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.

Proustian moments at Le Café Brexit

There is an old saying that if you sit for long enough outside a café in Paris then, eventually, everyone you have ever loved will walk by. I was reminded of this not by the opening of the Paris Olympics but, perhaps more surprisingly, by an article this week in the Financial Times (£). In it, economics commentator Martin Sandbu ponders the possibility that, with the new government’s more positive and relatively more pragmatic approach to EU relations, some new agreement might be reached whereby the UK as a whole, and not just Northern Ireland, participated in the single market for goods.

It made for a kind of Proustian moment. For here, walking past Le Café Brexit, so to speak, was one, or perhaps two or even three, of the Brexit models we once knew so well, although Sandbu does not mention them by name in the article. Most obviously, it reprises the ‘Ukraine model’, first propounded, so far as I know, by Andrew Duff in November 2016. It also resembles the perhaps less familiar ‘Jersey model’, first propounded, again so far as I know, by John Springford and Sam Lowe of the Centre for European Reform in January 2018.

For that matter, it resembles what, in June 2018, seemed to be what Theresa May might seek to negotiate. (I mean by that not what ended up being her backstop proposal as regards the Northern Ireland Protocol in the Withdrawal Agreement, but what was floated as the potential final form of UK-EU relations.)

The sight of once familiar faces

Since the faces of these old ‘loves’ (if, indeed, they warrant that term) may now have been forgotten, it’s worth just briefly recalling their main features. Under the Jersey model, the UK would be in the single market for goods, including agriculture, accepting EU rules not just on products but things like state aid, and social and environmental standards, and be part of the EU VAT regime and, effectively, its customs union.

Under the Ukraine model*, there would be a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA) effectively entailing membership of the single market for goods and some services, again accepting product rules as well as things like state aid and social and environmental standards. There would be customs cooperation, rather than a customs union (though Duff suggests the model could be augmented with a customs treaty). However, in a more expanded sense, the Ukraine model encompasses not just a DCFTA but an Association Agreement, encompassing wide-ranging political cooperation, including in areas of foreign, defence, and security policy.

Needless to say, in both cases there is considerably greater complexity than this (for which, see the links above), and no one regards them as precise templates for a UK-EU relationship rather than being indicative of a certain type or category of relationship. Why were they not pursued? One answer can be found in another remembrance of past things, this time the famous ‘Barnier staircase’, the diagram which encapsulated the various categories into which post-Brexit relations might fall, along with the declared UK red lines which ruled all of them out other than a ‘standard’ Free Trade Agreement indicated by the Canadian and South Korean flags on that step of the staircase.

The Jersey model doesn’t feature on the staircase, but the UK red lines which precluded it were partly the same as those for the Ukraine model, which does appear as one of the steps: no ECJ jurisdiction and regulatory autonomy. The Jersey model would also cross the red line of having an independent trade policy, at least as regards agreements about trade in goods. At the same time, it is worth recalling that the Ukraine model, certainly, and the Jersey model, possibly or even probably, does not cross the UK red line of ending freedom of movement of people.

Why are we seeing them again now?

Why, then, might these models have become relevant again, at least from a UK perspective? Firstly because, in a general sense, the Labour government has committed to “tearing down” the barriers to trade created by Brexit. These models would do so, at least for goods trade, by removing many of the non-tariff barriers to trade with the EU, and not just tariff barriers (as, to a large extent, the existing trade agreement does). Since it is goods trade, rather than services trade, which has been most badly affected by Brexit, this would, unlike some of the more modest reforms Labour have suggested, actually make a meaningful economic difference and this, in turn, would assist Labour’s broader growth agenda (it would also considerably, if not entirely, remove the need for the Irish Sea border).

Secondly, and more specifically, Sandbu stresses the significance, which I highlighted in my most recent blog post, of Labour’s planned legislation to shadow EU product safety regulations. It is an important development, rightly described as “a real blow to the Brexiters” by Niall Ó Conghaile in East Anglia Bylines, and one which requires no agreement with the EU. But it also seems likely that the government will agree ‘dynamic alignment’ of Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary (SPS) regulations with the EU, at least if it is serious about reaching the ‘veterinary agreement’ which has been presented as central to its European policy. Of course, product safety and SPS are by no means exhaustive of the EU regulations, but the point is that, unlike the Tory governments, the present administration has no doctrinaire objection to regulatory alignment. Nor does Starmer have to contend with Brexit Ultras on his backbenches opposing it.

Dating isn’t the same as marriage

Even under the Tories, it was de facto accepted that the possibilities for regulatory divergence were very limited in a practical sense, which Is why they identified so few, and pursued even fewer. Moreover, as the recent example of ‘tethered plastic bottle caps’ has illustrated, to the bemusement of Brexiters like poor old Isabel Oakeshott (£), whatever the UK government may do, UK businesses will often decide to follow new EU regulations.

That’s for the fairly obvious reason that it is cheaper to produce to only one standard, especially if it is that of the larger market, but, in any case, to produce to the standard which is required by one market and is acceptable in the other market (i.e. in this case, tethered plastic bottle caps are now legally required for sale in the EU and acceptable, although not legally required, in Great Britain). Moreover, there is an additional incentive for UK manufacturers, specifically, to produce goods to a standard which will be acceptable in both Great Britain and Northern Ireland, where EU rules apply anyway (an early example being that of baby food manufacture).

This is just one illustration of something that Brexiters have never been able to understand. They (generally) manage to grasp that exported goods have to meet the standards of their destination market, but don’t understand why firms producing goods which are not for export should have to comply with the EU rules, depicting this as unnecessary red tape. And, with Brexit, they proceeded on that basis, only to find that doing so actually increased red tape. Hence, for the most part, the UK continues to comply with EU rules but without having any say in making them (or, at least, only a very limited say, in some cases, via the British Standards Institute’s membership of European standard-setting bodies). So much for ‘sovereignty’.

