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.

54 comments:

  1. "Brussels was the place the UK went to bang the table with a handbag"

    This is indeed one of the core tenets of Brexitism and perhaps could be called the "myth of Maggie's rebate". A core Brexit belief is that Thatcher got lots of concessions from the EU by being obstreperous while, in fact, she was seen by the other member states as being very pro-Europe and managed to negotiate deals for the UK in exchange for being very cooperative in other areas. The UK's rebate was reduced during negotiations, under Blair, about paying for the expansion of the EU to eastern Europe, which all political parties in the UK agreed with: this is portrayed by Brexiteers as "Blair giving away our rebate".

    "In fact, Cooper has been arguing against freedom of movement since at least December 2016."

    Cooper's husband went on TV during the referendum campaign to say that Labour's position should be to stay in the EU and opt-out of FoM. The weakness of the commitment to FoM began before the referendum.

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    1. One outcome of the "test" via the Youth Mobility Scheme was that the UK has not even returned to its transactional mode of operation yet.

      The politicians of both main parties are still in the dogmatically rejection phase, even if a change would be mutually beneficial.

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    2. The EU made clear that Cameron's renegotiation was a take it or leave it (Leave EU) once off offer. An opt out from FoM was never a runner, a complete abrogation of a core EU principle. Maurice O'Leary Catalonia

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  2. Leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and its associated Court has major implications for the UK on its role in the international “community”.
    Ramifications could also include leaving the Council of Europe.

    Is it really the correct solution or just a further indication that the UK cannot come to terms with the loss of the empire graciously, and cannot accept its new diminished role on the World stage. In that regard Brexit has had negative consequences.

    99% of the Gibralter residents sensibly voted to remain in the EU, which is obviously where their future lies.
    Taking them down with the UK on its downward spiral to appease those that still believe Brexit benefit nonsense is absurd.
    Luckily for them Spain is holding all the cards. How ironic.

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    1. I suggest one needs to ask where this idea of leaving the ECHR is really coming from. There is plenty of evidence for close observers of British politics that there are puppet-masters behind the scenes, such as Rupert Murdoch, who are often pulling the politicians strings. The proposal to leave the ECHR looks to me to be a device to return the UK to the anti/pro-European arguments of the last eight years. This has served some people very well by creating division in the UK and distracting attention from other issues such as the extraordinary divide that has been allowed to grow between the very rich and the poorest in society. I doubt this latest proposal is an accident.

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    2. Thank you very much for the work you put into the blog Prof Grey. As for puppet masters one might have to look further to the east. That's where the new leading light for the right seems to be coming from.

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  3. Don’t give up! You have always provided a very clear overview of Brexit related events - enabling context without prejudice.

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    1. Thanks. And to you and others saying similar things, please don't think that my comment about ploughing a lonely furrow implied I am thinking of stopping: I have no plans to do so for now.

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    2. Agree, please don't give up, whilst it may now be a lonely furrough, given all the other disappearance, this will be the only serious commentary on what is going on.

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  4. Thanks a lot another one of your insightful articles!

    Especially the recent "withdrawals from the battlefield" of Nick and Gerhard makes waiting for post every second Friday even more worthwhile than it had already been in the heydays of Brexit coverage.

    From my point of view the analysis of alleged "reset" or any other changes in the EU/UK relationship are as valid and valuable as the analysis between the referendum and the immediate aftermath of actually leaving.

    More so because the approach of the UK government is still so frustratingly limited by self imposed restrictions.

    The almost knee-jerk reactions of both the previous as well as the current governments to the (still internal) EU ideas for a YMS were just mind-boggling.

    However, as you've said, this could have very well been a sort of test balloon by the EU to see how much the UK has actually moved on or is willing to move on under new leadership.

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    1. If it was a test balloon, then raising it during the election campaign was not that helpful to Labour (the EU could surely guess what the Tories' reaction was going to be). Fear of being attacked over immigration was very real for Labour, and their fear of a YMS being used by the Tories to attack them surely led to their instant rejection of the idea.

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    2. I am not sure that the EU had considered that its internal discussion starting efforts would be interpreted as an invitation for comment by British parties.

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  5. Please keep writing your articles. They are essential reading for of us who believe brexit was The Great Mistake but need a sensible analysis of developments to keep us from either giving up in despair or becoming frenzied zealots.

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    1. I think we can be more sure than just ‘believe’.

