Brexit eruptions

Recently, a rash of molehills has appeared in my garden, the visible eruptions of a vast subterranean network of tunnels and burrows. Brexit lurks in a similar way beneath the surface of British politics, a constant presence which, however much it is ignored – perhaps the more that it is ignored – continues to break out here, there, and everywhere.

That, surely the most tortuous and tortured of the many metaphors that have been applied to Brexit, is intended to introduce the fact that this post doesn’t have any particular unifying theme other than the latest ways in which Brexit has been in view over the last fortnight.

Robert Jenrick and the Tory madness

We don’t yet know how the story is going to end, but it is looking increasingly likely that, when history is written, Brexit is going to figure as the central cause of the decline and perhaps demise of the Tory Party. For all that numerous political commentators, most recently Andrew Rawnsley, urge the party to re-discover its more moderate and pragmatic traditions, for now it seems stuck in the spiral of madness of which Brexit is the proximate cause. Thus possibly the least surprising development of the last fortnight was that their party conference showed the Conservatives to be firmly in the grip of Brexitism.

At the conference, the most obvious manifestation, or even exemplification, of this was the latest stage in Robert Jenrick’s long journey from “bland centrist solicitor” to gurning ideologue. It’s a journey made stranger because he has somehow retained his blandness along with the way, managing to be, as Ian Dunt puts it “at once banal and monstrous”. Much attention focused, rightly, on his complaint about the lack of white faces in Handsworth, a complaint made not less but more objectionable by his absurd suggestion that this remark “was not about the colour of your skin”. Less discussed, but objectionable and absurd in a different way, were his remarks about the judiciary.

Jenrick’s thesis, if we can grace it with that term, is that when judges ‘don the wig’ – a point he sought to make dramatic by flourishing such a wig – they at the same time put aside personal interests and identity so as to apply the law impartially. So far, so good. But he also claimed that, having, like every internet troll, ‘doNe he’s Own ResEArch’, he had made a shocking discovery. Apparently, there are “dozens of judges” who have used social media to “broadcast their open borders views” (whatever that means; does anyone advocate ‘open borders’?), or have “spent their whole careers fighting to keep illegal migrants in this country” (which seems to mean, based on his other remarks, that Jenrick imagines barristers to be invariably sympathetic to their clients’ causes, and retain a lifelong commitment to them).

Jenrick is either too dense or too dishonest to see that his first observation made his second claim irrelevant. To make his thesis stick, he would need evidence that the judges he identified had also given judgments which, in legal terms, were demonstrably wrong, and wrong in ways biased in the direction he claimed. Moreover, he would need to show that they had done so to a greater extent than judges who he had not identified as having this alleged bias. But of course, and this is part of what makes this an example of Brexitism, reliable evidence is irrelevant to Jenrick. What is relevant, and what makes it definitively Brexitist, is the attempt to undermine the judiciary as an institution and, with that, the rule of law. It is ‘enemies of the people’ territory again. And it hardly needs to be said that Jenrick’s supposed solution, the political control of judicial appointments, would make the supposed problem he supposedly wants to solve worse.

Whether Jenrick has become a convinced Brexitist ideologue or is just opportunistically seeking to burnish his leadership credential hardly matters. Either way, it shows that Brexitism is an obligatory posture for those who aspire to lead the current Tory Party. That fact was underlined by Kemi Badenoch’s long-expected adoption of leaving the ECHR as official party policy, a policy which is the central prescription of ‘Brexit 2.0’.

It is also, as I noted in my previous post, a policy being ‘sold’ in exactly the same way that Brexit itself was sold, even though recent polling shows that 46% of those planning to vote Tory at the next election think Brexit has been a failure (and only 22% think it has been a success). Perhaps that is why Badenoch made only a couple of passing references to Brexit in her conference speech, in itself a telling fact: far from boasting of it, the very party that delivered Brexit feels too ashamed to talk about it.