But the Brexiters also failed to understand something which is admittedly more complicated, and which is highly germane to the re-appearance of the Ukraine and Jersey models. The fact that goods produced in the UK meet EU standards doesn’t in itself make those goods legally saleable in the single market. Alignment doesn’t mean access, any more than dating means marriage. It is exactly the same issue, though in reverse, which some remainers fail to understand when they wrongly assume that goods sold in the UK marked ‘Not for sale in the EU’ (NFEU) must mean that those goods do not meet EU standards.

So, for this reason, even if the Labour government shadows EU regulations for product safety and in every other area, whilst that is helpful for businesses (by ensuring there is no need to produce to two standards**), that does not in itself replicate or gain the benefits of single market membership. But if regulatory alignment is no longer a red line for the UK, then there is no good reason not to make it de jure and not just de facto (in other words, to agree dynamic alignment not just in relation to SPS, but across the board for goods)? Similarly, if dynamic alignment for SPS is to be agreed, then that crosses the previous red line on ECJ jurisdiction, which would ultimately be needed in the event of, for example, disputes. So why not do the same for all goods?

In short, since, under Labour, the UK red lines which the Barnier staircase showed to preclude the Ukraine model have now, apparently, gone, then why could the Ukraine model not be revived? Indeed, given Labour’s very clear desire for a deep security pact, there seems little the government would object to, on doctrinaire grounds, in the wider model of not just a DCFTA but an Association Agreement.

One potential issue, with the Jersey, though not the Ukraine, model, is that it implies a customs treaty, which would limit the possibilities for an independent UK trade policy. And, despite the very limited economic rationale for such independence, Labour seem as committed to this as the Tories were. However, even the Jersey model would not preclude UK trade agreements with other countries on services, and whilst it is true that, historically, FTAs have been goods-focused, it is at least arguable that a smarter UK policy would be to develop a focus on services deals. Indeed, last year’s ‘Trading Up’ report from the Nuffield Foundation funded Economy 2030 project advocated precisely that, along with replicating the arrangements for goods in Northern Ireland across the whole UK economy.

It takes two to tango

So much for the UK side, but about the EU? Sandbu suggests that admitting the UK to the single market for goods would require the EU “to abandon the theology of four inseparable single market freedoms”. It’s a slightly irritating formulation, since it’s hardly a ‘theology’, but presumably one thing he has in mind is the issue of freedom of movement of people, which remains a UK red line under Labour. However, the Ukraine model does not entail such freedom of movement (and, hence, that did not feature on the staircase as precluding the model).

Nevertheless, in terms of the likelihood of the EU agreeing to it, an obvious objection is that the current Brexit trade arrangements actually work fairly well for the EU, and also that the dividing line between goods and services is an increasingly blurred one. Moreover, as a report this week emphasized, the EU are likely to want to see the existing Brexit deal fully implemented before considering a new one. It’s also questionable whether either the Jersey model (which really only arises from the historically curious status of the Channel Islands, and anyway relates to a tiny territory) or the Ukraine model (which relates to a much smaller economy than that of the UK, and is really predicated on being a path of entry to full EU membership, rather than an exit destination), would prove attractive or practicable from an EU perspective.

There is also the perennial problem of Britain’s Brexiters, despite them being out of government. Even Labour’s fairly modest policy on tracking EU product safety standards got a full frontpage headline in the Express declaring it to be ‘The Great Brexit Betrayal’, and the rage at something like a Ukraine-style Association Agreement can be all too easily imagined. So one question is whether Labour have the courage to defy the wave of criticism that would come from the press, and which might well impact on the electorate. My sense is that the answer is that they don’t, but I’ll come back to that.

The bigger issue is what this means for the EU. It is exactly the same problem as that which would be created by the UK rejoining the EU, or the single market as a whole: what happens if the Tories pledge to reverse whatever Labour agree, if and when they return to power? That is a huge concern for the EU, and one which we know the Brexiters would play on because at least one of them, David Frost, has already openly stated (£) that both the “Conservatives and the Reform Party must ... raise doubts on the EU side about how politically sustainable any deal might be in the medium term”. This wasn’t a reference to a single market for goods deal, or to an Association Agreement, specifically, but clearly would apply to them, and it did make explicit reference to the policy of regulatory ‘mirroring’.

It's tempting to think that what Frost and his fellow Brexit Ultras say is now irrelevant but, unfortunately, they retain a wrecking power. For the EU, having gone through the pain and aggravation of Brexit and reached what appears to be a durable form for the future relationship, and with many other issues far higher up its agenda, there’s not much incentive for a major change in that relationship anyway. But there still less if there is a real risk that, a few years later, the UK might pull out of it.

This in turn makes it less likely that Labour will seek such an agreement, even if they were minded to take on the domestic opposition to it. Why take that hit to embark on a policy which they can’t be sure of delivering? And this is a point that those who are impatient for progress, up to and including joining the EU, should take note of. Suppose Labour pursued being in the single market for goods, and were rebuffed by the EU. Then, regardless of the underlying reasons for it, it would become an established fact of British political life that ‘the EU will never give us more’.

It is this, I imagine, which informs Labour’s rather stealthy approach to alignment and to closer relations generally. Some, at least, within the government may well hope that gradually, if circumstances change, that will morph into a substantive change in the institutional form of the relationship, perhaps in a second term of office, perhaps with the Tory Party smashed again, and an eventual marginalization of the Brexiters. Such an approach could include, apart from a security pact, seeking the kind of detailed trade easements recently discussed by trade expert Sam Lowe.

