relations, are still only just being taken, Starmer’s trip to Dublin last weekend to – yes, of course – ‘reset’ those with Ireland being a recent important example. Relatedly, it is because nothing much of substance is going to happen until the new EU Commission is in place, effectively at the beginning of next year. For that reason, it’s also probably sensible not to read too much into reports, such as that of the leaked briefing document, of what may or may not be agreed.

Familiar farces

During this ‘reset means reset’ period, many of the now familiar features of the post-Brexit (or should we call it pre-reset?) landscape continue. These include reports that the new government will yet again postpone the full introduction of import controls, with what was supposed to have been the October phase now put off until next July. It’s the latest iteration of a farcical saga which I’ve discussed in detail at the time of previous postponements.

This time there is the added feature that whereas, apparently, the new government thinks the need for controls will disappear if and when, following the ‘re-set’, there is an SPS agreement, the EU seem likely to be unwilling to agree to any re-set until the provisions of the original deal have been fully implemented. This includes the provisions for goods coming from Ireland to Great Britain, also much delayed, with construction work beginning only last week on the necessary facilities at Holyhead port. These facilities are due to be completed “sometime in 2025”. We will see.

Even more farcical, although, paradoxically, at the same time eminently sensible, is the latest retreat from the utter absurdity of the UKCA mark. Here too there has been a long history in delays to the date by which CE quality marks would cease to be valid, and UKCA would become mandatory. I discussed this issue in detail in August 2023, when the plan was “indefinitely postponed”. However, as I noted then, some products were not included in that, one case being construction products, where CE marks were still due to be phased out by the end of June 2025.

Last week, the government announced that this date would not apply and gave no other in replacement, suggesting that, for these products too, postponement is now indefinite. So far as I know, no such announcement has been made as regards medical devices, the other main area not covered by the 2023 indefinite postponement, with CE marking for these products due to be phased out by 2028 in some cases and 2030 in others. But I think it is all but inevitable that these will also be dropped.

UKCA was a particularly ludicrous piece of Brexit hubris, which has unravelled because in practice no one wanted it, and the country couldn’t afford it. In that sense, it is a metaphor for Brexit itself, albeit that, unlike Brexit, it proved easy to unravel by simply not doing it. Every time we see the Conformité Européenne mark on a product will serve as a reminder of that.

Evidently neither the latest postponement of import controls nor that of conformity assessment marking show any departure from the pattern of the previous government (from which derived the welcome news of the first Horizon funding for post-Brexit projects). In fact, in terms of things the government can do unilaterally (as opposed to through negotiation with the EU), the sole new departure so far has been the promised legislation to (mainly) track EU product safety, and weights and measures, provisions. Pretty much everything else remains unclear, and will most likely emerge in piecemeal decisions which only in time (if at all) will come to form a pattern of its own. In that sense, the ‘reset means reset’ period is likely to be a long one.

Latest false claims about Freeports

However, whatever the Labour government’s post-Brexit policy intentions may be, one thing which is pretty much irrelevant to them is Freeports. I’m not sure that this is even worth discussing, but there is a new myth gaining traction on social media that because the government apparently has no plans to close what are almost invariably referred to as ‘Sunak’s 86 SEZs and Freeports’ this means that it is precluding the UK from rejoining the EU or even the single market. In a more conspiratorial version, the reason the government doesn’t want to rejoin is in order to continue with ‘SEZs and Freeports’.

This is the latest iteration of something which has been doing the rounds for a few years. It started with the claim that Freeports are, or could become, ‘Charter Cities’, where companies are granted ‘charters’ to set and run legal systems. This would supposedly mean that all regulations, including employment and environmental laws, along with all public healthcare and education, would disappear within these zones. I wrote a detailed debunk of this in 2022, calling it a conspiracy theory because having already claimed that creating Charter Cities was ‘the real agenda’ behind Brexit, the subsequent announcement of Freeports was retro-fitted to ’prove’ this [1].

Subsequently, the same idea re-emerged, not always referring to Charter Cities explicitly, but making a similar false claim that ‘SEZs and Freeports’ were ‘States within a State’, again setting their own corporate legal and regulatory regimes. I wrote another debunk of this, earlier this year. It included reference to the then only emerging claim that ‘SEZs and Freeports’ are somehow a barrier to ever rejoining the EU and the very first references to Labour’s complicity in this.

Since the election, this latter claim, along with repetitions of the previous ones, has become quite widespread on social media. I won’t link to examples because, as a matter of general policy, I don’t make critical comments about social media posts by private individuals, as this can lead to bullying ‘pile-ons’ [2]. However, a quick key word search of X-Twitter, and to an extent BlueSky, will provide examples.

Freeports and the prospects of rejoining

I have put ‘SEZs and Freeports’ in scare quotes because this near-ubiquitous formulation is often the first clue that something misleading is about to follow. SEZ – meaning Special Economic Zone – is a generic term, encompassing many different institutional forms, of which Freeports are one (though they, themselves, are not all the same). So to say ‘SEZs and Freeports’ is a misnomer, and this is not a pedantic matter of jargon: it is a misnomer which carries some highly misleading implications.   

It implies that all 86 UK SEZs (exact numbers vary) are part of this supposed explanation for Brexit or this supposed barrier to re-joining the EU. Describing them as ‘Sunak’s 86 SEZs and Freeports’ makes that implication even stronger, since it suggests that they were his invention. In fact, the majority of these were created before Brexit and before Sunak, and so, self-evidently, neither explain Brexit nor preclude EU membership. Nor, by the way, have any of them ‘turned into’ anything remotely resembling Charter Cities or ‘States within a State’ which, if that was the ‘secret plan’ for them, there would surely be signs of by now.

So what about UK Freeports, specifically, which do, in their present form, post-date Brexit? It’s certainly true that Sunak and others proclaimed them as a post-Brexit ‘freedom’. Oddly enough, I recall correcting some of the initial criticisms of Sunak which were based on the fact that Freeports had existed, though had been closed, when the UK was in the EU. I pointed out that, post-Brexit, UK Freeports would indeed be different as they would not be bound by EU rules, highlighting in particular EU state aid rules. The problem with those initial critiques was that they were a knee-jerk reaction, ignoring key details.

I wrote that in February 2020, so it is somewhat ironic that now, over four years later, some are latching on to the differences between UK and EU Freeports, most especially as regards state aid, but again ignoring key details. (There’s also a certain irony in the way that they are simultaneously presenting Freeports as neo-liberal hellholes in the making and yet also fulminating about state aid, which they pearl-clutchingly tell us is really taxpayers’ money, for all the world like the most doctrinaire of neo-liberals.)

As to the details, there are two questions. One is whether, as a matter of fact, the tax breaks provided to Freeports would not be allowed under EU state aid rules. This is by no means an easy question to answer, as recently highlighted by George Peretz KC, a leading expert in this area, in response to the claim that this is so. It doesn’t just depend on what those tax breaks are, it also depends on the (hypothetical) question of how the EU Commission would interpret them. Moreover, it is simplistic to discuss the state aid issue in terms of EU rules, ignoring those of the UK (which exist: again, it’s not a neo-liberal free for all), the Level Playing Field provisions in the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement, the provisions of the Northern Ireland Protocol, WTO rules, and OECD protocols. In other words, the issue here isn’t reducible to EU rules versus no rules.

The second question is whether, even assuming that UK Freeports do violate EU state aid rules (or any other EU rules), this precludes the UK joining, or applying to join, the EU or the single market. The answer to that is certainly ‘no’ (this also applies to the parallel claim that they would preclude an independent Scotland joining the EU). Many other EU accession countries have had SEZs which, at the time of application, did not comply with EU rules. As part of the accession process, these SEZs either changed their rules or were phased out, in some cases over long periods, hence the idea that UK Freeport contract lengths might delay, even if not prevent, rejoining is also bogus [3].

