The landscape of the politics of Brexit remains a broad and highly contested terrain, ranging from those convinced it was a great and necessary triumph, to be defended at all costs, to those urging its immediate reversal, with many shades of opinion between. But, under the Labour government, what might be called the immediate practical politics of Brexit operates within a far more restricted space in which only ‘micro-issues’ are subject to political decisions. Those micro-issues and decisions matter, and are worthy of attention, but, ultimately, the question is whether this disjuncture of scale is a sustainable one.
Wes Streeting’s facts of life
The Health Secretary Wes Streeting, whether intentionally or not, recently gave a very clear exposition of the perverse position the government has adopted. He was asked why the idea, not of rejoining the EU, but even of joining the single market was undiscussable. Whilst happy to recall that he, himself, had “campaigned passionately” against Brexit (this, at least, is something which is now sayable for cabinet ministers), he argued that “the people have moved on, the country has moved on and the EU has moved on”, so that there was “no appetite” for such questions to be re-opened.
This is familiar enough stuff, but Streeting then went on to say something more surprising, which I’m not sure has been explicitly expressed by any other cabinet minister: “there’s no doubt that what we warned about in advance of the referendum in terms of the impact on economic growth has come to pass, and that’s a fact of life we have to deal with. I think the sweet spot is working as closely with the European Union where we can, but also showing the agility to work with and through other partners in other markets as well …” [1]
This is different to the kind of things Keir Starmer, in particular, has said, accurately but irrelevantly, about the fact that not all Britain’s economic problems stem from Brexit. Sometimes, that has even morphed into the implication that ‘therefore’ these problems can be solved irrespective of Brexit. By contrast, the Streeting version is that the costs of Brexit are significant but just have to be accepted and, at best, mitigations made at the margin. In effect, this elevates the ‘mustn’t grumble’ mentality, which I alluded to in my most recent post, to the level of government policy.
That still leaves open the question of what Streeting means by “working as closely as possible with the EU where we can”. I wrote in a post at the end of the summer, pointing to the government’s lack of a clear and coherent post-Brexit strategy (a lack which still remains), that the most likely reading of Labour’s approach was that it would be the “maximalist” one of seeking “the maximum closeness, cooperation and alignment with the EU short of breaking the Labour manifesto commitment to its negative red lines”. Actually, it would have been more accurate to say that this is the best that can be hoped for. For that approach has yet to be demonstrated, as illustrated by the current rejection of a Youth Mobility Scheme (YMS), despite that fact it would not violate those red lines.
Backbench pressure?
I also pointed out in that post that one important way in which this government differs from its Tory predecessor is that the backbench pressure will be towards closer ties with the EU, rather than resistant to them or, indeed, agitating for even more distant ties. That is true, but what it is turning out to mean in practice is backbench pressure for such a ‘maximalist’ approach.
Thus, writing recently in the Guardian, Stella Creasy, the MP who chairs the Labour Movement for Europe, set out just that case. It included some of the things mentioned in my post, including seeking to join the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean Convention, and embracing, even extending, the EU’s proposals for a YMS. It also supported amendments to strengthen the governments Product Regulation and Metrology Bill (discussed in another recent post), further enhancing the way it will tend to keep many UK and EU regulations aligned.
What Creasy’s article self-avowedly did not do was make the case for rejoining the EU or for abandoning the government’s red lines. Saying that is neither praise nor criticism. It is simply a fact. What it betokens is that the practical politics of Brexit under this government is therefore now entirely about the nature and extent of Brexit damage limitation. That is, there is no dramatic difference of principle between what Streeting said and what Creasy wrote: the issue is entirely one of specific ‘micro-issues’ to be addressed within the framing they share.
That framing still leaves room for some policy debates and choices. Apart from the government’s stated ambitions, such as an SPS deal with the EU, there will be constant decisions to be made, with important upcoming examples including linking UK and EU Emissions Trading Schemes and aligning UK and EU deforestation regulations. Yet, important as these things are, they are still decisions to be made within the limited parameters of what the present government regards as practical politics.
A vanishingly small space?
A year ago I reviewed a book by Peter Foster, the Financial Times journalist who has been one of the best analysts of Brexit (I apologise for these repeated links to earlier posts, but they help, I hope, to provide context and sometimes corroboration, whist avoiding excessive repetition). That book is perhaps the most detailed articulation of what ‘maximalism’ (in this context) means in terms of specific measures.
In my review, I suggested that: “one danger which a Labour government looks likely to face is that, along with Brexiter denunciations, it will also be attacked by remainers and rejoiners as being insufficient to the magnitude of the task. The positive reading of that is it will push Labour towards Foster’s more maximalist version of its presently disclosed policy. The negative reading is that, squeezed between those who say it is too much and those who say it is too little, the space for pragmatism will remain vanishingly small.”
It's arguably too early to be sure yet, but it looks as if it is the latter outcome which is emerging. In practice this would mean that, rather than post-Brexit policy being located right up against the edge of Labour’s red lines, those lines will mark the far boundary of what is possible, and policy will settle between that and the kind of ad hoc accommodations the Sunak government was forced to make despite Brexiter opposition (e.g. watering down the scrapping of retained EU law, postponing if not effectively scrapping UKCA, agreeing the Windsor Framework). That is, if the Sunak approach is defined as minimalism, and the Creasy (or Foster) approach is defined as maximalism, the Starmer government’s approach will end up being somewhere between the two.
If this is so (and, actually, even if what emerges does turn out to be the maximalist approach), it is likely to come under increasing strain as it collides with economic reality. That was illustrated by the government’s much-vaunted International Investment Summit last week. This was the context of both the Streeting interview and the Creasy article, and it also provoked commentators to ask the question which, even if the government wants to believe that ‘the country has moved on’ will not go away: what about Brexit?
