Extension is the Brexiters’ chance to show they accept that they won

With the last week of talks prior to the end of June cut-off for agreeing an extension finishing today, there is no sign (£) of progress towards a deal and no sign of UK willingness to extend the Transition Period. At the end of the first week of talks, just as coronavirus was beginning to bite in Europe, I speculated that we might see a less bellicose and more flexible approach adopted by the UK, including on transition period extension. I was wrong. Indeed since then, as the rational case for extension has grown because of the deepening coronavirus crisis, the government’s refusal to even acknowledge that case has hardened. Is that likely to change?

Business voices

There is strong public support for an extension. But it probably isn’t the kind of issue that has individual voters writing in huge numbers to their MPs (for whatever effect that would have) and so any pressure to extend will come from elsewhere. I remarked in passing in my last post that it would be easier for Keir Starmer to call for an extension were business and civil society institutions to do so, and a couple of weeks back that businesses might be wary about this given their present dependence on government. That latter analysis was supported by Delphine Strauss writing in the FT this week (£) and Charles Grant, Director of the Centre for European Reform, reports that business leaders aren’t willing to speak out “for fear of punishment by Number 10”.

Such fears are no doubt well justified. Long before Brexit, and before even the decision to hold a referendum, arch-Brexiter John Redwood threatened (£) “to punish businesses that speak out in favour of Britain remaining in the EU”. Subsequent to the referendum, companies bidding for government contracts were asked if they backed Brexit. And at the present time we can see government contracts being awarded to firms which had prior connections to the Vote Leave campaign. In a landscape where fealty to the true cause of Brexit is the sole qualification for political office, it hardly strains credulity that the same criterion might be applied in other contexts.

As the deadline for extension gets closer, there are the beginnings of some rumblings, for example from the CBI, of real alarm. Carolyn Fairbairn, its Director-General, wrote this week that many businesses “are not remotely prepared” for “a chaotic change in EU trading relations in seven months”. She was apparently referring to a no deal scenario but, actually, the chaos would hardly be less in the event of a deal being done, for this would still represent a sea-change from the current situation of single market and customs union membership. And Nissan – whose Sunderland factory plays an iconic role within the Brexit saga – warned in perhaps its starkest public terms yet that if tariffs are introduced the plant will be unsustainable.

Why hasn’t business had more influence?

Such statements may become more common if, as Brendan Donnelly of Federal Trust cogently argued this week, people are belatedly waking up to the strong possibility of there being no deal at the end of transition.  Yet even if the business community becomes more vocal there are doubts as to whether it can make much difference to how the government proceeds. Indeed the lack of influence it has had on Brexit throughout is remarkable, and a marked contrast to its role in the 1975 Referendum. That is all the more extraordinary given the way that, in the intervening decades, the priorities of business have had such political prominence.

There are several, quite complex, strands which explain this relative lack of impact. Perhaps one was that, indeed, people had got fed up with being told for so long that business interests were paramount.  Another is the extent to which British businesses have over those decades been sold off to overseas conglomerates. For them, whilst Brexit may be undesirable because of the disruption, it is not existential. Their opposition is driven, perfectly understandably, by considerations of cost not of principle (though Japanese firms also see Brexit as a betrayal of trust). They can and will decamp or divest if it becomes necessary. It is an irony that some Brexiters imagine that big business does not support Brexit because it does not care about what is good for Britain when the reality is that its lack of such care is one reason why Brexit is bad for Britain.

Not only did such global businesses lack genuine passion in their opposition to Brexit they also, for the same reason, did not place it at the top of their list of priorities. In particular, come 2019, they saw a Corbyn government as more of a threat to them than Brexit. They also saw the possibilities of government contracts – or exclusion from them – as a counterweight to the disruption of Brexit. The alliance between politically committed remainers and big business opponents of Brexit was always one of convenience and, ultimately, transitory.

The same is not neccessarily true of the thousands of small, domestic businesses who are opposed to Brexit – yes, on economic grounds, but with neither the escape hatch of relocation nor the detachment from British society of the big firms. But, by definition, it is harder for smaller businesses to have a loud voice. Representative bodies like the CBI have sought to be that voice, but in the process have become the target of massive hostility from both Conservative Brexiters and their cultural attack dogs in the media. Sometimes the two join hands, as when Priti Patel viciously attacked the award of a Damehood to Fairbairn as rewarding “her role in the Brexit betrayal” (as so often, reading this one might have thought that the Brexiters had lost).