There’s absolutely no reason to think the same would not be true for the any accession process for the UK and, anyway, it would be part of a much wider issue than that of Freeports. If the UK ever rejoins the EU or the single market, any and all divergences from its rules that may have occurred since Brexit will have to be ended. Freeports are different in detail, but no different in principle, to any other such case. The sole reason they are being presented as some kind of special obstacle to rejoining is because of the weird preoccupation with Freeports which has grown up.

It shouldn’t have to spelt out, but I will do so to avoid misunderstanding. None of this means that Freeports, specifically, or SEZs, generally, are ‘good thing’. On the contrary, there are serious questions about issues including corruption, various forms of criminality, value for money, and lack of accountability. That is especially clear from questions which have been raised in the case of the Teesside Freeport. Similar questions would arise with or without Brexit (because EU Freeports are by no means immune from criticism). But Freeports don’t ‘explain’ Brexit, they aren’t a vehicle for post-Brexit ‘States within a State’, and, to speak to the latest claims, they are irrelevant to the prospects of rejoining.

That being so, it would make no sense for Labour to continue with Freeports in order to subvert rejoining. Nor do we need to look to Freeports for some secret reason to explain Labour’s hostility to rejoining. The reasons for that may be poor or at least debatable, but they are well-known (freedom of movement, fear of Labour leave voters, fear of it dominating the entirety of the administration etc. etc.). The UK may or may not end up joining the EU again, or the single market, under a Labour government, but Freeports won’t play any part in deciding that.

Ruthless remainers?

Although I don’t think the distraction of these Freeport claims are very widespread amongst serious political actors, they do point to a wider issue for ‘remainers’ or ‘rejoiners’ (or whatever the best term would be: just ‘joiners’, perhaps?) So also, and more importantly, does the present vacuum of this ‘reset means reset’ period which, as I noted above, creates a space for such political actors to influence government policy. That wider issue is the politics of the ‘join’ or ‘rejoin’ movement.

The Bagehot (aka Duncan Robinson) column in the latest issue of the Economist (£) posed some sharp questions for what it called this “strangely ineffective” movement, exhorting “remainers” to become “more organized and more ruthless”, aping the determination of Farage and what became the Brexit movement. It provoked a lot of interesting discussion on social media, and although I don’t have space to discuss it in this post, I will probably return to it in the future.

For now, one observation is that, whilst part of the ‘ruthlessness’ of Brexiters was a quite cavalier disregard for factual accuracy, I do not think that will serve ‘remainers’ well. Ruthlessness needn’t mean truthlessness. That’s not a matter of squeamishness, or even of scruples, it’s more that, with so many excellent arguments against Brexit it’s hardly necessary to make false ones.

 

Notes

[1] I’m not going to re-hash all the tortuous arguments about this, but those who have followed them may be interested in a recently published academic paper by Patrick Holden and Nichola Harmer of Plymouth University, who note that: “The outcome [of the UK’s introduction of post-Brexit Freeports] is a Freeport policy that, whatever its merits, is not forging a neoliberal dynamic in the UK’s political economy.” This is actually a specific instance of a point I’ve made many times on this blog. There were certainly some Brexiters who saw it as vehicle to pursue a massive agenda of neo-liberal deregulation. This was ‘a’ reason for Brexit, but it wasn’t ‘the’ reason for Brexit, and when Brexit happened they found that there were many other constraints on the pursuit of their agenda apart from EU membership. It’s yet another instance of Brexiters simply being wrong about what EU membership meant and what Brexit would mean.

[2] By private individuals, I mean any account where it is not clear that they are posting in a professional capacity as politicians, journalists, or experts within the domain that is the subject of their post, or on behalf of some organization, or might reasonably be considered a ‘public figure’ in some other way.

[3] A related claim is that investors in Freeports would make use of Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) systems to sue the UK government if it adapted or closed Freeports in order to re-join the EU. However, that would be irrelevant if the contracts were simply wound down as part of any accession process. That aside, the ISDS claim is a bit like some of the Brexiters' 'technical' sounding claims which are difficult to disentangle as they involve a simplistic take on a deeply complex area, but it certainly isn’t true, as such claims imply, that ISDS would simply be available to foreign investors in such circumstances, as if it were some kind of international court open to all comers. It might (but wouldn’t automatically) apply if the investor was from a country with which the UK had an ISDS agreement as part of an investment or free trade agreement, which, post-CPTPP accession might apply if that country was a CPTPP member (though not if it was Australia or New Zealand). However, typically, ISDS (of which there are very many legitimate criticisms) comes into play in countries which do not have well-developed domestic legal systems to which investors can bring claims. For this reason, those ISDS agreements the UK has entered into have almost entirely been used by UK firms against foreign governments, not by foreign firms against the UK government (the UNTD database records only one such case, from an Indian investor in 2006, though some sources suggest there have been two; either way, no case has succeeded). Anyway, even if the UK sought to re-join, and if an investor in a Freeport had a right to bring an ISDS action, and if it did so, it would not follow that it would win, and even if it did win, whilst that might cost the government some money, it wouldn’t derail rejoining. In short, it is a red herring.

The government needs a post-Brexit strategy

It would be unfair to expect the Labour government to have achieved much yet. The peculiar timing of the election, in combination with the parliamentary recess, meant that there has been even less ‘political time’ than the three months of calendar time since then. That was mainly absorbed by dealing with the riots, with a degree of effectiveness which stopped them spiraling into a crisis, and beginning the process, both real and theatrical, of ‘discovering’ that the previous government left an economic and social disaster to be dealt with. This was the message of Keir Starmer’s ‘Rose Garden’ speech this week, effectively heralding the start of the new political year.

It would also be unfair to deny that the government has already made some real progress with what it promised for the UK’s relationship with the EU. Although Starmer said nothing in the Rose Garden speech about the EU or Brexit, the next day he promised to “turn a corner on Brexit” prior to trips to Germany, to discuss a new bilateral treaty, and thence to France where he met Emmanuel Macron. That followed the pattern begun from his government’s first hours and days, when he and his ministers took a series of steps to improve the tone of the relationship. It’s worth stressing this, as it is all too easy to forget just what a departure it is from the previous government, and the last few years. Moreover, these are necessary steps to effect any and every improvement in the substance of the relationship, up to and including any possibility of ever joining the EU in the future. So what has happened already shouldn’t be dismissed or belittled.

However, it clearly isn’t anything like enough, for two obvious reasons. One is that despite the repeated references to a  ‘re-set’ in the tone of relations, doing so cannot be the one-off event that this word implies. It will be an ongoing process. The other is that improving tone isn’t an end in itself, but a prelude to improvements in the substance of the relationship. Actually, despite their obviousness, I think these are oversimplifications in that, in reality, the relationship between tone and substance is recursive rather than linear, with substance impacting on tone as much as tone impacts upon substance. In particular, trust will have to be rebuilt iteratively, through both actions and words.

What does the government want to do about Brexit?

Beyond these obvious points, there is a much deeper issue. The government has yet to articulate its overall desire, or hope, for the UK’s post-Brexit relationship with the EU. Starmer talked this week of an “ambitious” re-set of relations – but ambitious for what, and why, and how, and when?

So far, before, during, and since the election, these questions have partly, and most vociferously, been answered negatively, in terms of the ‘red lines’ of not joining the single market, a customs union, or the EU itself. By definition, that does not provide a positive template for the future. The more positive answers have been, yes, to ‘re-set’ the tone and, on substance, to pursue a short list of discrete initiatives. The principal items on that list are a security and defence pact, a Sanitary and Phyto-sanitary (SPS) agreement, a mobility agreement for travelling artists, and mutual recognition of professional qualifications.