Counting the costs of Brexit: latest news
It is a question given added salience by a report the same week from Stephen Hunsaker of UKICE, calculating that, since 2017, the UK may have lost £44 billion of public investment which it would otherwise have received from the European Investment Bank. Like other counterfactual estimates (i.e. what would have happened if Brexit hadn’t happened), such as those of foregone trade, this may have little cut-through with the public. It is hard for people to get agitated about the loss of something that they ‘would have had’ in an alternative history. But for policymakers such things are, or should be, highly important and, indirectly, they do actually have a political significance: even without recognizing the mechanism, voters react negatively to the effects.
There was also a reminder of ‘the costs of Brexit’ in terms of payments made under the Brexit ‘divorce settlement’. This came as the result of a parliamentary question from SNP MP Stephen Gethins about how much has been paid so far, and how much remains to be paid, to which the answers turn out to be £24 billion and £6.4 billion respectively.
Strictly speaking, these are not ‘costs of Brexit’ because they are payments for liabilities the UK had incurred as an EU member so, in that sense, would have been paid one way or another regardless of Brexit. Nevertheless, it shouldn’t be forgotten that many Brexiters insisted, amongst them Nigel Farage, that there would be no ‘divorce settlement’ to pay or, even, that the EU would owe money to the UK. Even when installed as Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson said the EU could “go whistle” for a financial settlement. Others of them fantasized that nothing should be agreed until the future terms of trade were also agreed, a fantasy which did not survive what turned out to be the non-existent ‘battle of the summer’ of 2017, although it still lingers on in Brexiter mythology as one of the many ways that Brexit ‘could have worked’.
More generally, the financial settlement was expected to be the most contentious aspect of the Withdrawal Agreement, and one of the more curious parts of the Brexit saga is the way that, having effectively been settled as part of the ‘phase 1 agreement’ in the autumn of 2017, it has scarcely figured in discussion since. By contrast, the issue of Northern Ireland, which had been dismissed by Brexiters as a triviality, proved to be far more toxic, festering on until the Windsor Framework was agreed in February 2023, aspects of which remain unimplemented even now, and is still a running sore to many, including many advocates of Brexit.
All this is worth recalling if only because we should never forget the grotesque ways in which Brexiters fooled themselves and misled others about the most basic realities of leaving the EU. More specifically, in the present context, it serves as another illustration of how, every step of the way, what Brexiters sold as a cost-free project has incurred cost after cost after cost.
A third recent reminder of this is the Reuters’ report that the Lord Mayor of the City of London estimates that Brexit has led to the loss of 40,000 jobs from Britain’s financial centre since 2016. It was a noteworthy report not least because, rather like the financial settlement, the figure for City job losses also has a special place in the iconography of the Brexit process.
Before the referendum, a widely cited report from accountants PWC estimated that the figure would be 70,000 to 100,000. This was dismissed as ‘Project Fear’ by leave campaigners, who later claimed vindication when, in 2022, another accounting giant, EY, estimated that the actual figure had been ‘only’ 7000 jobs. Of course, this was only a vindication because, by then, defence of Brexit had long since moved to claiming it had not been as bad as expected, rather than that it had had the positive benefits promised. If the latest 40,000 figure is correct then, on that logic, it could still be claimed as a vindication. Nevertheless, it would be closer to the lower end of the PWC estimate than to the EY estimate.
Foregoing jobs of this type, on this scale has significant implications. For example, economics commentator Jonty Bloom calculates that, if the figure is indeed 40,000, this represents well over £1 billion per year of foregone tax revenue (even conservatively assuming these jobs to have had an average salary for the sector, and considering only the income tax and national insurance they would have paid). Again, these are counterfactual costs but, whilst that inevitably means they are estimates, counterfactual analysis is the only way of assessing the effects of Brexit. Indeed Brexiters themselves recognize this whenever they claim (usually wrongly or misleadingly) that such-and-such a thing is a ‘benefit of Brexit’ because it wouldn’t otherwise have been possible.
Foregone jobs aside, the wider issue is that, apart from a few pro-Brexit diehards, no one seriously thinks that, overall, Brexit has been anything other than bad for the UK financial services industry. Even the pro-Brexit Telegraph reported (£) earlier this year that Brexit was the “prime suspect in the death of the stock market” and that the referendum was a decisive moment in the City’s “brutal losing streak”. Meanwhile, a review of the sector jointly produced by the City of London Corporation and the Treasury last year (i.e. under the Tory government) identified “strengthening and deepening the EU-UK business relationship” as “a top priority for the UK based financial and professional services sector.”
There’s little sign that this priority will be delivered by the new government, for all Labour’s wooing of the Square Mile. As a recent analysis by Hannah Brenton of Politico explained in some detail, the sector remains “out in the cold”, rarely featuring in the government’s statements about the ‘reset’ with the EU, and barely mentioned in discussions with the EU. Yet, as Brenton points out, financial services account for some 12% of UK GDP and contribute £100 billion in tax revenues (2022 figures). A government which has made GDP growth its central mission and which has a pressing need for tax revenues to repair highly-stressed public services can hardly afford to ignore the sector’s stated priority needs in this way.
Some other facts of life
Constant reminders of the costs of Brexit, such as these, will continue to exert pressure on the narrowness of the political space within which Labour are willing to discuss it. Next week’s budget will be an important example. At one level, it will push discussion of Brexit even further to the margins, as commentators will find many others things in it to talk about.
At another level, it will make the costs of Brexit even more relevant. Battles between the Treasury and spending departments are a basic fact of political life, and those over the forthcoming budget are no different (rather than being, as some reports suggest, the sign of a government in chaos). Nevertheless, they have an added dimension when budgetary constraints are so much tighter than they would have been as the result of a calamitous decision about national strategy.
