Count to one hundred

It’s indicative of the Trumpian world, as well as the hyper-frenetic nature of the contemporary media, that the ‘Greenland crisis’ which dominated the news when I wrote my previous post has all but disappeared from view. Its replacement this week by the Epstein files scandal is, in one very particular way, an illustration of how the two are linked in that the disclosures, which have convulsed British politics, only arose because of the persistent questions in the US about the Trump-Epstein relationship. That freneticism is disorientating, intentionally so in Trump's case, so it's worth slowing down and 'counting to one hundred' rather than responding to each twist and turn. In any case, a fortnightly blog imposes that discipline. 

In fact, even before the latest Epstein story broke the Greenland crisis had become old news and the standard analysis of this seems to be that ‘Trump always chickens out’ (TACO) or, alternatively, that, like a market stall haggler, Trump starts with maximalist demands, always intending to settle for less. I’m not so sure. As Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland points out, Trump’s more common pattern is to briefly retreat then return for more. Thus on Greenland, within a few days of his apparent climbdown, Trump’s envoy was once again demanding (£) “total, unfettered access” to the territory.

The truth is, we don’t know what Trump was offered by NATO’s Mark Rutte that led to the sudden withdrawal of the ‘Greenland tariffs’ threat, and we don’t know what will happen next. And that is just one example of the bigger truth about Trump: no one knows what he will do next across the board. Another example is his sudden turnaround yesterday on his previous turnaround on the ‘Chagos deal’, which, incidentally, leaves those like Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage who used Trump’s previous statement as a stick with which to beat the government looking rather stupid (it’s also a good example of why ‘counting to a hundred’ in the current political climate is sensible).

It’s this unpredictability, as much as anything else, which presents the UK, like every other country, with so many dilemmas. It is also what is gradually draining away US power and prestige. Far from ’making America great again’ Trump is actually diminishing his country, burning away its ‘soft power’ and, increasingly, making it an undesirable trade and defence partner (£).

The Carney Doctrine in practice

So it’s not just that the Greenland crisis, when the US made both military and economic threats against its closest allies, won’t be forgotten. It’s that many countries, including the UK, are following the ‘Carney doctrine’ discussed in my previous post, finding new ways to navigate around the malevolent and unpredictable superpower that America has become. Examples from the last fortnight include Keir Starmer’s visit to China, to promote economic ties and to smooth diplomatic relations (just as have Mark Carney and President Orsi of Uruguay), followed by a slightly less high-profile stop in Japan to discuss economic and defence links. Another example is the completion of an EU-India Free Trade Agreement, which also included significant steps towards security cooperation [1].

Obviously, these events were in train before the Greenland Crisis and before Carney’s Davos speech. That speech was merely a sharp articulation of an existing trend, and the Carney Doctrine has now become a useful way of framing the continuation of that trend. The point is that these, and similar, events have to be understood in relation to Trump. Thus Reuters reported Starmer’s China visit as the latest example of countries “seeking an economic and geopolitical hedge against Trump's unpredictability” whilst Kerry Brown, Professor of Chinese Studies at King’s College London, argued that it “reflects the realities of a new global order that has upended traditional alliances”.

Similarly, the EU-India deal, which has been long-delayed, was undoubtedly accelerated by Trump’s erratic and punitive tariff policies, and was described in very Carney-like terms by trade expert Amitendu Palit, of the National University of Singapore, as being “a strong signal for global middle powers committed to rules-based trade”. Another analyst spelled out that “this is not simply a trade deal. It is an act of geopolitical statecraft; one that reveals how major democratic economies are adapting to a more fractured and volatile global order.”

The rapprochement between the UK and China is not without risks. Just as Carney’s visit to Beijing attracted Trump’s ire, so too, though in slightly milder terms, did Starmer’s. Meanwhile, domestically, the potential security problems as well as the human rights implications, of closer relations with China attracted criticism. But this just underlines that there are no good options, and that, whatever else China may be, it, unlike the US, is at least relatively predictable and if Trump doesn’t like that then he has only himself to blame. This also means that, for the foreseeable future, there is going to be no easy way of describing the UK’s international relations posture in the way that, at least to some extent, was possible during the Cold War. It’s going to be a hodge-podge of uncomfortable accommodations.

Brexit: a hodge-podge of its own

Of course, those accommodations are made all the more uncomfortable by Brexit. Indeed, it shouldn’t be forgotten that the appointment of Peter Mandelson as British Ambassador to the US, and the very profound discomfort it has caused the government this week, arose at least in part because, as the Financial Times trade commentator Alan Beattie has pointed out, it was believed that he would be able to deliver the supposed prize of a post-Brexit trade deal with the US (or non-deal, as it has so far largely turned out to be). It also seems pretty obvious that he was appointed because of rather than despite his friendship with Epstein, in the sense that it was such connections that made Mandelson the kind of credible Trump-whisperer that post-Brexit Britain needed: all three men swam in the same fetid cesspool of wealth and depravity.

That aside, the more general point is that, given the situation Trump has created, what the UK most needs is a close, predictable relationship with a major geo-political entity with which it is closely aligned in terms of trade, interests, and values. Thus it is more obvious than ever that Brexit was supremely stupid. EU membership would not remove the challenges of navigating relations with the US and China, but it would provide a stable anchor-point for that navigation (I’m aware that this metaphor is mangled). Now, given that Brexit has happened, the obvious logic of the global situation for the UK is to move closer to the EU.

In fact, what we see in that respect is also a hodge-podge. Last week, Starmer stated that the UK should look to “go further” at the next summit with the EU. This is to be held in May, with what was in effect a pre-meeting having taken place this week, resulting in a rather bland joint statement. One implication of that statement, at least on my reading (the wording is slightly ambiguous), is that the once eagerly anticipated 2026 review of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement is now redundant, with everything folded into the ongoing process of the summits. Yet, despite the talk of ‘going further’, the reality is that almost none of the things agreed in principle at last year’s summit have been finalised, and this week’s statement gives only vague aspirations for when they will be [2]. And one of last year’s proposals, UK participation in the EU SAFE fund for defence procurement, has actually already failed, although, partly because of the Greenland crisis, it seems that there could be a new attempt at an agreement.

There is also a very mixed picture in the regulatory sphere. The latest iteration of the invaluable UKICE regulatory divergence tracker shows a variety of passive and active divergences between the UK and the EU, alongside some cases of active alignment. In his analysis of the overall position, Joël Reland, the compiler of the tracker, argues that there has been greater divergence under the Labour government than under its Conservative predecessor. This is because, whilst broadly pursuing ‘alignment’ in relation to trade in goods, there has been targeted divergence in relation to some (not all) services, especially financial services, and technology regulation. In this respect, Reland suggests, the Labour approach is more precise than that of the last government in identifying priorities and, in a certain sense, more effective in actually making concrete changes within those priority areas.

There’s a lot to unpack in that analysis. A preliminary point is just a reiteration of what I’ve already said: the decisions the UK is taking do not point in a single direction. Secondly, as Reland points out, the actual economic impact of these regulatory divergences is likely to be very slim. In other words, they show one of the many basic flaws in the entire Brexit prospectus: it is simply wrong to claim that freedom to diverge from EU regulations constitutes an economic benefit (and, certainly, to claim that it could remotely compensate for the costs of having that freedom). Indeed, the reason why the Tories did not greatly diverge from EU regulations when they were in power was not through any lack of zeal. For example, no one could accuse Jacob Rees-Mogg as deficient in such zeal yet, when he was Minister for Brexit Opportunities, he was notably reduced to asking Sun readers to identify what these benefits might be.

Perhaps the more important point is a political one, and it is one replete with ironies. For whilst the government may be diverging more from some EU regulations than its predecessor and is certainly disappointing many of its anti-Brexit supporters in doing so, its opponents are insisting that it is doing the opposite. Indeed, there has been a rash of anniversary commentary (marking six years since the UK formally left the EU and, more imprecisely, ten years since the referendum) bemoaning Labour’s – yes, of course – ‘betrayal’ of Brexit. I’m not sure, by the way, when it was first claimed that Brexit had been betrayed, but I suspect that it is approximately the tenth anniversary of that, too.

A necessary betrayal

More specifically, the Express has launched a “crusade” to “Give us a Proper Brexit”, a campaign backed, inevitably, by Nigel Farage and, even more shamelessly, by Boris Johnson and Kemi Badenoch. Since Johnson actually negotiated the terms of Brexit and Badenoch had key ministerial roles associated with delivering post-Brexit ‘opportunities’ it's questionable exactly what their credentials as ‘crusaders’ for ‘a proper Brexit’ might be. The obvious conclusion should be that ‘proper Brexit’ is a mirage, but it is one which eludes arch-Brexiters such as serial idiot Daniel Hannan (£),  for whom the “cowardice” of Britain’s leaders explains why Brexit is “not more popular” (even that formulation is slyly dishonest, as if it is ‘popular’, but could be more so).