Even here, there is still remarkably little detail of what the government will seek, and in what time frame it hopes to reach these various agreements. An SPS agreement, in particular, seems to be the main improvement the government anticipates for border frictions, and yet it has remained resolutely ambiguous about what type of agreement it expects to reach. The important differences between types of agreement, both technically and in their political implications, have been discussed on this blog in the past and were recently excellently summarized by trade expert Sam Lowe, the principal one being between ‘equivalence’ agreements and ‘dynamic alignment’ agreements. Labour’s ambiguity cannot persist now it is in power, and it is hard to believe that those within government do not realise that there is actually only one choice.

For the reality is that if there is to be an agreement with the EU it will only be on the basis of some form of ‘dynamic alignment’ (since the EU long ago rejected an equivalence agreement as unworkable). If the UK doesn’t accept this, then there will be no SPS deal, but even if it does, with negotiations expected to begin in early 2025, it will take time. So, in either scenario, what happens to the much-delayed introduction of full import controls? What about the mounting costs of those controls which have been implemented, which businesses are now reporting to be even higher than the previous government had claimed? What about the bio-security risks being taken until such time as there is either an SPS agreement or import controls are fully introduced? Indeed, is the entire ‘2025 UK Border Strategy’ for “the world’s most effective border” still in place?

The absence of strategy

However, the real absence in the government’s approach isn’t the lack of detail on individual initiatives like an SPS agreement. Just as the government’s negative red lines do not offer a ‘template for the future’, neither does its list of wants. What is missing is any strategic framing.

Without such a framing, there is no logic guiding, or explaining, why it is these particular areas, and not others, which are the focus, or how the different initiatives are supposed to fit together. For example, as mentioned in a previous post, the government has already announced there will be legislation to keep the UK aligned with EU product safety rules. That’s an important decision. But why these rules and not others? The same question could be asked of reports that the government may seek to link UK and EU REACH systems for chemicals regulation.

The most likely reading of the government’s approach, and the safety rules policy supports it, is that it will seek, in all areas, the maximum closeness, cooperation and alignment with the EU short of breaking the Labour manifesto commitment to its negative red lines. All of its leading figures were opposed to Brexit, and whilst they no longer speak of it having been a massive mistake it is hard to believe that they do not still think so. At the very least, none of them is an ideological Brexiter, wanting divergence at any price as a matter of principle. Starmer has more or less said that in terms.

Even if this were not so, this government will be aware, just as the last one discovered, that basic practicalities mandate closeness (hence, whatever some of the Tory Brexiters wanted, there was so little divergence from the EU under the Tories). That may have been a distasteful necessity from a Tory point of view, but is likely to be seen as a virtue by Labour ministers and MPs. And the issue here isn’t just one of regulatory alignment, it is that over a whole swathe of economic and geo-political issues the UK’s proximity to the EU, both geographical and ideological, tends to mandate close cooperation. Hence the folly of Brexit, but even post-Brexit the same logic applies.

However, if this is the approach, then it hasn’t been announced as such, and doesn’t seem to be embedded in the government’s own inner workings. This was illustrated by the mess of this month’s mixed messages about whether the government would agree to an EU proposal, which first emerged in April, for a youth mobility scheme (YMS). As also happened at that time, YMS was immediately and falsely framed as being about ‘freedom of movement’, but whereas in April Labour (and the Conservatives) immediately rejected it, this month there was an initial report that the government was considering it. This was immediately contradicted by another unnamed government source, although with careful wording (‘no plans’ etc.) so it hasn’t been definitively ruled out. This week Starmer was similarly careful not to do so, although he did not endorse it either (also this week, exactly the same kind of wording was used in relation to rejoining the Erasmus+ programme).

Of course it is possible to read too much into this episode. It was summer, many politicians and officials were on holiday, and the status and credibility of the sources of the stories was unclear. But, apart from the confusion caused by these contradictory messages, the more significant issue to my mind is the way that the original story did not suggest that the government wanted a YMS, but that it might have to “give ground” on it to the EU in order to secure other agreements, for example on SPS. On that account, even if YMS is ever agreed, it would be grudging and transactional. On the subsequent account, it wasn’t being considered. So on neither account of the government’s position was there any suggestion that YMS would be actively welcomed, but nor, beyond the irrelevant mention of there being no return to freedom of movement, was there any explanation of why it shouldn’t be welcomed.

Joined-up government?

The YMS example is just one illustration of the absence of a coherent post-Brexit strategy. Last November, David Lammy, now the Foreign Secretary, said that relations with the EU would be Britain’s “number one” foreign policy priority. But if that is so, it cannot simply be a matter for the Foreign Office.

For example, whilst foreign policy and trade policy aren’t the same thing, they do overlap, so how does that square with Trade and Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds’ threnody to the supposed value of global trade deals in an article last Sunday? It’s true that Reynolds also wrote of the importance of trade with the EU – referring to the usual standard list of measures I mentioned earlier – but such a twin-track approach self-evidently doesn’t imply prioritization.

It may be reasonable enough, given the government’s red lines, to pursue global trade deals, but there’s no need to pretend, as the Brexiters did, that they can be of great importance. So if Labour’s trade policy is to be consistent with its foreign policy, and if it is to be consistent with a re-set from the Tories’ approach, Reynolds would, or should, be positioning improving trade with the EU, even within those red lines, as the priority rather than engaging in boosterism about how wonderful CPTPP accession will be.

Similarly, the government has promised that a coherent industrial strategy will be central to its purpose. That, too, needs to be consistent with post-Brexit policy, with the manufacturing body MakeUK already calling for it to include measures to address the damage Brexit has caused. These measures would go beyond the government’s list of priorities, to encompass, for example, addressing the effect of ‘rules of origin’ in the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA). So will the government seek a full and formal re-negotiation of the TCA, or at least (given that the EU is unlikely to agree to that for the foreseeable future) identify that as a long-term aspiration? A different, though somewhat related, question is whether the government will seek an expansive approach to the 2026 TCA review, and if so what incentives will it offer the EU to engage in that?

On the specific issue of rules of origin, might the government seek to join the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean (PEM) Convention which, arguably, could help to address that problem? Or, in relation to a different issue, might it seek to re-open the UK’s failed application to re-join the Lugano Convention on cross-border commercial disputes? Or, in relation to yet another issue, with both economic and environmental policy implications, will the government seek to link the UK and EU Emissions Trading Schemes?

The point here is not, primarily, that the government needs to add to the short list of discrete measures or potential agreements, thus making it a long list. Rather, it needs to set out the overall framework and principles – the ‘vision’, to use a rather putrid term – through which the UK will seek to develop its post-Brexit relationship with the EU. That would also entail engaging extensively with all EU members, not just Germany and France, and not as a way of trying to circumvent Brussels, but as part of a coherent ‘neighbourhood’ policy. Equally, the government needs to connect this policy with its other intended reset with the devolved administration and regional Mayors.

Developing such a post-Brexit strategy would not, and could not, mean a huge, single, ‘Big Bang’ negotiation with the EU, or a quick process of delivery. The avenues for change will be the multiple ones of the different agreements and forums created by the complex architecture of Brexit. But it would mean that in each of those avenues the UK would be working towards an overall purpose, rather than piecemeal haggling and horse-trading.

The case for an explicit post-Brexit strategy

Crucially, such a strategy needs to be openly articulated. At the moment, whilst the implicit logic of the government’s approach is, at least arguably, one of maximalism, it certainly hasn’t been explicit about that. Its reticence presumably derives from its continuing fear of the pro-Brexit media and the possible effects on Labour leave voters, allied with the fear of being seen to be ‘banging on about Brexit’ and out of step with voters’ priorities.

It’s easy to understand those fears, when even Starmer’s trip to Germany this week led to accusations that he was reversing Brexit, as if leaving the EU had meant never talking to any of its member states ever again. Actually, a good response to such accusations would be to quote the Vote Leave campaign promise that Brexit would mean “we have better relations with our European friends”.