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  6. Congratulations on passing the 10 millionth page views of your ever-interesting and informative blog, which I've been reading and learning from for almost as long as you have been posting. I hope you'll continue indefinitely, as there is still much need for clear and well-informed comment.

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  7. Greetings from Italy.I renew my advice to integrate the opinions of the EU media into your posts as Brexit does not end with domestic politics.
    Here the news about your prime minister in Brussels was very limited, at the level of any head of state visiting from a country worthy of little interest. All of them reported the fact that your government has the same limitations as the previous ones and that the agreements signed in 2020 have not yet been completed.
    Keep us informed.
    Federico

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    1. Thanks. My focus is primarily the UK, but I do quite often link to EU and EU MS (especially Ireland) sources, perhaps less than in the past but that's because, as you yourself point out, Brexit is no longer much discussed in the EU media. But I always stress, as in this post, that the UK debate needs to be more attentive to EU interests than it tends to be.

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  8. Keep 'em coming!

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  9. Thank you for another no nonsense distillation of the matters at hand. On the ECHR; I think, as many here do, that the consequences of the UK leaving the ECHR with regards to Northern Ireland are underpriced in the extreme in GB.

    The ECHR is explicitly required by the GFA. All NI citizens must have access to the ECHR court to vindicate their rights, and the GFA institutions themselves have ECHR compliance built in to their design and operation. These are explicit treaty obligations.

    But it goes further than whether or not the GFA is violated or unilaterally torn up by London. It seems to be forgotten in Westminster that the weaving of the ECHR into the GFA was a crucial component in selling the GFA to the nationalist community, and thereby securing their consent for the first time to being governed by Britain. Without wishing to sound dramatic, it follows that for many people Westminster reneging on the GFA and unilaterally removing the guarantees that secured consent to British rule thereby ends that consent. For most that will mean shifting to more urgent demands for reunification, and appeals to Dublin, Brussels and Washington for protection (with the inevitable backlash to these things from unionism), but it also opens the space for dissident republican elements who have never accepted the peace process to sell the resumption of hostilities to people in marginalised communities.

    Opposition and support for the UK leaving the ECHR will break down along the same political fault line that Brexit did, and immediately become utterly, utterly toxic. Nationalists, the liberal unionist minority, and the unaligned (Alliance, Greens for instance) will oppose it tooth and nail. That's about two thirds of the population. The remaining third, hardline unionism represented by the DUP, and the even more extreme TUV, will support it enthusiastically. The Tories and Faragists in GB will, as they did during Brexit, side with the one third and against the two thirds, and resurrect the toxic practice of referring to the hardline unionist minority as "the people of Northern Ireland" while ignoring, or dismissing with undisguised contempt, the majority of the population.

    Because the GFA falls if Britain does this, it will become necessary for the EU and Irish government to point out the folly, and to reluctantly spell out the consequences, which include the end of the Withdrawal Agreement, and the TCA. As during Brexit, those facts will be met with outrage, both real and confected. It's at that point that loyalists will start talking darkly about what will happen if they don't get their way, just as they did when death threats were issued to UK border staff and NI business leaders during the Protocol crisis.

    The question of whether the UK government succeeds in leaving the ECHR, and what that will do to Northern Ireland is secondary to the unavoidable spiral of consequences flowing from the attempt to do so. It is the attempt that will destabilise Northern Ireland even further than Brexit did, to the point I fear of bloodshed.

    It has been suggested that GB could exit the ECHR but leave NI under it's provisions. This would seem to be nonsense, as the Convention is signed by sovereign states, and (I am told by a friend who is a lawyer) must be applied in every part of that state's sovereign territory. But even if it were possible, the reaction in Unionism and Loyalism to NI being placed in a legal and constitutional silo with a different HR regime to Britain would make their reaction to the Ireland/NI Protocol look restrained.

    All of this may sound florid or far-fetched to readers in GB. I would politely suggest that it is not, and that impression is a function of the woeful lack of coverage of the realities of NI in GB media, and the disregard of those realities in politics generally, but most especially on the populist right. Again this was the case during Brexit, with warnings from this island about NI beginning in early 2015 and being ignored in GB until it could no longer be ignored in 2017.

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    1. Thanks, Liam, these are really important points. Like others, I think I've alluded in the past to the implications for the GFA of leaving ECHR, but not giving much detail. It's one of many areas where I have fallen short. Thanks for taking the time to rectify that.

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    2. Thank you, it really was not my intention to criticise your post, or correct it. I do tend to go on at length about this, but it's because my family are from both sides of the border and I remember just how bad things were. The fear of it, and that those making decisions don't know what they are doing with regards to it is unsettling. After the last 8 years we all need them to leave it be.