To put it another way, Wes Streeting may think the costs of Brexit are “just a fact of life we have to deal with”, but he must know that much of the political credibility of the government, not to mention his own career, depends on the funding settlement he obtains for the NHS. The same goes for other ministers and other public services. For this reason, even if ‘the people have moved on from Brexit’ and even if counterfactual losses have no cut-through, it doesn’t follow that bearing those costs has no political consequences. It’s another fact of political life that voters expect results. [2]
From that point of view, the limited space of Labour’s Brexit politics, and the Brexit micro-issues to which it confines the government, is always going to be faced with the question of why it is so small. The ‘macro-question’ of Brexit as a national strategy will not go away. And that isn’t solely or even, ultimately, mainly because of the question of whether Brexit was a mistake. It is for similar, if now updated, strategic reasons to those which, in the 1960s and 1970s, drove the UK repeatedly to seek membership of what was then the EEC (this argument was made with great elegance by the historian Robert Saunders, in an essay marking the day that Britain left the EU). Those reasons, too, are facts of life, deriving from those of economics, geography, and the nature of international relations.
So the issue for this and future governments is the disjuncture between what is economically (and geo-politically) desirable and what is politically viable. The present government has an answer to this, and it is not entirely without merit: it is that re-opening the macro-question of Brexit would be economically damaging because of the instability which would result from the political toxicity of doing so. On this account, there is no disjuncture: it’s not economically desirable because it’s not politically viable. And it’s true that, in particular, many big businesses which have adapted themselves to being outside the single market and customs union are not keen to have that all thrown up into the air again for an indeterminate period with an uncertain outcome.
However, whilst it isn’t unreasonable for the government to take account of those concerns, they do not define the interests of Britain’s economy as a whole, nor those of its citizens. Acting as if they do is not only unhelpful to smaller businesses and to consumer choice, it institutionalizes higher costs, lower investment, and a lower tax base than would otherwise be the case. Equally, it does little to address the geo-political damage of Brexit.
This doesn’t mean, at least in my estimation, that the present government is going to pivot to joining (or rejoining) the single market, let alone the EU. It does mean, though, that an approach based on simply “living with” the costs and damages incurred by choices made by, and in the aftermath of, the 2016 referendum is inherently fragile. It is very unlikely that the politics of Brexit can forever be contained within the small space to which it is currently confined by Labour. For it is also a fact of life that attempts to fit a quart into a pint pot – to use measures that some Brexiters might appreciate – will result in a leakage, if not indeed a flood.
Notes
[1] The last words of this quote seem to suggest a continuation of the last government’s faith in post-Brexit Britain’s ‘nimbleness’ in being able to set its own regulations and make its own trade deals. There’s little reason to share it. But in one respect, at least, there has been a departure from this hubris in that all the existing advisers to the Board of Trade have been dismissed, including Daniel Hannan, one of the major architects of Brexit, and Australia’s former leader Tony Abbott, one of its few international champions.
[2] In the present context, it’s an even harsher fact of political life that some voters expect results that they have denied themselves by their vote to leave the EU, or, however they voted in the referendum, by their unwillingness to see that decision revisited. But there’s nothing new about people holding perversely contradictory views, and it’s one of the tasks of political leadership to persuade them of the need to face realities. The core of the present government’s ‘Brexit problem’ is that it believes this is not possible – and it may well be right.
Friday, 25 October 2024
Friday, 11 October 2024
Britain's Brexitism test
The most significant Brexit-related development of the last fortnight was Keir Starmer’s first visit to Brussels since becoming Prime Minister. Media attention focused on his meeting with the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, but, notably, he also met with Charles Michel, Chair of the European Council, and Roberta Metsola, President of the European Parliament.
Significant it may have been, but dramatic it certainly wasn’t, and no one should have expected otherwise. This was never likely to be the moment for some great announcement and, in fact, the joint statement of the Starmer-van der Leyen meeting, whilst positive in tone, was fairly anodyne in content. Nevertheless, it did contain some points of interest.
The Starmer-von der Leyen statement
The reaffirmation of a shared commitment to the Withdrawal Agreement, Windsor Framework, and Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) could be taken as a reminder of the EU’s desire to see all of the provisions of these fully implemented, and perhaps as a pre-condition of any ‘reset’. It was certainly a reminder of the Labour government’s acceptance of the basic architecture of what was agreed by its Tory predecessors, and thus the limitations of such a reset. Yet the reference to “the unique relationship” between the EU and the UK, whilst at one level a truism, could betoken a recognition by the EU that not all its relationships with third countries are of the same order, and by the UK that the brief and hubristic days of post-Brexit ‘global Britain’, in which the EU hardly counted, are long gone.
At all events, the statement identified the desire to develop an agenda of strengthened cooperation “at pace” and, interestingly, included within that agenda were references to both climate change and energy. These had been identified by Joël Reland of the UK in a Changing Europe (UKICE) research centre in advance of the meeting as being something to watch for as neglected, but highly viable areas, for greater cooperation within the existing agreement architecture, and of potentially mutual interest to both sides.
But ‘pace’ will indeed matter. For example, the ongoing development of both UK and EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanisms (CBAM) and associated Emission Trading Systems (ETS) means that decisions about their possible linkage, a perfectly realistic possibility within the TCA framework, will soon become pressing. More generally, as economics commentator Simon Nixon argued in a recent post on his Wealth of Nations substack, emerging EU plans to revive EU competitiveness are likely to have major implications for the UK. In short, any reset of relations with the EU will not occur against a static background.