All of this is dismally familiar, since the claim that Brexit would all have been wonderful if only it had been done ‘properly’ has, like the claim that it has been betrayed, been endlessly repeated since 2016. Equally dismal is that, even after all these years, Brexiters either can’t describe what this ‘proper Brexit’ would consist of or, if they can, are unable to agree with each other’s descriptions. Even more dismal is that what most of them do now agree about is that true Brexit means leaving the ECHR, which was never entailed by Brexit.

However, the ‘proper Brexit’ theme has a new and particular salience in the current political context. That context is, of course, the rise of Reform UK, and the increasingly urgent need for its opponents to expose its vulnerabilities. These are multiple, including the many failures and scandals which have attended even the short time it has controlled local councils, and several of them centre on Farage, on whom Reform is almost totally reliant. His vulnerabilities include his close relationship with Trump, his admiration for Putin, his financial dealings, and, at least potentially, Brexit. After all, this is the defining policy of his political career.

If it was remotely possible to make the case that Brexit had been a success, then Farage would certainly be taking credit for it. The fact that he does not, and has even called it a failure, is one of the strongest pieces of evidence why there is simply no plausible basis for the continuing attempts of some Brexiters to claim otherwise. Unlike those diehards, Farage, who if nothing else is an accomplished political operator, knows that that argument has been lost. Yet he can hardly disavow Brexit as an ‘idea’ given both his own support for it and the deep emotional commitment to it amongst his core voters. Thus the narrative of Brexit betrayal is absolutely central to his political credibility and prospects, and, in turn, to those of Reform [3].

This is one reason why the steady stream of Tory defections to Reform, Suella Braverman being the latest, is potentially damaging to his party. Along with the general point that this makes it harder to sustain Reform’s image as an insurgent alternative to ‘the Establishment’, and the Conservative Party in particular, it prompts the specific question: who betrayed Brexit, if not these former Tory MPs and government ministers? Naturally, they would have their own answers (the civil service, the judges, the metropolitan elite etc.), but, for many committed or potential Reform voters, the answer will be Tory politicians, especially senior Cabinet ministers like Braverman.

The angry man

The next test for Reform’s prospects will be the forthcoming Gorton and Denton by-election. It will be an unusually complex contest, for the reasons set out with great clarity by the political scientist Professor Rob Ford of Manchester University. Some of that complexity is specific to the seat, and to this particular point in the electoral cycle (and now, very likely, the impact of the Epstein scandal), but some of it is a harbinger of what probably awaits us at the next general election when the splintering of party loyalties combined with the first-past-the-post electoral system will produce unpredictable and possibly bizarre results.

One thing which is specific to this by-election is Reform’s choice of Matt Goodwin as its candidate. Much has been written about Goodwin’s journey from being a reasonably successful academic specialising in the study of right-wing populism to a strident populist ideologue (the profile by James Ball in The New World last year and Ian Dunt’s assessment a couple of weeks’ ago will tell those who aren’t familiar with this story most of what they need to know). In some ways, he is just an identikit of such ideologues, notable, if at all, for a degree of pomposity and a whiff of megalomania (at one stage, he sought to found his own party and adopted a vaguely sinister avatar, now alas deleted, depicting himself in black and white, with jutting jaw, rather like a latter-day Roderick Spode). However, he also, far more than Farage, has become a more-or-less open champion for English ethno-nationalism, reflected in the fact that his candidature has now been endorsed by Tommy Robinson. Reform has repudiated that endorsement but, so far as I am aware, Goodwin has not.

If he is elected, then, it will betoken more than a win for Farage. Farage, whatever his true beliefs may be, has always been very careful, and fairly adept, at distancing himself from overt extremism, including repeatedly distancing himself from Robinson. He projects, fairly successfully, the image of a jovial, common-sense fellow, superficial as that image may be. Goodwin cuts a very different figure, and if he wins it will be an electoral endorsement of ideas which had been confined to the extreme fringes of the far right for decades, especially the idea that being born in Britain doesn’t make people British. His prolific, even hyperactive, social media postings have for some time now obsessively documented the actual or alleged crimes of immigrants, especially refugees, and predicted civilizational collapse. And, unlike Farage, who occasionally displays flashes of humour, Goodwin is relentlessly, splenetically, angry.

The angry brigade

In that respect, whatever the outcome of this by-election, Goodwin is representative of a group of voters who are highly active online, expressing their anger and in the process inciting their own and others' increasingly radical positions. Whereas much attention has been given to the online radicalization of the young and, especially, of young Muslims, this group are old (usually meaning the ‘baby boomers’ born before 1965) or middle-aged (usually meaning ‘Gen-X’ born between 1965 and 1980). They are also predominantly white, and generally but not always male. Apart from being slightly younger, having been born in 1981, Goodwin and his escalating online anger and growing radicalism perfectly fits the profile as, no doubt, do many of his followers.

Crucially, these people’s activities are not confined to the online world (the online and real-world distinction anyway being increasingly blurred). For one thing, as with older people generally, they are more likely to vote than younger cohorts. But they also take part in street politics, including the violent unrest and rioting associated with the asylum hotels ‘protests’. Recently, a few extreme cases have gone even further. One example is the ‘Ulez bomber’ convicted last week, who had not only apparently been radicalised by online far-right discussion forums but, in those forums, is regarded as a hero. In his case, he was arrested before he hurt anyone, unlike the far worse case of the ex-soldier who, in a fit of uncontrollable anger, rammed his car through a crowd of Liverpool fans, injuring 134 people. The background to his crimes is complex, but includes following a small number of social media accounts of whom most were associated with the far-right.

I’m obviously not suggesting that the online anger of right-wing populists necessarily causes people to commit crimes, or that most of those who post or are exposed to that anger engage in violence, or that crimes such as those mentioned would not occur anyway. But it is not unreasonable to assume that the online expression of anger amongst older people informs their political decisions (indeed, it is hard to imagine that it would not), and that it matches the age and gender profiles of electoral support for Reform. The same is probably true of support for the various small far-right parties such as Advance UK (which last week recruited two Devon County councillors who were originally elected as Reform candidates). And although this anger isn’t unique to Britain, it is hardly outlandish to say that in the British context it is connected to the anger which drove at least some of the vote for Brexit, and which continues to inform the anger about Brexit having been betrayed.

Political anger has been stoked this week by the Epstein scandal, and of course anger about that is by no means confined to the populist right. However, for the populist right specifically, it adds new ballast to its familiar critique of the ‘corrupt globalist elite’ and its general rejection of ‘mainstream politicians’ as all being as bad as each other. It does bear saying, though, that the scandal could backfire on them because it is already clear that there are multiple connections between Epstein and the British and American populist right, and that Epstein, like others in his circle of anarchistic oligarchs, was an enthusiast for Brexit. For that matter, it is revealing Farage’s brazen opportunism and hypocrisy, as he castigates Starmer for appointing Mandelson whilst praising the appointment at the time.

Nursery politics

But, in a sense, it’s all irrelevant. There will always be some new story or scandal to feed the anger, and the details get forgotten immediately, because, fundamentally, it’s not about this or that event, it’s about anger as a permanent political condition. I’m not sure that this condition of anger can be assuaged, not least because, as I’ve argued elsewhere, much of it stems from an impossible desire to reclaim an imaginary past or, more profoundly, not from a desire for grievances to be redressed but to luxuriate in the feeling of aggrievement. On either account, this explains why, for such voters, having been given Brexit, they are now even angrier because it isn’t the right sort of Brexit.

Strangely, whilst this anger is most evident amongst older voters, there is something childish about it. One of my earliest memories (and one my family reminded me of for years) is of a day when I was, perhaps, five years old and for some reason I pestered and pleaded for my mother to buy some honey. She eventually gave in, but when I saw it, I fell into a raging, uncontrollable tantrum because, I shrieked, she had bought the wrong sort of honey.

And this brings us back to the beginning of this post. For all that he has far more power than them, Donald Trump is not so different to the on-line army of angry old white British men radicalizing themselves and each other. There is at least a rhyme between the two. Trump’s rapacious and capricious ego, driving his unpredictable demands and vindictive assaults on anyone who crosses or slights him, is also child-like in its nature. Perhaps that is also why living through the current political period is so neuralgically wearisome, like being trapped in a nursery not just full of, but run by, angry screaming toddlers. It also brings us back to 'counting to a hundred' which, apart from being a useful antidote to the frenetic news cycle, was what a wiser American President, Thomas Jefferson, advised the very angry to do before speaking.
 

