Brexit Britain is still a tinderbox

It is now almost exactly ten years since my first post on this blog, and this latest post comes after a long, hot summer break in which there have been virtually no developments as regards Brexit, in the delimited sense of Britain’s post-Brexit relationship with the EU.

That isn’t a surprise, given that it is usually the political holiday season, at least for routine parliamentary and inter-governmental politics. Yet, starting this eleventh year of blogging, there is a sense of a more pervasive Brexit stasis. That stasis is not a sign that Brexit has ceased to be important but, rather, that the British polity has still not faced up to its consequences and shows no signs of being able to do so.

The Brexit stasis

The stasis has two aspects. From an EU perspective, relations with the UK have not been a matter of pressing concern since the completion of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement on broadly satisfactory terms, and perhaps not since the completion of the Withdrawal Agreement. Not only are there now more important issues on the EU agenda, but it is also obvious that very little of substance can change unless there is a decisive change within the UK polity. And this is the second aspect of the stasis: there has been no such change.

For it is now abundantly clear that Andy Burnham’s EU policy is going to be virtually identical to that of Keir Starmer. That is most obvious in Burnham’s re-iteration over the summer of his commitment to the manifesto ‘red lines’ (no single market membership, no customs union, no freedom of movement of people, if a reminder is necessary). There should be no surprise in that, either. Politically, it would be very difficult to justify so major a departure from the manifesto without stoking demands for another general election. But in any case, as for Starmer before him, there would be little point in spending political capital on seeking from the EU something which it would be unlikely to grant until it is clear that it has strong and durable support in the UK, and will not be reversed by the next government.

There is also a time factor here: the government is already approaching the likely mid-point of its parliamentary term and, as yet, it still hasn’t delivered even the very limited reset promised by Starmer. Indeed, there isn’t even yet an agreed date for the (much delayed) next UK-EU summit at which the reset agreement is supposed to be announced, although the current rumour is that it will be in November. It’s astonishingly feeble given the supposed priority Labour accorded it when they came to power.

So, even if Burnham dropped the red lines tomorrow, it is highly unlikely, if not impossible, that an entirely new deal with the EU could be struck by the next election. Thus not only would he have taken the political pain of dropping a central manifesto commitment, he would have nothing to show for it. The real question for Burnham’s Labour will be whether it abandons or modifies its red lines in the next election manifesto, with the subsidiary question being whether in the interim Burnham lays the ground for doing so.

Many pro-Europeans will find this intensely irritating, but it does at least have a discernible political rationale (it’s not necessary to agree with that rationale to discern it). What is far less forgivable is that Burnham has also taken over from Starmer the stupid and dishonest pretence that, despite the red lines, he is going to seek a “bolder” and “more ambitious” relationship with the EU, something also re-stated over the summer by Hamish Falconer, the new ‘Europe Minister’ (in effect, if not in title). Thus, Burnham talks (£) of putting closer ties with the EU at the heart of his economic strategy in order to “add percentage points” to UK growth, something precluded by his own red lines. The absurdity of these claims is made all the clearer by the way that, at the same time, the British government is engaged in sour wrangling over university tuition fees for EU students as part of the existing reset negotiations, which hardly bespeaks of either boldness or ambition.

Well-worn delusions

If all this were not depressing enough, this summer has shown that the absurdity goes beyond simply spouting pieties and making dishonest claims. Rather, as an intervention from former Tory Minister Nick Boles, now advising Burnham on European policy, shows, all the familiar Brexit delusions are still in place.

In an essay for the thinktank Demos, Boles makes two key arguments. One is for the creation of a ‘European Confederation’ of the EU and non-EU countries (including the UK) allowing a single market for goods (widely misreported as ‘rejoining the single market) but with no freedom of movement of people. The other is that this would be associated with a comprehensive defence pact which would include the UK providing nuclear deterrence capability to its members.

The first of these arguments is as well-worn as a treadless tyre, and yet another iteration of the refusal to understand what a single market means as a concept, a refusal to understand what it means to the EU, and, ultimately, just the latest home-grown proposal to be ‘out and yet in’ of the sort that has been made since the very beginning of the Brexit process.

The second argument has, ostensibly, a more contemporary flavour. At least it recognizes the changed security landscape created by Trump, and shifting US priorities even without Trump, and what that means for NATO and European defence. It is clear that for Boles these two arguments go together, in that the offer of a UK (nuclear) contribution to an enhanced European defence pact will be the ‘carrot’ (£) to unpick the EU’s commitment to the ‘four freedoms’ of the single market.

