A pregnant pause

This post is slightly shorter than usual because the last fortnight has been a fairly quiet period for Brexit-related news, with the dominant domestic story having been the continuing fall-out from Keir Starmer’s ill-judged appointment of Peter Mandelson. Even that does have some Brexit angles, though. Certainly Morgan McSweeney claimed this week that the choice of Mandelson was animated by the post-Brexit need to have a good trade relationship with the US. Actually, I suspect that, even if it’s true that Mandelson was appointed for his supposed ‘Trump-whispering’ credentials, something which is contested [1], this rationale would have applied regardless of Brexit because of the non-trade issues at stake in the UK-US relationship (i.e. defence and security).

Perhaps the more important Brexit angle is that one of the things Starmer’s government was expected to achieve was a substantial improvement in the relationship between politicians and civil servants following the huge damage done to it during the Brexit process. Yet the summary ejection of Sir Olly Robbins from the Foreign Office brought that relationship to what is probably a new low, made all the more noteworthy by the fact that Robbins at one time led the UK Brexit negotiations and, in that role, became almost a hate-figure to Brexiters.

However, in general terms there a sense of Brexit being on pause, but it is an unusually expectant pause, awaiting three imminent events.

The coming elections

The first of these is the English local council, Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd elections which will be held next week. The results of these will have numerous consequences but one of them is that, assuming Labour do as badly as is expected, Starmer will face enormous pressure to reinvent or to resign his premiership. If the outcome is ‘reinvention’, then one very possible aspect of that will be to move from Labour’s “crabwise” approach to UK-EU relations to something quicker and deeper. If the outcome is ‘resignation’ (whether willing or forced) then it is highly likely that discussion of such a move will feature strongly in the race to succeed him, and that his successor, whoever it is, will embrace a reinvented policy.

In some ways, this would only be the continuation of the existing direction of travel. It is not so long since Labour had a virtual omerta on even mentioning Brexit. Starmer very reluctantly broke that silence in July 2022, although only to insist on his ‘red lines’, and for most of the period since then has relied on formulaic repetitions of the reset policy. It is really only in the last couple of months that he, Rachel Reeves, and other ministers have openly spoken of the damage Brexit has caused. But that openness has had the inevitable corollary of exposing the limitations of their plans to repair the damage, and increases the pressure for a far more ambitious policy.

A move in that direction would also be a continuation of Labour’s emergent realization, especially since losing to the Greens in Gorton & Denton, of the electoral need to offer its anti-Brexit members and voters a reason for loyalty. In particular, a shift to a full-throated project to ‘rejoin’ (probably articulated in terms of a future manifesto commitment rather than an immediate policy) might be seen as a way to out-flank the rather cautious ‘customs union for now’ position of both the Green Party and the Lib Dems. Whether such calculations, especially if transparently designed to save Starmer’s job, constitute the kind of principled commitment which could yield a genuine partnership with, let alone eventual membership of, the EU is another matter.

The coming UK-EU Summit

The second imminent event is the next UK-EU Summit. Unless I have missed it, the date of this has still not been agreed but in a speech at the beginning of April Starmer said that it would be announced “in the coming weeks”. This summit will really be the point at which the ‘reset’ has to have tangible outcomes, turning the rather vague aspirations of last May’s meeting into definite agreements. In particular, but also at the very least, the SPS or ‘veterinary’ agreement, which the government constantly talks of as if it were a done deal, will have to be delivered if there is to be a chance of getting it to the point of implementation by the next general election.

However, the reality is that the May 2025 Summit, which even at the time was rather insipid, now seems woefully inadequate given the scale of events since, most obviously the endless raging storm of Trump’s tariff policy and the successive international crises he has provoked, most damagingly in the Middle East. For example, the impact of an SPS deal on UK food prices, which was never going to be that great, now looks like very small beer in the face of the inflation of food and many other prices which is coming down the track as the result of the Iran War. So delivering on the 2025 Summit will not be enough and Starmer’s April speech said as much:

“I can tell you, at [the next] summit, the UK will not just ratify existing commitments made at last year’s summit. We want to be more ambitious. Closer economic cooperation. Closer security cooperation. A partnership that recognises our shared values, our shared interests, and our shared future. A partnership for the dangerous world that we must navigate together.”

What this means in practice is, as usual, very vague. But it is hard to see how Starmer can go on and on making such vague promises without delivering and, in conjunction with the issue of how he responds to the May election results, this means that the next Summit is going to be a crucial moment in post-Brexit relations. It will show whether there is any momentum to the reset, any momentum to go beyond the reset, or whether we are stuck in the sludge, muddling along with nothing really changing since, effectively, the point at which, with Rishi Sunak’s Windsor Framework agreement in February 2023, a kind of post-Brexit status quo was achieved, more through exhaustion than anyone being especially satisfied with it.

At the time, I wrote of that perhaps being the moment when Britain’s ‘Brexit fever’ broke (in the sense of ending the period of open hostility towards the EU, with British threats to renege on the agreements made etc.) and would be followed by a long, slow process of convalescence. Arguably, that is what we have seen since then and, if so, the question is whether we are still in that process or whether there will be a new phase of more rapid recuperation.

The coming anniversary

The third imminent event is the tenth anniversary of the Brexit referendum, on 23 June. At that point, there will be a rash of re-evaluations of Brexit, and already the anniversary is being invoked as a moment to initiate a renewed debate. That would be occurring anyway, just because ‘ten’ is a round number, but it has an added salience because of the context of international crisis and domestic disarray and, with that, the pervasive sense of a country adrift. As the economics and politics commentator Simon Nixon put it this week, with remarkable rapidity Brexit has ceased to be a taboo subject in British politics.

Thus, in the last fortnight there have been several high-profile interventions, including that of Sir Philip Rycroft, the former Permanent Secretary of the erstwhile Department for Exiting the European Union. Writing in The Times (£), he argued that the promises made for Brexit had not materialized, and that changes in public opinion and the international situation meant that it was time to make the argument for ‘rejoining’. Meanwhile, last weekend’s Observer made the call to rejoin its front page and carried an article by Neil Kinnock (£) arguing the case for doing so, as well as a report by the paper’s political and economic editors (£) (quoting Kinnock, Rycroft, Sadiq Khan, and a former President of the CBI, amongst others) of there being pressure on Starmer to at least begin a conversation about rejoining.

Notably, all of the interventions I’ve mentioned refer to a report entitled “Is it time to talk about EU membership?’ just published by Best for Britain which presents and analyses new public opinion survey data showing support/opposition for rejoining at 53%-32% and suggesting that, ultimately, this would be a more politically sustainable policy than, for example, seeking single market membership. What’s notable is not so much the figures, which are in line with other recent opinion polls, but my impression, at least, that campaign groups like Best for Britain (which not long ago was proposing what in my view was a variant of the flawed ‘mutual recognition solution’) and the European Movement are now more vocal, or more confident, in talking about ‘rejoining’. That is only an impression, but it will be interesting to see, for example, the level of support for the next National Rejoin March, which will be held on 20 June, and perhaps even more interesting to see the extent and the nature of the media coverage it receives.

The coming conversation

Obviously these three imminent events link together, with the idea of a ten-year anniversary ‘national conversation’ being part of the attempts from outside and within the Labour Party to push for a new policy in preparation for the expected election results and in anticipation of the summit. And, to the extent that this new policy is envisaged as being more ambitious than the reset, that pretty much implies the abandonment of Labour’s ‘red lines’, as was argued this week by Labour MP Marsha de Cordova [2]. Whether that will happen any time soon I doubt, not least because I doubt whether the opinion poll support for joining the EU is yet large enough or reliable enough for Starmer or any other Labour leader to depend upon it.

Nevertheless, it is already clear that the coming months are going to see a revival of debate about Brexit and that will include, as indeed reactions to these recent interventions have already shown, a ferocious reaction from leading Brexiters. In that sense it will show that, in line with the book I reviewed in an ‘extra’ post on this blog last week, the “tribal divisions” of the 2016 referendum have persisted. For that matter, whilst the May election results may well push Labour to a more anti-Brexit position, the expected gains of Reform UK will be a fillip to the confidence of Brexiters. That is another reason why beginning the process of joining the EU is not an imminent possibility, but this certainly doesn’t mean that a revived debate about doing so will be unimportant or meaningless.

No doubt I will write more about that when we get to the tenth anniversary, but, for now, an important point to make is that the continuing Brexit divisions show just how comprehensively Brexit has failed, in at least two ways.

Firstly, whilst those divisions have persisted, and much of the debate about Brexit is extremely repetitious, the underlying dynamics have shifted and will likely continue to do so. In 2016, the Brexiters’ case was primarily about how good the effects of leaving the EU would be. Now, their argument is just that it hasn’t been as bad as was warned or as is claimed. That is, it has become a fundamentally defensive case, and, moreover, that case is necessarily undermined by their constant claim that Brexit has been ‘betrayed’. It is hard to mount a convincing defence of something whilst also disdaining it.

The ‘join’ (or ‘rejoin’ – but in the end this term will have to be dropped) case has also altered, in that it is now possible to demonstrate the damage of not being a member and also possible for joining the EU to be presented, as leaving once was, as a radical disavowal of the status quo in favour of a new and desirable future. Indeed, ultimately, the viability of the ‘join’ case, not least in the eyes of the EU, will depend on it being articulated in positive terms and not just as an escape from the hardship of a failed experiment.  