Notes

[1] The EU-India trade agreement underscores the fragility of claims about Brexit benefits, of which the UK-India trade deal is supposedly an example. The slight difference in timing hardly warrants that supposition (there are also some signs of closer EU-CPTPP integration). The same potentially applies to the regulatory choices exercised by the UK (e.g. in relation to gene-editing or financial services).

[2} For a detailed update on the reset and its future prospects, see this week’s policy briefing from Ian Bond of the Centre for European Reform.

[3] This means that Starmer’s attempts to attack Farage on Brexit aren’t very effective, and might even serve to endorse Farage’s own position, because in doing so Starmer insists on referring to “botched Brexit”. The reason, of course, is that he wants to imply to Labour leave voters that he is not opposed to Brexit and isn’t going to reverse it but ‘improve’ it. But even if that line made some kind of sense as an attack on the Tories, it effectively validates Farage’s claim that Brexit wasn’t done ‘properly’, even if he has a different view on how it should have been done.

It’s limited, but Labour’s post-Brexit policy does offer voters a choice

This has been quite an important week for post-Brexit politics, in that there has been the clearest indication yet of the approach of the anticipated future Labour government, and certainly the most extensive media coverage of it, perhaps because that prospect is becoming closer. At the same time, there’s been the clearest indication yet of how Labour’s policy will differ, to an extent, from the present Tory government and differ, considerably, from the probable position of a post-election-loss Tory Party.

Labour’s ‘new’ post-Brexit stance

It is the latest stage in what has already been a long, slow process, which I’ve discussed many times in the past on this blog, most recently in June of this year. This means that, in some respects, there is little that is new. Keir Starmer has been talking since July 2022 – although it seemed to have to be dragged out of him – about seeking to improve the terms of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), including a security pact and a veterinary agreement. And in January of this year Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy made what I argued was a significant speech, which included plans for closer and more harmonious relations with the EU.

However, Labour are now making relations with the EU a more central part of their electoral offer, and doing so more loudly and slightly more confidently, perhaps emboldened by the clear polling evidence that so many voters regard Brexit as having been a failure. Indeed the pollster Professor Sir John Curtice argues that Labour aren’t so much being bolder as “playing catch-up” with public opinion.

This began to be signaled by Starmer’s visit to meet Europol officials in The Hague last week to discuss enhanced cross-border intelligence cooperation, during which he announced Labour’s plans to strike a deal with the EU over irregular migration. Then, last weekend, he and David Lammy used a conference in Montreal to re-iterate that in government Labour would seek to re-set relations with the EU as their “number one” foreign policy goal. This isn’t just about the TCA, and would include participation in structured, formal strategic dialogue, presumably along the lines already offered by the EU but rebuffed by Rishi Sunak (£).

During the Montreal visit, Starmer also gave a major interview to the Financial Times, which, tellingly, was widely reported by other media outlets, including the BBC main news bulletins, pledging “to seek a major rewrite of Britain’s Brexit deal” as part of the TCA review in 2026. Subsequently, footage emerged, though it was hardly surprising, of him emphasising that, under Labour, there would be no desire to diverge from EU environmental, food and employment standards. Then, also widely reported, including in the French media, was Starmer’s trip, along with Lammy and Rachel Reeves, to Paris, where he held what seems to have been a positive meeting with Emmanuel Macron.

In last week’s post I suggested that a Labour government might be able to fashion “a more coherent strategy, to the extent that it might pursue closer ties with the EU across all policy areas” and, even in the short period since then, it now seems clear that this is what they will offer. As such, again as I pointed out last week, it offers a contrast to the ad hoc and inconsistent Brexit ‘pragmatism’ of Rishi Sunak, constantly hamstrung by his own lack of vision as well as the leaden, lumpen, dead weight of his Brexit Ultra MPs, and the ever-present Conservative terror of a Farageist revival.

It’s worth adding that, for all that Starmer has repeatedly endorsed the hard Brexit red lines of not re-joining the EU or the single market, he has at least implicitly rejected the Tories’ doctrinaire opposition to (almost) any role for the ECJ. That in itself opens up some space for creating closer relationships with the EU, as it is often what precludes them (for example in relation to security and commercial database sharing). That is a contrast both with one of Theresa May’s original Lancaster House ‘red lines’ and with Boris Johnson’s adolescent ‘sovereignty first’ approach to the TCA negotiations.

Moreover, it is clear from his FT interview that Starmer has set his own red line against the ‘Brexit 2.0’ of derogating from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which so many Brexit Ultras are agitating for and which, possibly, and I would think probably, will be adopted as Conservative policy after the next election. For that matter, given Sunak’s embrace this week of the anti-Net Zero agenda of the Tory right, it’s not inconceivable that, alongside promises of a fresh push to post-Brexit regulatory divergence, it will be their policy before the election. Some may regard Starmer’s stance as a small mercy, but I think it is rather more than that: Brexit itself is bad enough, but Brexit 2.0 on top of it would be even worse.

The Brexiters’ reactions

As this new, or newly communicated, approach from Labour began to emerge, the Brexiters’ knives were sharpened, if sharpness is a quality that can be applied to what, in both senses of the word, are such dull blades. Some of their reaction had a slightly surprising tinge. We’re well-used to them predicting the imminent collapse of the EU, but, in the Telegraph, both Associate Editor Camilla Tominey (£) and columnist Nigel Farage (£) were making the slightly different argument that, according to Tominey, only “poor deluded souls ‘remain’ under the illusion that the EU is some sort of friendly and progressive family of nations” whilst, according to Farage, “it is not the cuddly place Remainers think it is”. As evidence, both of them referred to the rise of the AfD in Germany, the illiberal regimes in Poland and Hungary, and the possibility of a Le Pen presidency in France. Why would “idiot remainers”, as Farage charmingly put it, want closer ties?

It was a strange line to take. There may be some remainers who are starry-eyed about the EU, but there are at least as many Brexiters who are constantly astonished that the EU is ‘mean’ and ‘unfriendly’ for reserving the rights and benefits of membership to its own members, something which most remainers see as self-evident. And even those with the mildest of liberal sensibilities hardly need instruction from Farage, of all people, about the dangers of neo-fascist and populist regimes. Beyond that, the very fact that individual members of the EU follow their own political paths gives the lie to the Brexiter claim that membership precludes national sovereignty.

But there is an even more fundamental issue, and it lies at the heart of the fallacy of Brexit. Brexiters used to say ‘we’re leaving the EU, not leaving Europe’, a slogan which, unusually, is simultaneously a truism, nonsense, and an important insight. The important insight is that, whether or not the UK is a member of the EU, the EU and its member states are there, right next door to us. Indeed, even if the EU didn’t exist at all, the nations of Europe would be there, right next door to us. Those irreducible geo-political facts mean that, whether in terms of trade, defence, irregular migration or anything else, the UK necessarily has a significant relationship with those countries.

So the issue is how, and how best, to relate to them. Brexiters have never even tried to give a reason why being absent from the institutions that link them is a better way of relating (as opposed to their claims about the supposed benefits domestically, or in terms of relating to non-EU countries and bodies). And they most certainly haven’t given any reason why, having decided to leave those institutions, a relationship of distance and antagonism is better than one of close cooperation.

Otherwise, most of the reactions from Tories, and Brexiters generally, to Labour’s approach have been fairly predictable. Early out of the trap, like an unusually well-conditioned Pavlovian dog hearing the distant ringing of a bell, David Frost dribbled (£) that “Britain is now in serious danger of losing Brexit” because “Labour wants to take us back closer to the EU”. It didn’t make much sense as a critique, though. Frost, like many Brexiters, gives as his central ‘philosophical’ argument that democratically elected UK governments should be free to pursue whatever policies they judge to be in the UK’s best interests. So if such a government decides being closer to the EU is in the national interest, then, even in Frost’s own terms, it doesn’t mean ‘losing’ Brexit but enacting it.

A few days later, Frost came up with the even more predictable line (£) of “Brexit betrayal”. If possible, this made even less sense than his previous effort, if only because, in insisting that the EU would not countenance an improvement to the TCA he negotiated, he not only negated his claim that it was already a wonderful deal – since he implicitly conceded that, were the EU minded to agree, a better deal is possible – he also negated the very claim that a ‘betrayal’ was in prospect.

In fact, this was a recurring contradiction in the Brexiters’ reaction, such as the Mail’s report on Starmer’s meeting with Macron. On the one hand, the prospects of the EU agreeing any re-negotiation were dismissed – strangely, the Brexiters have now abandoned all their claims about Britain ‘holding all the cards’ or ‘them needing us more than we need them’ – whilst, on the other hand, the non-outcome of this non-negotiation was presented as something to fear.