Farage’s culpability and Labour’s problem

So much for the Tories. In my previous post I also noted that Keir Starmer had begun to attack Nigel Farage on the grounds of the damage done by Brexit. That attack has escalated, with Labour now starting to argue (£) that Farage will be to blame for anticipated tax rises in the forthcoming budget because, having used “easy sloganeering” to persuade the public to vote for Brexit, he then walked away and took no responsibility for it, leaving the economic consequences which ultimately explain the need tax raises.

Farage and his supporters, and no doubt others, object that he had no control over the delivery of Brexit, so the accusation is unfounded. But that is simplistic. Farage was not in power, it is true, but he exercised considerable power, always ready to denounce as ‘betrayal’ whatever form of Brexit was proposed and never once putting forward realistic proposals for delivering it in ways that were less economically damaging than what was enacted. Moreover, at the 2019 election, he backed Boris Johnson’s ‘oven-ready Brexit’ even to the extent of standing down Brexit Party candidates in Tory-held seats.

So, yes, Farage is very much amongst those responsible for Brexit and, in any case, it is more than reasonable to point out that the main cause of his political life has proved to be a failure. It’s certainly clear that this line of attack is being made increasingly often by Labour politicians or sympathetic commentators, an example this week being an opinion piece by Kevin Maguire, Associate Editor of the Mirror.

Where the Labour government is on much trickier ground is that, to the extent it acknowledges the economic damage of Brexit it opens the question of why it has no plans to seek more than marginal limitations to this damage. Perhaps that is why Starmer’s conference speech, like Badenoch’s, had a telling lacuna, in his case avoiding any mention of his ‘reset’ policy. For if Brexit is a sufficiently serious problem to make attacking Farage’s culpability for it worthwhile, what is the government’s solution?

That is the question which Starmer has, until now, avoided and to which he cannot give a credible answer without abandoning his cast iron ‘red line’ manifesto promises, as well as ensuring that the entirety of British politics during this parliament, and probably the next election, is dominated by Brexit again. He isn’t going to do that, and that is one exemplification of the Brexit impasse that Britain as a whole is in: its entire national strategy is admitted, even by many of its advocates, to have failed, and public opinion firmly and consistently endorses the view that it was wrong to leave, but there is no presently viable political route to its rectification.

I’ve been arguing consistently, since December 2022, that there is a better approach for Labour, which would be to honestly admit that Brexit is damaging and has failed, and ought to be reversed, but to be equally honest in saying that this isn’t a political possibility until there is cross-party consensus (at least amongst parties that might credibly come to power) to make an application to rejoin. That means, in the present context, identifying Reform and the Conservatives as the barrier, making them responsible not just for the original problem but for the continuing absence of a solution. I still think that would be Labour’s best option, and with the latest line of blaming Farage for Brexit it becomes the logical next step.

A Royal Commission?

If there is ever to be a solution, one part of the route to it could be an interesting proposal made over the summer (although I have only just come across it) by former MEP Andrew Duff. Noting the “deadlock” in British post-Brexit politics, he proposes the establishment of a Royal Commission to investigate the position and future of the UK in Europe. It’s not often that a new idea about Brexit surfaces, and it’s a reasonable one in all sorts of ways, the most minimal, but not unimportant, being that, as I argued in June, it is surely right to review, given the time that has passed and the experience we have had, what Brexit has actually meant for the UK.

If nothing else, it would be a way of drawing together the now massive, but highly dispersed and fragmentary, body of evidence about Brexit, and providing some accountability for decisions made. For example, at this week’s Tory Party conference, Michael Gove admitted that the trade deals his government did with Australia and New Zealand were poorly negotiated and damaging to farmers, going on to say “we were too anxious as a government to secure those deals in order to show that Brexit was working.” Yet these highly revealing remarks were barely reported, even though they confirm exactly what so many of us said at the time, what civil servants warned ministers of at the time, and what the government denied at the time.