The second point about the ongoing debate is, simply, the fact that it is ongoing. In the second edition of my book about Brexit I wrote that according to its advocates and supporters “… Brexit was intended to be the start of a confident national renewal, a reinvigoration of national purpose, prosperity and standing. It certainly wasn’t proposed as, or supposed to be, the prelude to a country permanently divided on the wisdom of Brexit, still less to an interminable debate about whether it had been the right thing to do ….” (p.285) and I went on to quote David Frost saying that “one piece of evidence of failure [of Brexit] would be if we are still debating this in five- or six-years’ time in the same way. I think [if] it is to succeed it needs to settle in the British polity.”

He said that in June 2022, so we haven’t quite reached the point he specified, but there’s absolutely no sign that his test will be met. As the writer and journalist Matt Carr puts it in his recent, excellent Substack post:

“Ten years after Brexit, the UK is yet to find either peace or acceptance. Roiled by angry, vicious dreams and fed on a diet of toxic delusions, it recognises the folly of the decision that it took in 2016, but does not know how to change it, or simply does not dare.”

Yet, depressing as that is, it would be even more depressing if Frost’s test had been met, we had ceased to debate Brexit and it had settled in the British polity.

Notes

[1] I express this conditionally because, although that has always been my understanding, and one shared by, amongst others, the Guardian columnist Rafael Behr, another eminent political commentator, Stephen Bush of the Financial Times, is adamant that the sequence of events shows that the government’s desire to appoint Mandelson preceded Trump’s re-election. Whatever the truth of this, it doesn’t affect my point that the idea it had a Brexit rationale is questionable.

[2] It should not, however, be thought that all the pressure within the Labour Party points towards erasing the government’s red lines, or even towards a more ambitious reset within those red lines. For example, it was reported this week (£) that (unnamed) ministers are concerned that Labour’s increasing commitment to alignment with EU regulations, above and beyond that entailed by the reset, of will impair the UK’s ability to set its own regulatory regime for AI. And the regulatory alignment envisaged by the existing reset policy also has critics, some of whom may well be Labour voters and members, who are opposed to the fact that an SPS deal will prevent Britain adopting its own animal welfare protections.

The limits and limitations of post-Brexit choices

The very tiniest consequence of Trump’s election victory is that its timing falls messily for me now that this is a fortnightly blog. This post’s main topic, which is last week’s budget, suddenly seems like old news. Equally, writing about that leaves little space to write about the US election.

But that may be no bad thing. I often think that hot takes on big events are foolish, and the scale of this event, in particular, is going to take time to process. It is going to be different, bigger, and potentially far more dangerous than what flowed from his 2016 victory. The consequences go well beyond the focus of this blog, but even within that focus they will be profound. Profound for the UK, for the EU, for the continent of Europe and therefore, inevitably, for the entire Brexit project.

A preliminary list includes issues of defence, most pressingly as regards Ukraine, but also as regards the Baltic states, Eastern Europe both inside and outside the EU, and the Balkans. It also includes economics, and the possibility of substantial tariffs on trade with the US. Both of these things will shine a fresh and very searching spotlight on the economic and geo-political incoherence – an incoherence so great that it can properly be called a stupidity – of Brexit as a national strategy. That can only add weight to calls to join (or rejoin) the EU, though it's hard to see them being heeded. It certainly ought to bring more urgency and ambition to what already seemed the feebleness of the Labour government’s ‘reset’ of UK-EU relations, and which has now been rendered utterly inadequate in both scale and pace.

Yet, at the same time, Trump’s victory will embolden and re-energise the populists and the Brexiters. Earlier this year, when a second Trump presidency was already looking likely, I wrote at length about the relationships between Brexit, Brexitism, Trump and Putin. Most of that still stands, although some of the dynamics will be inflected differently under a Labour government. Thus Nigel Farage is gloatingly cock-a-hoop, directly comparing the result to Brexit, and the crackpot idea of him being the ‘unofficial Ambassador’ to the US is doing the rounds again.

Meanwhile, Kemi Badenoch, the new Tory leader, is already trying to exploit the difficulties that a Trump presidency would pose for any British government, and resurrecting the Brexiters’ favourite idea that he will agree a favourable trade deal with the UK. More generally, Brexiters, who have seen their 2016 ‘triumph’ become not just unpopular but a kind of byword for failure, will see in Trump’s reincarnation the hope that their fortunes, too, can be revived.

Labour’s first budget

All of this and much more will play out in the coming years. However, that doesn’t make last week’s budget an irrelevance and it, too, will have some long-term effects. It was a notable Brexit event, albeit in a peculiarly negative way. That has two aspects, one of them fairly widely remarked upon by commentators, the other, so far as I know, not mentioned by anyone.

The widely remarked-upon aspect was trailed in my previous post, where I wrote that “at one level, [the budget] will push discussion of Brexit even further to the margins, as commentators will find many others things in it to talk about. At another level, it will make the costs of Brexit even more relevant.” And so it proved.

Rachel Reeves’ budget speech lasted well over an hour, but mentioned Brexit only once, and only in passing, when she said that the Tory “Brexit deal harmed British businesses”. The subsequent debate focussed on everything from the rise in employer National Insurance contributions to the supposed impact on family farm inheritance, but only rarely on the Brexit silence.

On the other hand, buried in the accompanying Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) documents was a reminder that, taking into account what has already happened, its forecast for the impact of Brexit on trade intensity remains the same. This presumably also means that its forecast that the long-run impact will be that GDP will be 4% lower each year than it would otherwise have been also still holds (as last formally stated in May 2024). It is also implicit in the OBR figures, and confirmed explicitly by Treasury Minister Tulip Siddiq, that 60% of this damage is yet to come.

It bears repeating that, for all the tedious misleading graphs, cherry-picked data, and attempted rebuttals that still float around Brexiter-world, and get cited as ‘gotchas’ by keyboard warriors who wouldn’t know an x-axis from the X Factor or the X Files, something like this figure is given by all the major independent estimates. There’s a good discussion of this in relation to the budget by John Wilmslow in Sussex Bylines. 

The irrelevance of Brexit

All this is important, and provides a fresh example of the strange post-Brexit landscape in which the mounting economic damage is politically all but undiscussable. However, there is a sense in which the silence about Brexit in the budget was entirely justified. For the aspect which I have not seen mentioned is just how little difference Brexit has made to political debates and policy choices. Brexit was billed by its advocates as a great national liberation. This budget was a big event, setting the direction of travel for the next few years. Yet its basic parameters were indistinguishable from those of all the decades in which Britain was a member of the EU.

This is a demonstration of the fact that Brexit itself was based on an utterly false narrative of policy being substantially constrained by, or dictated by, the EU. Or, to put it another way, the false narrative that Brexit would give the UK greater ‘sovereignty’. In fact, policy remains within the familiar terrain of how much to tax, how much to borrow, and where to allocate funds.

Of course, the precise decisions made about that in this budget were distinctive, but the generic issues involved have not changed at all. It may be that in the weeds of specific measures there were some things, if so, very likely related to VAT, which would not have occurred as an EU member but, again if so, they were very marginal.

The constraints of reality

Brexiters would no doubt say this reflects the failure of the government to take advantage of ‘Brexit freedoms’ but, as the previous government found, these proved to be illusory in practice. And the reason for this is not, as Brexiters would have it, a lack of will. It is because the constraints on UK policy choices were never, in any significant sense, those arising from EU membership. In fact, as regards the budget, the principal constraints are, as was the case before Brexit and as was the case before membership of the EU, the currency and bond markets. As Labour politicians in the 1960s used to complain, it is the ‘Gnomes of Zurich’ who set the parameters of UK economic policy. That was before Britain joined the EEC, but it remained the case afterwards, as Denis Healey found in 1976.

It is still true after Brexit. That was amply demonstrated by the Truss-Kwarteng mini-budget and - though to nothing like the extent that right-wing commentators claimed (£), and perhaps hoped - by Reeves’ budget. If the Reeves budget escaped the market mauling that Kwarteng’s endured it was partly because it was accepted, for example and in particular by the IMF, that the borrowing it involved provided the basis for sustainable growth and necessary public investment. It was also because Reeves explicitly eschewed the Brexitist anti-institutional frenzy which characterized the mini-budget, a frenzy which ended with the ludicrous assertions about ‘deep state’ interference and ‘socialist’ market traders.

But it’s not just fiscal policy which has shown the irrelevance of being outside the EU. The same goes for most parts of regulatory policy, something tacitly accepted by the last government, and slightly more openly accepted by the present government. The reasons, which I’ve rehearsed endlessly on this blog, boil down to the fact that, in or out of the EU, the UK largely has little choice but to accept transnational rules. Moreover, largely for reasons of geographical reality, these are very often those of the EU itself. Even immigration, the strongest candidate for the claim that Brexit has made a difference to policy choices, doesn’t bear out the Brexiters’ thesis. The detailed inner workings and mechanisms of policy have changed, but the basic parameters are framed by the same economic and political questions as they always were.  

The constraints of domestic politics

This points to a related issue. It is not just that there are the same external constraints on policy as there were before Brexit. It is that there are the same, or similar, domestic constraints as before. It’s undoubtedly the case that many Brexiters on the free-market right saw leaving the EU as a way to introduce radical ‘neo-liberal’ [1] policies to become 'Singapore-on-Thames' (£), to use the common, though misleading, term. But the assumption that it was only EU membership which stood in the way was false.

The British electorate was and remains a major obstacle. If neo-liberals sought to achieve electoral consent for their vision via the backdoor of Brexit, it was because they had no confidence they could do so through the front door of a general election. That was actually underscored by the coalition of voters brought together by Vote Leave and, later, by Boris Johnson in the 2019 election. Many, if not most, of them wanted no such thing as the ‘Singapore Brexit’ agenda.