The main substantive announcement in the joint statement was of agreement to begin holding regular EU-UK summits, starting early next year. Anton Spisak of the Centre for European Reform, and a seasoned analyst of Brexit, pointed out that the significance of this should not be downplayed, given the unwillingness of both parties to entertain the idea in the past. Small as it may be, it is a sign of progress, and was welcomed as such by the European Movement UK.*
Testing questions for the ‘reset’
How far that progress goes, and what it consists of, remains to be seen, not least because, as I discussed in a recent post, it’s unclear what the government means by ‘the reset’. But, whatever its intentions, many commentaries on the Brussels’ meeting focused on UKICE Director Professor Anand Menon’s remark that to pursue them the UK needs to show the EU “a token of good faith” by agreeing to a Youth Mobility Scheme (YMS). Yet, beyond the obvious fact that this would do much to enhance the credibility of the UK’s commitment to a genuine reset, what I have not seen discussed is exactly why such a gesture is needed and what it would betoken.
I think the answer to that is bound up with the entire post-Brexit question. To what extent has the UK, not just in its government but in its wider political culture, banished or at least decisively marginalized ‘Brexitism’? I’ve argued in the past that it is this which will be the key test for the viability of any idea of ultimately joining the EU or the single market. It isn’t enough for there to be majority support for doing so in the opinion polls. The credibility question, for the EU, is whether or not there is any danger that a move to join would subsequently be reversed, and the trauma of Brexit repeated. If there is such a danger, there is no attraction for the EU in entertaining UK accession.
That is not in prospect, but the same argument applies, though arguably to a lesser extent, to the far more limited aspirations for rapprochement envisaged by the current government. To what extent can they be taken as a reliable, permanent, feature of UK-EU relations? Or will this ‘reset’ be followed, a few years down the line, by another reset, back in the direction of the Brexit Ultras’ desire for separation, antagonism, maximum distance, and ‘sovereignty’ above all else? Is the UK now, in fact, a reliable interlocutor again, or is the Brexit virus liable to break out again, as shingles may for anyone who has had a bout of chicken pox?
In this sense, complaints that the EU’s original proposal for a YMS deal were made at a time that was unhelpful (£) to the then Labour opposition missed the point: these questions aren’t (just) about any particular party or government, but about the British polity. If the EU still has to tip-toe around the Brexit eggshells of UK politics, then that in itself answers the question of whether or not Brexitism has been marginalized.
There is also a deeper, or, anyway, different version of this same question, which is also highly germane to the viability of a substantive reset in relations. Brexit aside, the UK’s attitude to the EU during the years in which it was a member was very much characterized by grudging transactionalism, rather than by any commitment to European ideals. Brussels was the place the UK went to bang the table with a handbag, and extract the most it could whilst giving the least possible in return. Now that the UK is outside, is that still the approach, rather than, as a reset might imply, one of genuine partnership?
Oddly, and perhaps unintentionally, the comments of some ‘post-Brexit realists’, who, whilst understanding very well the folly of Brexit, discuss Labour’s reset in terms of negotiating strategies and ‘offensive’ and ‘defensive’ objectives, reinforce the impression that this transactionalism persists. At all events, a genuine reset needs to entail more than regret about the way in which May, Davis, Johnson, and Frost went about divorce proceedings. If the marriage is to be replaced by friendship, it is also necessary for there to be a genuine desire to avoid repeating the behaviour which preceded the divorce.
The YMS test
On these questions, YMS is quite a good test to set, relating as it does to the neuralgic issue of immigration which played such a central role in the vote for Brexit. YMS manifestly doesn’t cross the Labour red line on the restoration of freedom of movement of people, so if the government still sees it as too politically toxic to pursue that suggests two, related, things. One is that within the British polity, generally, the experience of Brexit has still not lanced the populist boil about immigration. The other is that the Labour government is not minded to challenge, but to accept, the orthodoxy of anti-immigration sentiment.
It would seem as if that test has already been failed. Unsurprisingly, anti-immigration politics still suffuses Farage’s Reform Party as, hardly any more unsurprisingly, it does the Tory Party, whoever its new leader turns out to be. The Tories did have the possibility of saying that, with Brexit, they had delivered the ‘points-based’ system which Brexiters like Farage used to say was all they wanted. They could then have initiated the ‘honest conversation’ everyone says they want to have about immigration, for example by decoupling it from asylum-seeking, and by challenging the voters about their view that immigration in general should be significantly reduced whilst those same voters, including Conservative voters, do not support reductions in almost every specific category of immigration. But, whether from fear of Reform, their own preferences, or some combination of the two, the Tories have not chosen to take this opportunity.
Nor is there any sign that the Labour government will do so. That clearly extends even to YMS, with reports that the cabinet is split over whether to agree to it, and identifying Home Secretary Yvette Cooper as the main opponent. Cooper played a pivotal and praiseworthy role in preventing Boris Johnson’s government enacting a ‘no deal Brexit’, and a courageous one, too, given the horrendous abuse and threats she faced. So it might be tempting to see her stance on YMS as the latest example of the Home Office capturing its Secretary of State. After all, Theresa May went from challenging her party to stop being ‘nasty’ to being a distinctly nasty Home Secretary, and the department seems to have had similarly radicalizing effect on one-time Immigration Minister, then Tory leadership candidate, Robert Jenrick.
In fact, Cooper has been arguing against freedom of movement since at least December 2016. And although she must know very well that YMS would not mean anything like its restoration she insists that the EU “see this in the context of free movement”, whatever that is supposed to mean, or why it even affects the issue. But it isn’t just Cooper. Starmer, too, despite being enthusiastic about the case for freedom of movement as recently as January 2020, is reported to fear the reaction from the pro-Brexit press to a YMS deal. So even on this quite limited measure it seems Labour have no appetite to take on Brexitism, thus failing first part of the YMS test, namely, whether has Brexitism been marginalized.
This does not mean that YMS will not be agreed in the end. Many people (including me, for what it is worth) expect that it will be. However, the consequence of having failed the first test is that, if and when YMS is agreed, the UK will also fail the second test. For if it is agreed as, or is presented as having been agreed as, part of some quid pro quo deal to obtain some softening of the economic damage of Brexit, such as an SPS deal, then it will be clear that the UK’s relationship with the EU remains within the same transactionalist frame as it has always been. That needn’t preclude a ‘reset’ but places limits upon it, and defines the future ‘partnership’ in relatively shallow terms.
