That’s partly because, as Elledge says, in general terms the public tends to support closer ties with the EU, but I suspect it’s also because the public don’t really care that much either way. It is striking that every poll on the reset, whether conducted before the Summit or afterwards, shows high numbers of ‘don’t knows’, usually about 30% of respondents. Moreover, the YouGov post-summit poll shows that as well as 30% who ‘don’t know’, another 16% think that ‘the deal’ agreed is neither good nor bad. I also suspect that even those who oppose it struggle to muster the angry energy of the headline writers.
Actually, in this case at least, a ‘don’t know’ response is not necessarily a reflection of the public’s disinclination to be acquainted with the facts. It would be a perfectly reasonable response from even the most assiduous and well-informed voter. For, as I highlighted in that previous post, all that has really been announced of ‘the deal’ is a whole series of discrete potential agreements between the UK and the EU, but without almost any announced processes or timetables for their negotiation, let alone for their completion.
An SPS agreement?
The most important of the possible economic agreements, at least from the perspective of the Labour government’s explicitly stated reset aims, is a Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) agreement. On that, my assumption that the government would take the possibility of its completion to justify the further postponement of full import controls on goods coming from the EU has been proved correct. Thus it was announced this week that the next phase of controls, which after several delays was meant to be implemented in July, has been paused, in effect indefinitely although the government press release stated they are deferred until January 2027 [1].
It's worth standing back from this latest announcement to recall just how ridiculous the situation is. Successive British governments, having embarked on Brexit with a referendum held almost nine years ago, and having fairly soon decided that this meant ‘hard Brexit’, went on to delude themselves and to mislead the public about the fact that this was going to entail import controls. Indeed it was not until February 2020 that any Cabinet Minister, specifically Michael Gove, formally and publicly stated that import controls would have to be introduced. By that time, Britain had already left the EU and was in the transition period, a transition period which the government had previously resisted and which it refused, despite the pandemic, to extend.
Since Gove’s announcement, there have been years of preparations, with huge costs for both government and businesses, and so many delays and multiple phasings, with different delays to the different phasings, that it is all but impossible to catalogue them in their entirety (see my post of April 2024 and the links within it for some of the detail). Meanwhile, the EU was ready to introduce controls on imports from Great Britain on the day after the transition period ended (to complaints from Gove about EU ‘over-rigidity’).
SPS controls, or even import controls generally, are not, in themselves, amongst the biggest costs or consequences of Brexit (an SPS deal is estimated to be worth less than 0.1% of UK GDP per annum) although they have proved to be one of the costs the UK has been most unwilling to pay. But the whole saga, and the fact that it is still playing out with this new supposed deadline being set for well into the next parliament, is a potent symbol of the utter ignorance, incompetence and dishonesty that has characterised Brexit as a whole. It certainly, in various ways, makes a mockery of the slogan about ‘taking back control of our money, our borders, and our laws’ if, indeed, anything more than the slogan itself were needed to induce mockery.
Risks and reactions
Coming back to the specific issue of the latest postponement, a few points stand out. One is the now familiar one that the lack of full import controls constitutes a risk which will now continue for even longer. As I noted in my last post, it will certainly be months, and very possibly years, before an SPS deal is both agreed and implemented and, meanwhile, Great Britain (but not Northern Ireland) risks importing shoddy or dangerous goods. For reasons I’ve discussed before, that isn’t because EU products have ‘ceased to be safe’. It is because the UK no longer has full access to the ‘eco-system’ relevant databases, and as a result is more vulnerable to accidental or criminal introductions of, for example, animal diseases, African Swine Fever being the most high-profile example.
From this point of view, reported food industry concerns that an SPS deal would increase those risks, because it would ultimately enable the UK to remove those phases of the post-Brexit import controls which have been introduced, are wide of the mark. If and when any such deal is done, it would, according to paragraph 31 of the statement released after the reset Summit, include full database access and thereby return risks to pre-Brexit levels (or to the same level as for member states of the EU which, of course, can never be zero). The real concern is that, meanwhile, the remainder of the necessary import controls will remain unimplemented.
If some have misunderstood the implications of an SPS deal, others have been wrong-footed by it. A particularly delicious example is an article in the rabidly pro-Brexit Express. Those who only read the headline, “‘Brexit reset deal’ to hit grocery bills next month – how it affects your pockets”, could be forgiven for thinking that Starmer’s craven betrayal of the Brexit dream was about to hit hard-pressed consumers in their wallets. But - what’s this? – the report goes on to explain that it will reduce business costs by £200 million a year, which will “gradually work its way down to consumers” who will see lower prices and greater availability of produce. Some “hit” [2].