Hence, even after leaving the EU and after the pandemic, neither Johnson nor Sunak followed that agenda (£), much to the chagrin of its advocates. Liz Truss undoubtedly wanted (£) to go down something like that route but had not secured electoral support for doing so and, even if the bond markets hadn’t imploded her premiership, it’s far from clear she could have delivered on it politically even within her own party.

All this inflects another way. Just as many right-wing Brexiters saw the EU as a barrier to neo-liberalism, many on the left came to see it as a bulwark against such policies. This at least partly accounts for the shift from Labour’s 1983 ‘Brexit’ policy to its later, largely pro-EU, position. Of course this did not apply to some on the Labour left, who became what we now call Lexiters, but in the process that revealed another aspect of the incoherence of the Brexit coalition. For the Lexiters see the EU as neither a barrier to, nor a bulwark against, neo-liberalism, but as an incarnation of it.

The consequences of this are still playing out. At the time of the referendum, many left-wing remainers believed (and some still do) that because many neo-liberals supported Brexit then ‘therefore’ this was ‘the real purpose’ of Brexit. Ironically, this validates the neo-liberal Brexiters’ own complaint that what has been delivered is ‘not real Brexit’. For, manifestly, Brexit has not ushered in anything remotely like what they wanted.

The Freeports red herring

That ought to be seen as their problem, and as a demonstration that the neo-liberal Brexiters were as deluded and incompetent as every other brand of Brexiter. However, the insistence that this was what Brexit was ‘really all about’ lives on in the ridiculous claims about Freeports, which continue to do the rounds on social media, depicting these as being, or in the process of becoming, deregulated neo-liberal ‘zones of exception’ (there’s an irony in that, too, as it validates Brexiters’ own false claims about Freeports being, in their terms, a ‘Brexit benefit’).

In fact, they are no such thing, and the two pieces of ‘evidence’ cited to suggest otherwise are both flawed, as I discussed in more detail in a previous post. One is that these Freeports would violate ‘EU state aid rules’. It’s questionable whether this is true, but even if it is then it is an odd way to demonstrate their ‘neo-liberalism’. For, as the Lexiters insist, it is the EU’s state aid rules which are one of the principal reasons for regarding it as a neo-liberal institution. (Freeports aside, the Lexiter position on this is another example of the wider Brexiter falsity that it was EU rules, rather than the UK’s own political choices, which were the barrier to the use of state aid: whilst still in the EU the UK gave much less state aid in per capita terms than most other members.)

The other piece of ‘evidence’ given for deregulated Freeports is that the Retained EU Law (REUL) Act 2023 supposedly unleashed massive deregulation by scrapping 600 EU laws. But, apart from the fact that this applies across the country, not just in Freeports (so it is irrelevant to the claims about them), anyone with even a cursory understanding of this issue knows that REUL was a major disappointment to the neo-liberal Brexiters. They had wanted to scrap or automatically sunset all the estimated 4,000 EU laws by the end of 2023, and were infuriated that not only was the number scrapped so small, but that they generally related to trivialities. That decision, taken by Kemi Badenoch when she was Trade and Business Secretary, actually marked a defeat for them. That isn’t to say they may not revive in the future, and no doubt Trump’s victory will embolden their hopes of a similar resurrection, but the idea that REUL was a triumph for their version of Brexit is simply false.

The Freeports issue is an illustration of my wider point here, that the parameters of policy have not been changed by Brexit. It’s something demonstrated, if inadvertently and in a misleading way, when the Freeport alarmists talk about ‘the 86 Freeports and SEZs’ (Special Economic Zones). It’s misleading because Freeports are SEZs (so ‘Freeports and SEZs’ is a misnomer) and doing so enables them to talk of these being ‘rolled out’, when almost all of them have existed for years, and pre-date Brexit. And it’s that which illustrates the point that, both before and after Brexit, policy choices haven’t really changed. In this case, that is because SEZs were and still are predominantly areas with various business tax breaks, most if not all of which did not require Brexit. That doesn’t mean they are good, or that they are effective. It just means that they are pretty much what they have always been.

Back to the budget

This brings us back to the budget. It does so in one trivial way. Before the budget there was a report that it would announce five new Freeports. This report turned out to be mistaken, but not before much gnashing of teeth about how it ‘proved’ Labour had embraced post-Brexit neo-liberalism. Far more importantly, the budget marks a distinct break with recent economic policy, perhaps going as far back as 1979. That isn’t so much because of its taxation decisions as the role it envisages for state investment.

As such, it marks a decisive rejection of the neo-liberal ‘crowding out’ thesis – the idea that public investment crowds out private investment [2]. That was a key part of the intellectual undergirding of what became Thatcherism, and it persisted under George Osborne’s Chancellorship. Arguably, it also lay behind the Blair-Brown governments' embrace of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). This doesn’t mean that it was the ‘socialist’ budget or the “Marxist nightmare” (£) described by the ludicrous rantings of right-wing commentators. But nor does it warrant the lazy claim that there’s no difference between Labour and the Tories. It was, as Martin Kettle of the Guardian described it, “a budget in the identifiably social democratic Labour tradition”.

Whether it succeeds in delivering the economic growth it promises, and to what extent, is another question, and one made all the more difficult to answer by Trump’s election. But, along with other Labour policies, from industrial policy to workers’ rights – even if none of these go as far as some would want – it puts paid to the idea, at least for now, that Brexit was the harbinger of a new wave of neo-liberalism. In some ways, it could even be described as bringing the UK closer to a ‘European’ economic model.

The limits and consequences of choice

That might seem ironic, but to a certain sort of Brexiter, arguably the most principled sort, it would be no such thing. Such people would say that the point of Brexit was not to usher in any particular policies, but simply to ensure that the policies in place are those chosen by British voters [3]. It is the same argument they make when saying that Brexit did not mean lower immigration, just that immigration levels would be determined solely by the elected government.

It may be a fine sentiment, but it is a naïve one, ignoring the many constraints on the choices available to voters, constraints over which their elected governments have far less control than they used to over EU laws and regulations. Like it or not, voting never has been, and never could be, the sole source of policy. On the other hand, it ignores the fact that, despite those constraints, the same kind of budget as that of last week could have been delivered with or without Brexit. That doesn’t mean that Brexit has made no difference to this and other post-Brexit budgets. It has. But the only real difference it has made is that there is less money.

In a similar way, no British voter chose Trump as American President, and most of them are unhappy about his election and concerned about its implications for Britain, but they will all have to cope with the consequences of it. That would have been true with or without Brexit, but Brexit limits the choices for how to do so.

 

Notes

[1] I’m aware that some people find ‘neo-liberal’ an imprecise, irritating, or even meaningless term. I use it here as shorthand for the broad proposition that markets are the best way of allocating resources, that they do so best when minimally regulated, and the State should be confined to relatively limited functions.

[2] I’m thinking in particular of the influence of the ‘Bacon-Eltis’ version of the crowding out thesis. Crowding out as an idea has a longer history, but in their telling it was enrolled into the wider neo-liberal narrative of ‘private good, public bad’.

[3] This was the position of the late Tony Benn, who of course was a Lexiter avant la lettre, and, certainly in his version of it, it was not the same as either ‘nationalist’ or ‘sovereigntist’ positions.

The battle for Britain’s post-Brexit polity

In the book I wrote about Brexit I anticipated (pp. 275-278) two broad scenarios for how the immediate future would develop once the realities of Brexit began to be felt (the book itself ended with the end of the transition period). These scenarios weren’t about ‘staying out’ versus ‘re-joining’, though they might eventually have implications for that, but about different ways of ‘being out’.

Post-Brexit scenarios

In the first scenario, the bitter domestic debate and the corresponding antagonism towards the EU would gradually die down. The inescapable facts of geographical proximity and of economic and regulatory interdependence would normalize the UK-EU relationship, in that it would come to be viewed as a rather dull issue to be approached in pragmatic terms, and seen through the prism of UK strategic interests rather than Brexit per se. The first concrete outcome of that would come with making use of the provisions within the existing Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) to deepen it as regards both trade and security.

In the second scenario, the UK would be stuck in a perpetual Brexit ‘Groundhog Day’. The approach to relations with the EU would be one of permanent hostility, resentment and suspicion. And there would be a similar hostility to attempts from the supposed ‘Establishment’ and ‘liberal elite’ to improve those relations. The economic damage of Brexit would be blamed on ‘EU punishment’ rather than Brexit itself, and the Referendum vote would continue to be used as a supposed mandate for ever-greater divergence from the EU and even as a mandate for a “Brexit 2.0” of leaving the ECHR.

‘Scenario one’ might be called one of ‘rapprochement’ or perhaps ‘amelioration’, and ‘scenario two’ might be called one of ‘repetition’ or even ‘intensification’.

Elements of both of them have been on display this week. That is because we are now witnessing, on a daily basis, a battle that will determine which, if either, of these scenarios will prevail as the consensus view of the UK polity, broadly conceived.

It is a battle played out in contestations over the nature and extent of Brexit damage, over specific post-Brexit policies including the Northern Ireland Protocol and the Retained EU Law Bill, in all the less visible interchanges between interest groups and the government over post-Brexit funding schemes or regulatory regimes, and in increasingly vociferous denunciations of the ECHR, especially in the context of ‘the small boats crisis’.