The ECHR test
Whilst the YMS is a good test of the question of whether the UK has left Brexitism behind, there is a different test, which is whether the UK is likely to go even further down the path it took with Brexit by embracing a ‘Brexit 2.0’ of leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and its associated Court. That, too, is largely bound up with immigration, to the extent that ECHR derogation is almost invariably presented as being a means of ‘stopping the small boats’ (in this sense, it is also bound up with the failure to differentiate immigration from asylum-seeking).
Here the text of the Starmer-von der Leyen statement was revealing in “re-affirming” the parties’ mutual commitment to the Convention. It’s not clear that Rishi Sunak could have done the same thing, given his repeated pandering to the possibility of derogation over the ‘Rwanda plan’. By contrast, on this, Starmer’s resolve is unequivocal: a government under his leadership will never leave the ECHR. Given all his priors, it is unthinkable that he will renege on this.
However, it is very far from obvious that this is the settled view of the British polity. Again, it is unsurprising that Farage and Reform UK are adamantly opposed to ECHR membership, whilst support for it within the Tory Party is fragile. Of the remaining leadership candidates, Robert Jenrick has unreservedly advocated leaving and, despite having initially rejected the idea, Kemi Badenoch now says that she would consider doing so.
Whichever of them wins will undoubtedly find much support for making leaving the ECHR official party policy, since doing so is now an article of faith to those on the right. At the same time, former candidate Tom Tugendhat’s foolish attempt to court the right by contingently supporting leaving indicates that even on the more ‘centrist’ wing of the party it is no longer seen as unthinkable. At the very least, his having done so will have weakened what remains of the One Nation Tories’ ability to oppose it. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson, with his usual opportunism, this week called for a referendum on membership.
So it certainly can’t be said, despite all the miseries that Brexit has caused, and despite its unpopularity with the public, that Brexit 2.0 can be ruled out, or that demands for it will be confined to the margins of politics. That seems all the more the case given the faltering first 100 days of the Labour administration. Of course, it is too early to judge, but the possibility of a two-term hegemony, in which Labour might re-write British politics, looks less likely now than it did in the immediate aftermath of the election, whilst the possibility of a disillusioned electorate turning to nationalist populism has become more feasible.
The Gibraltar test
Whatever the truth of that turns out to be, it is abundantly clear that the populist and pro-Brexit media has not been cowed by the new government, and continues to exert a very considerable influence upon it. Many believed that a huge Labour majority would somewhat tame that media, for the general reason that the centre of political gravity would have shifted, and the specific one that journalists would become somewhat beholden to the new regime.
That hasn’t really happened, and certainly not to the extent that it did in 1997, with the result that Starmer’s government has immediately become embroiled in controversies, leaks and scandals (some of them highly confected), and has already been forced to engage in a domestic re-set. That has multiple implications, including for the prospects of a ‘reset’ of relations with the EU.
A clear example was the furore over the announcement that the UK has agreed to cede sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. This is itself, in part, a Brexit story because, as the BBC report of it mentioned, Brexit meant that many EU nations were no longer prepared to back the UK’s case for retaining control of the territory. It’s a point that Brexiters should heed, since it a reminder of how Brexit has weakened the UK geo-politically as well as economically.
However, more to the present point is the way that the agreement was represented by Brexiters and the right-wing press as showing “weakness” and even “treason”, ignoring the fact that the negotiations which led to the agreement had been started by the previous Tory government. This was then linked to ridiculous claims (ridiculous as there is zero connection) that it would be followed by similar deals to cede sovereignty of the Falklands and Gibraltar (£).
It’s the latter claim which relates most directly to Brexit, since the post-Brexit situation of Gibraltar remains unresolved and under negotiation, and resolving it is, in itself, now a test of Starmer’s desire for a reset with the EU. In principle this is becoming urgent, with the new Entry/Exit System (EES) Schengen border controls due to begin in early November although, as I write, reports are confirming the recent rumours that these will be postponed again. But the new controls will, eventually, happen and this matters, since a key issue is maintaining an open border between Gibraltar and Spain, and the associated question of the management of border controls at Gibraltar’s port and airport (which is also an RAF base).
The last time I discussed Gibraltar in detail on this blog was in April, when it seemed that a deal was imminent. A deal, that is, brokered by the Tory government. Since then, reports of the negotiations have been sparse, although last weekend it emerged (£) that the government was about to make formal complaints to Spain about its military overflights of the territory, which doesn’t augur well. But if, and I would think when, a deal is done it will almost certainly involve ‘concessions’ to the EU and Spain, reportedly already made by the previous government, on who undertakes border controls.
This will be the cue for Brexiters to cry ‘betrayal’, as they would have done under the Tories but now, no doubt, with the support of the Tory leadership. Such protest may be marginal, and easily batted away by the government. But the reaction to the Chagos agreement suggests the possibility of a Gibraltar deal being woven into a wider narrative of Starmer being ‘weak’ and ‘not standing up for’ Britain, both generally and in relation to the EU. If that narrative gains ground it will be another indication that Brexitism exerts a profound hold on the UK, whatever its government may be.
Still not done
The question of how Brexit will continue to unfold is a crucial one for our country, so it was with considerable regret that I learned that Yorkshire Bylines’ Davis Downsides Dossier is to be discontinued. It has been a huge, and I think unique, resource for collating media reports about the practical consequences of Brexit, and I’ve referred to it many times.