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    3. Liam's comment couldn't be more on the money Brexit upset the applecart in many ways, as Sammy Wilson and Co. intended (in the hope of securing a hard border on the island of Ireland and ending the GFA).

      The patience of the majority of the Irish people with the jingoism and lies and instrumental use of NI by Tories and fellow travellers has been remarkable. Sammy Wilson fulminations in the House of Commons about the return of the Chagos Islands spoke loudly to his fears and also to the grotesque entitlement of a minority who regard the rights of others with contempt.

      I have, surprisingly, yet to read a critique of Boris Johnson's mendacity about the EU trying to trap the UK in the EU via NI (as opposed to insisting the UK uphold the GFA in full--a binding international peace agreement). The persistence of the Ireland-sized blind spot suggests that Britain's "slow learners" (as Seamus Mallon called them) seem intent on learning the hard way that their days of dictation to the majority are over.

      The saddest recent testimony to the persistence of both ignorance and, for some, blood-boiling double standards, was in the documentary shown this week on BBC2 on the bombing of Brighton Hotel during the Conservative Party conference in which John Gummer, even now, said "there is nothing to understand" - - an implicit whitewashing of British history in Ireland.

      Parties that claims that complex matters are in fact simple are inevitably destined for hard lessons - Boris Johnson, Brexiters, English ethno-nationalists and NI unionists.

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  10. Chris - I have read from the very start and always welcomed your informed and insightful commentary. I regret the loss of other objective information sources which makes your blog, however frequent, an even more important resource. Thanks for your work and please be reassured that there is a very grateful community of people out here!

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  11. Starmer has stated that rejoining the SM/CU/EU will not happen "in my lifetime". He hasn't really said why he is adopting this position, but I suspect he's worried about annoying his 'Red Wall' voters, not to mention the bigoted Brexiteers and the right wing press both of which are only interested in preserving their dubious money making activities. I don't understand his trepidation. Given his majority of roughly 150, he could legitimately call a referendum on rejoining and see what the country really thinks. I agree it wouldn't be straightforward but it would give him some facts to bargain with Brussels. At some point he must start paying attention to what ordinary voters think, especially his own party.

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    1. I agree that Starmer has gone too far in his statements. But I don’t think another referendum would help. The result is likely to be close (given that Brexiters, having got what they want, the right-wing press and Tory lightweights won’t let them give it back) and a 52-48 the other way would just show that this nation can’t make its mind up and therefore won’t get an invitation to rejoin. Added to that, the U.K. wouldn’t get anything close to its old deal back - no doubt Brexiters would make a meal if that too.
      Sadly, I think we are stuffed on this one.

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    2. Sure you're right' but I did say it wouldn't be straightforward, even risky. However given the polling which suggests there is a large majority in favour of some sort of rejoining, I do not understand the omerta that prevails. There is no doubt that Brexit has been a disaster and it must be confronted by politicians and journalists, even if only facing the fact the 2016 vote was fraudulent. So why has Starmer converted to hard line Brexitism when with his huge majority he could he could start a proper dialogue far removed from his 'make Brexit work, contradictory nonsense. Confront the Russian interference which continues to this day, face the ERG lies, talk about the treasonous Johnson/Frost 'oven ready deal', and all the rest of it. The UK economy is crying out to be rescued.

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    3. Starmer's unease will likely be due to a deep fear of the Brexit debate being used to drive a wedge into his party's core vote, potentially costing him a sizeable chunk of it if 2016 Leave voters decide that their Leave identity is more important to them than supporting Labour.

      This caution is the legacy of their miserable experience in Scotland after 2914, when the Scottish Independence debate deeply split Labour's traditional core vote, costing them tens of thousands of previous Labour voters in 2015 and afterwards because they had voted Yes to Scottish Independence. With their political loyalties and sense of identity - many no longer saw themselves as British, but Scottish, and saw no point whatsoever in continuing to vote for pro-UK Labour - forever changed, they dumped Labour for the SNP. As a result, Labour crashed from dominance to irrelevance in only 1 election, losing 40 out of 41 seats in 2015, and took almost a decade to recover.

      This experience brutally exposed the dangers of splitting your core vote in a FPTP election system, and Labour must be very worried that the Tories and Reform UK - who are now fighting over the same pool of voters - will try and weaponize the Brexit identities to try and divide Labour's core vote. If they did, the consequences would be disastrous for Labour, risking a disaster similar to what happened to them in Scotland.