The current state of play

By the ‘UK polity, broadly conceived’, I mean the nexus of political parties and political actors, civil society organizations, the commentariat and media, including social media, and public opinion. I stress that, because it is not, as some seem to think, simply about what the opinion polls say, important as that is. Public opinion is certainly a necessary condition in settling which scenario emerges, but it is not a sufficient one.

It is indeed the case that public opinion is settling towards the first scenario. Some 47% (and 30% of leave voters) want a closer relationship with the EU, though what is meant by ‘closer’ is not homogenous, with just 14% (and 18% of leave voters) wanting it to be more distant than at present. That is still not a majority, but it is a very strong lead. It is likely that political actors, in the sense of business groups, trade unions and numerous lobbying groups, are even more united in favouring scenario one, as evidenced for example by the many signatories to a letter calling on the government to abandon the Retained EU Law Bill (£).

However, the commentariat and media remain as split as ever, and scenario two still has enthusiastic support in, for example, the pages of the Telegraph, Mail and Express. There has been some change in the way that is expressed, though, with the tone becoming notably more defensive as the evidence of Brexit damage has mounted (£) and as commentators realize they are losing the battle of the narrative and, with it, public support.

As for the government, in line with my post last week it is hopelessly stuck. It’s clear that there are elements, including Rishi Sunak himself, which see the need for something like the first scenario on grounds of economic and political pragmatism. That is evident in numerous reports that Sunak wants a resolution on the Northern Ireland Protocol, but the fix he is in is reflected by other reports saying he has been “sitting on” an agreed deal for the last week, presumably for fear of the Brexit Ultras’ reaction. That looks like the final gasp of what for a long time seems to have been a policy of hoping that ‘something will turn up’. It hasn’t, and it’s likely he’ll find out next week what that reaction will be: already their opposition is growing louder (£).

The same desire for rapprochement is also evident in the government’s decision not to continue to contest the legal challenge to its treatment of EU citizens with pre-settled status and, in a more general way, in the Bloomberg report this week that Sunak has asked senior ministers and officials to draw up plans for a less acrimonious relationship with the EU. But, again, the same report highlighted the risk of a backlash to any such plans from the Ultras. And it’s not even as if the government itself has a coherent approach to EU relations since, in other reports this week, there are plans to “snub” the EU Horizon science funding programme, itself delayed purely because of the Protocol row.

Overall, whilst there may be some impetus to scenario one under Sunak, and he may even make some headway, there is no possibility of it becoming the settled consensus under this government. On the other hand, all the other political parties, apart from the Reform Party and DUP, are supportive of, at the very least, scenario one and certainly opposed to scenario two. The Labour Party, in particular, has effectively made scenario one its policy. So it does seem likely that, assuming a Labour election win, the next government will seek to enact it.

However, it’s crucial to understand that this would be a necessary but by no means sufficient condition for it actually happening. The key point is the earlier point that what is at issue is a consensus across the UK polity. Such a consensus doesn’t mean total agreement, which is never going to happen anyway. Instead it means scenario one dominating, and support for scenario two becoming the province of marginal and fringe actors in politics and the media. In particular, creating a consensus around scenario one will need significant buy-in from at least some who supported Brexit as well as from those who opposed it.

The Ditchley Park meeting

From that point of view, reports of a “secret” meeting held at the end of last week at Ditchley Park to “discuss the failings of Brexit and how to remedy them in the national interest” was an interesting development. The meeting brought together Brexiters (including Tories Michael Gove, Michael Howard and Norman Lamont, and Labour’s Gisela Stuart who co-chaired Vote Leave) and erstwhile remainers (including Labour’s David Lammy and Peter Mandelson, and the Tory David Lidington), as well as several former civil servants and some business leaders.

I call it ‘interesting’ not because it is going to yield anything in the way of concrete consequences, but because it is a tiny example, and so far as I know the first of its kind, of what a wider and long-term process of consensus-building for scenario one would look like. It is also, as Martin Fletcher of the New Statesman observes, perhaps the first time that as prominent a Brexiter as Gove has come anywhere close to acknowledging the failures of Brexit. Not that it should be over-stated: Gove, unlike those Labour MPs who attended, did so without the knowledge or consent of his party leader.

Brexiter reactions

That such a consensus is very far from being in the offing is also shown by the “near-hysterical responses” to news of the meeting. The most predictable came from Nigel Farage, with his autonomic reflex moan that “the full sell-out of Brexit is underway”. The Brexiter press took the same approach (£). You have to wonder just how often something can be sold out before there ceases to be anything left to betray. Brexiters like Sherelle Jacobs in the Telegraph (£) perhaps recognize this, but she draws the equally ludicrous conclusion that “Brexit was finally condemned to death in the gilded splendour of Ditchley Park”!

The Mail was sufficiently infuriated to run three items about the meeting – a report, an editorial, and a comment article by Steven Glover. Inevitably, the main attacks were multiple versions of the line that this was “a cynical remainer plot to derail Brexit”, but it was a line which made little sense, precisely because of the presence of “apparently unapologetic leavers” (though note the implied question raised by the word ‘apparently’) like “sinuous” Michael Gove (again, note the language: no one can fault tabloid journalists on their capacity to insinuate meaning). Nor could it be squared with the fact that neither re-joining the EU nor re-joining the single market were on the agenda. Indeed, all that was on the agenda was precisely the kind of rapprochement that I have called ‘scenario one’.

The logic of some of the Mail’s secondary lines of attack was also rather hard to follow. Apparently the secret nature of the meeting was evidence of its sinister intent, but so too was the fact that the leak of it having been held had appeared in the “Europhile Observer”. So was the cunning plot to conceal the meeting’s existence or to reveal it? Equally, David Frost ponderously warning, like a lumpen schoolboy who has diligently memorized the textbook without understanding its meaning, that the “establishment want to unravel the deals we did in 2020” was at odds with his own perpetual insistence that the Protocol, which is a key part of those deals, is not sacrosanct and, indeed, should be ‘unravelled’.

Most splenetic of all was someone called Carol Malone on GB News, who delivered a diatribe about “the anti-democratic treacherous elites” who by meeting to discuss how to make Brexit work better had apparently “spat on democracy and spat on the British people”. Goodness knows how unhinged she would have been had the meeting been a discussion of how to abandon Brexit altogether.

‘Remainer’ reactions

Perhaps less predictable were the negative reactions* from some of those who are anti-Brexit, although Martin Fletcher, referred to earlier, gave a qualified positive response and others were willing to give it a very cautious welcome. But some were almost as suspicious of the secrecy as the Brexiters, though it’s surely obvious that this was precisely because of the sensitivity of holding such a meeting, a sensitivity amply demonstrated by the ferocious response to its disclosure. In any case, whilst it is true the meeting wasn’t publicized by Ditchley Park, it wasn’t quite the conspiratorial event some depict it to be. To my mind, the level of confidentiality was sensible rather than sinister although, of course, ultimately such conversations will have to be public if a consensus for scenario one is to be created.

Many comments were disdainful of the lack of representation from any party other than Tories and Labour, or from trade unions and lobby groups. That’s a reasonable criticism, and, again, ultimately consensus-building would need a broader base, but it’s not indefensible to have a narrow group for what was widely recognized to be an unprecedented meeting, and one which would seem to have been very exploratory in nature.

In particular, some of these comments about lack of inclusiveness seemed to assume that the meeting had some kind of official or semi-official status that would, or could, give rise to a new national ‘plan’. Perhaps that was encouraged by the misleading reporting of the meeting as being a ‘Summit’. At all events it is obviously nonsense: such a meeting has no power at all, and certainly isn’t the basis of some kind of cross-party government or policy initiative. For that reason, similar comments about the lack of EU involvement were wide of the mark. The entire significance of the meeting, such as it is, lies in it (conceivably) being a tiny first step towards, specifically, domestic consensus-building around a very modest agenda.

Other comments jeered at precisely that modesty, insisting that no discussion was worthwhile that did not have re-joining the EU, or at least the single market, on the agenda. This is almost the mirror-image of the Brexiters’ criticisms, in that whereas they falsely assert that this was the real agenda and it was an attempt to sell out leavers, the re-join critics dismiss it for not having this agenda and being an attempt to sell out remainers.

Re-joiners beware

Underlying this is what I am increasingly coming to see as almost as big a block to ‘scenario one’ as that of the Brexit Ultras – the insistence by some that re-joining is something that will be quickly and easily achieved. I don’t think that is so, for the reasons I discussed in a video this week as a guest of Federal Trust (again, the comments beneath are instructive). But, whether I am right or wrong, the key point is that if re-joining is going to happen in whatever timescale, a necessary condition for it will be the creation of scenario one rather than scenario two. If scenario two becomes dominant, then re-joining will most certainly not happen. If scenario one takes hold then re-joining is by no means assured, but it becomes possible.

The danger, then, is that if even the tiniest step taken towards scenario one is dismissed out-of-hand by re-joiners and dismissed out-of-hand by Brexiters, then it will never happen. By insisting that only their preferred perfect outcome is acceptable, re-joiners, unwittingly no doubt, aid Brexiters in their rejection of it. In turn this makes it easier for scenario two to emerge. I don’t mean by this that re-joiners should give up on campaigning for their preferred outcome, just that they make that outcome much harder to achieve if they insist that anything other than the near-immediate delivery of that outcome is pointless or even, in a kind of reversal of the standard Brexiter line, a ‘betrayal’.

Commenting on reactions to the Ditchley Park meeting from “annoyed Remainers and EU commentators”, Helene von Bismarck, an eminent German historian specializing in Britain’s international relations, wrote “Too little, too late, they say. I am impatient too, but seriously, where do you want to start? If nothing except a Time Machine transporting you back to 2015 will make you happy, the future is bleak”. She also, rightly, pointed out that the meeting doesn’t constitute any kind of a turning point but at least – or at best – part of a process of facing up to the realities of Brexit.