That aside, Frost’s second article was revealing in being laced with disparagement of the present Tory government for “paving the way” to Labour’s supposed betrayal, a good indicator of how the Tories will conduct their election defeat post-mortem. Frost will undoubtedly be a leading player in the autopsy, which seems almost certain to conclude that Sunak failed to be a ‘true’ Conservative and Brexiter. This will, again almost certainly, presage a lurch to the ‘National Conservative’ right. Liz Truss’s attempt this week to exhume the corpse of her disastrous ‘true Brexit’ premiership (£) can also be seen as the beginning of the same dismal process, as discussed by Josh Self, the increasingly excellent political commentator who succeeded Ian Dunt as Editor of politics.co.uk.

Political dad dancing

The meta-issue in all this, shown by the reaction of Frost and numerous other Brexiters, is the endless betrayalist narrative that permeates Brexit. But its very endlessness shows its absurdity. Just how many times can Brexit be betrayed? And if it has already been betrayed then what does it matter what Labour now do? Similarly, having warned us in October 2019, and in December 2020, and in November 2022 that we were getting ‘Brexit in Name Only’, it is hard to imagine why anyone would feel greatly stirred by Nigel Farage’s latest hand-wringing about how “two years into a Labour government it will [be] Brexit in Name Only”.

In fact, generally, although the Brexiters’ attack on Labour’s plans will undoubtedly continue to resonate with hardcore Leave voters, it’s hard to see it having wider cut-through. Things have moved on from the ‘will of the people’ days, especially given how many voters, including leave voters, have become disillusioned with Brexit, and the way that Sunak’s government has already, in a limited way, accepted the deficiencies of the Johnson Brexit. In this sense, if Labour are still 'playing catch-up' with public opinion, the Tories are simply ignoring it.

For that matter, not only has there been little regulatory divergence from the EU under the Tories – because for the most part it is totally impractical, either politically or economically – but, also, there is considerable public support for things staying that way, including amongst leave voters, in line with Labour’s policy. Similarly, whilst Starmer’s mention of not diverging on environmental, food and employment standards got the predictable ‘betrayal’ treatment on this morning’s Mail front page, a commitment to at least non-regression of environmental and labour standards is part of the TCA that Johnson agreed.

However, the only songs the Brexiters have are the old ones. For example, in his moonlighting role as a GB News presenter, Jacob Rees-Mogg’s squeaky diatribe against Labour focused primarily on the possibility of re-negotiating the Brexit deal leading to the UK “shadowing” the EU through “alignment”. But it seemed embarrassingly dated, the political equivalent of dad dancing, given the numerous ways that this is happening under the Tories, for reasons very well-understood by Rees-Mogg himself (£), as illustrated by his support for the idea of the UK unilaterally adopting EU regulations and conformity assessment marking, so as to avoid the ‘red tape’ of divergence or duplication.

Rees-Mogg also deployed an altogether more cynical, and probably more electorally potent, criticism in suggesting that the public had thought that all the arguments about Brexit were over. This was the standard response from the Conservatives, with a government spokesperson telling the BBC that Starmer "wants to take Britain back to square one on Brexit, reopening the arguments of the past all over again". It is a response that eschews any discussion about the merits of a closer relationship with the EU but instead plays upon the perhaps widespread desire amongst the electorate to simply not hear anything more about Brexit. Yet, apart from being cynical, it is also dishonest, since it is the Brexiters who constantly try to drag the debate back to the toxicity of 2016, not least with the accusation that any steps to a closer the relationship are 'betraying Brexit'.

By contrast, Labour’s policy is plainly an attempt to avoid ‘reopening the old arguments’ at all costs, hence Starmer’s insistence that there is no case to re-join the EU or the single market. That attempt attracts the hostility of Brexiters, who argue that his real agenda is rejoining, and that seeking a closer relationship is a route to this. But, ironically, it attracts as much hostility from re-joiners, who argue that his real agenda ought to be rejoining, and that seeking a closer relationship doesn’t offer any route to this.

Towards ‘de-Brexitification’?

My reading is slightly different. I think what Labour are doing, sensibly, is to try to ‘de-Brexitify’ the entire question of UK-EU relations, and to approach them as a policy issue that may be very different in detail, but no different in kind, from the way the UK conducts its relations with other friendly powers. Contrary to the Brexiters’ criticisms, that doesn’t entail reversing Brexit, but contrary to the re-joiners’ criticisms it does not preclude doing so, and is a necessary step to doing so.

If successful, normalizing relations, and not framing them constantly in terms of the now dead question of whether to leave the EU, would be a good thing in itself, undoing some of the damage of Brexit, as well as providing at least one of the preconditions for a viable case for joining the EU to be made (another being an active campaign movement for doing so). To put that another way, whilst Brexiters are wrong to think that Starmer’s insistence that ‘there is no case to re-join’ conceals a current intention to do just that, it really shouldn’t be difficult for re-joiners to envisage that, at some time down the line, he will say that circumstances have changed and that there is now such a case.

It may well be that Labour, at least in public statements, are pinning far too much on the TCA review, which is designed as a technical stock-taking exercise rather than a vehicle for re-negotiation. This week, the UK in a Changing Europe (UKICE) research centre produced an excellent report on this, explaining that, as things stand, the EU is likely to approach the review from just such a ‘minimalist’ perspective, and that if a Labour government wants to make the scope more ‘maximalist’, then the onus will be on it to persuade the EU that this is worthwhile, which won’t be easy. Moreover, even if that persuasion is successful in setting a maximalist agenda, then pursuing it to a successful conclusion will take a long time to negotiate. Peter Foster and Andy Bounds of the Financial Times provided a similarly cautious analysis (£).

However, an interesting Twitter (or X, or perhaps ex-Twitter) thread by Mujtaba Rahman, the well-connected and insightful Europe MD of the Eurasia Group, offered a perhaps more subtle, and rather more optimistic, perspective. Amongst other things, he argues that the importance of changing the tone of the UK-EU relationship shouldn’t be underestimated. That’s not, as is sometimes dismissively suggested, for the naïve reason of thinking that a more ‘friendly’ atmosphere will make much concrete difference, but because Labour look set to bring what Rahman characterizes as a “more consistent, more serious and more forward-leaning engagement” than the UK government has shown since 2016. That, along with greater realism than the Tories have shown, could create new incentives for the EU to engage with the UK.

Domestically, Rahman suggests that Labour ruling out all forms of re-joining gives them “political cover” to make non-trivial improvements. It’s true, as the UKICE report points out, that even the maximalist version of the TCA review would not greatly shift the economic dial, but the report also provides a list of the substantive improvements that could result. Of course, they aren’t going to ‘make Brexit work’, but it simply isn’t true, despite what most re-joiner critics of Labour insist, that Starmer’s red lines preclude any progress of any value at all. Indeed, that’s demonstrated by the UKICE point that the maximalist version of the TCA review would require protracted negotiation. That would hardly be so if the possible changes were as trivial as those critics claim.

Rahman also points out that the positions of both Labour and the EU are in flux, with many possible outcomes. One indication of this was the publication this week of a Franco-German plan, reported by The Times (£) as being  “designed with Labour in mind”, although better understood as part of a far broader EU discussion about enlargement, for new forms of tiered ‘associate membership’ of the EU, within which the UK might find a place. It’s not an altogether new idea, although the context is, and a shadow minister was quick to disown any interest in it, which is unsurprising as it goes much further than Labour are willing to go this side of the election. But it does point to the way that, as Ian Dunt of the i put it, “a new kind of European future” could emerge for Britain.

The domestic choice

Whether or not that is so, the domestic politics of Brexit are becoming clearer, at least in terms of what the alternative to the Tories’ approach consists of. It is a Labour, or perhaps Labour-led, government which won’t offer (and, arguably, couldn’t deliver, at least in its first term) a reversal of hard Brexit, but will develop as close and as harmonious a relationship as the EU will agree to short of that. That isn’t just about the TCA review, but the entirety of the ongoing relationship.

That opens some clear water between the parties, though it is of slender breadth. As Rafael Behr eloquently put it in the Guardian, “the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition are both shopping for European policy in the narrow aisle between economic grasp of the problem and political fear of the remedy”. The difference, though, is slightly greater than it seems, and greater than Behr perhaps allows, not so much in itself as in the direction and speed of travel it points to. Just as it is now widely understood, even by most Brexiters, that Brexit is a process, not an event, the same holds for ‘de-Brexitificaton’ and even ‘de-Brexiting’, if they are to happen.