      Added to this, at present Starmer still does not know who will be opposing him as Tory leader, or what their approach to the threat from Reform will be. So he cannot plan ahead until he knows the answers to those questions, and the timescale has not been in his hands.

      But the Tories are now in an existential crisis. Unless they can win back the voters that they have lost to Reform, they will never win another election under FPTP and if they cannot win elections, what is the point of their existence? They show no sign of understanding the scale of their crisis, and instead appear to be making a panicked lurch to the right to try and emulate Reform. Being too hard right has already cost them voters to the Lib Dems, and a further lurch to the right will only make this problem worse as the Lib Dems are clearly aware of the opportunity which this would offer them. Combined with this, their baby-boomer core vote is now really starting to die-off, so the Tories' future now looks very bleak.

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    4. But doesn't Labour now face the equal and opposite problem that many of its core vote are so disillusioned by the leaderships new-found Brexitism that they are likely to peel off (as is already happening to some extent) to the Greens, LibDems, Plaid or SNP? I think that Brexit is the death throes of both Labour and Tory

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    5. All of which is correct. The Tories have probably destroyed themselves over Brexit which is unfortunate, since their hatred of foreigners trumps all common sense. It seems to me however, that Starmer was far too dogmatic having painted himself behind his self-imposed red lines. He could have kept quiet and waited for the situation to evolve. In any case, which is more important, the good of the country or the good of the Labour party? The Lib Dems made large gains because they are essentially a rejoin party.

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    6. In discussion of Starmer’s oft repeated promise that in his lifetime the UK will not rejoin the EU I read many ideas as to why, but one explanation is curiously absent.
      Having watched Starmer for some years now since Corbyn elevated him to the shadow front bench I believe he is a Brexiter himself.
      We must remember that Labour has always had a strong Eurosceptic faction that came from both moderates and the hard left, just think of the days of the Bennites as moderates but firmly anti-EU.

      Corbyn who describes himself as a ‘true Socialist’ (making clear the is not a Democratic Socialist) in all his 33 years as a backbencher before becoming party leader called for the UK to leave the EU as it is (in his own words) ‘a capitalist construct’ that prevents member states from being remade into ‘true Socialist societies. In this he stands in the mainstream of the European hard left (true Socialists and Communists).

      Once in leadership Corbyn ensured that Labour had the policy of ‘Constructive Ambiguity’ whereby Labour was ‘neither a Remain nor a Leave party’ and thus under his leadership Labour sat on its hands and allowed the Tories to take the UK completely out the EU.

      It’s a no brainer that for his shadow cabinet he was first & foremost going to choose people who ideologically were Brexiters.
      Starmer is not a Lexiter , a term applicable to the hard left reasons for wanting out of the EU but make no mistake he is a Brexiter.

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  12. Posting from France. I join others in encouraging you to go on writing this blog. More than ever, when it comes to Brexit, you are one of the few clear-headed UK voices in what is otherwise a blighted media landscape.
    On the topic at hand, I see zero interest at least in France to reopen the Brexit file. As for the EU (Brussels), if talks were ever to start afresh, I'm convinced that amongst the non-negotiable EU demands would be Freedom of Movement and Adoption of the Euro. Can you imagine a political landscape in the UK favorable to ditching the Pound? I can't either. Hence I doubt the UK will rejoin the EU at least in a long foreseeable future. But parts of it might.

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    1. I agree. But I don’t think parts of the U.K. (unless you man NI as part of the Republic) will join. I just can’t see how Scotland could shake itself free from England. There would have to be an open England-Scotland border.

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  13. " these questions are ... about the British polity." Good point, and the sorry tale around YMS shows that the UK is still hyperventilating about Brexit and no meaningful reset is hence possible. Not that I find it at all profitable to speculate over what a Starmer administration might do next. I don't expect him to be around for long. More worrying is what comes after him, for which Brexit 2.0 is an inadequate metaphor.

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  14. As ever, a great summary of recent Brexit-related events. As a committed Remainer/Rejoiner I will campaign for the UK to be part of the EU again until my dying day. Shortly after the Brexit vote I saw a British journalist on a German press discussion programme saying, "The UK will take ten years to get out of the EU, ten years complaining about it and ten years to get back in." That seemed about right to me at the time and still seems about right today. With a bit of luck, I'll live to see the thirty year period end in happiness for me.