That doesn’t, of course, mean that the agenda of that meeting did, in itself, face those realities. Gerhard Schnyder, in his discussion of it on his latest Brexit Impact Tracker is also absolutely right to say that:

“… eventually, the country will have to come together and heal the deep wounds Brexit has inflicted on the British body politic. But not on any terms. The risk is that if ‘moving on’ happens without a proper analysis of why Brexit took place and why it was never going to work, the ideas that drove the Brexit fringe of the UK’s political sphere will continue to cast their long shadows over the inevitable process of softening hard Brexit.”

However, that is not going to happen in one moment of revelation. The ‘proper analysis’ already exists; the political issue is to establish it as a consensus, which means enrolling at least some committed and leading Brexiters through a repudiation of their entrenched beliefs. That will take time and patience.

One implication of this could just conceivably be imminent. Although it is unlikely, suppose that Sunak decided that the only way of securing the deal with the EU to revise the Protocol was to take up Keir Starmer’s offer of Labour support, or even just threaten to do so to bring his rebels into line? If so, re-joiners should resist the temptation to denounce Labour for ‘propping up’ Brexit and instead see it as a significant move towards creating scenario one through a cross-party agreement that marginalizes the Brexit Ultras and undermines their desire for scenario two.

A battle for high stakes

The stakes here are very high. Each of the scenarios I sketched has very different consequences. For scenario one, rapprochement and amelioration lead to ‘restoration’, by which I don’t, or don’t simply, mean eventual re-joining, but a thorough repudiation and marginalization of the entire populist or Brexitist project. For scenario two, repetition and intensification lead to ‘pariahdom’, meaning international isolation and domestic authoritarianism and immiseration. But it’s also possible that the current situation, in which the two scenarios are contested with neither becoming dominant, will become the permanent one. That scenario, which we could call ‘muddling along’, actually seems quite likely at the moment and if so would lead to permanent economic and geo-political decline, as well perpetual political and cultural strife.

How re-joiners decide to conduct themselves will be one, though clearly only one, of the factors in what now happens in terms of these post-Brexit scenarios. The extent of the damage of Brexit and how widely that damage is recognized is one of many others. So is the scale of the expected Tory defeat at the next election and how the Tory Party then responds. A Labour government will take us some way to scenario one, though won’t be enough to do so in itself, and will presumably improve the TCA (and, to pre-empt some objections, no, that doesn’t mean ‘cherry-picking’ and, no, it won’t come close to reversing the economic damage of Brexit).

Getting from that to any kind of re-joining (whether of EU or single market) will need a situation to develop where it is the settled ambition of both government and official opposition parties, rather as it was in the 1960s when (unsuccessful) applications to join the EU were made by both Conservative and Labour governments, though, post-Brexit, any such application would need to be preceded by a referendum. In other words, as then, and quite differently than was the case with Brexit, joining would become an established national strategy.

The British polity is currently nowhere near that point. And it may never get to that point (and that won’t be hastened but delayed if, as some think, it needs to be preceded by reforming the ‘first past the post system’, which would mean electing a government with such a policy and then holding, and winning, a referendum on that, before even getting to the question of re-joining).

The long road ahead

But if things are ever to get to that point it will start with baby steps like the Ditchley Park meeting (even to call that a baby step is to over-state the case), after which there could and would certainly need to be far more confident and significant strides. The Brexiters, even as their cause languishes in the opinion polls, will still have the power to keep trying to trip that process up. They can only be aided in that if re-joiners and erstwhile remainers jeer at and belittle every fledgling attempt to walk.

Of course it is absurd, infuriating, ludicrous that we should be in such a situation, and that it is not possible simply to say, as one might in everyday life, that a terrible mistake was made and that it should be put right as quickly as possible. But, politically, that isn’t possible because of the deep and toxic nature of Brexit and the bitter divisions that still exist over it, including over the very idea that it was a terrible mistake. For evidence of that, just look at the extraordinary anger even something as trivial as the Ditchley Park meeting provoked. The poison can’t just be sucked and spat out. The fever has to pass and, even then, a long recuperation will be needed.

In the time that takes, the costs of Brexit will rack up, higher and higher. That’s disastrous. But one of the many damages caused by Brexit is precisely the fact that even the process of reversing it entails huge costs.

 

 

*I am mainly referring here to reaction on social media. In line with my usual practice I don’t link to tweets unless they are from public figures, but if anyone doubts the veracity of my account of these reactions see, for example, some of the responses to my own tweet of the original report of the meeting.

Strange days

Despite the two-week gap since my last post, Brexit developments have been relatively sparse. There is, as always, the endless drip of bad news stories and of new data on the damage of Brexit. In the former category is the final grisly demise of Britishvolt, once lauded as the shiny example of post-Brexit industrial strategy. It is now more readily understood as illustrating the total absence of such a strategy which, the CBI warned this week (£), is causing global investors to ‘shun’ Britain. The week before, Make UK gave a similar warning (£), blaming post-Brexit political instability.

In the latter category is a new report from the Centre for European Reform on the extent of the labour shortages Brexit has caused. Not only does this contribute to the now everyday experience of businesses being unable to provide services, for example in the hospitality sector, it also has adverse implications for economic growth and inflation. There’s also no doubt that this, and Brexit generally, is contributing to the burgeoning NHS crisis, according to a Nuffield Trust report (actually published just before Christmas, but I’ve only just become aware of it).

Meanwhile, the two main strands of Brexit politics, those of the Northern Ireland Protocol and the EU Retained Law Bill, drag on undramatically, yet with the capacity to unleash crisis and chaos in the near future. Both are dominated by the never-ending toxicity of the internal dynamics of the Tory Party.

Northern Ireland Protocol: will the ‘Brexit purity cult’ swallow a deal?

Thus talks about the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP) have continued, and the tone of very cautious optimism continues, most recently in a joint statement following Monday’s meeting between James Cleverley and Maros Sefcovic. It is reported in The Times (£) that the creation of a UK database giving the EU real-time information on goods moving to Northern Ireland has made the possibility of green and red trade traffic channels viable. But, although described as a “breakthrough” (£), assiduous readers of this blog will have known that this was in the offing over a month ago.

The same report explains that the UK has now given the go ahead to building permanent border facilities in Northern Ireland, but, again, that was covered on this blog two weeks ago. The report does, though, contain the amusing detail that these facilities may be called ‘huts’ rather than ‘border posts’ as a way of downplaying their significance to unionists and Brexiters. It’s true that within both these groups there are some who might, not entirely uncharitably, be described as intellectually challenged, but it seems somewhat unlikely that such semantics will fool even them.

Indeed, the core political question remains whether the unionists and, especially, the Tory Brexiters will accept any deal that may be done, especially on the issue of the role of the ECJ, and the answer to it is as uncertain as ever (£). One development has been Keir Starmer’s offer to provide the parliamentary support to get a deal agreed in the face of what he called the “Brexit purity cult which can never be satisfied”, though it seems almost inconceivable that Rishi Sunak would accept such an offer, or that doing so would overcome rather than exacerbate the divisions in his party, even though it could resolve the immediate issue of the NIP.

Starmer, no doubt, knows this and it’s fair to call his intervention “political mischief”. Yet it does also point to the way that the best long-term way of repairing the damage of Brexit lies with the side-lining of the small, but powerful and toxic, coterie of what is, indeed, the Brexit Ultra cult. Indeed, it is a very mild and minimalist version of the strategy which I recently suggested Labour might adopt on Brexit more generally.

Whilst current attention is on the prospects of a deal over the NIP, it’s important not to forget the origins of this mess in the entire Brexit project and process in general, as well as the specific mendacity of Boris Johnson in agreeing the Protocol in the first place. A significant reminder of that will come with the publication next week of Stefaan De Rynck’s book Inside the Deal. De Rynck was a senior aide to Michel Barnier throughout the negotiations and his account of the events leading to the NIP has been previewed by RTE’s Tony Connelly. Amongst much else, this shows that Johnson knowingly and explicitly accepted all of the provisions which he, and Brexiters who voted for it, now regard as unacceptable, including the role of the ECJ. As ever, dishonesty lies at the rotten core of Brexit.

Retained EU Law Bill: a prize for the ‘Brexit purity cult’?

The baleful influence of the ‘Brexit purity cult’ also lies behind the ongoing passage of the Retained EU Law (REUL) Bill, which passed unamended through the Commons this week, although is likely to face extensive opposition in the House of Lords. Widely regarded as an abomination, both in principle and in the grave practical dangers it poses, it has even been ‘red-rated’ by the government’s independent Regulatory Policy Committee because of the inadequacy of its Impact Assessment process. But it has become totemic to many of the Brexit Ultras such as Jacob Rees-Mogg who, quite illegitimately, seeks to tie its passage to the outcome of the referendum (£) using all the tired old tropes of the obstructiveness of the ‘remainer Establishment’ to do so.

Yet, more interestingly, the REUL debate shows once again, and even now, that the Brexiters have no settled idea about what Brexit actually means. As I mentioned in my previous post, those who insisted it was all about parliamentary sovereignty ought to be alarmed by the REUL Bill which so blatantly undermines it. And so it has proved, with David Davis, no less, spearheading an unsuccessful rebellion against it on just those grounds. That may be remarkable in being the first time Davis has ever been right about anything to do with Brexit, but it shows the incoherence of the Brexit project, as well as the sheer extremism of Rees-Mogg and similar ‘Brexit Spartans’*.