In fact, and this I why I said it was only ‘ostensibly’ a new argument, the attempt to barter security for trade was attempted several times during the Brexit negotiations, starting with Theresa May’s Article 50 notification letter in 2017, an attempt much resented by EU leaders, some of whom regarded it as blackmail (it is fair to say that the use of this tactic ebbed and flowed over the years). Boles appears to think that, precisely because of the new security landscape, the attempt can be made again though perhaps – to be charitable – not in the negative sense of a threat to reduce cooperation, but in the positive sense of an offer to enhance it.

However, this rests on what is obviously a false premise. There is a perfectly good, if not indeed overwhelming, argument that it is in the mutual interest of the UK and the EU to radically increase defence cooperation because the US is no longer a reliable security partner. It’s an argument Burnham has recently endorsed. But the key point is that it is a mutual interest: both could benefit.  Yet what Boles envisages is that, as well as its share of this benefit, the UK would receive an additional benefit in the form of joining a single market for goods with no freedom of movement of people. So the equation clearly doesn’t balance. [1]

Why nothing is changing

In short, we can see Brexit stasis at multiple levels in the UK: nothing new is happening, the Labour government’s policy is unchanged and so is the mendacity of its rhetoric, and thinking about post-Brexit policy continues to go round what in the past I have called the same old Mobius Strip of ‘solutions’ to the problems caused by Brexit whilst retaining the supposed ‘benefits’ of Brexit.

As time has gone on, those benefits have proved so illusory that only the most recalcitrant continue to claim them. No one seriously believes that having an independent trade policy is a net benefit, even though the Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds continues to suggest it is of value (£). And the limitations of regulatory independence were illustrated yet again over the summer in an analysis by Vilija Vėlyvytė of UKICE of the regulation of medicines testing and authorization (once touted by Brexiters as a key example of how post-Brexit sovereignty would make Britain a ‘world leader’).

But, despite the government’s continuing attempts to suggest that trade and regulatory independence provide some sort of justification for it European policy, it is perfectly obvious that what drives that policy is, overwhelmingly, Labour’s neuralgia about immigration. That explains both the broad contours of the policy, in terms of the ‘red lines’, but also the micro-details, such as resistance to an extensive Youth Mobility Scheme. It explains the contortions and delusions of the Boles’ proposals, and all the other attempts over the years to detach freedom of movement of people from single market membership. It also explains why the government is willing to sacrifice the economic growth it would so dearly love to have, to sacrifice the universities which should be central to its regional and innovation policies, and even to sacrifice the house-building programme it is committed to delivering.

Hostility to immigration supersedes everything and anything else. And whilst Labour can be blamed for its cowardice and lack of leadership in this respect, that is, itself, a manifestation of the deeper and more widespread way that the UK – and especially England – are gripped by anti-immigration fervour which persists even now that a collapse in net migration levels is under way. It is this, more than anything else, which means that post-Brexit relations with the EU are stuck in their present form.

Summer at the seaside

One obvious expression of, and barometer for, the extent of this anti-immigration fervour is the continuing level of support for Reform (and its rival offshoot Restore). Here, the event, or perhaps non-event, of the summer was the Clacton by-election. Unsurprisingly, this was won by Nigel Farage, but there was little triumph in it and the Reform leader, who has not been seen much since, seems to be a much-diminished figure. Meanwhile, there are reports of increasing infighting within the party, and its finances, as well as those of Farage himself, continue to be a source of vulnerability and potential scandal.

It may well be that electoral support for Reform will never regain its peak levels of earlier this year, when some surveys had the party polling at over 30%. However, it continues to have a fairly stable 25% of the vote share, easily large enough to have a major electoral impact and perhaps an even greater political influence. This again implies that the chances of any British government pursuing a substantially closer relationship with the EU are small, and the chances of doing so in a way that is plausible to the EU are even smaller.

Support for Reform does not simply betoken the persistence of anti-immigration sentiment. It is also bound up with the persistence of Brexitism and its attendant culture war. This summer saw an especially intense skirmish within that war with the events leading up to and following from the death of Jason Arday.

The Arday case and the culture war

More than any other example I can think of, this showed one of the most obnoxious features of the culture war. I suspect (or at least hope) that I am not alone in thinking that the Arday case shows appalling racism and EDI over-reach and legitimate media scrutiny and media hounding and personal failings and institutional failings. These aren’t incompatible, and what is so obnoxious about culture war is its demand that everyone ‘picks a side’, or perhaps more accurately the seductiveness of that demand, and ignores or denies all complexity and ambiguity.