There is a wider story here about how the modern Tory Party has become detached from almost all parts of the business community – except, perhaps, the hedge funds which are one segment that benefits from Brexit and which generously fund the party. The days when the Conservative benches would have plenty of people with intimate knowledge of business are long gone. It’s a similar story with its membership, perhaps because of its ageing profile. I had several conversations with some of them during the Referendum campaign, and they often spoke of their business experience but, invariably, it was decades out of date and showed no understanding of contemporary supply chains or international regulation. It is also strange how confident Brexiters have been in the lobbying power of ‘the German car industry’ at precisely the time they have been so dismissive of the concerns of its British counterpart.

The pernicious success of the ’Project Fear’ rebuttal

Be that as it may, business opposition to Brexit was also blunted by the extraordinary success of the ‘Project Fear’ rebuttal line (which, of course, was not just deployed against business). That success, which endures to this day, is difficult to explain. It seems to rely on the idea that any warning of any danger should be discounted, yet this is hardly how most people approach their daily lives.

It perhaps gained traction partly because the Remain campaign failed to articulate much in the way of a positive case for EU membership. It certainly relied on a constant argument ad absurdum, with warnings of, for example, damage to trade being rendered (and thus dismissed) as claims that all trade would cease. At all events, however successful it may have been as a campaign tactic, it has permanently crippled rational debate about Brexit, with any and every attempt to discuss, let alone address, practical difficulties being blasted away by its ovine repetition.

Additionally, at least during the Referendum campaign itself, and, I think, thereafter, the business voice against Brexit was muffled by media coverage. More than any other area, it suffered from the application of the ‘balance’ formula by the BBC and others. For, invariably, whenever business leaders spoke against Brexit they were then counterposed with a pro-Brexit business person. That may have ‘balanced’ the arguments, but it presented a seriously unbalanced picture of where the business community, overall, stood on Brexit.

Apart from the evidence of numerous surveys, the clue to that being so is that the pro-Brexit business people were always drawn from the same handful or so: Tim Martin, Anthony Bamford, James Dyson, Digby Jones, Rocco Forte and a few others. It happened precisely because there were so few of them.

The paucity of business support for Brexit is underscored by the failure to create a significant pro-Brexit business organization. Despite being boosted as the voice of business by the likes of ERG self-styled ‘hardman’ Steve Baker, the Alliance of British Entrepreneurs – the creation of an intellectual property lawyer and someone invariably just described as ‘a veteran and businessman’ – has never really taken off and does “not offer formal ‘membership’”. There’s something rather telling about the speech marks around membership, as if to imply that lack of members is a principled choice to avoid something disreputable. One might also wonder what ‘informal’ membership entails. These are hardly picky points to raise about an organization that aspires to be representative.

In any case, the Project Fear line was fundamentally dishonest both in itself and in what it became an alibi for. It was dishonest in itself because it ignored or distorted the factual basis of the warnings. It is dishonest in what it became because it morphed into the claim that, by ignoring those warnings, leave voters had chosen economic damage in favour of ‘sovereignty’. Yet, clearly, the entire Project Fear narrative was about discrediting those warnings; that there was nothing to ‘fear’. And why? Because the Vote Leave campaigners knew full well that if voters realized the economic damage Brexit would cause then they would never have voted for it simply on grounds of sovereignty. Otherwise, they would have simply agreed that there would be that damage and invited voters to support the policy anyway.

Whilst Project Fear was a potent way of neutering business opposition to Brexit before the Referendum, afterwards the populist neck-hold of ‘the will of the people’ was the main way of choking the business voice. If the judiciary and civil service could be traduced in that way, how much more difficult would it be for businesses reliant not just, possibly, on government favours but, almost certainly, on customers who might punish them as ‘saboteurs’? Safer to keep quiet. And of course the same situation obtains for other civil society institutions such as trade unions, charities, universities, professional bodies and so on. All are vulnerable to economic punishment, cultural punishment, or both. And all will suspect that speaking out is likely to be in vain as they will automatically be dismissed as ‘the Establishment’. So why take the pain for little or no gain?

That same logic now carries over to voicing concerns about not extending the Transition Period. Since Brexiters have managed – illogically, because Brexit has, in a legal sense, happened – to depict such an extension as ‘thwarting’ Brexit they can also run all their old attack lines about Project Fear and the will of the people.