At all events, the government’s idea seems to be to pursue post-Brexit policy by stealth, through various boring technical adjustments, whilst in public talking about ‘tough negotiations’ with the EU over more high-profile issues. But if this is so it will create several major problems, as well as miss some major opportunities.

Firstly, it will make it much more difficult to maintain the attempt to improve the tone of the relationship, and to develop substantive improvements to it. This goes back to my point about the recursive relationship between tone and substance. An interesting post by Pascal Lth on the Europe Tomorrow substack argues that the defensiveness with which Labour responded to the YMS proposal was a “strategic mistake” not least because the UK will probably end up agreeing to it anyway, and therefore squandered “an ideal opportunity to rebuild trust through an agreement on a proposal of mutual interest”.

I think his more general point is, and if it isn’t then it’s the point I’m trying to make here, that a new and trusting tone in the relationship can only be effective if it is publicly acknowledged. Only that can shift the relationship from one of transactional negotiation aimed at reconciling divergent interests to one of shared partnership based on the recognition of mutual interests. That won’t happen if the government talks from one side of the mouth to the EU and from the other to the British public.

Secondly, if there is no publicly articulated strategy for a maximalist relationship, there will be little possibility of building a domestic political and public consensus for such an approach. Any cooperation that happens will have been achieved by stealth, and played out in public in terms of ‘winning battles’ or ‘making concessions’. That relates to the previous point, as if that is what happened then it will do little to build trust with the EU and, in particular, to build trust that whatever is agreed with the EU is durably rooted in public consent. That failure will in turn limit the depth and extent of what the EU is likely to agree.

To put this another way, a post-Brexit ‘re-set’ is needed not just in the tone of UK-EU relations but in the tone of domestic discussion of those relations. Of course, that will encounter the hostility of the Tories and much of the media. But if it is to be done, it would be better started whilst the Tories are distracted and in disarray, and when the government’s newness gives it the most power it will ever have to influence and defy the media. In any case, as is already happening, every move Labour make in this domain will be denounced by Brexiters as betrayal of Brexit, so the government might as well be clear about its strategy and try to build support for it. Moreover, beyond politics, such strategic clarity would enable businesses and other organizations to understand and anticipate developments since the broad direction of travel would be known.

Thirdly, there is a party management, and ultimately electoral, issue. Many within the parliamentary party, the party membership, and the Labour movement more widely, not to mention many Labour voters, are deeply disappointed by the timidity and limitations of the government’s approach. That would apply even if that approach really is the maximalist one I’ve discussed here because, of course, for many the fundamental objection is to the red lines which define the ceiling of its ambitions. Even so, if those ambitions were publicly and unashamedly proclaimed as the government’s strategy it would at least offer something to all those who want much more, and a reassurance that, indeed, the maximum within those red lines would be done.

Again, this can be illustrated by the YMS proposal. Just as Labour’s reaction to that squandered an opportunity with the EU over something that will quite probably be agreed anyway, so too did it squander an opportunity to give Labour’s pro-EU supporters some reason to have faith in the new government’s approach. Conversely, it gave them a reason to feel highly pessimistic. Whereas if, on this and other issues, the government openly pursued a maximalist strategy, building trust and cooperation with the EU and domestic public support for that, it would provide the necessary basis for their hopes eventually to be realised. In that sense Labour’s maximalism would meet the minimum threshold of rejoiners. There would always be a tension, but not an unmanageable one.

Silence is not a strategy

Brexit nerds may recognize this sub-title, as it was the title of a very early post on this blog, in September 2016, and was taken from the sub-title of an Institute for Government report written at that time, when we were still in the ‘Brexit means Brexit’ period. I’m stressing this because there has been a sense ever since the referendum, and perhaps even more since we left the EU, that Brexit is something best not talked about. Former diplomat Simon Pease, writing in East Anglia Bylines last week, made this exact point with great eloquence.

That has certainly been the case for the Labour Party under Starmer, with any kind of post-Brexit policy discussion having to be virtually prised out of him. That eventually happened in July 2022 and, remarkably, his proposals then were almost identical to Labour’s present policy, and, as I discussed at the time, contained exactly the same ambiguities. At that time, I gave a qualified welcome to it, but it’s depressing that there’s been literally no development of it at all, at least in public.

The general political silence continued during the recent election, though some party manifestos, most notably that of the SNP, broke it. The question now is how much longer can it persist? Brexit surely can’t be a permanently taboo topic. The new government has an opportunity and, more than that, a need to break it, by publicly articulating its post-Brexit strategy. It doesn’t even have to be called that. If the ‘B’ word is still so toxic, just call it a Continental or a Regional strategy.

Will it happen? Given the newness of the government it’s still possible, but Starmer had the perfect moment to do so in his Rose Garden speech this week. He could, with justification, have rolled dealing with the legacy of Brexit in with the other ‘tough choices’ which he talked about making in order to clear up what his government has inherited from the Tories, but chose not to. So for now, the country will continue to muddle along, despite all the damage, hoping that, somehow, if we don’t talk about it, Brexit will resolve itself or simply go away as an issue. It’s not a strategy, except in the perverse sense of a strategy of having no strategy.

Correction (made 31/8/24, 11.32): The 'calendar time' the government has been in power is of course (approximately) two months, not three as stated in the post! 

Many thanks once again for all the feedback, much of it extremely kind, in response to my question about the future format of this blog. I’ve decided to experiment with moving to a fortnightly post, still on a Friday morning. I will also write additional posts if anything important happens between the regular ones. Depending how that goes, I may change approach but for now it will be fortnightly. Thus the next post will be on Friday 13 September. 

The riots represent a moment of choice for post-Brexit Britain

It’s hopefully not premature to say the literal, if not the metaphorical, dust has settled on last week’s riots. I’ve waited to write about them as I’m not a fan of ‘hot takes’ on big events, which are often foolish, and prefer to let a little time to pass before commenting. At the same time, I’m breaking my planned August break from posting because I think that it’s important to record the riots as a part of the Brexit saga. That doesn’t mean that Brexit caused the riots, but there are some connections between them. Equally, the fact of the riots having happened could pave the way for a new and better conversation about immigration in post-Brexit Britain.

The riots

Keir Starmer correctly called the riots “far-right thuggery” which had “no justification”, and it was refreshing to have a Prime Minister unequivocally doing so, and not back-tracking in the face of criticism. Some of that criticism was dishonest, denying that any of the culprits were of the far-right. Some of it was obtuse, in interpreting Starmer’s comments as a claim that all those who took to the streets were of the far-right. It’s true, of course, that some of them were anti-immigration without necessarily being doctrinaire fascists; that some were just thugs; that some were opportunistic looters and vandals; that some were inadequates and idiots. Still, at the hard centre of the riots were far-right activists and their sinister online allies. The far-right didn’t tag along with the crowd, the crowd tagged along with them. So Starmer’s description was correct. Indeed in some ways it was an understatement: some of the far-right thugs would better be described as lynch mobs.

Given that other elements were present, Starmer was also correct to talk about the riots in terms of mindless criminality, but this was manifestly a different truth to describing them as far-right. For, to the extent the violence was politically motivated, it was not ‘mindless’ and nor was it simply ‘criminality’. The use of violence for political ends is usually called terrorism, even if calls to treat the riots as such have not been heeded, at least so far. And this does not just apply to the doctrinaire fascists. Any of the rioters whose motivation was to change immigration policy, far-right or not, were attempting to change policy by means of violence. If people wanted a severe reduction of immigration, then, just a few weeks ago, they had an election when they could have voted for a party, Reform UK, pledging just that. Only 14% of voters did so.