Yet complexity and ambiguity there was. As the journalist and commentator Helen Lewis put it in The Atlantic, “the Arday case is endlessly debatable because it contains so many double-edged elements”. In a similar way, another journalist and commentator, Lewis Goodall, remarked that the case, and Arday himself, became a symbol in “the ceaseless, airless, brainless culture war.” This became obvious in the way that the case – which, surely, was a most unusual, even idiosyncratic, one – came to be used as a proxy to attack social science in general, academics in general, and universities in general. It also became obvious in the way it was taken as having a general meaning for diversity initiatives, press freedom, academic freedom etc. etc.

However, in terms of the focus of this blog, I’m not sure that the sides in the Arday furore map easily on to Brexitism. There is obviously some overlap – the racism, and the attack on academics and universities generally, no doubt has some correlation with support for Brexit and the wider social illiberalism with which that, in turn, correlates. But there are probably plenty of people (and for what it is worth I am one of them) who are neither socially illiberal nor pro-Brexit yet think that Arday’s appointment to a Cambridge professorship was questionable [2], even if hardly warranting such outrage.

More importantly, the way the ‘sides’ have lined up doesn’t map neatly on to Brexitism because it has brought into sharp focus some of the fissures amongst, especially, those who are opposed to Brexit and Brexitism. Those fissures are many (for example, liberal conservatives find commonality with social democrats, whilst social democrats are alienated from Lexiters) but the Arday case, in particular, illustrated how deeply the trans-rights issue has split the liberal-left. Thus several high-profile gender critical feminists, most notably J.K. Rowling, who were highly opposed to Brexit were also highly critical of Arday’s appointment.

As I understand it, the connection, even if not explicitly stated, is this: EDI in universities is seen by gender critical feminists as a bedrock of trans-activism; Arday’s appointment was seen as an expression of EDI in universities; and ‘therefore’ attacking Arday’s appointment was a way of attacking trans-activism. I’m not, here, making any comment on the trans-rights debate, or the sides within it, but rather trying to unpick how it cuts across the issue of Brexit and the concept of Brexitism and, in the process, trying to explain why the sides in the Arday case only partially overlap with those of Brexit and Brexitism. The example of gender critical feminists is not the only one but it is perhaps the most obvious [3].

The political tinderbox

Although the Arday case may only partially relate to Brexitism, the ferocity of the arguments it has engendered do disclose something about how intensely divided post-Brexit Britain is. I don’t mean that, had Britain not left the EU, there would not have been exactly the same argument. That would be nonsense. Nor am I suggesting that existing EU members are not, in many cases, as bitterly divided on culture war lines. What I mean is that these intense divisions have a particular significance for the prospect of re-opening, in any substantive way, the question of UK-EU relations, and especially any question of joining the EU. If even the slight spark of the Arday case can ignite such ferocity, how much more would that be true in the case of Brexit?

During this long, hot summer, Andy Burnham described the country as being a “tinderbox”, with numerous devastating wildfires and the danger of many more, and even instigated an emergency mobile phone alert to warn of this danger. With rain now starting to fall more widely, that danger is hopefully receding. But the metaphorical sense that Britain is a political tinderbox, with a culture war conflagration an ever-present danger, continues. It is for that reason that the Brexit stasis also continues. It remains too a hot a topic to address in any serious way, and there is no obvious sign that rain is imminent.

 

Notes

[1] I have a feeling that someone else made the argument I am making here, and that I am cribbing it, but unfortunately I can’t recall who did so or where I read it. I think it might have been Anand Menon. So apologies to him – or whoever it was – for not quoting/ linking to it in the way I normally would.

[2] This isn’t just a hunch on my part. I don’t want to sound as if I am waving my academic credentials but, when I was a Professor at Cambridge University, I was an external (i.e. external to the faculty, but internal to the university) member of the Board of the Faculty of Education, where Arday was employed, and sat on several of its professorial and non-professorial appointments’ panels, as well as those in my own and other faculties. I also chaired a committee for the DfES (as was), identifying criteria for quality in educational research, Arday’s field (though not my own). Admittedly, these experiences were almost 20 years ago, and I don’t want to over-claim for them but, still, it perhaps means my view isn’t entirely uninformed, and possibly less uninformed than many of those who have commented. And, in my view, whilst some of the criticisms levelled at Arday and his work were unfair, there are genuine reasons to doubt his suitability for his post.

[3] Another, perhaps less obvious or important example, is that I have noticed several people who I know to be highly critical of Brexit also strongly supported the ‘academic freedom’ of Nathan Cothnas, one of Arday’s principal accusers, following his suspension by the University of Ghent.

Regular (and attentive) readers will notice that this post comes a week earlier than the date I gave in my previous post for when I would resume, and also comes later in the day than usual.