The post-Brexit landscape

Yet voices are being raised over extension, and not just those of business. This week the Social Market Foundation published a report undertaken for the Best for Britain campaign group showing the economic implications of ending the Transition Period without a deal in the context of the coronavirus crisis. Meanwhile, a House of Lords Committee catalogued the extensive problems in implementing the Northern Ireland Protocol by the end of the year and business groups there are expressing desperation about the lack of clarity about how the sea border is to work.

The Northern Ireland Assembly itself voted this week in favour of an extension until the coronavirus crisis is over, and Nicola Sturgeon has repeated her longstanding demand for extension. Mark Drakeford, the Welsh First Minister, did so several weeks ago and was joined this week by Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London. The latter is significant in being the first major Labour figure to make this argument and, as discussed in my previous post, there are good reasons why Keir Starmer should follow suit.

These and other bodies and leaders are likely to become more vociferous this month as the window for agreeing an extension closes. If so, I think that despite their fears they might find that the landscape is rather different to that of even a few months ago, especially if they find a way to speak in concert (as the TUC and CBI did when warning of the national emergency of a no-deal Brexit in March 2019) rather than individually.

Of course those familiar Brexiter attack lines will continue to appeal to a significant segment of the public and the media. But the coronavirus crisis, the government’s inept handling of it, and its falling popularity as a result all serve to change the environment. Brexit just doesn’t dominate in the way that it did and it’s all but certain that a vote held today would reverse it. Outside of the minority who will always care about it, it’s yesterday’s issue. The Referendum mandate to leave the EU has been discharged and is now expired. That mandate had nothing to do with the length of the transition period and it most certainly wasn’t a licence not make a deal with the EU – as Michael Gove effectively admitted this week.

Extension isn’t remainers’ last stand, it’s Brexiters’ first challenge

Indeed, for this reason, even had the pandemic not struck we would still be in a new situation. For what Brexiters and, I suspect, some remainers seem not to have grasped is that the debate over extension is not the last, desperate gasp of the battle against Brexit. That battle was lost and is over. Rather, it is the first of what will be many post-Brexit rows about how to implement it.

These will be over all the myriad of issues relating to the future relationship with Europe – not just trade, but education, science, data, security and so on – which will still need to be implemented in detail if there is a deal, and which won’t simply go away if there isn’t. They will be over the impact of whatever trade deals may be negotiated with the US (£) and other countries. And they will be over the big picture issue of what the UK’s place in the world is post-Brexit, which is already being played out as we navigate the complex power-plays between the US, China and the EU, for example over Huawei.

The Brexiters have already found that winning the Referendum was just the beginning of a long and arduous journey – the more so for having no defined destination. They are now about to find that the act of leaving the EU, whilst marking the end of one phase of Brexit, was itself only the easiest part of the process. The first challenge has now arisen in the form of whether they will be pragmatic in finding a way to secure more time given the impact of coronavirus or whether they will remain forever in thrall to paranoid fears of ‘betrayal’.

It is a chance for them to show that, finally, they accept that they have won and that Brexit is happening. In the end it is their ability to do that, rather than any lobbying from business or opposition parties, which will determine what happens on extension. Now comprehensively in charge of government it is a chance for them, and especially Boris Johnson, to show that they have moved on from the culture war slogans that got them this far. But there is very little basis for optimism and, alas, it is far more likely that they will show that those slogans were all they ever had.

Can a hard Brexit be averted?

The unfolding events are very difficult to read, and any reading is likely to be out of date even before it is written. This post is about where I think we are currently. [Before starting, it may be useful to clarify key terms, since their meaning is shifting. By soft Brexit I mean remaining in the single market and customs union. By hard Brexit I mean leaving both of these and seeking a free trade agreement with the EU. By ultra Brexit I mean leaving the EU with no trade agreement and possibly no agreements on anything].

The failure of the Tory party to win the election clearly places their hard Brexit plan in jeopardy in that it was not endorsed by the electorate. The consequence has been to open the debate that Theresa May refused to have after the Referendum about what sort of Brexit that vote meant, itself a consequence of the abject failure of the Leave campaign to specify what form of Brexit those who voted to leave were voting for. That latter point is crucial, because it means that the ‘will of the people’ argument (flawed as it is in general) is irrelevant to the question of how Brexit should be enacted.