The realities of single life

However, even if I am right to hypothesize that there is the coherent long game in play (and, obviously, I may not be), whilst the government ponders asking the EU to set up home together, it still has to face up to the issues of being single. The most immediate of these is the completion of full import controls on goods from the EU. This is one of the major hanging threads from Brexit, deriving from the twin scandals of Brexiters’ failure to understand that such controls were the necessary consequence of hard Brexit, and the Tory government’s abject incompetence in setting them up.

It bears repeating that the equivalent controls on the EU side were introduced, in full, the day after the transition period ended. That is now over three and half years ago, and not only has Britain repeatedly delayed doing the same but also, as I’ve detailed in the past, the Tory government created an almost incomprehensible array of partial and/or deferred implementations, with a patchwork of completion dates over the coming years. This is borne out by a National Audit Office report of May 2024, which was scathing about the costs, delays, and lack of clarity about the future timetable. Within that timetable, at least as things stand, October will see the introduction of the next phase of safety and security declarations, as well as some of the physical checks left hanging from the previous phase.

Labour’s intention is to make much of this unnecessary by reaching an SPS deal with the EU, but since negotiations will not even begin until early next year, not least because the new commission will not be in place until then, what happens in October? Another delay, with the attendant biosecurity risks? Meanwhile, the costs of preparing the new facilities will continue to mount, and port operators are already calling for compensation if it turns out these are not necessary following a new SPS agreement.

This is actually just the latest iteration of this issue, as changes that the previous government made to the checks required have already led to significant wasted expenditure on port facilities, as recently reported by Sophie Inge of Politico. There is hardly a better illustration of the absurd folly of Brexit than this saga of dishonesty, incompetence, cost, and the fact that rectifying it will entail further cost. It may also be another example of the way the Tories ‘salted the earth’ in anticipation of losing the election.

At least the import controls issue is one where, however difficult and expensive it may be, there is a potential solution. It is less clear that this is so for another Brexit-related issue the new government will soon have to face, the introduction, probably in November, of the EU’s new Entry/Exit System (EES) and, probably next May, of the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS). Taken together, these systems will introduce new processes for travellers entering the EU, and are likely to cause substantial extra delays at British airports, the Eurostar terminal, and ports, especially Dover.

Unlike import controls, these are not a hanging thread from Brexit, but they are a consequence of it. That’s not, as some Brexit commentators persist in claiming, because they are some sort of EU ‘punishment’. It is simply that they apply to all third country nationals entering the EU. The fact that they are likely to impact especially upon British nationals is because of the volume of travel between the UK and the EU. That, rather like the extent of UK-EU trade and supply chains, is yet another reflection of the basic facts of geography and economics that the Brexiters refused to understand. Now, it’s yet another price we are all going to have to pay for that ignorance.

As things stand, unless there is a further delay for technical reasons, which is possible, there isn’t much the government can do other than, as is reported to be happening, lobbying the EU to water down the impact of these new measures. But it’s not clear whether, or why, the EU will agree, and it is another example of the Brexiter myth of sovereignty that the only way Britain can ease the travel queues for its own citizens is by going ‘cap in hand’ to Brussels. What is in the government’s power, and has now been announced, is legislation to extend the rights of French border officials to operate on UK territory in Dover. That’s perfectly sensible, though, again, it scarcely betokens a great win for Brexit sovereignty.

Brexit: unloved and unlovable

It is still only the very early days of the new government, and it would be unrealistic to expect more than the beginnings of the re-set in the tone of relations with the EU, which we have started to see. In that sense, whilst it may be reasonable for commentators to take notice of foregone models of Brexit, these are still only passers-by at Le Café Brexit.

As we sip water from our bottle, with its tethered plastic top, we may have glimpses of paths not taken, and which might one day be available again, but for now we are stuck with the unloved and, even to its most ardent advocates, distinctly unlovable dishonesty, cost, and confusion of the Brexit we – in the collective sense of the polity – have chosen. As Proust put it, “it is often hard to bear the tears that we ourselves have caused”, and Brexit has certainly induced some especially stinging ones.

But Proust also suggested that “we are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full”. Although Brexit is already unpopular, that has still to happen. However, with the full impact of import controls and the new barriers to travel still to come, not to mention the accumulating drag on economic growth, it is perfectly possible that the harsh and bitter divorce created by May, Johnson and Frost may give way to a new kind of relationship and eventually, who knows, even a re-marriage. Or, since both parties will have changed, and lost times can never really be retrieved, perhaps that possibility would better be called, simply, a marriage.

Update 02/08/24, 08.26: since writing this post, I’ve seen that, just yesterday, it was reported that many of the import control processes and checks due to come into effect in October are going to be postponed, yet again, this time until the end of June 2025. Another Proustian moment! As before, this prevents, or defers, disruption, but at the risk of biosecurity breaches. It also maintains the farce of asymmetrical border controls. 

Notes

*Of course, this ‘Ukraine model’ was developed prior to the war with Russia, which has had many effects upon Ukraine’s relationship with the EU. My use of the term here simply refers to the basic type of the relationship, which is also illustrated by those the EU has with Georgia and Moldova. Note also that Andrew Duff has continued to develop and advocate this model since 2016, for example in a European Policy Centre discussion paper of March 2024.

**Some readers may be thinking the plastic bottle tops example makes this point irrelevant, since businesses don’t need the UK government to shadow EU regulations if they, as businesses, do so anyway. However, the bottle top example is of a particular sort, in that the EU standard, whilst not required in the GB market, is entirely legal here. But, absent of UK shadowing of EU regulations, there could be cases in which goods conforming to EU standards were illegal to sell in terms of UK standards. The legislation prevents this happening, at least within its domain of safety standards, and albeit with some caveats.