The problem, of course, as Behr concludes, is that “time is already running out”. More accurately, the problem is the tension between two different timescales. The more time that passes since the 2016 referendum, the more the toxicity of Brexit recedes, the more its sensitivity as a political issue reduces, the more the generation of politicians which was obsessed with getting it passes, and the more the electoral demographic that most supported it is replaced by that which was most opposed to it. On the other hand, the more time that goes by without being a member of at least the single market, the more the economic damage racks up as, without also being a member of the EU, does the geo-political damage.

Within that framing, the first timescale isn’t much affected by who is in power, but would be slightly accelerated by a Labour government if only because that would marginalize Tory Brexiter politicians. The second timescale could be slightly shortened by a Labour government, and the interim damage slightly reduced, or possibly considerably reduced compared with what a Tory government might decide to do if elected.

It may not seem like much of a choice, but it is a choice, and this week made it clearer than ever that it will be the one facing us at the next election. The outcome will make some difference to post-Brexit policy in the following years, but could make a huge difference to the choices available in the election after that.

 

Note: I have re-enabled comments on this blog, for an experimental period, under a strict comments policy.

As Brexit fails, attention turns to Labour

The failure of Brexit is now widely acknowledged and ever-more openly discussed. But there isn’t going to be some quick, neat or easy epochal change. Brexiters aren’t going to give up quietly, and the process of addressing the failure of Brexit is going to be complex and fraught with difficulties.

Still, there is a gradual shift under way. For a long time after the transition period ended, the damage Brexit was causing lurked in the shadows. It’s not that it wasn’t reported, but those reports were often piecemeal in nature, rather than drawn together, and Brexit often featured in the small print as a factor in whatever damage was being discussed rather than as the headlines. That is increasingly changing, with a good example being the two-part series assessing Brexit in this week’s Times newspaper (here and here). There’s far too much in it for me to summarise but, although striving almost painfully at times to be ‘balanced’, the overall picture was undeniably clear, and undeniably negative.

Even without much media prompting, and despite a barrage of pro-Brexit reporting from some parts of the media, as well as much Tory boosterism, the public view has for many months been settling to the view that Brexit was a mistake and has failed. The latest YouGov polling records its lowest-ever level of people thinking Brexit was the right choice (31%) and the joint highest-ever level of those thinking it was a mistake (56%). It also shows 62% think Brexit has been ‘more of a failure’ and just 9% that it has been ‘more of a success’. Inevitably the responses of leave voters and remain voters are rather different, but even amongst leave voters the figures are 37% saying failure and 20% saying success, with a lot who think ‘neither’ (35% of leaver voters compared with just 6% of remain voters).

It's worth pausing to consider just how damning an indictment of Brexit those figures are, so I’ll repeat them. Just 9% of all electors, and only 20% even of those who voted for it, think Brexit is a success. By comparison, a 2019 survey found that 16% of the UK adult population believe that the moon landing was staged.

Brexit betrayed

However, there’s an important difference between those remain voters who think Brexit is a failure, of whom about three-quarters think it was always going to be, and those leave voters who think it is a failure, of whom about three-quarters think that it could have been a success if it had been implemented differently. That isn’t a surprising finding, but it matters because it shows that disillusionment with Brexit ‘as an idea’ is far from universal, and also that there is quite a deep seam of opinion susceptible to a narrative of Brexit ‘betrayal’.

It's a seam which Brexiters were always going to mine assiduously, and a particularly unhinged example was provided by Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn last Friday. It wasn’t just about Brexit, but slurs about ‘salivating remoaners’ with ‘loyalty to the EU’ permeated a wider attack on the “New Establishment” – an apparent nod towards political scientist Matthew Goodwin’s half-baked ‘new Elite’ theory - and its supposed “coup” against the government. But careful readers, if such the Mail has, would notice, even if Littlejohn is too careless a writer to realise it, that this was all rather let down by the observation that “to describe all this as a conspiracy is not entirely accurate [as] it's not co-ordinated.” So not, in fact, a “coup” at all.

This kind of ‘stab in the back’ myth (the on-line version of Littlejohn’s article was actually illustrated with a bloody dagger) has always been the most dangerous potential outcome of Brexit, and Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian recently and rightly warned that what follows from it “may be very dark indeed”. That said, it’s worth remembering that, with or without Brexit, Littlejohn has been squeezing stuff like this out of his anger-tightened sphincter into the eager maw of the Mail’s lavatory bowl for 30 years, on and off. In fact, the kind of aggressive victimhood of a ‘lost country’ his writing exemplifies is a big part of what drove the leave vote. It’s not even the first time he has posited a “coup staged by remainers” – he did so as recently as October 2022 – despite having assured his readers in January 2021 that Brexit was “all over bar the shouting”. You couldn’t make it up, to coin a phrase.

Whilst Littlejohn fulminates, other members of the Brexiter commentariat have adopted a more listless and resigned attitude to how the glorious possibilities of Brexit have been squandered. For example, Fred de Fossard of the Legatum Institute wearily bemoans (£) the government’s failure to pursue a deregulatory agenda, though that was never the automatic consequence even of hard Brexit, and laments the forthcoming introduction of import controls, which was. The “climbdown” on Retained EU Law is also dolefully recounted (“the less said about [it] the better”, de Fossard sighs), but with no recognition of why that, or any of the other foregone ‘opportunities’, have failed to materialize. Indeed, scratch the surface and the explanation offered is a more urbane version of Littlejohn’s, whereby “our entrenched bureaucracy ensures [that voters always] get the same Left-wing, Europhile outcomes”. As a result, “the whole concept of Brexit” is now imperilled, the sometime special adviser to Jacob Rees-Mogg glumly concludes.

Brexit’s last defences

Whether blamed on betrayal, or just lack of political will, these responses at least acknowledge that Brexit hasn’t been a success. But some Brexiters aren’t ready to accept that (and never will be). Instead, individual pieces of economic good news are still trumpeted as evidence that it has been triumph, a recent example being the thuggish Tory MP Lee Anderson's boast that the reported decision by Tata to build a gigafactory in Britain rather than Spain is “another Brexit bonus”. The obvious problem is that something can only be a Brexit benefit if it couldn’t or wouldn’t have happened without Brexit, which isn’t the case in this example. And, of course, even where there are any such benefits, they need to be set against the many costs to justify Brexit as a success overall.

It’s also typical of such claims to invoke a strawman that ‘remainers said there would be no more investment after Brexit’ or ‘remainers said there’d be no more trade with the EU after Brexit’, or the slightly different one that ‘remainers blame all Britain’s economic problems on Brexit’. Needless to say, no serious analyst has ever suggested such things, but even if they had then the most it would mean is that Brexit hasn’t been as bad as some said it would be, or that it may not have been a success, but at least it hasn’t been a failure.

For example, in a Telegraph article (£) the pro-Brexit economist Julian Jessop discusses the impact of Brexit on the services sector. It’s headlined as a “success story”, but the content is less ebullient. “If one thinks back to all the apocalyptic claims made by Remainers, our services industry should be a smoking ruin by now”, he says, conjuring up “doomsday predictions”. But worry not, for “the overall impact has been far less than feared”. It’s hardly an inspiring defence. To be fair, Jessop recognizes this, saying “it is not enough just to say that Brexit has been less damaging than expected. It was supposed to benefit the City. But this is a process.” However, this is just another of the stock defences: the benefits are always just over the horizon.

Still less compelling is the current fashion for comparing UK economic performance with that of Germany (£), or perhaps a wider selection of EU countries (£), selected over this or that timeframe, to argue that the UK’s is no worse, and perhaps slightly better. That fashion seems to have arisen because the IMF, its forecasts suddenly now in favour with the Brexiters who usually disparage them, upgraded its 2023 forecast for the UK from a 0.3% contraction to a 0.4% expansion, whilst forecasting the German economy to shrink by 0.1%.

Even if it made sense to ascribe these (rather negligible) differences to Brexit, it would not be much of an argument because, again, Brexit wasn’t undertaken on the basis that it wouldn’t be a failure but that it would be positively advantageous. But, in any case, it doesn’t make any sense. Whether in the EU or not, the UK’s economy, like any member state, fluctuates at different times and for sometimes different reasons to that of Germany (or any other individual country). In particular, Germany’s current economic difficulties are very obviously connected to its rapid diversification from over-dependence on Russian energy. So, except as a kind of schoolyard ‘what about you?’ taunt, such comparisons tell us nothing one way or the other about Brexit.