What this now means is that the Tory civil war on the EU which has ripped it apart since the Maastricht rebellions of the early 1990s, and which the referendum was supposed to solve, is now raging again. In fact, it never stopped: but in the months after May’s anointment it was stifled by her embrace of hard Brexit. It is worth constantly reminding ourselves what a massive price the UK’s economy, cultural cohesion and geo-political standing is being forced to pay for this internal party factionalism, driven by perhaps no more than 70 Tory MPs.

As to how the current battle in that war is going, it’s difficult to say. There are many signs of an emerging soft Brexit ascendancy: the appointments of Gavin Barwell as May’s Chief of Staff and Damian Green as de facto deputy Prime Minister being prime examples of this, since both are (or at least were) strongly for remain. The newly elected group of Scottish Tory MPs and the Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson would also seem to be pushing the government in a soft Brexit direction.

The need for DUP support, likely to be predicated upon a ‘soft border’, is being reported to imply staying in the customs union (and, if so, that means no independent trade deals, a major plank of the hard and ultra Brexit positions). But I think that in reality a soft border is only possible if the UK is also in the single market. Consider: if there is free movement of people into the Republic of Ireland from the rest of the EU, but no free movement into Northern Ireland as part of the UK, then how can passport controls at the border be avoided? What else would stop a Bulgarian, say, entering the Republic with no restriction and then entering the UK? It is no good talking about the Common Travel Area as a model here: it derives from a situation which pre-dates the existence of the single market.

All this, plus renewed and intense business lobbying to stay in the single market and customs union, pushes the Tories to soft Brexit. But other signs point in the opposite direction. Michael Gove’s appointment to DEFRA is one; and it will be interesting to see how he squares his new role with promises to farmers during the leave campaign that Brexit would not affect their subsidies. More specifically, Brexit Secretary David Davis has indicated in a series of interviews today that hard Brexit is non-negotiable. That may well shift, but if it does then nothing will be resolved as it would almost certainly lead to a leadership challenge from the monomaniac, dogmatic Tory hard Brexiters and, if that challenge was successful, almost certainly a second election.

So the Tories are in a horrible mess. Labour are in an equally confused state, although being out of government it presents less pressing problems. Their absurd manifesto position of wanting the benefits of the single market and customs union but without membership of either and excluding freedom of movement may have helped them to secure the votes of both remainers and ex-UKIPpers, but as a serious policy position it is meaningless. The official position of seeking ‘tariff free access’ to the single market shows a pitiful ignorance of the (inter-related) issues of single market membership (cf. ‘access’) and non-tariffs (cf. ‘tariffs’). It doesn’t even make sense in terms of their other stated position of wanting any Brexit deal to deliver exactly the same benefits as EU membership. Meanwhile other influential voices within the Labour Party are speaking of single market membership as their preferred option. They need to agree on that, and very quickly, if hard Brexit is to be avoided.

A curious and very unfortunate consequences of the splits within each party is that they produced manifestos which were similar with respect to Brexit. This allows the ludicrous claim currently being made by Brexiters that, although neither party won, there is a consensus view amongst the electorate in favour of hard Brexit. The reality is almost certainly the exact opposite: if there is still a majority in the country for Brexit at all, it is for soft Brexit and the same is true amongst MPs.

Underneath all the complexities and uncertainties it’s that last thing we should hold on to. If we must use the dire phrase ‘the will of the people’ then it is not – either in terms of direct or representative democracy – a will for hard Brexit, and may not even any more be for any Brexit. It is now vital that our political institutions align with that.

The window to do so is very small indeed. Because of May’s grotesque irresponsibility in triggering Article 50 before embarking on the election, Britain has now used up almost 3 months of the 24 month A50 period – that’s one day out of eight -and in that time has not just done nothing to progress negotiations but has plunged itself into a new debate about what those negotiations are even about. In the meantime, businesses are relocating, investments are on hold or going elsewhere, staffing of public services is falling apart, the economy is on a knife edge, and the lives of millions (both in the UK and the EU) are in a turmoil of uncertainty.

Some of that damage will never be undone, including that to the UK’s reputation, but it could at least be staunched by a rapid commitment to soft Brexit. It’s extraordinary that an obvious solution to most of the Brexit problems facing the UK is still, even after this election, no more than a possibility. That election has given the UK a final chance but it is time-limited. Unless some way can be conjured up to pause the A50 process then we have perhaps a couple of weeks left to avoid disaster.