I am not planning to post again until Friday 30 August, unless there is a major Brexit development. During that period, I will be pondering the future of this blog, which by then will be about to enter its ninth year, and circumstances have become very different. I might just continue as before, but other possibilities include scaling back from a weekly to a fortnightly, or even monthly, post; or scaling back to posting only whenever there is a major, or interesting, development however frequently or infrequently that may be. I’d be interested in the view of readers on this, and in particular whether a regular post (so you know when it will be coming) is preferable to an ‘as and when’ post, and, if a regular post is preferable, whether every week, every fortnight, or every month would be better. If you have a view, please leave a comment below this post, or a message on X-Twitter.

A country on hold

Writing this weekly blog creates a certain rhythm, though the nature of it has changed over the years. In fact, in the early years it wasn’t always weekly, as I often wrote several short posts in some weeks. But it gradually settled into a weekly pattern of posting on a Friday morning, not necessarily rounding-up the week’s events but certainly based around them. As that happened, the length of posts also settled to being about 2000-3000 words each week. Occasionally they become even longer, but I try to keep to a 3000-word ceiling although it is often difficult to do so, and sometimes impossible.

For a long time, throughout most of 2017-2019, I more or less knew what the week ahead would bring in terms of particular scheduled parliamentary events, or negotiations with the EU. Of course the exact detail of what those events would bring could be highly unpredictable so that, often, the bulk of the post would be written in the small hours of Friday morning.

Since that period things have changed in that it is less common for there to be a predictable set of events, with the consequence that almost every Sunday and Monday I find myself thinking that there will be nothing to write about this week. Yet, invariably, and despite Brexit featuring less in the news than it did in previous years, there has always been plenty to say by Friday and the problem is just that of trying to find a coherent theme which isn’t simply a repeat of things I’ve already written, and which keeps close to my self-imposed word limit.

No news is bad news

All of this is a long-winded prelude to saying that this week, for the first time in over seven years, there is almost nothing new worth saying about Brexit. Of course there are, as always, a few news stories of note. In last Friday’s Financial Times (£) Valentina Romei, drawing on the latest ONS figures, reported that “UK goods trade has suffered its steepest five-year fall on record”, with Brexit at least one factor, and possibly a major factor. But it was hardly a huge surprise, any more than was the usual ‘yesbuttery’ from the usual suspects.

The most superficially plausible objection to Romei’s report is that the focus on UK goods trade ignores the far better post-Brexit performance in services trade, as discussed by Emily Fry, the Resolution Foundation's Senior Economist. However, as John Springford of the Centre for European Reform explains, “if the UK had remained an EU member, its services exports would probably have grown much faster”. Brexiters would no doubt huff and puff about the ‘probably’, but the basic fact remains that there’s no plausible reason to explain how three years of increased trade barriers with the UK’s biggest trade partner, and only very marginal, and very recent, reductions in (mainly goods) trade barriers with a couple of very small trading partners, could possibly mean anything other than less trade, including less services trade, being done than would otherwise have been the case.

To avoid this obvious fact, Brexiters go through all sorts of contortions, with Kemi Badenoch yesterday using the shop-soiled trick of claiming post-Brexit export growth by using figures without adjusting for inflation. It’s like someone who earns £30K a year saying that they are much better off than their granddad was because he only earned £25K when he was their age. It’s bad enough when it comes from some pseudonymous Twitter account, or some woeful Brexit-dogma website. But this was the Trade Secretary, giving a major speech the central point of which was the need for "realism, realism, realism" in discussions about trade! Inevitably it was picked up to be the front page of this morning’s Express, a screaming headline of Brexit’s success, based on a claim which bears as much relation to economic realism as potato printing does to fine art.

Relatedly, we have also learned this week that, on top of the recently announced ‘pause’ in the UK-Canada negotiations, an imminent UK-India Free Trade Agreement is looking increasingly unlikely. But that’s not surprising, either, and it makes little difference anyway. The entire idea that having a trade policy independent of the EU’s is of any value was always bogus. Even the now moribund idea of a UK-US trade deal, supposedly the great economic prize of Brexit, would make only a tiny dent in the costs of leaving the EU. In passing, it is almost forgotten now but, during the referendum, the then real possibility of an EU-US trade deal (TTIP) was regarded with horror by many Brexiters and touted by some as the main reason to leave (on the spurious grounds that it would have meant privatization of the NHS). It’s another small reminder of the contradictions, dishonesty and opportunism with which Brexit was sold.

Meanwhile, ‘Global Britain’ Brexit ideologue Daniel Hannan is reduced (£) to lauding Argentina’s Javier ‘El Loco’ Milei as an inspirational model for British economic policy. This, apparently, is what we could have had if only Liz Truss had been allowed free rein and, in fairness, that, at least, may be true. This one was especially striking because prior to the referendum one of the most perspicacious warnings about Brexit came from the Conservative commentator Garvan Walshe, in which he suggested that it would set Britain on a pathway of decline similar to that which Argentina took from its relative prosperity at the start of the twentieth century. In doing so, he noted that the country “suffers from a chronic political virus: with only brief interludes, it has since the 1930s been run by populists who maintain that the system is run for the elite, and against the people; that any experts are the system’s hired clerks, their wisdom corrupted by money; that the plain anger of the ordinary man isn’t just right, but righteous”. Now, Milei’s loony-tunes regime, which exemplifies such ‘anti-Establishment populism’, is proposed by Hannan as the template for post-Brexit Britain. At least it shows that one thing can be relied upon: if nothing else, there will always in any given week be one, and probably several, insane articles by Brexiters in the Telegraph.

Other than that, the sorry saga about import control introduction also continues to limp on, this week with the news that physical checks on goods moving from Ireland to Wales are unlikely to begin before spring of 2025. This is a delay within a delay in that, as is well-known, controls on imports from the EU have been delayed five times, and are only this year being implemented in full, with the physical checks aspect due to begin at the end of April. However, goods from Ireland (which mainly route through Welsh ports, especially Holyhead), were already exempted from that date, and checks were due to begin in October 2024. It is that latter date which now looks set to slip.