All this aside, there was something decidedly odd about the announcement. The fact that the government is not going to continue to develop full border controls, and may even start selling off some of the ‘white elephant’ border facilities, seems to suggest either that it is completely confident of reaching an SPS agreement with the EU (which is exactly how the press release reads) and/or that it is determined to do whatever is necessary to reach such an agreement. Much of the media discussion certainly talks as if the deal already exists or is at least a fait accompli.
In fact, as things stand there is no agreement and, although I think it is very highly likely that there will be, it is impossible to be certain or to know how long it will take. If there is no agreement, and in the mean-time there has been no further development of import controls, then there will be an even longer period until full controls are operational. They certainly aren’t going to spring into action in January 2027, the supposed new deadline. But even if there is an agreement, the longer it takes to be made and implemented the greater the chance that the risks involved will eventuate and that, in turn, carries a political risk for the government [3].
A detour into Brexitology
One thing which can be said about an SPS agreement, if it happens, or any of the others identified at the reset Summit, is that neither it nor they will constitute ‘cherry-picking’. I’m returning to this point reluctantly since, as I said when I last discussed it, my original passing remark about it, in a footnote to an earlier post, led to much critical, and some hostile, comment on social media.
My basic argument is that this term has now ceased to have analytical value because, now that the UK is a third country to the EU, any agreements made will simply be between those two polities, in the light of their own interests. Some seemed to think this showed my supposed ‘UK-centrism’, and perhaps even my own hidden Brexity nature, or was just some inexplicable lapse from cogency on my part. All of which seems rather strange given that for almost ten years I’ve been writing about cherry-picking (and related concepts like ‘cakeism’), repeatedly using it as a concept to analyse Brexit and to criticise the UK’s conduct.
I only return to this now because last week no less a person than the EU Ambassador to the UK, Pedro Serrano, described the term as being “no longer helpful” and went on to say of the reset that “this is not about cherry-picking or not cherry-picking. We have identified a number of issues that are of mutual interest.” The report of these remarks, by Jon Stone in Politico, goes on to say that “in the Berlaymont, too, the [cherry-picking] line is seen as passé”, although gives no specific evidence of that and it’s not clear to me that, as the report claims, this term has been “officially retired” by the EU (or what form ‘official retirement’ would take). Nevertheless, it is clearly significant that someone of Serrano’s stature said what he did and, unless the suggestion is that his posting to London has made him fall prey to ‘UK-centrism’, it suggests that my own observation was an accurate one.
Moreover, the report goes on to quote Charles Grant, the widely-respected Director of the Centre for European Reform, saying that the cherry-picking line had been “a product of the strained relationship that followed the referendum, and the EU’s concern that other countries should not follow the UK’s example.” That is exactly my point, or part of it: not just the word, but the concept, relate to a time which legally and institutionally has ceased to exist, namely the period during which the Withdrawal Agreement and the Trade and Cooperation Agreement were being negotiated.
This isn’t (or isn’t simply) an ‘I told you so’ on my part (and, even if it were, there are plenty of things, often more important than this, which I’ve been wrong about over the years). Actually, it’s a fairly minor issue which I never expected to cause so much fuss. Nevertheless, it does have a wider significance which is worth mentioning.
It has become almost a truism of ‘Brexitology’ (for there is such a thing) that Brexit is a ‘process not an event’, an observation only ever necessary to make because of the bone-headed inability of most Brexiters to grasp that simple fact. But that doesn’t mean that the process ‘unfolds’ in the sense of going in a particular direction, like the unrolling of a carpet to reveal a recurring pattern. For whilst it is undoubtedly true that there are endless recurrences and repetitions – to a degree that is sometimes almost soul-destroying – it is also the case that the direction and content of the process modulates over time, and will continue to do so. As that happens, anyone who is serious about understanding Brexit needs to be attuned to both the continuities and the changes.
I think that most readers of this blog would have no difficulty agreeing with the suggestion that those Brexiters who are still, for example, droning on about ‘alternative arrangements’ for the Irish border are simply stuck in a groove whereby not just the terminology but the entire situation it relates to have been superseded. What may be less palatable is that the same can apply to some of the idées fixes of those on the ‘remain’, ‘rejoin’, ‘FBPE’ (or whatever term we want to use for it) side.
The Strategic Defence Review
One important reason why the Brexit process does not have a single fixed direction, mandating a fixed repertoire of analytical terms, is that this process does not take place in isolation from the wider world. The most obvious example is the Ukraine War, which has had a profound impact on UK-EU post-Brexit relations ever since its outbreak in 2022. That impact continues to develop, and is itself one of the things impacted by the other most obvious example, Trump’s second presidency. The EU-UK Security and Defence Partnership, announced at the reset Summit, is the most tangible consequence of these two developments.