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    1. That would be good. I’d hope that the middle 10 years started in 2021 and so it’s only 17 to go.
      The process might be aided if Ukraine can get near. It probably won’t get to be a full member which leaves room for the U.K to join it in some form of association.

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  15. Another nuanced, balanced, informative post. Thanks Chris.

    As pointed out by Liam above, Brexit 2.0, leaving the ECHR, essentially reneges on the Good Friday Agreement and the basis on which Ireland agreed to renounce its claim to Northern Ireland in its constitution. It is really only feasible in the context of the UK giving up sovereignty over Northern Ireland, and would therefore require a majoirtity vote in a border poll.

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  16. If the UK leaves the ECHR, it reneges on the GFA and the basis on which Ireland agreed to give up its claim to sovereignty over Northern Ireland in its constitution - by large majorities in referenda north and south. A border poll would be inevitable and would have to be carried to enable this to happen. While Ireland fully anticipates this eventuality - see Varadkar's recent comments - I see no debate in Britain on this topic - despite the increasingly unaffordable subvention required to keep Northern Ireland afloat within the UK - which is now greater than the UK's much hated net contribution to the EU.

    Do you see discussion on Irish re-unification happening in parallel with Brexit 2.0 or is this just another case of Brexitists being wilfully blind as to the implications of their proposals? Does the DUP still have any standing in UK politics, as is Irish re-unification seen as a prerequisite for any wider reset in UK/EU relations? Certainly neither re-joining nor Brexit 2.0 can happen without that nettle being grasped...

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  17. Thank you for staying with us. You are highly valued by your faithful readers as I hope you know.

    Every week I set aside a bit of time so I can read you (+ links) in peace without distractions.

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  18. Please keep ploughing. A valuable resource indeed.

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  19. The best thing the "thinktank" UKICE could do is change their name to UKOCE (
    United Kingdom OUTSIDE a changing Europe.)
    Listening to people like Anand Menon it is obvious they have no clue how the UK could be part of the Europe that the 30 nation EU/EEA are in.
    Anand Menon’s remark that the UK needs to show the EU “a token of good faith” by agreeing to a Youth Mobility Scheme (YMS), just shows his total ignorance and triviality about how the EU thinks and what their interests are.
     
    The EU are committed to ever greater union between the people's of Europe. Building a greater union between the people of the UK who never had the choice in their nation's EU referendum, is just part of that. The rights of these young people are not going to be traded in some offset transactional deal with Starmer.

    Menon doesn't understand the European people, their heritage, their common interests and like minded thinking. He just thinks the EU are wrong but at least he is realistic about where the UK is ...OUTSIDE Europe.
    The EU just want to know if the UK wants to become a partner in the EEA, or a competitor outside on the doorstep - in which case they can cut the pointless bilateral relations with Starmer which would only benefit his electioneering.

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  20. Chris - Thank you for continuing the blog. As you and we are discovering, it has been about ‘Brexitism’ all along. Brexit has been just the most visible manifestation of it. As long as Brexitism retains its significant influence on UK politics (and thereby on economic and social outcomes) there will be a need for the great clarifying work that you do.

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  21. Please do continue. I regard this as essential reading. I marvel at how you interweave so many strands of thought, insight, opinion over myriad time-lines

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  22. To encourage you to keep going, the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [HL]: HL Bill 18 of 2024–25 will be worth tracking.
    UKandEU has some info about it. https://ukandeu.ac.uk/the-brexit-bill-no-ones-talking-about/
    Also the HoL library has a briefing note at https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/lln-2024-0053/

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  23. Robert Jenrick was a remainer. I have a fantasy that he wins the Conservative leadership contest. Then sometime later he quietly announces the manifest truth that Brexit was a major blunder, and he would reset Conservative policy on a course that would hopefully eventually reverse it. It would be a sight to see, worthy of the pen of an H.M.Bateman. Not 'The Man Who Passed The Port The Wrong Way' but 'The Conservative Party Leader Who Said Brexit Was A Blunder. '
    But it would confound the other parties, who are so careful not to mention the Elephant in the Room.

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    1. @Colin sadly rejoining is a generation off even if a Conservative leader admitted it was, is and always will be an economic and diplomatic disaster.
      Just consider that EU law requires that any nation applying to join must submit proof that bit is the will of the majority.
      This proof must be via the ‘usual constitutional means of the applicant nation’.
      For the UK that means1) an Act authorising the request and b) a majority yes in a new referendum.
      However, given the decades of anti-EU sentiment and delusions about the status of the UK on the world stage the EU will be very wary.