Although the Davis rebellion failed, the REUL Bill also illustrates the ongoing unleadability of the Tory Party and Sunak’s vulnerability to its now numerous flanks and factions in almost every policy area. In this sense, his administration is the latest manifestation of the rolling political crisis the Brexit referendum unleashed. Indeed one of the reasons why so much in modern Britain seems not to ‘work’ properly must surely be the way that the administrative demands of Brexit, on the one hand, and the political chaos it has engendered, on the other, mean that much of the basic work of a functioning government has been neglected for seven years. The anticipated chaos the REUL Bill will cause when enacted can only prolong that.

This dysfunctionality was not diminished by the size of the Tory majority since 2019, since from the start, with the exception of the vote on Johnson’s Brexit deal, it proved to be highly brittle and fractious. In fact, both the majority and its brittleness are inextricably linked: the ‘get Brexit done’ coalition of voters and MPs which created the 2019 majority is inherently incoherent. This makes it impossible for any Tory Prime Minister to stick to their principles, a situation compounded by Sunak’s lack of any evident principles to stick to, since he displays neither Johnson’s blatant commitment to his own self-interest nor Truss’s naked ideological fervour.  

No doubt Sunak has a modest share of both those characteristics, but far more obvious is his plasticity – not in the sense of being malleable, but of being lacking in solidity or substance which, in turn, does make him plastic in the sense of being malleable in his decisions. Even his pitch of ‘pragmatism’ is shown to be bogus given the manifest lack of pragmatism of REUL. Thus, exactly as was the case under Johnson and Truss, it is simply impossible to be sure which way Sunak will bend both on the NIP and on what becomes of the REUL Bill, including what use is made of its powers when it passes. It may even be, as I’ve suggested before, that the one depends on the other – in other words that his decision to plough on with REUL is to soften the pill he knows he is going to have to try to get the Brexit Ultras to swallow over the NIP. Then again, it is equally possible that he may give in to them on both.

The death of Brexit?

One curious feature of the present political landscape is that, despite the Brexiters’ continuing throat grip on the government, self-confidence amongst their wider camp-followers in the media seems to have collapsed. That has been underway for a while, but was dramatically illustrated by Sherelle Jacobs’ recent Telegraph column (£), bemoaning that Brexit has become “unsalvageable” because of “the hash” the Tories have made of this.

At one level, this is boilerplate stuff about how true Brexit has been ‘betrayed’, and all would have been well if only it had been done ‘properly’. But the language is especially spicy, for example in saying that “Brexit has become the madwoman in the country’s attic”, and it comes from one of the most dogmatic of Brexit flag wavers. Indeed Jacobs even castigates “the Spartans” for fighting their “last heroic battle” over the REUL, saying that in doing so they fail to see “the big picture” and are pursuing divergence for its own sake in a way that will seem pointless to many voters. Similarly, since Jacobs sees delaying an NIP agreement as being useful to the EU who, she suggests, want to wait for a Labour government to get a ‘softer’ deal, then what does this say about the Spartans’ anticipated opposition to whatever deal Sunak may do?

The headline of Jacobs’ piece (‘Britain is going to rejoin the EU far sooner than anyone now imagines’) prompted some excitement, as it seemed to be a case of the devil quoting scripture, but there was actually little in the article to justify it. And, in fact, the most obvious significance of the REUL battle is that the Brexiters are using what may their last months in power to leave a ‘scorched earth’ of entrenched divergence from EU law so as to make future alignment, let alone re-joining either the single market or the EU, more difficult for a future government.

So Jacobs may be right in saying of the present situation that “this is how Brexit dies”, but Brexiter MPs are doing all they can to prolong its life even if they, like Jacobs, recognize its failure. If so, that makes their actions even more despicable.

So is re-joining in prospect?

Of course Brexit, in the literal sense of the UK not being a member of the EU, will not simply die. It will continue unless it is reversed, and as I argued at the end of last year that will be a marathon not a sprint. In brief, it would require a government to be elected with a manifesto pledge to hold a referendum, which almost certainly isn’t going to happen in 2024, so would be 2029 at the very earliest. Personally, I think that the entire British polity has been so scarred and traumatised by the 2016 referendum that it will be much longer than that before any government contemplates repeating it. Either way, if and when it happens, that referendum would have to be not just held but won by re-joiners.

Additionally the EU and all its members would need to have confidence that both the size of that win, and a changed political culture of the UK, indicated that a subsequent change of mind would not happen. And by a changed political culture I mean not just the marginalization of Brexiters, but a sustained and wholehearted commitment to the EU as an ideal. It couldn’t simply be, as it was for many who voted to stay in the EEC in 1975, based on some grudging, transactional acceptance of the evident economic costs of not belonging. A re-joining UK would need to clear a much higher bar in that respect than a new entrant, precisely because of Brexit having happened, which has been traumatic for the EU, too.

How (not) to win friends and influence people

If all this is to come to pass, it will require the creation and maintenance of a ‘big tent’ re-join movement over many years, perhaps even decades. From that point of view, it will be important not to alienate sympathetic allies. In my previous post I discussed an article by Martin Fletcher in the New Statesman which I felt had been unfairly treated by anti-Brexiters, especially given Fletcher’s long track record of critiquing Brexit, a treatment he subsequently described as “a ton of slurry [landing] on my head”.

To summarise very briefly, he argued ‘remainers’ should recognize that re-joining wasn’t on the agenda for a generation and in the meanwhile seek to contribute to a post-Brexit consensus. My criticism was that, whilst I agreed about re-join being a generation away, his consensus proposals were totally unrealistic. It’s relevant to what I’m about to write that he described this criticism as “well taken” and expressed with “civility”, showing that it is possible for like-minded people to disagree without rancour.

Without reprising the discussion, my point here is about the “ton of slurry” Fletcher received. It accords with my own observation and, to an extent, experience in recent months, in that there seems to be a seam of anti-Brexit sentiment which is every bit as judgemental and even vicious as some of the nastiest elements of the Brexit camp. No doubt there are earlier examples, but it first really caught my attention at the time of the P&O sackings last March, when I recorded on this blog that “it has been depressing to see so much disinformation about this coming from the ‘remain’ side, and the virulence with which some have responded to corrections to the false claim that Brexit is what made it possible for the P&O workers to be sacked in the manner that they were”.

I’ve subsequently experienced some of that virulence first-hand, especially from those who took umbrage at my explanation of why Freeports are not ‘Charter Cities’. Perhaps I have been lucky, or naïve, not to have come across this before. In 2018, Robert Shrimsley of the Financial Times wrote that (£):

“Not being a Leaver, I had never really experienced the venom [of remainers] — until last week when I wrote a piece, which I won’t rehash here, doubting the case for a second referendum. As a liberal metropolitan media Remainer, I have got used to being regarded as an enemy of the people by Arron Banks, Nigel Farage and the Daily Mail. But it came as a shock to find I am also an enemy of the people to people I would until recently have regarded as friends. My enemy’s enemy has turned out to be my enemy too. By not supporting a second referendum, I am apparently transformed into Jacob Rees-Mogg.”

It may be understandable that, in the highly charged atmosphere of 2018, Shrimsley got this reaction. But the political situation facing re-joiners now is very different to that facing remainers then. Then, there was the immediate possibility of avoiding Brexit, and a one-shot route to doing so, making dissent from it hard to stomach. Now, there is a long haul towards reversing it, requiring a different political approach.

A very minor illustration of the implications of that is provided by the way my agreement with Fletcher about re-joining the EU not being on the agenda for a generation attracted a series of snide and increasingly unpleasant tweets from the Oxford for Europe group (or, more accurately, whoever operates its Twitter account) which led me to block their account, something I would never have expected to find myself doing. At a personal level, it was hurtful, and cost me some lost sleep. That wasn’t because it was abusive or especially insulting – I’ve had much worse over the years, though almost invariably from leavers. But, just as Shrimsley described, that’s the nub of it: it was hurtful because it came from a group to which, in principle, I’m sympathetic and, indeed, to which I have given an invited talk in the past.

But my point isn’t to solicit sympathy (perhaps I am too thin-skinned) or to elicit support for my view of the likely timescale for re-joining (which may, of course, be wrong). Rather, it is that if a re-join campaign is to gain traction, whatever the timescale may be, it will need to come to encompass those who are currently hostile to it. That is unlikely to happen if its proponents conduct themselves in so vexatious a way as to alienate even those who are already receptive to it. In a similar way, little good can come of heaping “slurry” on the head of someone like Martin Fletcher or aiming “venom” at someone like Robert Shrimsley.

Strange days

It’s difficult at the moment to capture the Brexit developments in a single narrative arc. The quote from Antonio Gramsci that “the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear” has become so over-used as to be clichéd, as well as ripped from its original context. But it captures something about the strange days we are living through, with Brexiters like Sherelle Jacobs talking of the death of Brexit, and public opinion clearly showing that Brexit is regarded as a mistake, yet no solution in prospect.

It has actually now also become clichéd to observe, invariably using, as Jacobs does, yet another cliché, that the failure of Brexit is ‘the elephant in the room’ of the vast majority of political and economic discussion. So, paradoxically, Brexit is both unsayable and yet its unsayability is constantly spoken of. It seems likely that these strange days will continue for quite some time to come. That, at least, seems to be the consensus of political experts and, as Brexit has shown us, we ignore experts at our peril. But Brexit has also taught us just how unpredictable politics can be.

Strange days, indeed.