That these checks serve important purposes is something I’ve written about before, with one of them being to reduce the risk of contaminated foodstuffs entering the country. Without reprising the detail, this risk is increased by Brexit not because EU goods have ‘suddenly become dangerous’ (as Brexiters invariably sneer when these risks are mentioned) but because the UK no longer has full access to the EU databases that help to track criminal and accidental dangers, and relies on a rather patchy, understaffed and underfunded system of its own. The importance of this increased risk is shown by this week’s reports of soaring hospital admissions for food poisoning, some of which is attributable to Brexit.

Exactly how much is down to Brexit is difficult, probably impossible, to know. There are certainly cases, such as a major salmonella outbreak last year linked to Polish poultry, where EU imports are to blame. But of course it cannot be proved definitively that this would not have happened without Brexit, for the simple reason that the risks were not, and never could be, completely eliminated by EU membership and nor can they be by import checks. The point is that, in the absence of EU membership and of import controls, these risks are increased, in principle, and so it is hardly unreasonable to think that the observed increase of cases, in practice, is linked to this. It is just one of many ways in which, with almost no public recognition of the reason, Brexit makes our lives a little bit worse, contributing to an aggregate which degrades our overall quality of life, with everything becoming more grubby and more ramshackle as the damage accumulates.

Waiting for god knows what

So, yes, there is some Brexit news, as always. But the reality is that the entire British polity is now on hold, waiting for an election with an almost palpable impatience. Even Tory MPs, leaving aside the many, currently numbering sixty-two, who have announced they won’t be standing again, seem to be gagging for the orgy of blood-letting that will follow. We have a rotting, maggoty sack of a government which is clearly bereft of any kind of policy agenda whatsoever, and certainly of any Brexit agenda. It's true that many of its backbenchers still harbour fantasies of massive regulatory divergence, but the government knows that they are totally impractical and would be heavily resisted by business organizations.

In fact, this government has no purpose at all other than to cling on to the trappings of power, and persists simply in the hope that the opinion polls may improve if it does so for long enough, a hope which rests primarily not upon anything which it may do, but upon the Labour Party committing some kind of massive error. Conversely, this means that the Labour Party are now animated solely by the desire to ensure that they commit no such error before the election. As regards Brexit, that means saying as little as possible, and promising as little as possible.

Notably, in the main political and economic event of the week, the Budget, Brexit was not mentioned once in either Jeremy Hunt’s speech or Keir Starmer’s response (even though the OBR forecasts that accompanied it stuck to their estimate that the evidence continues to support their original calculation that GDP will be 4% lower in the long-term than it would otherwise have been). If this silence persists – and, frankly, there’s no doubt that it will – then the Tories will go into the election saying almost nothing about Brexit, their defining policy since 2016 and their flagship policy at the last election, for the simple reason there is nothing to boast about and the people who still support it mostly think that the government made a mess of it. And Labour will do the same due to the (not unreasonable) fear that to do otherwise might give the Tories a chance to re-group around a ‘save Brexit’ slogan, perhaps even to the extent of spiking the cannibalization of their vote by the Reform Party.

That we have arrived at this situation is actually quite remarkable, and the more so since, as I recorded at the time, the details of Brexit barely featured in either the 2017 election or the 2019 election. So this great ‘national liberation’, this economic and geo-political reset will, once again, and despite all we now know about its consequences, be left as something virtually undiscussed, in substantive terms, since the short and stupid referendum campaign of 2016.

Labour in power?

Assuming Labour win the election, whenever it comes, it’s at least possible that Brexit, or, rather, the UK’s relationship with the EU will become discussable again. That’s partly for the reasons of security and defence which I’ve discussed in recent posts, as these are the areas where the Labour leadership is already indicating it is keen to deepen the relationship. But the economic issues won’t go away. It’s difficult to exaggerate the scale of the mess Labour are going to inherit, not least because, to the extent that the current government has any policy at all, it is to deliberately ensure that the mess be as bad as possible.

The political comparisons with the 1997 election may have some validity, but the economic outlook will be totally different, and more like that (or those) of 1974, in the era of stagflation. The elections that year, it bears recalling, occurred when the Tories had just implemented a European policy about which the Labour Party was deeply split, and entertained reversing by holding the 1975 referendum. I’m not suggesting that is a direct parallel, but Labour will have to fix the economy they inherit, and especially its impact on public services, and do so very quickly if they are to avoid voter disillusionment. For such disillusionment is likely to set in rapidly given that the main thing propelling Starmer to power is disaffection with the Tories rather than enthusiasm for Labour.

That will make the ongoing negative impact of Brexit more difficult to avoid than it has been in Opposition. The 4% drag anchor on growth that the OBR estimate (and other credible estimates are even higher) is a big elephant to ignore, especially given Starmer’s pledge to make the UK the fastest-growing economy in the G7. Attention will quickly focus on what, realistically, might be achieved via the 2026 review of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), with some recent signs that, from an EU perspective, there may be more scope than was once thought. That isn’t altogether unrelated to the security situation and certainly isn’t unrelated to whatever the outcome of the US Presidential election turns out to be.

But even the most maximal refinements possible within the TCA framework won’t do much for economic growth. This week the former MEP Andrew Duff has published a detailed, gradual plan for a bolder approach that Labour could take, and, for all the red lines that Starmer has drawn, it’s not hard to see this plan, or something like it, gaining a lot of support within his party, much of which is far less reconciled to Brexit than is its leadership. Even Duff’s first step, a UK-EU customs treaty, would have a strong economic rationale in terms of reducing some border frictions, and therefore compliance costs. Brexiters would screech about the loss of an ‘independent trade policy’ (even though the loss would be purely symbolic), but they will do that about anything Labour do, no matter how unambitious, that they could portray as a ‘betrayal of Brexit’ (as Suella Braverman already started to do during the Budget debate).