That isn’t the only loss. At the high-profile end of things, the decision to end the European Scrutiny Committee, for all its problems, without any replacement is a big setback for scrutiny and accountability of the government’s post-Brexit policies, as Jill Rutter and Hannah White of the Institute for Government explain. I’m particularly saddened by the decision to stop funding UKICE from April 2025. UKICE has been a consistently outstanding source of reliable data, incisive analysis, and intelligent comment about Brexit, and an invaluable public resource, not least for this blog where I have cited its work in, very possibly, the majority of posts.
At, if they will forgive me, the lower-profile end of the spectrum, Nick Tyrone has now ended his ‘Week in Brexitland’ newsletter, and Gerhard Schnyder has ended regular posts of his Brexit Impact Tracker blog. Again, I have often cited these sources on this blog and it is a shame that they are gone.
These losses contribute to a growing sense that Brexit (somewhat like Covid) is regarded if not as over, then as something that just has to be put up with, like the British, or more accurately English, weather. It’s a sense I tried to capture in more detail about a year ago in my post entitled “mustn’t grumble”. So continuing with this blog, even on its new fortnightly basis, feels like ploughing an increasingly lonely furrow, but I think it is still a worthwhile one. And this week, just over eight years since I launched it, the blog received its ten millionth visit, and the readership via email sign-ups continues to hold up, so hopefully I am not the only one to think so.
After all, as this post shows, Brexit is very far from ‘being done’, and that was without even mentioning the latest postponement to an aspect of import controls, this time that of digital product safety declarations. And as this post also shows, we are also far from done with Brexitism.
*Another small step of note was the this week announcement of a new agreement between the UK’s Office of National Statistics and EU’s Eurostat, severed since Brexit. It’s not really an example of ‘the reset’, since it was anticipated by the TCA and has been under discussion for a while, but it has a significance beyond itself in that it facilitates UK participation in EU programmes such as Horizon Europe. At the same time, it’s yet another reminder of the extent to which Brexit has caused so many utterly pointless, yet damaging, ruptures, large and small.
Significant it may have been, but dramatic it certainly wasn’t, and no one should have expected otherwise. This was never likely to be the moment for some great announcement and, in fact, the joint statement of the Starmer-van der Leyen meeting, whilst positive in tone, was fairly anodyne in content. Nevertheless, it did contain some points of interest.
The Starmer-von der Leyen statement
The reaffirmation of a shared commitment to the Withdrawal Agreement, Windsor Framework, and Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) could be taken as a reminder of the EU’s desire to see all of the provisions of these fully implemented, and perhaps as a pre-condition of any ‘reset’. It was certainly a reminder of the Labour government’s acceptance of the basic architecture of what was agreed by its Tory predecessors, and thus the limitations of such a reset. Yet the reference to “the unique relationship” between the EU and the UK, whilst at one level a truism, could betoken a recognition by the EU that not all its relationships with third countries are of the same order, and by the UK that the brief and hubristic days of post-Brexit ‘global Britain’, in which the EU hardly counted, are long gone.
At all events, the statement identified the desire to develop an agenda of strengthened cooperation “at pace” and, interestingly, included within that agenda were references to both climate change and energy. These had been identified by Joël Reland of the UK in a Changing Europe (UKICE) research centre in advance of the meeting as being something to watch for as neglected, but highly viable areas, for greater cooperation within the existing agreement architecture, and of potentially mutual interest to both sides.
But ‘pace’ will indeed matter. For example, the ongoing development of both UK and EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanisms (CBAM) and associated Emission Trading Systems (ETS) means that decisions about their possible linkage, a perfectly realistic possibility within the TCA framework, will soon become pressing. More generally, as economics commentator Simon Nixon argued in a recent post on his Wealth of Nations substack, emerging EU plans to revive EU competitiveness are likely to have major implications for the UK. In short, any reset of relations with the EU will not occur against a static background.
The main substantive announcement in the joint statement was of agreement to begin holding regular EU-UK summits, starting early next year. Anton Spisak of the Centre for European Reform, and a seasoned analyst of Brexit, pointed out that the significance of this should not be downplayed, given the unwillingness of both parties to entertain the idea in the past. Small as it may be, it is a sign of progress, and was welcomed as such by the European Movement UK.*
Testing questions for the ‘reset’
How far that progress goes, and what it consists of, remains to be seen, not least because, as I discussed in a recent post, it’s unclear what the government means by ‘the reset’. But, whatever its intentions, many commentaries on the Brussels’ meeting focused on UKICE Director Professor Anand Menon’s remark that to pursue them the UK needs to show the EU “a token of good faith” by agreeing to a Youth Mobility Scheme (YMS). Yet, beyond the obvious fact that this would do much to enhance the credibility of the UK’s commitment to a genuine reset, what I have not seen discussed is exactly why such a gesture is needed and what it would betoken.
I think the answer to that is bound up with the entire post-Brexit question. To what extent has the UK, not just in its government but in its wider political culture, banished or at least decisively marginalized ‘Brexitism’? I’ve argued in the past that it is this which will be the key test for the viability of any idea of ultimately joining the EU or the single market. It isn’t enough for there to be majority support for doing so in the opinion polls. The credibility question, for the EU, is whether or not there is any danger that a move to join would subsequently be reversed, and the trauma of Brexit repeated. If there is such a danger, there is no attraction for the EU in entertaining UK accession.
That is not in prospect, but the same argument applies, though arguably to a lesser extent, to the far more limited aspirations for rapprochement envisaged by the current government. To what extent can they be taken as a reliable, permanent, feature of UK-EU relations? Or will this ‘reset’ be followed, a few years down the line, by another reset, back in the direction of the Brexit Ultras’ desire for separation, antagonism, maximum distance, and ‘sovereignty’ above all else? Is the UK now, in fact, a reliable interlocutor again, or is the Brexit virus liable to break out again, as shingles may for anyone who has had a bout of chicken pox?