 

*Rees-Mogg wasn’t, in fact, one of the original Brexit Spartans, defined as those who voted against May’s deal all three times (he voted for it the third time). In other Spartan news, Andrew Bridgen has lost the Tory whip for comparing the Covid vaccination programme (puzzlingly, something which usually, though dishonestly, Brexiters regard as a benefit of Brexit) to the Holocaust, whilst fellow-Spartan Suella Braverman refused to apologise to a Holocaust survivor for the ‘dehumanising language’ she uses to describe migrants. Other alumni include Andrew Rosindell, whose claims to fame include his failed attempt to get the Union flag on all new car number plates, and Owen Paterson, the disgraced and now former MP currently seeking redress for his downfall in the ECHR he once said the UK should “break free” from. Always a pleasure to see what the class of 2019 is up to.

Making Brexit boring

The dramatic collapse of Boris Johnson’s premiership is inseparable from Brexit. His rise to power was built on Brexit, whilst the spectacular immorality and mendacity that caused his eventual downfall were at the heart of the tawdry campaign he fronted that yielded Brexit. There’s much more to say about that, and I will do so in a future post. But when the dust settles, and Johnson has been replaced by a new Tory leader, there will still be the never-ending consequences of Brexit to deal with. It’s certainly nonsense for anyone, whether pro- or anti-Brexit, to suggest that “if Boris goes, Brexit goes”.

So although it has almost been lost in this week’s political turmoil, I want to focus on an important Brexit development which occurred on Monday, when Sir Keir Starmer finally gave a single, dedicated speech on Labour’s Brexit policy. It may very well be that this policy will be re-calibrated according to who replaces Johnson, as many of the dynamics of politics will change as a result. But, even so, other dynamics will remain the same.

For example, it’s impossible to imagine the replacement resiling from hard Brexit, and quite likely that in the coming leadership campaign ‘getting rid of the Protocol’ will be a similar virility test to those of ‘getting rid of the hated backstop’ and ‘being prepared for a no-deal Brexit’ during that of 2019 which brought Johnson to power. Equally, the issues for Labour arising from the extent of leave support within its traditional heartlands, along with the extent of remain support amongst its voters overall, will still exist. In any case, whatever happens, any re-calibration of Labour policy on Brexit will now have to occur against the base line of what Starmer said in Monday’s speech. So it’s worth paying attention to it.

Breaking the loud silence

It was an encouraging speech whilst also being hugely disappointing, a paradox which, unsurprisingly, led to it having a distinctly mixed reception.

It was encouraging in marking an important change, that change being the simple fact of having given such a speech. Most of its content had already appeared in bits and pieces from various Labour politicians, but, for the first time, the Labour leader has drawn these together and devoted a whole speech to Brexit. The near silence is over. That is an important moment for Starmer and Labour – whose refusal to talk about Brexit has been criticised for well over a year now, and had become almost absurd in recent weeks as so much of the damage of Brexit has become undeniable.

It is also important for the wider polity because the Tories, too, have had little to say about Brexit other than the hollow boast to have ‘got it done’, overblown claims about post-Brexit trade deals, silly gimmicks like consulting on imperial measures, and the downright lie that the vaccine rollout was a Brexit benefit (on which Jacob Rees-Mogg was neatly skewered by Kirsty Wark this week). So it brings some – some – honesty to the polity because it acknowledges that Brexit is an ongoing and contested process. And it means that, now, Labour can attack the government for its handling of that process whilst having an answer of sorts to the question of what it would do differently.

Yet that answer is a disappointing one, and in some key respects an ambiguous one. It could hardly have given less to erstwhile remainers without being indistinguishable from the government’s policy. It offered the bare minimum of an alternative, and no one could call it an inspiring vision for Britain’s future. But it wasn’t altogether empty, and its critics should be careful not to fall into the age-old political trap of ‘making the perfect the enemy of the good’.

For it’s clear that Labour would adopt a far less confrontational and untrustworthy approach to relationships with the EU than Johnson did. Doing so isn’t a solution to anything in itself, though it would at least offer a respite from the endless, exhausting, shameful drama of this government’s conduct. More importantly, it is a vital pre-requisite to finding some solutions, and its importance shouldn’t be underestimated. It ought to enable a resolution of the Northern Ireland Protocol row, if that is still unresolved by the next election, and thereby unlock access to Horizon, another of Starmer’s goals (though much damage will already have been done if that, too, has not happened before the election).

That is likely to continue to be true if Johnson is replaced by someone like Liz Truss or Suella Braverman. On the other hand it is conceivable, though not very likely, that Johnson’s replacement will seek to re-set relations with the EU, perhaps even to the extent of dropping the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill (which, for now, seems set to continue its legislative passage, but, given expected House of Lords opposition, surely won’t make it through to the statute book before the new Prime Minister is in place).

If so, then Starmer’s promise of a change in tone would lose its distinctiveness. That in turn might prod him towards a more ambitious stance so as to differentiate Labour from the government. I suppose the biggest danger is that if the Tories did elect a ‘pragmatist’ who more or less took the line Starmer has put forward, then Labour might settle for parking Brexit as an issue altogether and a low-grade fudge on UK-EU relations would become the consensus of the two main parties. But it’s highly unlikely that the Tory Party, and especially the ERG, are about to go down such a route, and likely that many in the Labour Party, and outside, will continue to push Starmer towards a stronger position.

Ambiguities and implications

On the substance of his proposals, Starmer’s promise of a veterinary, or sanitary and phyto-sanitary, agreement would, in principle, smooth some of the frictions for British trade generally and would make the Irish Sea border considerably thinner. But here there is an ambiguity, as it’s only workable if it means the Swiss-style ‘dynamic alignment’ agreement that the EU has offered. Last month, Rachel Reeves spoke of having a veterinary agreement but compared it to that between the EU and New Zealand. If that’s really the model Labour have in mind then it is an ‘equivalence’ agreement and was originally sought by the government and rejected by the EU. It’s a non-starter (the differences between regulatory ‘equivalence’ and ‘dynamic alignment’ in relation to a veterinary agreement are explained in a House of Commons Library briefing).

In his speech, Starmer only referred to the veterinary agreements the EU has with “other countries”. However, in an interview, he, too, mentioned New Zealand as an example, but also made reference to how an agreement would reduce checks on the Irish Sea border by 80%. That figure (which some dispute) is the one first provided by Maros Sefcovic when offering the Swiss-style dynamic alignment deal, so using it implied that this was what Starmer meant, although he dodged the key question about what would happen if EU standards change.

It is, to say the least, infuriating that even now, when proposing a very modest measure, Starmer feels it necessary to describe it in such strangulated terms that it’s impossible to be sure what he means. Are we really back to the nods and winks about a vaguely-specified ‘closer relationship’ of the Corbyn years? Nevertheless, given his grasp of Brexit detail, I assume Starmer knows that an equivalence agreement isn’t going to happen and that his proposal is for dynamic alignment.

If that is the idea, then implicit (but, still, only implicit) in it is that Labour will not be doctrinaire in refusing any role for the ECJ. That does seem to be the case, because it is also implicit in what was said about the Protocol and, even more so, in the proposal to create a security pact with the EU, which included a reference to data-sharing. Such data-sharing entails ECJ involvement, and it was Frost-Johnson’s aversion to this that led to the security part of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) being so thin.

So even if Starmer still isn’t willing to spell it out in terms, this does seem to code a real shift away from the red line that Theresa May originally drew (though later softened) on the ECJ, and away from the Frost-Johnson ‘scorched earth’ approach. If that shift is made in the areas he mentioned then that opens the door to deeper cooperation in multiple areas, and perhaps ultimately to something like an Association Agreement or an even more extensive arrangement than that, as was once mooted but swept away in the scorched earth frenzy of Johnson’s administration. For that matter, it shouldn’t be forgotten that Johnson’s own non-binding Political Declaration which accompanied his Withdrawal Agreement promised a far closer future relationship than eventuated in the TCA. Johnson reneged on that, but it could potentially be resurrected and might still appeal to the EU which, of course, also signed up to it.

That’s for the future. For now, clearly Starmer’s current proposals, including his other ideas such as enhanced mutual recognition of professional qualifications, barely touch the surface of repairing the damage of Brexit. That was acknowledged in the speech when he said that “complete frictionless trade” was impossible outside the single market and customs union, though it was implied that the proposed mitigations are much more substantial than they really are. The proposals do, however, suggest avoiding adding to the damage, for example in signalling a desire not to diverge on data protection rules, as the government currently plans to, and, by implication, to minimise regulatory divergence generally.

It remains to be seen if the next Tory leader will outflank Starmer’s proposals, but I think it is highly unlikely. I simply can’t imagine the ERG, or the Tory party membership, allowing the installation of anyone who would accept a dynamically aligned veterinary agreement, more role for the ECJ, or a softer line on regulatory divergence. Indeed I’d expect all the candidates to make a strong pitch on ‘maximising the benefits of Brexit’ (sic) through divergence, and most to take a ‘tough’ line on the Protocol.

Infuriating but astute

Unsurprisingly, the speech has infuriated many, possibly most, erstwhile remainers, many of whom would like Labour to adopt a ‘single market’ policy and some of whom want a ‘rejoin’ policy. Others, equally opposed to Brexit, recognized it as at least the basis for a new and better approach.  There’s no easy or perfect answer for Labour, whose calculation will be that when push comes to shove many or most of those who are infuriated will stick with Labour even so, whilst hoping that this new approach will not alienate and may even appeal to some leave voters. The danger is that it loses swathes of remain voters and is either ignored or disliked by leavers. That’s a risk, just as any way Labour positions itself on Brexit would be a risk, and it remains to be seen if it has been calculated correctly.