How loud would those screeches be, and how much political cut-through would they have? There are two, related, factors here. One is that it shouldn’t be under-estimated how much a change of government will change the dynamics of the right-wing media, which will become more compliant and much less influential overnight, as will the numerous thinktanks that have thrived on Tory patronage. That would be especially true if there was a huge wipe-out of the Tories. The scale of their defeat, and of a Labour victory, is the second factor. Whatever its size, the Tories look set to fall into vicious in-fighting which will consume most of their energy. And if it is as large as the largest current predictions, Labour’s freedom of action would be very considerable, at least initially. The question, however, remains the extent to which they would use it.

There is also, as ever, the question of whether the EU would enter into a significant change in the relationship. It can’t be assumed that even a total Tory meltdown would, in and of itself, make much difference to this. After all, the much-cited parallel of the 1993 Canadian election, which saw the near-extinction of the Progressive Conservative Party, ultimately led to a realignment of the right which brought the populist Stephen Harper to power in 2006.

The death row government

All of this is for the future. For now, Sunak will hold on, conceivably only until May but more likely until the autumn, especially as this week’s budget doesn’t seem to have ‘landed’ especially well. That means it is quite likely that we will have to endure another ‘fiscal event’, as well as whatever other nonsense they come up with, before the election. It’s a ludicrous and abhorrent situation, for all sorts of reasons, not limited to Brexit; the political equivalent of those ghastly death row stories where, long-ago convicted of some squalidly bestial crime, the inmate rots for years waiting to be strapped into the electric chair.

But, as the cliché has it, ‘we are where we are’. There will probably be many more weeks to come when there is little to say about politics, and even less about Brexit other than to record the endless drip of damage it is doing, and the endless drip of evidence that the promises made for it were false.

There's a better Brexit strategy available to Labour

I’ve spent quite a lot of time both in last week’s post and the one before discussing Labour’s Brexit position. That’s because, as the earlier of those posts concluded, it’s the only question that really matters now in terms of how Brexit proceeds. That assertion is predicated on two, related, assumptions.

The first is that the Tories are incapable of substantively changing the form of Brexit because of the strength and rigidity of the Brexit Ultras, and the fear of a Farageist resurgence (£). That should be qualified by adding that they might, even so, be capable of changing it for the worse, for example by pursuing the EU Retained Law Bill and, in particular, by re-igniting the Northern Ireland Protocol row. More generally, Rishi Sunak’s administration seems to be going through the motions of governing, bereft of ideas, lacking a policy agenda, riven by internal divisions, and simply serving out time until it is put out of its misery. Its decaying stench is captured with acidic humour by the journalist Matt Carr in his latest substack newsletter.

The second and related assumption is that it is highly likely that Labour will win the next election, probably with a majority or, if not, leading a minority administration. It is an assumption that is widespread, even, and perhaps especially, amongst Conservatives. This explains why Labour is attracting more donations, much greater interest from lobbyists and businesses, and coming under much more intense media scrutiny now, across all policy areas but including Brexit. Victory seems there for the taking unless Labour blows it, but with that comes an understandable degree of caution, not least about Brexit.

Today, in the absence of much Brexit news, I’m going to devote the whole post to discussing Labour’s Brexit policy, including a proposal for a totally different strategy, one that is not so much bolder as more imaginative than anything I’ve seen suggested so far.

What is Labour’s Brexit policy?

As things stand, the Labour policy is to seek improvements within the existing Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) framework, although the nature of these has not been fully spelt out. In particular, it has been suggested that Labour would seek a ‘veterinary agreement’, but it hasn’t been clarified whether this means committing to the ‘dynamic alignment’ on EU sanitary and phyto-sanitary regulations which is the key to reducing much of the border friction, including that on the Irish Sea border. The obvious assumption is that it does mean this, otherwise it is meaningless, but it hasn’t been made explicit, nor whether it establishes a more general principle for dynamic regulatory alignment in other sectors, and if so which.

The strategy appears to many commentators to be one of ‘alignment by stealth’ (£), giving enough hints to encourage anti-Brexit voters whilst being sufficiently vague to avoid alienating leave voters. One problem with this, apart from the obvious danger of pleasing neither group of voters rather than both, is that it reduces the legitimate space for extensive alignment, if this is indeed the goal, once the election is over. That may end up meaning only minimal changes, but, minimal or maximal, they would do relatively little – not nothing, but not much – to undo the economic damage of Brexit.

Is Labour getting it right?

As to whether this approach is right, there is a broad spectrum of opinion even amongst acute and well-informed commentators on Brexit and politics in general, and there is merit in all of the different things they say. For example, the Guardian columnist Rafael Behr argues that, despite the frustrations of erstwhile remainers and others, if Keir Starmer’s strategy was working the results would look … very much as, in fact, they do! I read that as a call for patience and realism rather than pushing Labour to take a more ambitious position, whether on Brexit or anything else. If so, there is some wisdom in that. The dangers of ‘purism’ in politics are well-evidenced, not least in the history of the Labour Party.

However, another Guardian columnist, Jonathan Freedland, points out that with the economic damage of Brexit now moving from the abstract to specific consequences for, for example, household food bills, it can’t continue to be politically ignored. Freedland doesn’t explicitly comment on what this means for Labour, but does remark that “in the eyes of the voters, Brexit was always a Tory project”. I read that as a call for Labour to make explicit the linkages of the cost-of-living crisis, Tory economic incompetence, and the Tories’ Brexit, and to offer a more extensive re-shaping of Brexit than at present. If so, that’s very much in line with what I’ve been arguing in recent posts.

