Brexit-related events of the past two weeks* seem to suggest that the consensus that Brexit is turning into a complete failure is spreading and barely requires any argument anymore. Most strikingly, the Telegraph’s pro-Brexit Sherelle Jacobs has declared Brexit unsalvageable. More specifically, she writes ‘the Tories have made such a hash of Brexit that the project is probably now unsalvageable’ and openly admits that Brexit is ‘stoking tensions in Northern Ireland and strangling small firms with red tape.’
Less surprisingly, perhaps (given his ‘Remainer credentials’), ex-Tory leader William Hague explicitly blamed Brexit for the collapse of British Volt, once lauded as a symbol of British post-Brexit industrial revival. What is more interesting though, is that despite acknowledging its damaging effects, even Hague still defends Brexit. On the News Agents podcast, he compared Brexit to ‘running uphill’ suggesting that it somehow constitutes a form of exercise that will make Britain stronger in the end. This must be the most absurd Brexit analogy that I have heard to date. Its absurdity shows just how difficult it is becoming to defend Brexit.
Starmer’s dishonest honesty
Keir Starmer’s take on Brexit is quite similar to William Hague’s. On the same podcast he quite openly admitted that Brexit causes all sorts of economic and political problems, and yet he insists that there is no case for rejoining the Single Market (SM), let alone the EU. While he did specify – when pressed – that he meant that there was no political (as opposed to economic) case, a month ago he has made the more problematic claim that there was no economic case either. Starmer’s argument seems to be that the rejoining process would be long and equally uncertain as the process of leaving, which would mean investors’ appetite for investments in Britain would be dampened for an additional five or so years.
It is questionable whether that is true. One could imagine that some investors would find a UK that is negotiating a closer relationship with the EU including the prospect of rejoining the SM a more attractive destination for investments than a UK permanently cut off from the SM through the current Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA).
In the same interview, Sir Keir also rejected the Swiss and Norwegian models for managing the relationship with the EU as a non-member. He rejects the Swiss model – in place since 1991 – because it had to be renegotiated over 200 times since coming into force. This was either a throw away comment made in an interview situation or revealing of the fact that even the leader of the opposition does not fully understand what Brexit actually means.
Indeed, any model of association with the EU that guarantees frictionless or near frictionless access to the SM will necessarily have to be constantly renegotiated. That is the case, because EU law and associated countries’ laws are of course constantly evolving. In such a situation, the only way to avoid constant renegotiation would be a complete, unilateral, dynamic alignment with EU rules by the associated country. If a country is willing to simply accept as the price to pay for access to the Single Market the automatic transfer into domestic law of any new rules the EU creates (as well as the European Court of Justice’s interpretation of those rules), then an association model may be possible that does not need constant updating. In any other case, being outside the EU means being in a state of more or less permanent negotiation.
That brings us to Starmer’s continuing dishonesty about Brexit. If he dislikes an agreement that requires regular renegotiation, the logical consequence is dynamic unilateral alignment. In some areas this may be politically feasible and desirable (e.g. in the area of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Standards for trade in food, plants, and livestock). Beyond such specific areas, however, the agreement that allows maximal access to the SM without being EU member would necessarily imply accepting EU rules unilaterally, which is hardly acceptable to much of the British public. For Brexiters, such alignment will be seen as an unacceptable attack on ‘sovereignty’ and the contrary of ‘taking back control.’ Remainers/Rejoiners, on the other hand, will ask why it is preferable to stay outside the EU and follow all their rules, rather than rejoining and having a say over the rules we are following anyways. In that sense, what Starmer is promising seems to be some mythical ‘eat cake and have it’ agreement that cannot exist. If membership is rejected, there is necessarily a trade-off between frictionless access to the SM and following rules we do not have a say on.