That choice was also available to the rioters if they are understood in terms of the softer interpretation of their political motivation, which has been deployed very widely by people who range from disingenuous apologists to some well-meaning liberals. On this interpretation these were not so much riots as political ‘protests’ which arose because the country has failed to have an ‘honest conversation’ about immigration, or failed to discuss it at all, with the result that immigration levels are far higher than ‘most people’ or ‘ordinary people’ want. On such accounts, the riots, even if not justified in their violence, reflect a legitimate and respectable grievance that ‘uncontrolled immigration’ has been forced on the public without their support or consent.

And this is where Brexit comes in, because of course we’ve heard all this before. In fact we’ve heard it for decades, but never more so than during the referendum campaign, though the honesty of that conversation can certainly be questioned.

Back to Brexit

There’s no doubt that hostility to immigration was one of the main drivers of the vote to leave, but, rather as in some of the commentary about the riots, there was a studied delineation of the ‘respectable’ and the ‘unrespectable’ approaches to this. Vote Leave, the official campaign, was at pains to distance itself from the much harsher anti-immigrant message of Farage and Leave.EU. This enabled the overall vote for Brexit to be boosted by providing different ‘channels’ to corral voters to the ‘leave’ box. For all their subsequent protestations, the ‘liberal Brexiters’ knew that they could only win by enrolling many distinctly illiberal voters. Even more disingenuously, whilst happily harvesting such votes, some of them claimed that Brexit would spike the far-right, by removing the ‘grievance’ of ‘uncontrolled immigration’.

Thus many who voted Brexit believed they had been promised that immigration would not just be made subject to national control but would be reduced and, for at least some of them, the belief was that there would be fewer Muslims and less black and brown people entering the country. The campaign also cynically, and quite deliberately, conflated the issue of freedom of movement for EU citizens with refugee flows from outside the EU, especially Syria, and exploited Islamphobia in multiple ways, including the lie that Turkey was about to join the EU.

Actually, all that had been explicitly promised, even by Farage, was an ‘Aussie-style’ points system for immigration from anywhere, including the EU. This was even sold to ethnic minority voters with non-European, especially Commonwealth, roots as a way not of clamping down on immigration but of creating parity between people from their countries of origin and those from EU countries. Indeed some Brexiters even suggested that EU freedom of movement was inherently racist, implying to some voters that Brexit should be understood as an anti-racist, anti-discrimination project at the very moment it was being implied to other voters that it was anything but that.

As I discussed at length in a post last year, the inconsistency of the appeals to voters set up a massive problem as regards immigration, just as it did in every other aspect of Brexit, after the Leave campaign’s unexpected and unplanned for victory. Of course, we know what happened. In brief, having decided, initially under Theresa May, that, more than anything, Brexit meant ending freedom of movement in order to control immigration, Brexit was enacted as hard Brexit, with all the damage that entailed. But when EU freedom of movement was ended, immigration from the rest of the world soared, precisely because, under a ‘points-based system’, it was mandated.

This wasn’t because of some ‘globalist’ plot, or the wokeish multi-culturalism of the ‘liberal elite’, let alone evidence of the obscene ‘race replacement’ conspiracy theory. It was because businesses and public services would have literally collapsed otherwise. But it also meant, in very broad terms, that it became more likely that immigrants had black and brown skins and more likely they would be of non-Christian faith. As for irregular migration, if anything Brexit exacerbated it by removing the UK from the Dublin Regulations.

So, to the extent that those who voted for Brexit wanted lower immigration, including those who did so for straightforwardly racist reasons, it left them completely unsatisfied. Rather than spike the far-right, Brexit has given them a new grievance.

Whose country?

Thus in 2016 Farage declared “it’s been a hell of a journey but we have got our country back”, in what he called “a victory for ordinary, decent people”, yet in 2024 we still have people like Lee Anderson, now a Reform MP, whining bellicosely that "he wants his country back"*. It is no coincidence that the same phrase was chanted at the recent ‘Tommy Robinson’ rally, showing the continuities between the would-be respectable Brexiter politicians and those who, by any reasonable definition, are of the far-right.

For Farage, Anderson, Robinson, and those they represent, this is because Brexit has been betrayed, but the reality is that their demands could no more be satisfied after Brexit than before Brexit. For the deeper truth is not just that those demands couldn’t be satisfied without doing massive damage, including to the public services upon which those making those demands rely, it is that even if that damage was done it still wouldn’t be enough to satisfy them. They would shift to demanding not just an end to immigration, but the repatriation of immigrants, and then of the descendants of immigrants who are not ‘really British’ (a recurring theme within far-right ideology).

We can either go on trying to appease these unappeasable demands or have the honesty and courage to say that they are unrealistic and do not constitute ‘legitimate concerns’. Or, to put that in a more positive way, to have the honesty and courage to say that most people accept, and many are more than happy, that our country is multi-cultural, multi-race, multi-faith. This isn’t just a pious or unevidenced claim. Polling this week from More in Common shows that 48% of people are proud “that Britain is a multi-ethnic society”, 45% are neither proud nor ashamed of it, and only 7% are ashamed of it. In that sense, the Anderson-type desire to ‘have my country back’ is not an innocent demand for restitution made by the many, it’s an authoritarian demand by the few for the imposition of their narrow version of what the country should be.

To accept or welcome multi-culturalism isn’t to make some Pollyannaish claim that all immigrants are good people. Why should they be? They will include the vicious and the depraved, and the saints and the saviors, just as the ’indigenous’ population does. Nor is it simply about an abstract principle of diversity, though that is a principle which plenty of people would support. It’s also about economic realism, with which comes the need to be realistic about the families of immigrant workers and students, and geo-political realism about what drives refugees and asylum seekers. The latter actually affects the UK less than many countries, but it isn’t going to disappear and, yes, it does create moral obligations on all countries, including this one.

From this perspective, the riots do show that Britain has an integration problem. But it isn’t the integration of immigrants, who mostly do so (probably rather more than most British ‘expats’, if truth be told), at least within a generation. The problem is the integration of a small percentage of stubbornly monocultural, and sometimes violent, white, mainly English men. They’ve had Brexit, with all the damage it has done. They’ve had the ‘hostile environment policy’, with all the misery it has caused. They’ve had an immigration system which, far from being uncontrolled, is tightly regulated, expensive, has left many sectors with endemic staff shortages and has banjaxed universities. But they’re still not satisfied. The issue isn’t that mainstream politics has not given enough attention to them, it’s that it has bent over backwards to do so.

I know only too well what the nationalist populists would say to all this: typical condescending globalist elitism from an out-of-touch academic. The irony is that the real condescension is the populist promise of something which is impossible to deliver in practice, as happened with Brexit and, for that matter, with successive Tory manifesto pledges of immigration caps. Equally condescending are those well-meaning liberals who insist that we must strive to ‘understand’ the concerns of the rioters, or to insist that their racism is actually just the cri de coeur of the disadvantaged. But we already understand them, and we’ve already tried to meet their concerns. It hasn’t worked, and it will never work. Whatever we do, they will still be angry, and still claim ‘their country’ has been stolen from them, just as they always have, irrespective of immigration levels, and irrespective of EU membership, decade after decade, including at those periods which, currently, they revere as the lost past of true England that they wish to reclaim.

After the riots

The riots have seemingly been quelled, partly as a result of robust policing and the rapid disposition of firm legal justice for the rioters and their on-line provocateurs. That has led to squeals from far-right apologists, with entirely bogus claims about ‘two-tier justice’ and ‘thoughtcrime’ prosecutions. In fact, it was liberal democracy in action: on the one hand, political arguments should not be advanced through violence, on the other hand, free speech is not a licence for incitement to violence. What’s more, the police response was not seen as excessive by the public, with only 7% thinking it was ‘too harsh’ whilst 42% thought it was ‘too soft’.