Meanwhile, writing in the Financial Times, Andrew Duff (£), a former LibDem MEP and founder member of the pro-federalist Spinelli Group, urges Labour to take a far bolder line. This would entail an EU-UK customs union and the creation of a Ukraine-style Association Agreement but with several additional features which, cumulatively, would create a new category of ‘affiliate state’. Duff makes it clear that this proposal is as challenging for the EU as it is for the UK, entailing not just that the EU “orthodoxy” against “cherry-picking” be dropped, but EU treaty change. As he puts it, “[t]here is no post-Brexit solution that does not entail radical reform on the EU side as well as a bold change of gear in Britain.”

For what it is worth, I think that this would be a goodish outcome, and have done since January 2018, not least under the influence of Duff’s earlier writings on this. However, it seems extremely unlikely that Labour would adopt it as their policy, and Starmer’s repeated comments about both the single market and a customs union bear that out. He and Labour may get to this point eventually, but it surely isn’t in prospect before the next election. Moreover, whilst Duff understands the internal politics of the EU far better than I do, I really doubt whether it is ready to undergo the kinds of changes he proposes in order to improve its relationship with the UK.

Even if Labour promised more, could it deliver?

Behind that doubt lies another issue, which the discussion about Labour’s Brexit position too often ignores, my own included. Commenting on my previous post, Bryan Kelly, a long-term reader of this blog, emailed me to make the point that Starmer might sensibly judge that it is not worth expending political energy and capital in proposing a major change to the UK-EU relationship if there is no reasonable chance of the EU accepting it.

To do so would carry not just the electoral risk of making such a proposal but the risk of failing to deliver on it when in government. I would add that it also risks perpetuating what has been pervasive in so much of the Brexit process, namely a chauvinism, or at least myopia, whereby the UK simply has domestic debates about what it wants and doesn’t want, without regard to what is acceptable to the EU.

These risks apply most obviously to Labour adopting a ‘re-join’ policy, and hardly less to any bold, Duff-type, proposals, but they also apply to all versions of the idea of seeking single market membership. The key question, Kelly suggests, isn’t so much whether the EU (or EFTA, for that matter) and its members states would or would not welcome such membership. It is whether they could rely on the UK polity to be able to sustain such membership.

Central to the answer to that question, Kelly argues, isn’t Labour policy, but the Conservative Party. For if a Labour government took the UK into the single market, what would stop a future Conservative government, five years later, or, for that matter, ten or even fifteen years later, from reversing it? Having gone through all the aggravation of Brexit, why should the EU risk going through it again with a second mini-Brexit?

Even if some individual figures within the EU (or EFTA) might say that they would welcome the UK into the single market despite this risk, that isn’t the same as the EU (or EFTA), and its member states, being willing to do so. And it remains a genuine risk at least unless either the Conservative Party completely implodes after the next election or it purges itself of the Brexit Ultras. Those are both conceivable, but the second, especially, is highly unlikely, and certainly can’t be relied on, now, for a policy that Labour must articulate now.

So this is a strong argument for Labour’s current approach of merely seeking refinements within the TCA although, even then, as I argued last week, the refinements sought could be more extensive and more explicit than Starmer is currently articulating, and take the form of the proposals made in the recent Tony Blair Institute report.

Is there a different strategy?

However, accepting that argument, it strikes me that Labour could use it in a far more intelligent and imaginative way. At the moment, Starmer is not only ruling out single market membership but now even claiming that doing so would not improve economic growth, which is obvious nonsense. He is also, with somewhat more reason, saying that renewed political uncertainty about the trading relationship would be de-stabilizing for businesses.

Instead, he could say that single market membership is indeed a solution to many of the economic problems caused by Brexit, but that it is not possible for him to propose it because it is not practically deliverable unless the Tory Party also commits to it. Were they to do so, it would make it viable for the EU to agree to and, whilst meaning a further change for businesses, would also remove the risk to them of that change only being temporary. That the Tories will not give such a commitment, Starmer would say, shows they are putting ideological dogma ahead of the national interest and economic competence.

At one stroke this would be honest and realistic, would have some appeal to erstwhile remainers (as it would show Labour trying to do at least some of what they want), would not alienate many Labour leavers (some of whom would be happy with the idea, whilst those who were not would see that Labour wasn’t actually proposing to do it, because of lack of Tory support), and it would make sense to the many people, not especially partisan for leave or remain, who recognize that Brexit has damaged the economy and that needs to be dealt with.

It would also turn the political spotlight firmly on to the Tories to justify their failed Brexit policy rather than allowing them to present Labour as trying to reverse or undermine Brexit. Obviously, the Tories would still claim the latter, but it is a claim which would be substantially blunted by the fact that Labour would not actually be proposing single market membership. Rather, Labour would be supportive of it if, and only if, it was accepted as a non-partisan, cross-party, common-sense solution to Brexit, something which could have a lot of electoral appeal to those voters who dislike political tribalism, and challenging the Tories to agree to it.

Of course they would not do so, and in that way would cater for their core, Brexit-supporting, voters who will never vote Labour anyway. But they would alienate some swing voters and help Labour to consolidate existing attack lines by depicting them as unfit to govern in the national interest, putting ‘party before country’, and held hostage by a small group of fanatics. All of which happens to be true. In the meantime, Labour would have created the space to openly pursue the most extensive possible upgrade of the TCA as a pragmatic and moderate holding position.

Gateways to this strategy

Needless to say, it may already be too late for this. Starmer’s repeated remarks about the single market may have precluded such a change of strategy. But the election may be eighteen months away – conceivably, as long as two years – so there’s at least the possibility of changing direction, citing changed circumstances. It is always possible to cite changed circumstances, anyway, and in this case it could be justified by the continuing build-up of evidence of economic damage. But there are two more specific gateways through which Labour could develop this strategy.