The Ukraine War had already prompted the 2023 ‘refreshed’ Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy (IR23). As I discussed at the time, this represented something of a retreat from the hubris of the original Integrated Review of 2021 (IR21) with its puffed-up post-Brexit ‘Global Britain’ framing, and put more emphasis on the centrality of European-Atlantic security. Now, just two years later, the government has published its Strategic Defence Review (SDR).
I’m not qualified to discuss the military details of the SDR, for which see Professor Lawrence Freedman’s expert analysis, but, on my reading of its geo-political framing, it does not really continue the direction of travel from IR21 to IR23. It is true that, as Freedman explains, the SDR is very much informed by the threat from Russia and by the military lessons of the Ukraine War. It is also true that it does not explicitly replicate the ‘Global Britain’ language of IR21. Nevertheless, it retains a strong emphasis on the UK as a global military power, centrally anchored in its relationship with the US and its membership of NATO.
Of course, that is not a surprise, any more than it is a surprise that it is only very gently hinted at that the reliability of the US as a defence partner has been compromised by Trump, and may well never recover. But it is, if not surprising then at least of note, that the partnership with the EU is given so little emphasis, and even that in rather muted tones (see especially p.75). In the process, what had seemed in IR23 to be the beginning of a recognition that the UK is primarily a regional power has been diluted. It’s difficult to be sure, precisely as so much is about tone and emphasis, and thus very much open to different interpretations, but, at the very least, I don’t think it is suggestive of the kind of Europe-first foreign policy which Foreign Secretary David Lammy talked about in Opposition.
A different review?
That rather tentative analysis aside, the SDR prompts the thought that, whatever it does or does not imply about the UK-EU defence partnership, there is literally nothing in it which could not, and probably would not, have been written had Brexit not happened. AUKUS, which features extensively in the review, is sometimes trumpeted by Brexiters as a ‘Brexit benefit’, but the fact that France, an EU member, was originally to have been the US and Australia’s partner gives the lie to that. But if Brexit has brought no defence and security benefits, what costs and disbenefits might it have brought?
In particular, whilst, like the other recent reviews, the SDR rightly identifies the threat Russia poses to the UK, and the very wide-ranging forms it takes, the entire question about how Brexit relates to this threat remains one of the major unventilated issues of recent history. I’ve never been one of those who ascribes the referendum result to Russian interference and, in some ways, I think doing so serves to deflect responsibility from those, including the voters, with whom it lies. But it is undeniable that Brexit was in line with Russian interests, and we know the pro-Putin views of many of its leading advocates, including Nigel Farage.
At issue here is not so much the failure to investigate what role Russia played in 2016, it is how, right now, in 2025, and in the future, Brexit continues to serve those interests. We are told that the SDR puts the UK on a “wartime footing” in the face of the “immediate and pressing threat” from Russia. A country which was really serious about that would be conducting a review not just of defence strategy but of why it is persisting with an entire national strategy which may not have been chosen for it by Russia but is exactly what Russia would have chosen for it. Whilst we are at it, we might also undertake a comprehensive official review of all the economic and political consequences of Brexit.
After all, if the dramatic changes in the world are such as to require three defence reviews in the five years since Britain formally left the EU, then it surely isn’t unreasonable to think that Brexit itself warrants at least one.
Notes
[1] Apart from at least recognizing that an SPS deal may not be done, the reason a date is stated is very likely in order to forestall any action against the UK at the WTO. As things stand, the UK is discriminating against non-EU countries, whose imports face SPS controls. But for so long as the UK can claim to be in the process of introducing controls on the EU and negotiating a deal with the EU, it is unlikely that any other WTO member will bother to start raising a complaint.
[2] In another article, even the Express couldn’t find a negative spin to put on one aspect of the potential SPS deal, namely that it would make it easier to take pets to and from the EU by a “reversal to Brexit rules”. This possible return to the pet passport scheme shouldn’t be confused with another development this week, introducing the Pet Travel Document to simplify taking pets between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. That is nothing to do with the reset or any SPS agreement, but is part of the ongoing implementation of the Windsor Framework.
[3] Of course there are political risks either way. If the government continued to roll out import controls which, along with those already developed, were subsequently rendered redundant by an SPS agreement then it could be accused of wasting money. Even so, that would be considerably less damaging (both politically and economically) than if, prior to an agreement, the absence of full controls led to, say, foot and mouth disease being imported.