The riots were also partly quelled by the thousands of counter-demonstrators and by the evident disdain of the thousands who turned out to repair the damage the rioters had caused. These are the ‘ordinary, decent people’ of our country, not the neo-Nazis and their tag-along mobs. Again that claim isn’t simply rhetoric but is supported by the polling evidence from More in Common which shows, amongst other things, that only 13% think the rioters represent ‘the real Britain’ but 87% think that those engaged in the clean-up do so. Meanwhile, only 23% think the riots stem from ‘legitimate concerns’ and a mere 17% think those involved in them are ‘standing up for Britain’.

So this was not some popular uprising, and that is a crucial point. One of the things which distinguishes populism in the UK from that in other countries is, precisely, Brexit. The referendum put a single populist policy to the electorate and the majority voted for it (let’s please leave aside the cretinous point that it was ‘only’ a majority of those who voted – that’s how democracy works). That emboldened the populists to claim (and perhaps to believe) not just, as they always have done, that they spoke for the ‘silent majority’, but that they represented an actual, permanent majority for all populist policies, especially as regards immigration.

It was always nonsense, and they are still peddling it by claiming the riots represent a popular revolt against ‘uncontrolled immigration’. Indeed, it’s hard to resist the sense that for the far right and some of its apologists there was a salivating hope that the riots marked the moment when ‘the people’ finally rose up against ‘the elite’ (it reminds me of how, when I was student, my left-wing friends and I were always predicting that some moment of crisis heralded the final collapse of capitalism under the weight of its own contradictions). If so, small wonder that they are so angry about the way that Starmer’s new government, rather calmly and undramatically, but highly effectively, restored order.

A moment of choice

With the riots now, hopefully, over, their aftermath therefore presents a moment of choice for post-Brexit Britain. People of all types voted to leave the EU for all sorts of reasons. It would be absurd to deny that some who did so have a similar agenda to the rioters or their sympathisers, but equally absurd to claim that all or even most of them had that agenda. And, of course, many voted to remain. So post-Brexit Britain does not belong to the rioters and their sympathisers, any more than this country should be defined by the image of ‘their country’. If, as many Brexiters say, the purpose was solely to take back sovereignty and so, as regards immigration, to make our own choices about that, then we are now perfectly entitled to have whatever immigration policy we, collectively, want.

It is certainly reasonable to demand that this immigration policy be framed by honest discussion. The first place to start with that is for those who call for much lower, or even zero, immigration to be honest about what they propose the country would have to go without, including in terms of public services, if their policies were pursued. It’s easy enough to say ‘stop mass immigration’ until the effects start to bite. For example, when, as has happened in the last year, immigration applications to work in health and social care have fallen by 82%, it emerges that 64% of the public view this as a negative development and only 16% see it as a positive development. No responsible politician, in power, could come anywhere near stopping immigration, or in some periods stopping what critics call ‘mass immigration’, and so no responsible politician, out of power, can honestly advocate doing so. 

There’s also a need for a different kind of honesty, from those who are ‘pro-immigration’ as much as those who are against it, and that is to stop the conflation of at least three different things: immigration which is largely about the labour market, immigration which is about students, and immigration which is about asylum seekers and refugees. When these distinctions are put to the public in opinion polls, what is revealed is that, far from anti-immigration sentiment being dominant it is actually much more nuanced. So whereas when asked about immigration in the abstract, 54% think it should be reduced, the only types of immigration for which there is majority support for a reduction in present numbers (as at January 2024) are people crossing the channel in small boats (68% want to see a reduction) and dependents of students (54% want to see a reduction, and this is now happening, with disastrous consequences for the UK’s universities). In all other categories there is majority support for the current or higher levels of immigration. In some cases that support is very high indeed (e.g. 82% for doctors, nurses, and care workers, 77% for their dependents, and even 55% for asylum seekers).

Of course, to the out-and-out racists, such distinctions don’t matter. Foreigners are foreigners, and so are their children and grandchildren. So it actually suits them if the rest of the public are not encouraged to draw those distinctions. Indeed there can be little doubt that the relentless focus on ‘stopping the boats’ suits the far-right agenda, by conflating the most unpopular form of immigration with all immigration (just as, during the referendum, the ‘migrant crisis’ was conflated with freedom of movement). All the more reason, then, why mainstream discourse should disentangle different forms of immigration, and create policies for each of them on their own terms. And, above everything else, all the more reason to refuse to frame that discourse in terms of the false claim that the far-right speak for the ‘ordinary, decent people’.

A fresh start?

The riots, and perhaps even more some of the apologism for them, have been both depressing and alarming, and for their targets literally terrifying. It’s tempting to see them as a kind of continuation of the xenophobia which was partly responsible for Brexit and perhaps enabled by Brexit. But in a roundabout way that plays into the hands of the populists who claim Brexit as some kind of mandate for draconian immigration controls, and who enrol post-Brexit immigration into their grievance politics.

Brexit was Brexit, and it has happened. The post-Brexit politics of immigration do not belong to the Brexit Ultras – it’s notable that Farage has found himself on the wrong side of public opinion this last week or so – and it is just possible that the public disdain for the riots will turn out to be the moment when a new conversation emerges. How likely is that? Well, rather obviously, it depends on who chooses to participate in it, what they say, and how loud they say it. For too long it has been dominated by the voices of  a loud minority, which last week came to a crescendo with the raucous cries of the mob and the insidious dogwhistling of their ‘respectable’ apologists. For now they have been, if not silenced, then at least slightly subdued. What happens next is up to the rest of us.

 

*Risibly, but also disgracefully, Lee Anderson, usually so ‘tough’ on law and order, sought to defend the rioters as just “British working-class lads” who had “probably had one too many” and “got carried away”.

Note: my normal practice if I claim that certain things are being widely said is to link to evidence in the form of a study demonstrating that this is so, or at least to a high-profile example. However, doing so for some things in this post would require linking to the absolute dregs of online vileness, which I would prefer not to do.

On a separate matter, I’m hugely appreciative of all the kind comments on the previous post in response to my request for preferences about the future of this blog. I’m still considering how to proceed, but I am quite overwhelmed by the response. Thank you.

Proustian moments at Le Café Brexit

There is an old saying that if you sit for long enough outside a café in Paris then, eventually, everyone you have ever loved will walk by. I was reminded of this not by the opening of the Paris Olympics but, perhaps more surprisingly, by an article this week in the Financial Times (£). In it, economics commentator Martin Sandbu ponders the possibility that, with the new government’s more positive and relatively more pragmatic approach to EU relations, some new agreement might be reached whereby the UK as a whole, and not just Northern Ireland, participated in the single market for goods.

It made for a kind of Proustian moment. For here, walking past Le Café Brexit, so to speak, was one, or perhaps two or even three, of the Brexit models we once knew so well, although Sandbu does not mention them by name in the article. Most obviously, it reprises the ‘Ukraine model’, first propounded, so far as I know, by Andrew Duff in November 2016. It also resembles the perhaps less familiar ‘Jersey model’, first propounded, again so far as I know, by John Springford and Sam Lowe of the Centre for European Reform in January 2018.

For that matter, it resembles what, in June 2018, seemed to be what Theresa May might seek to negotiate. (I mean by that not what ended up being her backstop proposal as regards the Northern Ireland Protocol in the Withdrawal Agreement, but what was floated as the potential final form of UK-EU relations.)

The sight of once familiar faces

Since the faces of these old ‘loves’ (if, indeed, they warrant that term) may now have been forgotten, it’s worth just briefly recalling their main features. Under the Jersey model, the UK would be in the single market for goods, including agriculture, accepting EU rules not just on products but things like state aid, and social and environmental standards, and be part of the EU VAT regime and, effectively, its customs union.

Under the Ukraine model*, there would be a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA) effectively entailing membership of the single market for goods and some services, again accepting product rules as well as things like state aid and social and environmental standards. There would be customs cooperation, rather than a customs union (though Duff suggests the model could be augmented with a customs treaty). However, in a more expanded sense, the Ukraine model encompasses not just a DCFTA but an Association Agreement, encompassing wide-ranging political cooperation, including in areas of foreign, defence, and security policy.