Supporting British (small) businesses

One is that, whilst Starmer has said this week, not entirely unreasonably, that businesses have now adapted to hard Brexit, so softening it would just create new costs and uncertainties, that really only applies to big businesses. It is SMEs which have suffered most, and would benefit most from softening Brexit. And here there is a certain irony, for Brexiters often claim that it is only big, global business that opposed Brexit, and that small businesses welcomed it. That was never entirely true, certainly of those small businesses that trade with the EU. But in any case what Brexit has revealed is that global firms, which have the resources to navigate new procedures, and which do not have national ties or loyalties, have most easily been able to undertake the relocations and supply chain adjustments it has necessitated.

That isn’t cost-free, for them or for the UK economy, but it is possible to a much greater degree than it is for SMEs. So it is SMEs, which are embedded in communities, localities and regions, and which are also crucial drivers of innovation and economic growth, which have paid the highest price. Yet, precisely because they have these qualities, they should be dear to Labour’s heart. And, crucially, they are exactly the kinds of British businesses that many leave voters (and many remain voters for that matter) want to see flourish, rather than the remote, global owners of casino capitalism: the ‘predator capitalists’ as Ed Miliband dubbed them in 2011, or the “people in positions of power [who] behave as though they have more in common with international elites than with the people down the road, the people they employ, the people they pass in the street”, as Theresa May put it in her 2016 ‘citizens of nowhere’ speech.

So, for Labour, a focus on improving the form of Brexit in order to come to the aid of British SMEs could be the golden thread to connect their remainer voters and those traditional Labour voters who supported leaving the EU, not to mention some of those who normally vote for others parties, including the Tories. In this scenario, the onus would be on the Tories to explain to voters, and especially to Labour-turned-Tory leave voters in the fabled Red Wall, why they refuse to endorse a cross-party agreement to shift Brexit from a form that disadvantages British local and family businesses to one that supports them.

The Northern Ireland Protocol

The other gateway for Labour to adopt this strategy is over the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP). Things have gone rather silent this autumn, and it is not really clear what is happening. The NIP Bill has been paused. There was a report this week of a new HMRC database that may meet EU requirements by providing real-time information on which goods travelling between Great Britain and Northern Ireland are bound for the EU single market. That would also greatly assist the creation of the ‘green lane’ system the UK government argues for.

However, as with all the debates between 2016 and 2019 about ‘technological solutions’ for an Irish (land) border, it seems unlikely that there is any technical fix for what are ultimately political issues. In particular, if the Tory government continues to refuse any role for the ECJ it is hard to see a resolution, and yet a resolution has been promised, not least to the US, by April 2023, when the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement occurs.

It’s possible that something will be found that the EU and UK government will agree to, and which the Brexit Ultras and the DUP will accept. But at the moment that seems unlikely, suggesting another crisis, probably in the New Year. That would again be a route for Labour to announce the offer of a cross-party agreement on softening Brexit, not (just) for economic reasons but in order to resolve the NIP stand-off. If that, rather than simply economics, were to be the gateway, something like the Duff proposals would be the logical solution since these, unlike single market membership alone, would be necessary to resolve the NIP issue.

Again, the Conservatives would certainly not agree. But, again, the spotlight would be on them to justify a policy which, on their own admission, had failed and to which, in this scenario, they had no solution other than simply to break the NIP, and, with that, international law, whilst risking a trade war with the EU, something made easier for the EU to prosecute under its recent rule changes.

A chance for Labour to lead

Clearly none of this goes as far as many would want Labour to go, especially ‘re-joiners’. Equally clearly, because the Tories would not accept a commitment to it, it would not in itself yield a significant change of direction. But it would be a relatively low-risk way for Starmer to bring some honesty and realism to the debate about Brexit, a debate which is likely to intensify as the election gets closer.

Moreover, it would enable Starmer to provide some substantive leadership to the country in this debate, even whilst in opposition. For he would be inviting the Tories, as they contemplate electoral defeat, to participate in a new national consensus, and one which spoke to the clear public belief that Brexit has been a damaging mistake, yet without taking Britain back into the EU.

And, after all, as I outlined last week, many leading Brexiters are now saying that, simply by being out of the EU, Brexit is vindicated. So Starmer would be making a proposal which gave Brexiters that ‘success’, whilst in a genuine and convincing way showing how Brexit could be ‘made to work better’.

Again, it’s obvious that the Tories would refuse the offer and the proposal would come to nothing but, again, it would open the space for extensive TCA reform as a baseline position whilst identifying a route map for the longer-term, were the Tory Party ever to come to its senses, or if circumstances changed in other ways (for example, sustained and overwhelming public support for single market membership). In the meantime, blame for the economic damage of Brexit would be pinned firmly on the Tories’ recalcitrance.

The need for imagination

So I think there is a strategy for Labour – not perfect, because no strategy is perfect, especially starting from the horrible mess that Britain has got itself into over Brexit, and especially given the conundrums Brexit has always posed for the Labour Party. And it’s not even especially risky, electorally. It has the advantage of an honest acknowledgement of what Brexit has done to the country, of the need for the EU to agree if there is to be a different and durable Brexit, and of the way that the Brexit Ultra wing of the Tory Party is both the cause of the problem and the barrier to a viable solution.

That might not have been possible before, but the mounting evidence of Brexit damage, the change in public opinion about Brexit, the political chaos of the Tory government, and the utter discrediting of the Brexit Ultras by the mini-budget have all made it so. It’s a huge prize for Labour and for the country, replacing the lies and division of the Brexit years with honesty and a plan for consensus, and offering a path to repairing some of the damage of Brexit. It does not even require Starmer to have courage. Only that he has imagination.