Update (14 June 2017): The situation described above persists and has, if anything, intensified. Thus on the one hand we have reports that Philip Hammond is seeking to soften the previous Brexit plans at least to the extent of seeking to remain in the customs union; whilst on the other hand one of the hardest of Brexiters, Steve Baker, who leads the ERG Group, has been appointed as minister in the DExEU (amidst reports of chaos within that department). May has also appointed several ‘soft Brexiters’ to various positions, and yet maintains that the White Paper hard Brexit remains the plan. It may be that there is Machiavellian intent in all this, but if so it is hard to decipher and it seems more likely she is simply so weakened that she has to try to keep everyone ‘on board’ for now. It is hard to see how that can survive contact with the reality of the opening of negotiations, which she insists will go ahead as planned. Meanwhile, different people within Labour Party continue to indicate different positions on the single market and customs union. There is now a palpable sense of political crisis, ironically pointed up by the pomp and ceremony of yesterday’s opening of parliament which seem a brittle and hollow shell around chaos rather than a signifier of traditional certainties and continuities.

Many people are calling for a cross-party group to take Brexit forward but it is hard to see how this can make a difference, since the parties themselves do not have agreed positions. There is a strong argument to say that other parties should stay well clear: this is the (predominantly) Tory Brexiters’ mess and they should own it. Conversely, a cross-party group would inevitably led Brexiters to complain, as the disaster unfolds, that this disaster was due to the other parties rather than to the wholly unworkable policy of Brexit. The way out might end up being some kind of cross-party arrangement but, if so, it should be one which reflects the majority view amongst – it can reasonably be assumed – both MPs and the public that Brexit should be completely abandoned. That would of course entail massive political fallout, but there is no scenario anymore which does not entail that.

So we remain in an unholy mess: a statement which I suspect will not need updating for some years to come.

Update (16 June 2017): The basic situation on ‘soft versus hard’ remains unchanged, so I am not writing a new post. Philip Hammond did not give his Mansion House speech on a softer Brexit, citing the dreadful London tower fire as the reason for cancellation. However, it seem hard to resist connecting the cancellation to the report, shortly before the cancellation, that the DUP support May’s rather than Hammond’s versions (I cannot bring myself to call them visions) of Brexit. At the same time, it seems difficult to reconcile the DUP’s reported position with their apparent desire to avoid a hard border, and there continues to be a strong head of steam within the Tory Party against hard Brexit Labour’s position remains opaque, despite an article suggesting a possible (but unspecified) change of course in an article by Keir Starmer today.

Nevertheless, the government intends to proceed with opening negotiations with the EU on Monday on the basis of the White Paper hard Brexit position. It is difficult to overstate the absurdity, and indeed gross irresponsibility of this: there is currently no government in place, and no agreement as to what the government’s position will turn out to be. For a fantastic analysis of this situation, which I will not try to better, see Ian Dunt’s piece Brexit talks start on Monday and we have no idea what we are doing.

 

[For ongoing links to a wide variety of news items and analyses of Brexit, please follow me on twitter. I tweet exclusively on Brexit with the focus on reputable sources and well-informed commentators, but avoid (with occasional lapses) extensive debate as the issues involved are usually too complex for tweets. Nor do I seek to persuade the unpersuadable – the aim is imply to provide high quality information for those who may be interested in it. Twitter ID: @chrisgreybrexit].

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Scotland and the absurdities of Brexit

After the long phoney war following the referendum, events are now moving much faster and it is hard to maintain a running commentary. With parliament now shamefully having, as predicted, passed without amendment the legislation to do so Article 50 will soon be triggered. At that point I will write a summary of where things stand.

For now, in this post I will focus on Nicola Sturgeon’s call for a second Scottish independence referendum (‘indyref2’ as it is being called). That the SNP would seek indyref2 was highly likely from the moment the EU referendum result was announced. What made indyref2 both inevitable, and potentially winnable, was the government’s decision to pursue hard Brexit. On the one hand this made a mockery of any notion that the government would take Scotland’s views into account; on the other hand, it ensured that the price that Scotland, like the rest of the UK, would pay for Brexit would be incalculably high. In this and in many other ways, Theresa May is emerging not as the pragmatic, safe pair of hands that was her USP in the Tory leadership election but as extraordinarily inept.