The key comparisons are between Brexit UK and how the UK would have performed without Brexit. That inevitably involves a counterfactual model, and the latest version of the best-known such model, the Springford CER ‘doppelgänger’, shows that by June 2022 the UK GDP was 5.5% lower than it would have been without Brexit. That may overestimate the damage or may underestimate it. But (to the best of my knowledge) neither the government nor any of the pro-Brexit economists have ever produced a comparable counterfactual model showing Brexit to have been economically beneficial to the UK. So on this key test there is, at the very least, no evidence of Brexit being an economic success.

What about Labour?

With Brexiters now engaged in the last stages of their attempt to deny Brexit has failed, and the latest stages of developing fantasies about why it has failed, and with the Sunak government in the throes of a protracted death, attention is increasingly turning to the prospects of a Labour administration. Interestingly, Brexiter fears for what that will bring are diametrically opposite to those of many erstwhile remainers. At least some Brexiters are convinced that Labour has “a secret 10-year plan to take Britain back into the EU” (£), whereas some remainers believe that there is no difference at all between Labour and Tory approaches to Brexit. The reality is more complex than either view allows.

Although by definition it’s unprovable either way, it’s absurd to think that Starmer has a ‘secret plan’ to re-join the EU. There’s literally no evidence for it, so Brexiters are wrong and rejoiners are right about that. However, it’s true that the logic of Labour’s position on Brexit – everything it says about the damage of it – points in the direction of eventually re-joining. So, forgetting any idea of a secret plan, the Brexiters are right to suspect that this would be the direction of travel for Labour (though they may be wrong that it will be the point of arrival), and re-joiners are wrong to dismiss the possibility of it going in that direction (though they may be right that it won’t be the point of arrival).

Remainer or re-joiner scepticism about Labour’s intentions was reinforced this week by Keir Starmer’s Express article, in which he again re-iterated Labour’s policy of no return to the EU, single market or customs union, but of wanting to improve the existing UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA). Most strikingly, and to many remainers most reprehensibly, he referred to the inadequate nature of that deal as meaning that “our European friends and competitors are not just eating our lunch – they’re nicking our dinner money as well”.

The clue to understanding this article is the polling figures I referred to earlier. It was written for the three-quarters of the 37% of Leave voters who believe Brexit has failed because of the way it has been implemented. More particularly, it was written for the erstwhile and potential Labour voters within that group who may be minded to blame that on the Tories. That is an important segment of voters for Labour to speak to, and the Express is a good place to reach it, with the pitch being based on tapping into, but subverting, the narrative of Brexit betrayal. The language may have been ugly and grating, but politics can be a dirty business, or at least it is for those who value winning above high-mindedness.

Of course, there is a tactical dilemma for Labour: in making its appeal to such voters it may lose support elsewhere (£), and there’s some polling evidence that this is happening. But the delicate calculation is presumably that many who respond to things like the Express article by angrily saying ‘I’ll never vote for Labour now’ will, when it comes to it, do so. Or, if not, that the votes lost will be in constituencies where the outcome isn’t affected, whilst those gained prove decisive in other seats. Again, it’s all grubby stuff for the squeamish, but perhaps they should reflect that after fourteen years in opposition squeamishness isn’t something Labour can afford to indulge.

Beneath Labour’s tactics

Tactics aside, what matters is what lies beneath. In his discussion of Starmer’s article, Ian Dunt, who has been consistently acute in his analysis of Brexit from the start, and often very critical of Labour, argues that “in truth, Labour’s Brexit position is far more nuanced, and much more radical, than it first appears. It has been carefully couched in the language of Brexit defence, but the proposals themselves promise a return to a much closer relationship with the Continent. It is the start of a journey back to Europe.”

The key word here is “journey” or, as I’ve put it, ‘direction of travel’. Starmer is cautiously going with the grain of public opinion, with a poll this week suggesting that 53% of voters favour ‘closer ties’ with the EU, and even in strongly vote-leaving areas a plurality doing so. What they mean by it is undoubtedly varied, but a first-term Labour government can be expected to push its possible meanings to the maximum it could without breaking manifesto commitments or suffering too much electoral kickback.

For an important example of what this would mean, in a footnote to my previous post I suggested that the seemingly arcane difference between Swiss-style ‘dynamic alignment’ and New Zealand-style ‘regulatory equivalence’ in Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary (SPS) standards might become an issue under a Labour government, since Labour’s apparently preferred policy of a New Zealand-style deal had already been rejected by the EU, whilst a Swiss-style deal had been ruled out by Starmer.

I meant that we might hear more about this in years to come, so it was much to my amusement that, just a few hours later, and presumably coincidentally, the Telegraph carried a report (£) ‘revealing’ this EU rejection of a New Zealand-style deal and, with almost heart-stopping irony, quoting David Frost castigating Starmer for “trying to sell unnegotiable fantasy proposals to voters”. In a mirror-image of that critique, some remainers, too, leapt on this report as evidence that Starmer was just reproducing the impossibilities of “cakeism”.

But it is easy to imagine Labour in power, having pledged in their manifesto to negotiate a ‘veterinary agreement with the EU’, agreeing dynamic alignment with the EU. That isn’t cakeism, as it has already been offered by the EU, and the fact that Starmer has previously said he doesn’t want a Swiss-style deal will be irrelevant as he has also said he wants a ‘bespoke deal’ and, almost by definition, any UK-EU deal will be that. Will electors who support ‘closer ties with the EU’ object? Highly unlikely. And if there is a ‘bespoke UK-EU’ SPS dynamic alignment deal then it means the hard Brexit ECJ red line will have been comprehensively breached, allowing it to be breached in all manner of other ways, in relation to trade, security, and participation in various programmes and agencies.

Beneath Labour’s hints

Much of this has already been hinted at by the public statements of Starmer and other senior Labour politicians, including Rachel Reeves and David Lammy. A much more detailed set of proposals for what it could mean in practice was published this week by the UK Trade and Business Commission, an unofficial but highly professional grouping of cross-party MPs, business people and experts. Their report, which is based on extensive evidence-gathering from a huge range of stakeholders and experts, contains 114 recommendations. So far as I can see, all of them are compatible with Labour’s stated position and so the report amounts to a blueprint of how to operationalize that position.

Some, though by no means all, of this entails EU agreement, and there are obviously important questions about whether that would be forthcoming, and a particularly valid question about the extent to which Labour are putting too much reliance on using the scheduled 2026 TCA review as an occasion for a more substantial re-negotiation. It certainly isn’t automatically entailed by the review. However, in his recent evidence to the European Parliament, Anton Spisak, a Brexit expert at the Tony Blair Institute, urges that both the EU and the UK would be wise to use it in that way, so as to “begin a more strategic discussion”.

It is at least possible that this view will prevail and, of course, it will still entail negotiation, but much that could have been negotiated had it not been for the Frost-Johnson ‘sovereignty’ line will become possible. Nor is the TCA review the only game in town. The European Political Community (EPoC), established last year and which had its second meeting yesterday, offers the UK a new vehicle for dialogue and cooperation with the rest of the European continent. How it develops remains to be seen but, with enthusiastic and effective participation, which would be unlike Sunak’s approach to it but consistent with Labour’s stated policies, the UK could at the least repair some of the relational and reputational damage of Brexit. Potentially, there would be more substantive outcomes.

All of this could be done without violating Labour’s red lines on rejoining the EU, the single market or the customs union. Those red lines don’t prematurely box Labour into a corner because there’s just no way that, simply from an EU perspective, the UK re-joining is viable in the timeframe of the next parliament: we’re in that corner anyway. Equally, going as far as possible within those red lines wouldn’t be ‘re-joining by stealth’ since there would be no re-joining unless there was a referendum. It would all be subsumed within the rubric of ‘closer ties’ and ‘co-operation’, potentially leading to such a referendum, perhaps in Labour’s second term, as Dunt suggests.

This is exactly what Brexiters fear, which is also why the hostility of some remainers/ rejoiners to Labour’s approach is misjudged. At the very least, even if it never gets to that point, the ameliorations Labour are likely to enact will be somewhat better than the current situation, and much better than would be the case if the Tories were re-elected and the Brexit Ultras got their way.

The long road ahead

This isn’t to disown what I said In a recent post, where I argued that the strategic problems posed by the failure of Brexit are not “addressed by Labour’s pledge to make Brexit work, since the solutions don’t exist within the modest tinkering with Brexit that Starmer has committed to. Not until the diagnosis that Brexit is a failure is accompanied by realism and honesty about the causes and solutions can it be addressed”. It’s true that even if what I’ve said about Labour’s position today is right it still fails to meet this test, but the issue is the process and timescale for getting to that point. It is clear that this is going to take some time, so the question is whether a Labour government would take use closer to or further from that point.