Needless to say, in both cases there is considerably greater complexity than this (for which, see the links above), and no one regards them as precise templates for a UK-EU relationship rather than being indicative of a certain type or category of relationship. Why were they not pursued? One answer can be found in another remembrance of past things, this time the famous ‘Barnier staircase’, the diagram which encapsulated the various categories into which post-Brexit relations might fall, along with the declared UK red lines which ruled all of them out other than a ‘standard’ Free Trade Agreement indicated by the Canadian and South Korean flags on that step of the staircase.

The Jersey model doesn’t feature on the staircase, but the UK red lines which precluded it were partly the same as those for the Ukraine model, which does appear as one of the steps: no ECJ jurisdiction and regulatory autonomy. The Jersey model would also cross the red line of having an independent trade policy, at least as regards agreements about trade in goods. At the same time, it is worth recalling that the Ukraine model, certainly, and the Jersey model, possibly or even probably, does not cross the UK red line of ending freedom of movement of people.

Why are we seeing them again now?

Why, then, might these models have become relevant again, at least from a UK perspective? Firstly because, in a general sense, the Labour government has committed to “tearing down” the barriers to trade created by Brexit. These models would do so, at least for goods trade, by removing many of the non-tariff barriers to trade with the EU, and not just tariff barriers (as, to a large extent, the existing trade agreement does). Since it is goods trade, rather than services trade, which has been most badly affected by Brexit, this would, unlike some of the more modest reforms Labour have suggested, actually make a meaningful economic difference and this, in turn, would assist Labour’s broader growth agenda (it would also considerably, if not entirely, remove the need for the Irish Sea border).

Secondly, and more specifically, Sandbu stresses the significance, which I highlighted in my most recent blog post, of Labour’s planned legislation to shadow EU product safety regulations. It is an important development, rightly described as “a real blow to the Brexiters” by Niall Ó Conghaile in East Anglia Bylines, and one which requires no agreement with the EU. But it also seems likely that the government will agree ‘dynamic alignment’ of Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary (SPS) regulations with the EU, at least if it is serious about reaching the ‘veterinary agreement’ which has been presented as central to its European policy. Of course, product safety and SPS are by no means exhaustive of the EU regulations, but the point is that, unlike the Tory governments, the present administration has no doctrinaire objection to regulatory alignment. Nor does Starmer have to contend with Brexit Ultras on his backbenches opposing it.

Dating isn’t the same as marriage

Even under the Tories, it was de facto accepted that the possibilities for regulatory divergence were very limited in a practical sense, which Is why they identified so few, and pursued even fewer. Moreover, as the recent example of ‘tethered plastic bottle caps’ has illustrated, to the bemusement of Brexiters like poor old Isabel Oakeshott (£), whatever the UK government may do, UK businesses will often decide to follow new EU regulations.

That’s for the fairly obvious reason that it is cheaper to produce to only one standard, especially if it is that of the larger market, but, in any case, to produce to the standard which is required by one market and is acceptable in the other market (i.e. in this case, tethered plastic bottle caps are now legally required for sale in the EU and acceptable, although not legally required, in Great Britain). Moreover, there is an additional incentive for UK manufacturers, specifically, to produce goods to a standard which will be acceptable in both Great Britain and Northern Ireland, where EU rules apply anyway (an early example being that of baby food manufacture).

This is just one illustration of something that Brexiters have never been able to understand. They (generally) manage to grasp that exported goods have to meet the standards of their destination market, but don’t understand why firms producing goods which are not for export should have to comply with the EU rules, depicting this as unnecessary red tape. And, with Brexit, they proceeded on that basis, only to find that doing so actually increased red tape. Hence, for the most part, the UK continues to comply with EU rules but without having any say in making them (or, at least, only a very limited say, in some cases, via the British Standards Institute’s membership of European standard-setting bodies). So much for ‘sovereignty’.

But the Brexiters also failed to understand something which is admittedly more complicated, and which is highly germane to the re-appearance of the Ukraine and Jersey models. The fact that goods produced in the UK meet EU standards doesn’t in itself make those goods legally saleable in the single market. Alignment doesn’t mean access, any more than dating means marriage. It is exactly the same issue, though in reverse, which some remainers fail to understand when they wrongly assume that goods sold in the UK marked ‘Not for sale in the EU’ (NFEU) must mean that those goods do not meet EU standards.

So, for this reason, even if the Labour government shadows EU regulations for product safety and in every other area, whilst that is helpful for businesses (by ensuring there is no need to produce to two standards**), that does not in itself replicate or gain the benefits of single market membership. But if regulatory alignment is no longer a red line for the UK, then there is no good reason not to make it de jure and not just de facto (in other words, to agree dynamic alignment not just in relation to SPS, but across the board for goods)? Similarly, if dynamic alignment for SPS is to be agreed, then that crosses the previous red line on ECJ jurisdiction, which would ultimately be needed in the event of, for example, disputes. So why not do the same for all goods?

In short, since, under Labour, the UK red lines which the Barnier staircase showed to preclude the Ukraine model have now, apparently, gone, then why could the Ukraine model not be revived? Indeed, given Labour’s very clear desire for a deep security pact, there seems little the government would object to, on doctrinaire grounds, in the wider model of not just a DCFTA but an Association Agreement.

One potential issue, with the Jersey, though not the Ukraine, model, is that it implies a customs treaty, which would limit the possibilities for an independent UK trade policy. And, despite the very limited economic rationale for such independence, Labour seem as committed to this as the Tories were. However, even the Jersey model would not preclude UK trade agreements with other countries on services, and whilst it is true that, historically, FTAs have been goods-focused, it is at least arguable that a smarter UK policy would be to develop a focus on services deals. Indeed, last year’s ‘Trading Up’ report from the Nuffield Foundation funded Economy 2030 project advocated precisely that, along with replicating the arrangements for goods in Northern Ireland across the whole UK economy.

It takes two to tango

So much for the UK side, but about the EU? Sandbu suggests that admitting the UK to the single market for goods would require the EU “to abandon the theology of four inseparable single market freedoms”. It’s a slightly irritating formulation, since it’s hardly a ‘theology’, but presumably one thing he has in mind is the issue of freedom of movement of people, which remains a UK red line under Labour. However, the Ukraine model does not entail such freedom of movement (and, hence, that did not feature on the staircase as precluding the model).

Nevertheless, in terms of the likelihood of the EU agreeing to it, an obvious objection is that the current Brexit trade arrangements actually work fairly well for the EU, and also that the dividing line between goods and services is an increasingly blurred one. Moreover, as a report this week emphasized, the EU are likely to want to see the existing Brexit deal fully implemented before considering a new one. It’s also questionable whether either the Jersey model (which really only arises from the historically curious status of the Channel Islands, and anyway relates to a tiny territory) or the Ukraine model (which relates to a much smaller economy than that of the UK, and is really predicated on being a path of entry to full EU membership, rather than an exit destination), would prove attractive or practicable from an EU perspective.

There is also the perennial problem of Britain’s Brexiters, despite them being out of government. Even Labour’s fairly modest policy on tracking EU product safety standards got a full frontpage headline in the Express declaring it to be ‘The Great Brexit Betrayal’, and the rage at something like a Ukraine-style Association Agreement can be all too easily imagined. So one question is whether Labour have the courage to defy the wave of criticism that would come from the press, and which might well impact on the electorate. My sense is that the answer is that they don’t, but I’ll come back to that.

The bigger issue is what this means for the EU. It is exactly the same problem as that which would be created by the UK rejoining the EU, or the single market as a whole: what happens if the Tories pledge to reverse whatever Labour agree, if and when they return to power? That is a huge concern for the EU, and one which we know the Brexiters would play on because at least one of them, David Frost, has already openly stated (£) that both the “Conservatives and the Reform Party must ... raise doubts on the EU side about how politically sustainable any deal might be in the medium term”. This wasn’t a reference to a single market for goods deal, or to an Association Agreement, specifically, but clearly would apply to them, and it did make explicit reference to the policy of regulatory ‘mirroring’.