The flip side is that, just because it is so limited in its appeal to remainers, it is very hard for the Tories to attack. Of course, they will try to do so, and to depict Starmer as an unrepentant remainer. That’s already started and it would happen whatever he did or didn’t say. It says much for Brexiters’ disingenuity in constantly demanding that remainers should accept and get behind Brexit that they immediately greeted his acceptance of it as a dishonest ruse (£).

Some argue that, therefore, Labour might as well have a maximalist anti-Brexit policy since it is going to get attacked in that way anyway. But that is flawed reasoning: the capacity for an attack to gain traction is at least partly reliant on it being accurate, and whilst the pro-Brexit press don’t care about accuracy there will be enough commentators in the media and enough voters able to see through any attempt to depict Starmer as somehow trying to reverse Brexit on the basis of these slender proposals. Only those whose votes are already lost to Labour are likely to buy such an attack.

In one particular way, Starmer’s approach is quite astute. For once I agree with Nigel Farage, whose observation this week that it is a proposal to “make Brexit boring” was an accurate one. In suggesting some limited technical fixes Starmer’s approach neither excites nor repels anyone. And this is exactly the kind of detoxification of Brexit which is needed, because in some ways the entire Brexit saga has been about treating a technocratic question of institutions as a cultural and emotional one of identity. It also enfolds Brexit into the wider critique of Tory incompetence, which, apart from being a potent political tactic, serves to normalise it as part of ongoing political debate rather than treating it as the sacred relic of populist imaginations.

Certainly, whatever the Brexit Ultras may think, very few voters care about ECJ oversight of database sharing or even about the ECJ at all. During the referendum, whenever those planning to vote leave because they objected to the role of ‘European courts’ were asked for examples the things they mentioned were always to do with the ECHR not the ECJ. And I doubt that one in a million people both know and care about the difference between regulatory equivalence and regulatory alignment of sanitary and phyto-sanitary standards. So it’s no criticism of Starmer’s approach to call it dull. Brexit is dull, just as EU membership was dull. The tragedy is that it was made interesting. Making Brexit boring is perhaps the best thing that could happen.

Realistic but over-cautious

It’s also misguided to suggest, as some claimed following the speech, that Starmer’s proposals are ‘cakeist’ (i.e. calling for the benefits of EU membership without belonging). The main ideas of a veterinary agreement (if dynamically aligned) and a security pact have already been offered in principle by the EU, and mutual recognition of professional qualifications is within the scope of the TCA, although in practice may not be so easy to achieve. Other easements are also possible within the five-year review of the TCA. So long as Starmer has understood – and, again, given his immersion in the detail of Brexit, he surely must have done – the implications of what he said for ECJ involvement then it’s simply absurd to call these ideas cakeism. It is in any case odd to do so whilst at the same time decrying them for being so unambitious.

Speaking personally, what Starmer said mostly accorded with what I’ve been arguing recently Labour should be saying, and indeed a year ago I suggested that the pragmatic path for Labour would be to propose “a better Brexit deal for Britain”, so I’d be churlish to criticise it (although I still think my slogan is better than that of ‘make Brexit work’). I certainly agree that he is right to rule out re-joining the EU. For all the passion of the advocates of re-joining, such a policy would be wholly unrealistic for Labour electorally and also unrealistic for the country and for the EU.

For one thing, it would unquestionably involve another referendum. That was conceivable as a confirmatory vote during the leaving process. But does anyone really have the stomach for a whole new referendum in the foreseeable future, or seriously think proposing one could be an election-winning policy? And if such a referendum was held then, unless (unlike that of 2016) it was set up to require a super-majority, and achieved it – and perhaps even in those circumstances – it would be a huge ask of the EU to re-admit the UK after all the pain of the last six years and with the risk of yet another change of heart. Imagine a simple majority vote yielded, say, 52-48 to re-join. It would hardly be a robust basis for the UK to embark on an application, or for the EU to welcome it.

Some argue that ruling out ‘re-join’ as unrealistic becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that ensures it never gets achieved. That’s true as a matter of logic of any policy about anything. But it does not follow that by deeming a policy realistic, and pursuing it on that basis, it then becomes realistic. There may come a time when re-joining becomes a viable strategy, but it is not going to be in the next parliament. It would probably need years of strong and sustained public support for it to be a realistic option for both the UK and the EU. That could happen, given the generational profile of support for re-joining, but it may never happen. Either way the real question is what happens in the immediate future?

In that respect, I think that Starmer is wrong in closing the door so hard against membership of the single market and a customs union. I don’t think he necessarily needs to makes these things Labour policy – though clearly many in his party do (£) – but instead of ruling such memberships out he should propose the establishment of Citizens’ Assemblies, and perhaps other consultations, to discuss the possibility of them in the future. Whereas re-joining isn’t realistic for a very long time, single market membership and/or a customs treaty could become so much more quickly. Both would present challenges for the EU – and it shouldn’t be assumed that they are simply there for the taking if and when Britain wants them – but these aren’t insurmountable and there’s no reason why a fresh referendum would be needed to pursue this path. After all, the Tories insisted no referendum was needed to endorse hard Brexit.

Certainly opinion poll evidence suggests there could be domestic support for a softer Brexit, and an interesting article about this evidence by Sam Bright in Byline Times concludes that:

“Labour’s decision to criticise the outcomes of Johnson’s Brexit, while supporting the thawing of tensions with the EU, therefore seems to be a politically sound one – for now. In the medium term, however, if and when the benefits of Brexit firmly fail to materialise, Labour may be able to offer a stronger policy.”

Labour's interests and anti-Brexit interests are different

I would add two points to this assessment. One is that the ‘medium-term’ is quite elastic, and could be with us sooner than expected. The danger of Starmer’s caution is that Labour could quite quickly find itself well behind the curve of public opinion, especially in the unpredictable post-Johnson climate. The other point is a deeper one. The interests of anti-Brexiters and of Labour strategists are by no means identical, although they overlap at points. The pre-condition of softening Brexit is the removal of the Tory government, which will certainly continue to be led by someone pro-hard Brexit. That’s clear enough, and here the interests overlap. But whereas Labour would, entirely reasonably, like to form a majority government, anti-Brexiters’ best (realistic) hope is for a Labour minority government, supported by the LibDems and perhaps the SNP.

This prospect, perhaps the most likely outcome of the next election, is already being attacked by the Tories using the ‘coalition of chaos’ line of 2015, though I doubt it will have so much purchase next time, given the utter chaos of the present government which, even if it stabilises, won’t be quickly forgotten. For anti-Brexiters, the bigger the LibDem presence, in particular, the better (clearly there is a ceiling on what the SNP can achieve given it only stands in Scotland, and a big question as to whether they and Labour could strike a deal). Indeed from that point of view, Labour’s rather minimalist policy is actually helpful if it pushes some anti-Brexit voters to the LibDems, so long as they also vote tactically with regard to the constituency they happen to live in.

A large LibDem presence should be able to pressure a Labour minority administration to a far more ambitious anti-hard Brexit stance than Starmer has outlined, perhaps even so far as seeking single market membership and/or a customs union. And since, I assume, Starmer would not in those circumstances want to lose the opportunity of leading an administration he is foolish to have so definitively ruled out these possibilities as he may have to backtrack. That’s especially so as it seems probable that he, personally, would welcome this policy. But the key point is that anti-Brexiters shouldn’t get hung up on whether Labour has the policy they want; what matters is getting a coalition (or other arrangement) that will do what they want, or at least the nearest thing to what they want that is in realistic prospect.

Facing the toxic legacy of Brexit

None of this is remotely perfect or gives any reason for pleasure, and I certainly feel no pleasure about it. That it’s not politically viable to simply face the truth that Brexit was a terrible mistake, and has already been proven to be, is part of the price we are paying for Brexit. The frustrations of anti-Brexiters are entirely understandable, but Starmer is the wrong target for their ire.

The 2016 referendum was like a political atom bomb which didn’t just cause immediate destruction but has also poisoned the ground for years to come. Poisoned not just in the sense of the direct effects of Brexit itself but in terms of the corruption of honest and rational politics (or perhaps we should say the further corruption, for Brexit did not come from nowhere, and pre-Brexit politics was not an idyllic rose garden). Johnson’s fall may extract a little of that poison, but it goes far, far deeper than him. He was as much its symptom as its cause, the depraved salesman not the adulterated product (though his ego allowed him to believe otherwise).

So it will be a very, very long and slow process to reclaim that political ground for cultivation, re-seed it, and harvest the first, no doubt feeble, crop. The blame for that lies solely with the Brexiters, both in 2016 but also now as they attack any and every attempt to cleanse the soil of their radioactive pollution. Taking some of the toxicity out of the Brexit debate by rendering it boring is a step in the right direction.

But I am not even sure that the solution lies in anything that is done about Brexit per se. Rather, as argued by Martin Fletcher in the New Statesman this week, what first needs to happen is a thoroughgoing overhaul of the “broken and discredited” political system of which Brexit is in part the cause and in part the consequence.

Like Starmer’s Brexit proposals, such a programme of institutional reform sounds boring and technical, and would require painstaking attention to detail and follow-through to deliver. That, in itself, would be a welcome contrast to the emotionally exhausting rollercoaster of Johnson’s government recently discussed by Rafael Behr and so plainly in evidence this week. Boring can sometimes be good and, right now, it’s better than good. It’s necessary.