On this, to quote Ian Dunt again, “if you put aside the tedious and unconvincing hardline rhetoric, a clear picture emerges. Brexit is collapsing. And Britain is, slowly but surely, drifting back to Europe”. It’s also true that the longer this drift takes, the more damage that will accrue in the meantime. That’s undeniable, even if Labour isn’t able to admit it. But it presumably goes without saying, at least to readers of this blog, that Brexit was a seismic event, so the political road to rebuilding from the earthquake is going to be arduous and slow. Opinion polls showing increasing national regret are vital, but they are a long way from being enough. Like it or not, we’re still barely on the first step of that road but, that being so, the worst thing we can do is refuse to take it because it is only a step. Equally, it’s perfectly right to keep pushing for the next steps, and necessary, too, if they are to be taken.

The leadership campaign is mired in Brexit dishonesty

As the dust begins to settle on Boris Johnson’s downfall, it’s worth emphasizing that it was inextricably bound up with Brexit even though Brexit wasn’t its direct cause. Unusually and fittingly, it was his character and conduct rather than any particular policy which ended his premiership. Not, I think, because the Tory Party had some collective outbreak of moral rectitude – they all knew what Johnson was like from the outset – but more because the thumping loss of two by-elections demonstrated that the voters were finally starting to see through him, in large part because of ‘partygate’.

In some ways that’s a good thing. It arguably shows that, eventually and creakingly, the British polity still has some kind of moral compass. But it also means that, even though it ought to be, this is not a moment of reckoning for the Brexit he did so much to promote and shape. From abroad, things look different. Writing in the Washington Post, Stryker McGuire observes that “viewed from afar, Johnson’s greatest failing is liable to be what he hoped would be his glorious legacy: Brexit”. I’m sure that will eventually be the generally accepted view here, too, but it isn’t yet remotely sayable amongst Tory politicians and commentators, who invariably chalk Brexit up to his credit, perhaps as his only credit, and set against the debits of his conduct in office.

Brexit and Johnson’s character are inseparable

Yet in truth, Johnson’s deficiencies of character are inseparable from Brexit. He was far from the only liar in 2016, but the casual and brazen dishonesty with which he fronted Vote Leave certainly embodied and perhaps swung its campaign. He even embodied many of the particular hues of that dishonesty, in his insistence not just that facts don’t matter but that belief matters more, in his endless sense of his own victimhood, still on display in his resignation announcement and mirroring that of the Brexiters generally, in his refusal to take responsibility for his choices even to the extent of denying choices have to be made, and in his constant bogus and half-baked invocations of the Second World War.

Equally, the rank dishonesty of agreeing the Northern Ireland Protocol without intending to honour it, and of agreeing a limited trade agreement with the EU whilst pretending it lived up to his ‘cakeist’ promises, both contributed hugely to making the calamity of Brexit even worse than it was bound to be. And for all the pearl-clutching now amongst some Tory Brexiters about Johnson’s contempt for established rules and norms, they almost all supported his illegal Prorogation of parliament in 2019, as well as his threat of illegality in the Internal Market Bill (IMB) in 2020. So whilst Johnson’s immorality was built into his character, their support for him reflected their Jacobin-like frenzy whereby Brexit justified ripping up any law or convention that seemed to get in its way, including the very parliamentary sovereignty they claimed to be so central to their cause.

Small wonder, then, that the bludgeoning nonsense that they were enacting the ‘will of the people’ was squeakily echoed in Johnson’s last-ditch attempt to stay in post by invoking the constitutional gibberish that he had been bestowed a personal mandate by 14 million voters in the general election. Small wonder, too, that despite the fact that MPs on all wings of the party, including the ERG, turned him out, some pro-Brexit commentators are insisting he was the victim of a remainer, anti-Brexit plot. Brexit populism has been set back, but not destroyed, by Johnson’s demise.

It's now widely accepted, including, if only superficially, by most of the candidates to succeed him, that Johnson’s legacy is a constitution and political culture horribly damaged by dishonesty and immorality, with accompanying public distrust and cynicism. But simply laying this at the door of his own character, without recognizing its roots in Brexit, means it will not be addressed.

Why Brexit has never been discussed honestly

There’s actually an even wider point to be made. The referendum didn’t just result in leaving the EU. It also created a massive and ongoing destabilization of British politics. It is not coincidence that we have had two general elections and are about to have the fourth Prime Minister in the space of just six years. That is astonishing in itself, but what is far more astonishing is that at each of the pivotal moments – the general elections and the leadership elections – Brexit itself was only discussed in the most cursory of ways.

This may seem a strange thing to say given how dominant an issue Brexit has been since 2016, but my point is that it has rarely, if ever, been talked about in depth, spelling out its actual practical implications and the choices and trade-offs involved. Thus Theresa May was installed following a truncated campaign after which we still, famously or infamously, only knew that ‘Brexit meant Brexit’. That stasis lasted for months until she simply announced in early 2017 that it meant hard Brexit. Then, as I catalogued at the time of the 2017 election and again during that of 2019, the two main parties, at least, refused, in different ways and for different reasons, to set out in detailed ways what their Brexit plans would mean. In-between, the leadership campaign which brought Johnson to power was conducted as a virility test over who would most readily embrace ‘no-deal Brexit’ rather than accept ‘the hated backstop’, but with no substance whatsoever on what lay behind these slogans.

So neither at these decisive points nor in the periods between them has there ever been any sustained, honest, realistic political conversation about the practical realities of Brexit. Instead, throughout the May years there were suggestions of securing ‘frictionless trade’ and the ‘exact same benefits’ of membership and in the Johnson years the claim of cakeism and denial of the coming costs, with Labour all the while just talking vaguely of the ‘better deal’ they would achieve. Equally, throughout these years there was virtually no honesty about the actual choices and problems posed by and for Northern Ireland. Instead there was endless nonsense about non-existent ‘alternative arrangements’ and, ultimately, the creation of an Irish Sea border whilst denying that that was what had been agreed. Thereafter, since the end of the transition the political silence about the damaging effects of Brexit has been deafening, whilst all the denial and dishonesty about Northern Ireland has been re-activated.

The fundamental reason for this, I think, lies precisely with the deadening effect of the ‘will of the people’ bullying, and attendant obscenities about ‘enemies of the people’. Whilst this hasn’t stopped continuing, vociferous opposition to Brexit, it has meant that, especially in the governing Tory Party, realism and honesty about the practicalities, and not just the principle, of Brexit is deemed as betrayal. This is why the civil service, which is bound to be realistic and honest in the sense that it has to deliver Brexit as a policy, rather than simply sell it to voters as an idea, has been so traduced as sabotaging Brexit.

It’s this which marks Brexit out as different to any other political issue, at least in my lifetime. There are plenty of examples of divisive policies but they’ve always been deliverable even when they have been undesirable, and they’ve always been discussable in more or less rational ways. Brexit isn’t like this because it promised impossible or contradictory things, which by definition can’t be delivered. But since even saying this is (still) deemed offensive to the ‘will of the people’, no honest or realistic political conversation has ever been possible within or between the two main parties. That extends from the most general level of Brexit having been enacted as hard Brexit, right down to the multiple and complex trade-offs in decisions about regulatory alignment or divergence in particular sectors. This evisceration of honesty and realism is the “radioactive pollution” that has poisoned the political ground, as I expressed it in last week’s post, and until it is cleansed the instability of the last six years will continue.

Who is a true Brexiter now?

In principle, the Tories now have a chance to change that with their change of leader. Whilst Johnson isn’t the sole or even main cause of the dishonesty of Brexit, he is so entwined with it that replacing him offered the possibility of facing up to that dishonesty. I don’t mean that there was ever the remotest possibility that Johnson’s departure would herald the end of Brexit. It won’t. That fantasy is the province of paranoid Brexiters (£) and, to put it charitably, over-optimistic remainers.

On the contrary, and entirely predictably, only those fully committed to Brexit have even attempted to be candidates. Yet there are now curious contortions in this. Some Brexit Ultras have insisted that Johnson must be replaced by a Brexiter, but this category includes Liz Truss who voted remain but is now deemed by Jacob Rees-Mogg to be a full convert. Indeed David Campbell Bannerman, the Conservative ex-MEP who once called for British people with “extreme EU loyalty” to be tried for treason, insists “only Liz Truss can save Brexit now” (£).

Rishi Sunak, on the other hand, who always supported Brexit, is now treated as not of the faith and even, bizarrely, denounced as a “socialist” by Rees-Mogg. Indeed according to arch-Brexiter Daniel Moylan, not only does Sunak not “care about” Brexit, but the other current front runner, Penny Mordaunt, who was an ERG member before becoming a minister, “doesn’t understand it”. Meanwhile, in a separate and stinging attack on Mordaunt (£), another of Johnson’s placemen in the House of Lords, the self-important would-be kingmaker David Frost, has questioned whether Brexit would be “safe” in her hands.