Assembling an authoritative single review of what happened with Brexit would, in itself, be a contrast with the evidence-free, faith-based, reality-denying politics of Brexitism. However Duff’s proposal is primarily intended as a future-oriented exercise, which could begin a process to create, to the extent it is possible, the basis for a future national consensus.

From that point of view, he is surely right to say that “the most likely outcome of such a Royal Commission will be a report that furnishes the Prime Minister with a cast-iron case for reversing Brexit.” I’m not so sure Duff is right that “it will prepare the ground for the referendum campaign that must inevitably follow”, since it wouldn’t in itself create the kind of cross-party agreement needed to make rejoining a viable possibility for the EU. But it would be a step away from the current absurdity of a nation which effectively knows it has made a mistake but can’t find a route to rectify it. At the very least it offers a practical suggestion to create such a route, in a way that eludes those who simply demand a ‘rejoin now’ policy. [1]

Still Brexiting

Whatever the wider issues in play (or which ought to be in play), it shouldn’t be forgotten that, as a matter of fact, the post-Brexit UK-EU relationship continues to limp along, largely undiscussed in public. One facet of that, which has had some media discussion, is that since the beginning of this week the EU Entry-Exit System (EES) has begun to be enforced. I should clarify that wording, perhaps, in that, whatever the pro-Brexit press may imagine (£), the EES isn’t something particular to the UK-EU relationship, as if it were a ‘punishment’ for Brexit, but, rather, applies to the EU’s relationship with third countries generally. However, in that sense, for the UK it is a consequence of Brexit and one which will introduce new complexities and, potentially, delays and queues for travelers (although in the last few hours it has been reported that, to avoid this, it is only being partly implemented for now). Sloganizing about ‘securing our borders’ suddenly looks less attractive when we are its target.

In an analogous way, whilst the Brexiters have long used the feeble pun of a ‘protectionist racket’ to describe the EU, that suddenly looks even less funny with the prospect of a massive increase in its tariffs and reduction in its tariff-free quotas for steel imports. That would be a very serious blow, perhaps even an “existential threat”, for the already beleaguered British steel industry, since almost 80% of UK steel exports go to the EU. Again, this is a consequence of being a third country although, again, with wearying predictability, the pro-Brexit press reported it as if it were aimed specifically at Britain (£).

It may or may not be that the British government manages to negotiate an exemption but, taken in conjunction with the now indefinitely stalled negotiations with the US over steel tariffs, it is a stark reminder of Britain’s post-Brexit isolation. That reminder has several dimensions, including the fact of the relative importance of the EU market as compared with the US (which, for steel, takes less than 10% of UK exports). More generally, for all the Brexiter rhetoric about Brexit enabling the UK to have a ‘nimble’ independent trade policy, it is a reminder that size matters more than agility in a world dominated by regional blocs. That is especially so when these lumbering trade monsters go to war, the wider context of the EU’s announcement being, in large part, the impact of Trump’s tariffs on the Chinese steel industry. [2]

The same ‘better in than out’ lesson applies to the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) which is due to come into force in January 2026, and which also has implications for steel, amongst other products. This is an issue which has been lurking in the Brexit undergrowth for years (I think the first time I discussed it on this blog was in September 2023, and that post includes several links explaining some of the complexities involved), but now it has been reported that a temporary deal to exempt the UK is in prospect. [3] The longer-term likelihood is that the EU CBAM will be linked to the UK CBAM (due to come in to force in 2027), along with an associated linkage of UK and EU Emissions Trading Schemes (ETS), a possibility within the scope of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement.

A permanent agreement on CBAM and ETS linkages sits alongside other elements of the still to be agreed details of the ‘reset’, including potential deals on a Youth Mobility Scheme, UK participation in Erasmus +, and a Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) agreement. The latter has a particular urgency in the context of food price inflation, as Naomi Smith of Best for Britain pointed out this week, and might be agreed and implemented “within a year”, according to a recent statement from Maros Sefcovic, the EU’s Trade Commissioner.