      They will demand the Act be passed by a large overall majority with support of the majority in all major parties in Parliament. They will also require the authorising referendum be passed by a minimum 60% majority and with >50% of eligible voters casting a vote.

      I can’t see that happening in England (85% of the UK population) for a generation.

      That level of support for the EU exists in Scotland and in NI already and as both are distinct societies and furious with Brexit I can see them taking their respective pathways out the UK Union long before the English understand that the UK is not a great power.

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  24. Re my comment above: for. '... the other parties...' read 'Labour and Lib Dems'. Apologies to especially the Green Party.

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  25. Chris, firstly your blog is always appreciated so please don’t stop.

    I read your comments about the British (English) approach to negotiating with interest. It reflects the increasingly American adversarial style to discussions that I have experienced in business as well as public life. Perhaps this is due to the preponderance of lawyers in the US, though I suspect it is more cultural than that. European negotiating tends to be a little more cooperative, trying to find a win - win solution, something that was seriously lacking during the febrile times of the Brexit talks.

    Whether the UK can move past that cultural barrier, or at least hide it from the gutter press, is I believe, what you are asking. None of us have that answer at the moment but I sincerely hope we do for the sake of the country.

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    1. There is definitely a big cultural barrier: the US and UK seem to be far more adversarial in their dealings than much of the continent, whether it be politics or business. But where that comes from: civil vs common law, being an island vs having borders, winning vs losing ww2, etc I don't think it's possible to nail down.

      Both the US and UK have the "big enough to go it alone" attitude, which kinda works for the US, but not for the UK.

      My favourite quote: there are two kinds of countries in Europe, small countries and those that do not yet realise they are small. - a Danish finance minister.

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  26. Thank you for all the work that goes into your blog. The more others fall by the wayside, the more important it is, please keep going!

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  27. Thank you professor for your insightful and timely work. I've always appreciated it and doubly do so now that other sources have ended/moved on.

    It must be a lot of work but it is no overstatement to say it provides invaluable analysis. I come from a political-science background and even I didn't fully comprehend the safety concerns with the UK NOT implementing border inspections until I read your work.

    I truly believe that future generations will require this record on everything Brexit in order to mitigate or undo a lot of the damage.

    Regards,
    Jake Davis, Toronto, Canada

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  28. Yes, please continue, it is one way to fight against the normalization of Brexit. That is what every awful government counts on: that sooner or later people just accept the status quo (because people indeed are willing to put up with atrocious things). Your blog is a wonderful antidote to the political poison of Brexitism. Thank you! Nora

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  29. Chris,
    Please keep going! I concur that we are at the end of an era, probably facing some years of increasing isolation, as reality forces us to recalibrate our position and strategic options.

    1) COVID, Brexit, Ukraine. A Middle East war, and expansion-ism in Russia/China/India/US will exacerbate the economic pressure. We cannot even be honest about the damage already done.
    2) Brexit and the inevitable fallout has destroyed the Conservative party, even more than immigration. ECHR is a minority sport for most in the UK, and they have no other policies
    3) Reform will continue to pick up the ashes of the Tories, recklessly fanning the embers of immigration, but FPTP will hopefully condemn them to an extreme minority
    4) Labour are forced to fix our damaged systems for NHS, Education, Justice etc. while trying to balance the books, our infrastructure, and a stuttering green transition

    I wonder if we are fighting the wrong battles here? Media shamelessly exploit (& create) without criticism, fault lines for their personal benefit. "Unions", “Labour”, Devolution, Falklands, Gibraltar, Northern Ireland, “foreigners” (always), race, gender…. Facts and data are blithely ignored, overtaken by diversion, lies and outrage, promoting exceptionalism at home to international indifference.
    While these cycles of division continue, no government can competently address these more difficult and nuanced issues. Perhaps “Leveson 2” is more urgent than re-join? We could at least demonstrate some stable-cleaning capability to the world.

    We need your objective analysis to inform our future. Thanks!

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  30. ….could betoken a recognition by the EU that not all its relationships with third countries are of the same order……?

    The UK’s third party relationship with the EU is indeed different. The Uk is the only third party country to have been a member for over 40 years and then left of its own accord only to seek enhanced terms now. This is not a very attractive take from an EU point of view particularly as there are many third party countries trying to join at present.

    The UK could once trade as market of 520m people but has limited itself to a market size of 67m in an increasingly global economic environment.

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  31. As you mention in your latest blog, Gibraltar will be a real test of a UK reset with the EU.

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