Yet Mordaunt’s credentials as a Brexiter seem real enough to the extent that, when challenged about her notorious referendum campaign lie that the UK did not have a veto on Turkish accession, opted to double-down on it (note her tone at the end of the clip, which has the muleish obstinacy of one who knows her argument has no logic, but takes perverse pride in clinging to it). Such unrepentant dishonesty is surely the hallmark of a true Brexiter, for all that ERG ‘hard man’ Steve Baker denies that this is what she is, whilst an article on the reliably peculiar Conservative Woman site goes further and denies she’s even a real Conservative.

Until she was knocked out of the contest, the ‘hard man’s’ preference, by the way, was for Suella Braverman, the scourge of ‘cultural marxism’ who wants to take the UK out of the ECHR and apparently believes that the vote for Brexit was also a vote against the expansion of university education and rights litigation (£). Kemi Badenoch, too, seems to think there’s a link between the ‘change’ people voted for in 2016 and her brand of small-state, war on woke conservatism. Perhaps it should be no surprise that it’s so hard to pin down who is a true Brexiter when so much of what has subsequently been claimed to flow the referendum result was unaccountably not written on the ballot paper.

The leadership contest continues to avoid the realities of Brexit

The most striking thing about the struggle between these latter-day Girondins and Montagnards for control of the Committee of Brexit Safety, at least to those who were assured that voting Tory in 2019 would ‘get Brexit done’, is how many are warning that it has not, after all, been done but is still a work in progress, and a fragile one at that. That being so, it might be thought that the candidates would at least have an honest conversation about how Brexit is going, if only because the recent by-election losses suggest that the voter coalition of the 2019 ‘get Brexit done’ election is fraying at both ends.

However, yet again, the chance for such honesty has been squandered. All the candidates have been setting out economic plans which barely, if at all, mention Brexit and certainly don’t acknowledge the chilling effects of Brexit on economic growth, trade, sterling and investment, which are now beyond sensible dispute, and are baked into official figures. For even to hint at any negative consequences of Brexit, economic or otherwise, is taboo in this election (the fact that Sunak has done so, even mildly, in the past may partly explain why the Brexiters have turned against him).

Similarly, all the candidates speak airily of capitalising on the ‘opportunities of Brexit’ without any meaningful or serious detail. Even the effects of Brexit and the new trade deals on farmers, a community that used to be close to the heart of Tories, go unmentioned. And even the Express has spotted the Brexit silence, though mistakenly thinking that it’s a failure to foreground Brexit benefits rather than a failure to acknowledge its damage. The consequence is that whoever leads the party will not have a viable plan to lead the country, for they will still be refusing the face the post-Brexit realities the country faces.

The most immediate acid test of whether a more honest and realistic approach to Brexit is in prospect is the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill (NIPB), which continues to work its way through parliament, with all attempts to amend it being rejected this week. For the NIPB arises from a tangle of dishonesties: dishonesty towards the EU with whom the Protocol was signed, towards the MPs who were told the Protocol was temporary, towards the voters who were told it was part of an oven-ready deal, and towards the Northern Ireland peace process which is at the sharp end of it all.

That test has so far been failed. None of the candidates has indicated opposition to the Bill, and the front runners have all said they will continue with it although Sunak apparently had reservations about it in Cabinet (and Braverman, astoundingly, wanted to pursue an even harder set of demands). Whether this commitment comes from conviction or from the realization that to say otherwise would torpedo their chances of winning is irrelevant; either way they are endorsing the dishonesties associated with it.

What isn’t clear is how far the next leader will take the NIPB once in power, and, so far as I know, none of them has been challenged to answer this. The reason it isn’t clear is partly because of the dishonesty of the proposed legislation itself, which has been presented to ‘one nation’ Tories as merely a negotiating tactic rather than something that would be used, and to ERG-types as a non-negotiable set of demands which, if not agreed to by the EU, will be unilaterally implemented. Therefore, the candidates simply saying they will pursue the Bill doesn’t tell us what doing so means.

However, since there’s no way the EU will agree to it in full, the new leader will in fairly short order have to end this ambiguity. This could herald an early crisis, though It’s possible that neither wing would dare rebel at the very start of a new leader’s tenure. But the wider point is what would it say for honesty in politics if the first act of the new leader were to reveal as a key policy – whether that be abandoning the NIPB, making a deal with the EU that fell short of the Bill’s demands, or disapplying the Protocol - something they had not explicitly mentioned in the campaign?

The Brexit cuckoos

It’s depressing that not a single candidate, for all the talk of integrity from all of them, has had the courage to point to any of the problems Brexit has created, even without necessarily disowning Brexit. That could have been the drum that Tom Tugendhat – who I gather used to be a soldier – might have marched to. But apparently there isn’t a single Tory MP who, even knowing they would have had no chance of winning, was willing to at least set down a marker for any kind of honesty or pragmatism about Brexit. That is shaming on those of them, and some still exist, who know the damage Brexit is doing.  But the fundamental responsibility lies fairly and squarely with the Brexiters inside and beyond the Tory Party. They have made honesty all but impossible.

Inside the party, the ERG’s journey from ginger group to virtual control – a partly taxpayer-funded cuckoo party within a party, but which has never stood for election as a party, on its own manifesto – is perhaps the biggest factor. An index of its strength is that in the current leadership contest at least three of the original candidates – Braverman, Javid and Mordaunt - have in the past been reported to be members. The group also insists on having its own one-to-one meetings with all candidates to assess their Brexit credentials (Sunak reportedly ‘stormed out’ of his). This strength, along with the UKIPification of the party membership (£), ensures that no even half-way ‘moderate’ candidate, by any standard but their own, has a chance and, in any case, most such moderate Tory MPs were purged by Johnson in 2019.

However, the current election also reveals that, as so often happens with extremist groups, the ERG is now riven by infighting over ‘purity’. That has been incipient since at least the split between ‘the Spartans’, who voted against Theresa May in all three of the ‘meaningful votes’ on her Withdrawal Agreement in 2018, and the rest of them. Now it has become manifest in the contortions, discussed above, about who is a ‘true Brexiter’, and just last night the group endorsed former remainer Truss as its preferred candidate (although it’s not clear that its members are obliged to vote en bloc). Even so it’s quite possible, because of those contortions, that the ERG will end up with a situation where neither of the final two is “a Brexit purist” (£). To spell it out, that is how some pro-Brexit commentators are describing the scenario if the last two are pro-Brexit Sunak and Mordaunt!

The endless Tory Brexit psycho-drama is set to continue

We are therefore in a potentially extraordinary situation. The dominance of the ERG means that this leadership contest to replace Johnson has continued with his dishonesty about Brexit. That in turn will ensure that for the immediate future British politics will continue to be corrupted by the dishonesty inherent within Brexit. Yet the outcome of that contest may very well leave the ERG still unhappy. And even if that is not true from the start of the new leader’s tenure, it soon will be.

The Times columnist Danny Finkelstein this week made a point (£) very much in keeping with an argument I’ve been making on this blog for years, namely that whoever is elected the Brexiters will end up saying that person has betrayed Brexit because reality always gets the better of their dishonest beliefs. Thus once they embraced May with, it’s easy now to forget, huge enthusiasm but ended up bitterly despising her as ‘Theresa the Remainer’. Johnson, who was never one of their own, they came to see as having lost interest in, and stomach for, ‘unleashing Brexit benefits’. The same will happen to his successor.

Since Finkelstein wrote his article things have already moved on. It has now become abundantly clear that if Sunak wins the Brexiters will disown him from the outset, and the same is very possibly true of Mordaunt. But whoever wins will go the same way, possibly quite soon, as I suggest above in relation to the NIPB, but if not later when, once again, the benefits of Brexit prove imaginary or unsatisfying. Nigel Farage has already said that unless Braverman, who is now out, won it would mean that Brexit would be betrayed. But the reality is that, if she had won, it would not have been long before Farage and other Brexit Ultras were denouncing her as well.

What I would add to Finkelstein’s analysis is that the reason for this isn’t just because the gap between reality and Brexiter fantasy means that Brexit always gets betrayed, it’s that deep in the psychology of Brexit is a desire to be betrayed so as to maintain the purity of insurgency and to preserve the comfort blanket of victimhood. Indeed, the ERG’s endorsement of Truss, given its view of what happened with May, seems almost masochistic. Of course the real victims are those of us who, in the present leadership campaign, are merely onlookers as the tragedy of this perverse political psychology continues to play out before our bruised and bleeding eyes.

 

 

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