That may be optimistic, and it is worth remembering that, price issues aside, until there is an SPS deal in place, the UK (or more accurately Great Britain) will continue with the risky policy of partial border security, having never fully implemented import controls and having now given up even the process of doing so, in the expectation of this still-to-be agreed deal. Sometimes, apparently, ‘securing our borders’ isn’t a priority.

Also sitting within the reset basket is the question of possible partial UK involvement in the EU’s Security Action for Europe (SAFE) initiative for defence procurement. It’s an issue of particular and growing salience in the context of the ever-growing threat from Russia and the declining reliability (to put it mildly) of the US as a security partner. Whilst, as Jannike Wachowiak of UKICE explains, the UK would not, as a third country, be eligible for loans from SAFE defence funds, it could, potentially, have access to joint procurements.

The growing charge list

All of these, and other, issues are a reminder not just of the ongoing negotiation of the UK-EU relationship, but of the cumbersome nature of that process, the uncertainties of its outcomes, and the limited scope of those outcomes even if the most favourable of them were to result. One consequence of that, although it is probably impossible to quantify, or even to find much information about, must be to deter investment and, therefore, economic growth. In all kinds of sectors, for all kinds of reasons, the terms of the UK-EU relationship are in flux which, necessarily, creates an unpropitious environment for investment.

Domestic political uncertainty is also a factor since Farage is already threatening to tear up any new agreements the present government makes with the EU. Even if that doesn’t make the EU wary of such agreements, it will prey on the minds of investors and indeed others trying to plan for the future. That, too, is something to be added to the growing charge list against the Reform leader and the other ‘guilty men’ of Brexit. Ultimately, there will need to be not so much a Royal Commission as a Public Inquiry if they are to be held accountable. Only by excavating the subterranean maze of Brexit will its eruptions be quelled.

 

Notes

[1] Duff’s proposal attracted several social media comments denouncing it as ‘British exceptionalism’ (in line with my usual policy, I only link to social media posts if they come from public figures). This is nonsense and reflects a wider problem. It is nonsense because there’s nothing ‘exceptionalist’ about a domestic political debate and, in this case, the idea that Britain needs a process of honest self-reflection about what has done to itself is almost the opposite. It is for the UK to face up to the consequences of its collective decisions, and to do otherwise, for example by blaming the EU for those consequences, or expecting the EU to provide solutions to them, is what might be exceptionalist.

The wider problem is that, whilst it is absolutely true that throughout the Brexit process British exceptionalism has been, and continues to be, greatly in evidence, sometimes amongst ‘remainers’ as well as Brexiters, there is a cadre of social media posters that simply parrots the word in any and every discussion of any and every aspect of Brexit (very often the same posters who ignorantly trot out ‘cherry-picking’ to describe any and every aspect of post-Brexit UK-EU relations).

Some (or more accurately one person, a rather creepy stalker who continually creates multiple pseudonymous social media accounts to harass me and various other people, including Jon Henley, the Guardian’s Europe correspondent, on the basis of entirely false accusations of anti-Irish racism) also object that my use of the word ‘Brexitism’ is ‘British exceptionalism’, since it denotes a British form of populism (I explain why that is warranted in my definition of Brexitism), which is as transparently stupid as saying that the word ‘Brexit’ is ‘exceptionalist’. Brexit happened here; Brexitism is happening here. Specific doesn’t mean exceptional.

[2] There is of course a much wider point here than trade or, rather, trade is imbricated within the wider point of the multiple areas – economy, security, defence - in which the UK is horribly caught between the US, China, and the EU. But that would need another post.

[3] Reading that September 2023 post again, I was reminded of the sad, sorry, stupid saga of the UKCA mark, the long, lingering death of which quietly continued over the summer, with the announcement that it will not be required for medical devices.