Ian Dunt, the journalist who in my view has emerged as the most astute and interesting writer on Brexit, summarised the situation powerfully:

“This is on Brexiters. This is their responsibility. It's not just the result, although it was clear during the campaign this was a likely possibility if people backed Leave. It's about what has happened since the vote. This is where Brexiters' arrogance, their refusal to listen to counter-arguments, their extreme agenda, their bluffing about economic self-harm, their strategic incompetence and their grotesquely irresponsible behaviour has got us”.

It is important to remember that the possibility that Brexit would lead to indyref2 was explicitly denied by all the leading leavers, both during the campaign and afterwards. Thus on 8 June 2016 The Sun dismissed warnings that this would be the outcome as (of course) ‘Project Fear’ whilst as recently as this February Michael Gove was saying that there was no prospect of a second independence referendum.

But although it is important to keep holding Brexiters to account for their mendacious and misleading claims it is equally important to point to the absurdities of the Brexit government, and nowhere are these clearer than in the response to the prospect of indyref2. For Theresa May’s arguments against this are, without exception, arguments which apply equally to Brexit. Thus if Scottish independence would entail huge uncertainty, severance from its main market and a substantial exit bill, how much more so is this true of Brexit? Most extraordinary of all, May has said that Scotland can’t have a meaningful vote on leaving the UK without knowing what the terms of the UK’s exit from the EU will be. Yet she and her government treat as inviolable the UK’s vote to leave the EU when it was taken without knowing the terms of exit. The lack of logic and of honesty would be laughable if it was not so sickening.

No less absurd is the idea that indyref2 would distract from the Brexit negotiations, since with this issue unresolved the EU will not know whether they are negotiating with the UK as it is, or without Scotland, or – now a very real possibility – without Northern Ireland either. On that last point, I am not sure that many people in Britain realise how rapidly things are shifting in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland. In the Republic – the EU country most affected by Brexit and likely to be highly influential in the exit talks – opinion is hardening against the UK and re-unification with the North is being widely discussed. In Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein are calling for a referendum on a united Ireland, and, although Wales voted for Brexit, there are emerging noises for a vote there as well.

These are not mere details, they are central, practical issues about what Brexit means. But the Brexit government is simply not interested in practical issues, as witnessed by the revealing appearance by David Davis at the Brexit Select Committee this week, where on issue after issue – from European Health Insurance Cards to personal data transfer he admitted that he just did not know what Brexit would mean. Most bizarrely of all, he confessed that the government have not costed the effects of leaving the EU with no deal in place, even though they believe that ‘no deal’ would be better than a bad deal.

But logic, evidence and argument have become completely irrelevant to Brexiters. In another great piece of commentary this week, this time from Nick Cohen in The Spectator, the cult-like nature of the Brexit government is dissected:

“Unconstrained by a political opposition and egged on by a Tory press that makes Breitbart seem like a reputable news service, modern Tories resemble no one so much as the right-wing parody of left wingers: utopian, contemptuous of detail and convinced the world owes them a living”.

Yet the left is by no means absolved of responsibility in the unfolding Brexit debacle. In fact, in a week littered with absurdities perhaps the most absurd event was Jeremy Corbyn calling for an ‘emergency demonstration’ in support of Labour’s amendments to the Article 50 Bill. Meanwhile, rather than refuse to vote for the Bill if the amendments were not in place, he whipped his MPs to support it. It’s difficult to know whether to laugh or cry.

Finally, it’s worth remembering that Brexit is also the subtext of most of the other main news stories this week, even when they don’t seem to be directly related. So the row over Philip Hammond’s changes to national insurance contributions was partly about Brexiters wanting to ‘bring down’ the most senior cabinet minister who is opposed to hard Brexit. George Osborne’s surprising appointment as Editor of London’s Evening Standard can be seen as an anti-Brexit politician seeking to get a media platform in anti-Brexit London. And the GCHQ statement about the allegations that it had wiretapped Trump goes to the heart of the UK-US relationship which has been touted by Brexiteers as central to Britain’s post-Brexit future. Pretty much all roads in the current UK polity lead to Brexit, and will do for years to come. Although it looks increasingly unlikely that the UK polity will survive Brexit.