In this sense, complaints that the EU’s original proposal for a YMS deal were made at a time that was unhelpful (£) to the then Labour opposition missed the point: these questions aren’t (just) about any particular party or government, but about the British polity. If the EU still has to tip-toe around the Brexit eggshells of UK politics, then that in itself answers the question of whether or not Brexitism has been marginalized.
There is also a deeper, or, anyway, different version of this same question, which is also highly germane to the viability of a substantive reset in relations. Brexit aside, the UK’s attitude to the EU during the years in which it was a member was very much characterized by grudging transactionalism, rather than by any commitment to European ideals. Brussels was the place the UK went to bang the table with a handbag, and extract the most it could whilst giving the least possible in return. Now that the UK is outside, is that still the approach, rather than, as a reset might imply, one of genuine partnership?
Oddly, and perhaps unintentionally, the comments of some ‘post-Brexit realists’, who, whilst understanding very well the folly of Brexit, discuss Labour’s reset in terms of negotiating strategies and ‘offensive’ and ‘defensive’ objectives, reinforce the impression that this transactionalism persists. At all events, a genuine reset needs to entail more than regret about the way in which May, Davis, Johnson, and Frost went about divorce proceedings. If the marriage is to be replaced by friendship, it is also necessary for there to be a genuine desire to avoid repeating the behaviour which preceded the divorce.
The YMS test
On these questions, YMS is quite a good test to set, relating as it does to the neuralgic issue of immigration which played such a central role in the vote for Brexit. YMS manifestly doesn’t cross the Labour red line on the restoration of freedom of movement of people, so if the government still sees it as too politically toxic to pursue that suggests two, related, things. One is that within the British polity, generally, the experience of Brexit has still not lanced the populist boil about immigration. The other is that the Labour government is not minded to challenge, but to accept, the orthodoxy of anti-immigration sentiment.
It would seem as if that test has already been failed. Unsurprisingly, anti-immigration politics still suffuses Farage’s Reform Party as, hardly any more unsurprisingly, it does the Tory Party, whoever its new leader turns out to be. The Tories did have the possibility of saying that, with Brexit, they had delivered the ‘points-based’ system which Brexiters like Farage used to say was all they wanted. They could then have initiated the ‘honest conversation’ everyone says they want to have about immigration, for example by decoupling it from asylum-seeking, and by challenging the voters about their view that immigration in general should be significantly reduced whilst those same voters, including Conservative voters, do not support reductions in almost every specific category of immigration. But, whether from fear of Reform, their own preferences, or some combination of the two, the Tories have not chosen to take this opportunity.
Nor is there any sign that the Labour government will do so. That clearly extends even to YMS, with reports that the cabinet is split over whether to agree to it, and identifying Home Secretary Yvette Cooper as the main opponent. Cooper played a pivotal and praiseworthy role in preventing Boris Johnson’s government enacting a ‘no deal Brexit’, and a courageous one, too, given the horrendous abuse and threats she faced. So it might be tempting to see her stance on YMS as the latest example of the Home Office capturing its Secretary of State. After all, Theresa May went from challenging her party to stop being ‘nasty’ to being a distinctly nasty Home Secretary, and the department seems to have had similarly radicalizing effect on one-time Immigration Minister, then Tory leadership candidate, Robert Jenrick.
In fact, Cooper has been arguing against freedom of movement since at least December 2016. And although she must know very well that YMS would not mean anything like its restoration she insists that the EU “see this in the context of free movement”, whatever that is supposed to mean, or why it even affects the issue. But it isn’t just Cooper. Starmer, too, despite being enthusiastic about the case for freedom of movement as recently as January 2020, is reported to fear the reaction from the pro-Brexit press to a YMS deal. So even on this quite limited measure it seems Labour have no appetite to take on Brexitism, thus failing first part of the YMS test, namely, whether has Brexitism been marginalized.
This does not mean that YMS will not be agreed in the end. Many people (including me, for what it is worth) expect that it will be. However, the consequence of having failed the first test is that, if and when YMS is agreed, the UK will also fail the second test. For if it is agreed as, or is presented as having been agreed as, part of some quid pro quo deal to obtain some softening of the economic damage of Brexit, such as an SPS deal, then it will be clear that the UK’s relationship with the EU remains within the same transactionalist frame as it has always been. That needn’t preclude a ‘reset’ but places limits upon it, and defines the future ‘partnership’ in relatively shallow terms.
The ECHR test
Whilst the YMS is a good test of the question of whether the UK has left Brexitism behind, there is a different test, which is whether the UK is likely to go even further down the path it took with Brexit by embracing a ‘Brexit 2.0’ of leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and its associated Court. That, too, is largely bound up with immigration, to the extent that ECHR derogation is almost invariably presented as being a means of ‘stopping the small boats’ (in this sense, it is also bound up with the failure to differentiate immigration from asylum-seeking).
Here the text of the Starmer-von der Leyen statement was revealing in “re-affirming” the parties’ mutual commitment to the Convention. It’s not clear that Rishi Sunak could have done the same thing, given his repeated pandering to the possibility of derogation over the ‘Rwanda plan’. By contrast, on this, Starmer’s resolve is unequivocal: a government under his leadership will never leave the ECHR. Given all his priors, it is unthinkable that he will renege on this.
However, it is very far from obvious that this is the settled view of the British polity. Again, it is unsurprising that Farage and Reform UK are adamantly opposed to ECHR membership, whilst support for it within the Tory Party is fragile. Of the remaining leadership candidates, Robert Jenrick has unreservedly advocated leaving and, despite having initially rejected the idea, Kemi Badenoch now says that she would consider doing so.
Whichever of them wins will undoubtedly find much support for making leaving the ECHR official party policy, since doing so is now an article of faith to those on the right. At the same time, former candidate Tom Tugendhat’s foolish attempt to court the right by contingently supporting leaving indicates that even on the more ‘centrist’ wing of the party it is no longer seen as unthinkable. At the very least, his having done so will have weakened what remains of the One Nation Tories’ ability to oppose it. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson, with his usual opportunism, this week called for a referendum on membership.