It's tempting to think that what Frost and his fellow Brexit Ultras say is now irrelevant but, unfortunately, they retain a wrecking power. For the EU, having gone through the pain and aggravation of Brexit and reached what appears to be a durable form for the future relationship, and with many other issues far higher up its agenda, there’s not much incentive for a major change in that relationship anyway. But there still less if there is a real risk that, a few years later, the UK might pull out of it.

This in turn makes it less likely that Labour will seek such an agreement, even if they were minded to take on the domestic opposition to it. Why take that hit to embark on a policy which they can’t be sure of delivering? And this is a point that those who are impatient for progress, up to and including joining the EU, should take note of. Suppose Labour pursued being in the single market for goods, and were rebuffed by the EU. Then, regardless of the underlying reasons for it, it would become an established fact of British political life that ‘the EU will never give us more’.

It is this, I imagine, which informs Labour’s rather stealthy approach to alignment and to closer relations generally. Some, at least, within the government may well hope that gradually, if circumstances change, that will morph into a substantive change in the institutional form of the relationship, perhaps in a second term of office, perhaps with the Tory Party smashed again, and an eventual marginalization of the Brexiters. Such an approach could include, apart from a security pact, seeking the kind of detailed trade easements recently discussed by trade expert Sam Lowe.

The realities of single life

However, even if I am right to hypothesize that there is the coherent long game in play (and, obviously, I may not be), whilst the government ponders asking the EU to set up home together, it still has to face up to the issues of being single. The most immediate of these is the completion of full import controls on goods from the EU. This is one of the major hanging threads from Brexit, deriving from the twin scandals of Brexiters’ failure to understand that such controls were the necessary consequence of hard Brexit, and the Tory government’s abject incompetence in setting them up.

It bears repeating that the equivalent controls on the EU side were introduced, in full, the day after the transition period ended. That is now over three and half years ago, and not only has Britain repeatedly delayed doing the same but also, as I’ve detailed in the past, the Tory government created an almost incomprehensible array of partial and/or deferred implementations, with a patchwork of completion dates over the coming years. This is borne out by a National Audit Office report of May 2024, which was scathing about the costs, delays, and lack of clarity about the future timetable. Within that timetable, at least as things stand, October will see the introduction of the next phase of safety and security declarations, as well as some of the physical checks left hanging from the previous phase.

Labour’s intention is to make much of this unnecessary by reaching an SPS deal with the EU, but since negotiations will not even begin until early next year, not least because the new commission will not be in place until then, what happens in October? Another delay, with the attendant biosecurity risks? Meanwhile, the costs of preparing the new facilities will continue to mount, and port operators are already calling for compensation if it turns out these are not necessary following a new SPS agreement.

This is actually just the latest iteration of this issue, as changes that the previous government made to the checks required have already led to significant wasted expenditure on port facilities, as recently reported by Sophie Inge of Politico. There is hardly a better illustration of the absurd folly of Brexit than this saga of dishonesty, incompetence, cost, and the fact that rectifying it will entail further cost. It may also be another example of the way the Tories ‘salted the earth’ in anticipation of losing the election.

At least the import controls issue is one where, however difficult and expensive it may be, there is a potential solution. It is less clear that this is so for another Brexit-related issue the new government will soon have to face, the introduction, probably in November, of the EU’s new Entry/Exit System (EES) and, probably next May, of the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS). Taken together, these systems will introduce new processes for travellers entering the EU, and are likely to cause substantial extra delays at British airports, the Eurostar terminal, and ports, especially Dover.

Unlike import controls, these are not a hanging thread from Brexit, but they are a consequence of it. That’s not, as some Brexit commentators persist in claiming, because they are some sort of EU ‘punishment’. It is simply that they apply to all third country nationals entering the EU. The fact that they are likely to impact especially upon British nationals is because of the volume of travel between the UK and the EU. That, rather like the extent of UK-EU trade and supply chains, is yet another reflection of the basic facts of geography and economics that the Brexiters refused to understand. Now, it’s yet another price we are all going to have to pay for that ignorance.

As things stand, unless there is a further delay for technical reasons, which is possible, there isn’t much the government can do other than, as is reported to be happening, lobbying the EU to water down the impact of these new measures. But it’s not clear whether, or why, the EU will agree, and it is another example of the Brexiter myth of sovereignty that the only way Britain can ease the travel queues for its own citizens is by going ‘cap in hand’ to Brussels. What is in the government’s power, and has now been announced, is legislation to extend the rights of French border officials to operate on UK territory in Dover. That’s perfectly sensible, though, again, it scarcely betokens a great win for Brexit sovereignty.

Brexit: unloved and unlovable

It is still only the very early days of the new government, and it would be unrealistic to expect more than the beginnings of the re-set in the tone of relations with the EU, which we have started to see. In that sense, whilst it may be reasonable for commentators to take notice of foregone models of Brexit, these are still only passers-by at Le Café Brexit.

As we sip water from our bottle, with its tethered plastic top, we may have glimpses of paths not taken, and which might one day be available again, but for now we are stuck with the unloved and, even to its most ardent advocates, distinctly unlovable dishonesty, cost, and confusion of the Brexit we – in the collective sense of the polity – have chosen. As Proust put it, “it is often hard to bear the tears that we ourselves have caused”, and Brexit has certainly induced some especially stinging ones.

But Proust also suggested that “we are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full”. Although Brexit is already unpopular, that has still to happen. However, with the full impact of import controls and the new barriers to travel still to come, not to mention the accumulating drag on economic growth, it is perfectly possible that the harsh and bitter divorce created by May, Johnson and Frost may give way to a new kind of relationship and eventually, who knows, even a re-marriage. Or, since both parties will have changed, and lost times can never really be retrieved, perhaps that possibility would better be called, simply, a marriage.

Update 02/08/24, 08.26: since writing this post, I’ve seen that, just yesterday, it was reported that many of the import control processes and checks due to come into effect in October are going to be postponed, yet again, this time until the end of June 2025. Another Proustian moment! As before, this prevents, or defers, disruption, but at the risk of biosecurity breaches. It also maintains the farce of asymmetrical border controls. 

Notes

*Of course, this ‘Ukraine model’ was developed prior to the war with Russia, which has had many effects upon Ukraine’s relationship with the EU. My use of the term here simply refers to the basic type of the relationship, which is also illustrated by those the EU has with Georgia and Moldova. Note also that Andrew Duff has continued to develop and advocate this model since 2016, for example in a European Policy Centre discussion paper of March 2024.

**Some readers may be thinking the plastic bottle tops example makes this point irrelevant, since businesses don’t need the UK government to shadow EU regulations if they, as businesses, do so anyway. However, the bottle top example is of a particular sort, in that the EU standard, whilst not required in the GB market, is entirely legal here. But, absent of UK shadowing of EU regulations, there could be cases in which goods conforming to EU standards were illegal to sell in terms of UK standards. The legislation prevents this happening, at least within its domain of safety standards, and albeit with some caveats.

I am not planning to post again until Friday 30 August, unless there is a major Brexit development. During that period, I will be pondering the future of this blog, which by then will be about to enter its ninth year, and circumstances have become very different. I might just continue as before, but other possibilities include scaling back from a weekly to a fortnightly, or even monthly, post; or scaling back to posting only whenever there is a major, or interesting, development however frequently or infrequently that may be. I’d be interested in the view of readers on this, and in particular whether a regular post (so you know when it will be coming) is preferable to an ‘as and when’ post, and, if a regular post is preferable, whether every week, every fortnight, or every month would be better. If you have a view, please leave a comment below this post, or a message on X-Twitter.