So it certainly can’t be said, despite all the miseries that Brexit has caused, and despite its unpopularity with the public, that Brexit 2.0 can be ruled out, or that demands for it will be confined to the margins of politics. That seems all the more the case given the faltering first 100 days of the Labour administration. Of course, it is too early to judge, but the possibility of a two-term hegemony, in which Labour might re-write British politics, looks less likely now than it did in the immediate aftermath of the election, whilst the possibility of a disillusioned electorate turning to nationalist populism has become more feasible.
The Gibraltar test
Whatever the truth of that turns out to be, it is abundantly clear that the populist and pro-Brexit media has not been cowed by the new government, and continues to exert a very considerable influence upon it. Many believed that a huge Labour majority would somewhat tame that media, for the general reason that the centre of political gravity would have shifted, and the specific one that journalists would become somewhat beholden to the new regime.
That hasn’t really happened, and certainly not to the extent that it did in 1997, with the result that Starmer’s government has immediately become embroiled in controversies, leaks and scandals (some of them highly confected), and has already been forced to engage in a domestic re-set. That has multiple implications, including for the prospects of a ‘reset’ of relations with the EU.
A clear example was the furore over the announcement that the UK has agreed to cede sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. This is itself, in part, a Brexit story because, as the BBC report of it mentioned, Brexit meant that many EU nations were no longer prepared to back the UK’s case for retaining control of the territory. It’s a point that Brexiters should heed, since it a reminder of how Brexit has weakened the UK geo-politically as well as economically.
However, more to the present point is the way that the agreement was represented by Brexiters and the right-wing press as showing “weakness” and even “treason”, ignoring the fact that the negotiations which led to the agreement had been started by the previous Tory government. This was then linked to ridiculous claims (ridiculous as there is zero connection) that it would be followed by similar deals to cede sovereignty of the Falklands and Gibraltar (£).
It’s the latter claim which relates most directly to Brexit, since the post-Brexit situation of Gibraltar remains unresolved and under negotiation, and resolving it is, in itself, now a test of Starmer’s desire for a reset with the EU. In principle this is becoming urgent, with the new Entry/Exit System (EES) Schengen border controls due to begin in early November although, as I write, reports are confirming the recent rumours that these will be postponed again. But the new controls will, eventually, happen and this matters, since a key issue is maintaining an open border between Gibraltar and Spain, and the associated question of the management of border controls at Gibraltar’s port and airport (which is also an RAF base).
The last time I discussed Gibraltar in detail on this blog was in April, when it seemed that a deal was imminent. A deal, that is, brokered by the Tory government. Since then, reports of the negotiations have been sparse, although last weekend it emerged (£) that the government was about to make formal complaints to Spain about its military overflights of the territory, which doesn’t augur well. But if, and I would think when, a deal is done it will almost certainly involve ‘concessions’ to the EU and Spain, reportedly already made by the previous government, on who undertakes border controls.
This will be the cue for Brexiters to cry ‘betrayal’, as they would have done under the Tories but now, no doubt, with the support of the Tory leadership. Such protest may be marginal, and easily batted away by the government. But the reaction to the Chagos agreement suggests the possibility of a Gibraltar deal being woven into a wider narrative of Starmer being ‘weak’ and ‘not standing up for’ Britain, both generally and in relation to the EU. If that narrative gains ground it will be another indication that Brexitism exerts a profound hold on the UK, whatever its government may be.
Still not done
The question of how Brexit will continue to unfold is a crucial one for our country, so it was with considerable regret that I learned that Yorkshire Bylines’ Davis Downsides Dossier is to be discontinued. It has been a huge, and I think unique, resource for collating media reports about the practical consequences of Brexit, and I’ve referred to it many times.
That isn’t the only loss. At the high-profile end of things, the decision to end the European Scrutiny Committee, for all its problems, without any replacement is a big setback for scrutiny and accountability of the government’s post-Brexit policies, as Jill Rutter and Hannah White of the Institute for Government explain. I’m particularly saddened by the decision to stop funding UKICE from April 2025. UKICE has been a consistently outstanding source of reliable data, incisive analysis, and intelligent comment about Brexit, and an invaluable public resource, not least for this blog where I have cited its work in, very possibly, the majority of posts.
At, if they will forgive me, the lower-profile end of the spectrum, Nick Tyrone has now ended his ‘Week in Brexitland’ newsletter, and Gerhard Schnyder has ended regular posts of his Brexit Impact Tracker blog. Again, I have often cited these sources on this blog and it is a shame that they are gone.
These losses contribute to a growing sense that Brexit (somewhat like Covid) is regarded if not as over, then as something that just has to be put up with, like the British, or more accurately English, weather. It’s a sense I tried to capture in more detail about a year ago in my post entitled “mustn’t grumble”. So continuing with this blog, even on its new fortnightly basis, feels like ploughing an increasingly lonely furrow, but I think it is still a worthwhile one. And this week, just over eight years since I launched it, the blog received its ten millionth visit, and the readership via email sign-ups continues to hold up, so hopefully I am not the only one to think so.
After all, as this post shows, Brexit is very far from ‘being done’, and that was without even mentioning the latest postponement to an aspect of import controls, this time that of digital product safety declarations. And as this post also shows, we are also far from done with Brexitism.
*Another small step of note was the this week announcement of a new agreement between the UK’s Office of National Statistics and EU’s Eurostat, severed since Brexit. It’s not really an example of ‘the reset’, since it was anticipated by the TCA and has been under discussion for a while, but it has a significance beyond itself in that it facilitates UK participation in EU programmes such as Horizon Europe. At the same time, it’s yet another reminder of the extent to which Brexit has caused so many utterly pointless, yet damaging, ruptures, large and small.
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