A similar dishonesty comes to light when Starmer speaks about immigration. Here, the Labour leader admits that the UK labour market is suffering from labour shortages partly caused by Brexit and he acknowledges that the UK needs more immigration. At the same time, he is clear that he is not willing to commit to such an increase in immigration and has categorically rule out a return to freedom of movement. As a result, he has to resort to similarly vague (and largely unrealistic) alternative solutions such as activating people who have dropped out of the workforce or forcing companies to invest in skills that Brexiters are usually resorting to. Yet, very little is currently known about the precise policies that a possible Starmer labour government will adopt to achieve either goal. It stands to reason that addressing these two issues – people dropping out of the workforce and companies not investing in skills – would have to start with a thorough investigation of the root causes of these two phenomena, which in turn would require a deep and honest look into everything that’s wrong with the British economic model. Starmer does not seem to be willing to do that.
Hostages in our own country
I do not want to be too harsh on Starmer though. The point is precisely that Brexit has put the UK into a position where the right-wing press and right-wing political formations like the European Research Group (ERG) and Change UK can hold us all hostages with their extremism.
Indeed, while few people are left in the country who doubt that Brexit is damaging the UK every day, those who dare openly talk about what our ways out of the mess are seem even fewer. According to pollsters and political scientists there are good reasons for that. For Starmer, the main reason for that caution is that discussing any realistic improvements on the current situation is expected to put off the so-called ‘red wall’ voters. The deeper reason for such fears, however, is that anyone attempting to openly discuss a realistic alternative to the current situation has to fear the right-wing press labelling them ‘Rejoiner,’ ‘diehard Remainer,’ ‘enemy of the people,’ or similar, which to many still seems like potentially career-ending.
As a result of this situation, acknowledging that Brexit is not working is not a taboo anymore. Saying what is really needed to ‘make it work,’ however, still is. This leads to a situation where our politicians are busy fighting the symptoms rather than the root cause of the problems. That applies also to Sunak and his government.
Symbolic policies with real (negative) impacts
Honesty being impossible, policies that would actually help with the current situation being precluded for ideological reasons, all the government has left is symbolic policies and fighting symptoms.
In terms of symbolic policies, Sunak has decided to speed up the Retained EU Law (REUL) bill which implies any EU-period law not explicitly retained will expire at the end of 2023. The law is hugely problematic from a democratic point of view, will potentially do considerable damage to the environment, workers, and the British economy, and serves no purpose other than signalling an unwavering opposition to the EU and a commitment to radical deregulation. As Jill Rutter’s explains (among many other legal experts), the unintended consequence of simply removing 4000 pieces of law concerning things like – food safety, worker protections, and the environment – are enormous.
Worse still, in another sign of how (somewhat paradoxically) Brexit is undermining British parliamentary sovereignty and instead strengthening the executive’s power, MPs’ request to get more time to scrutinise the laws by extending the deadline of the ‘sunset clause’ from December 2023 to 2026 and to give MPs a bigger say in the process were rejected. That means that the Bill, which passed the Commons on Wednesday, gives the government the power to remove up to 4000 laws through secondary legislation without Parliamentary scrutiny.
One minister defended the bill stating that the government did not plan to weaken protections, and the bill was a chance to ensure the UK economy was competitive. The latter statement is another example of the naïve view that ‘unregulated’ means competitive. Incidentally, the Telegraph’s Jacobs succumbs to the same fallacy when suggesting that replacing the ‘innovation-crushing GDPR’ would make British industries more competitive. That idea should by now be dead and buried since Brexit has illustrated better than any other real-world experiment ever could that we do not live in a world of isolated national economies anymore. Therefore, Brexit does not just affect companies that trade with Europe (although of course it does affect them), but also companies that are producing primarily for the UK market or for non-EU export markets, but depend on inputs and intermediary goods from a range of countries, including EU member states. Therefore, however much you deregulate the UK economy, companies who depend on cross border flows of goods and services will not necessarily benefit from that.
That is not to say that there are no possibilities to create a regulatory environment in some sectors that could benefit British-based companies e.g. in the creative industries, life sciences as Jill Rutter pointed out; but creating such a regulatory framework will certainly require more than an ill-advised ‘bonfire’ of any existing regulations without any serious consideration for the likely impact of each law that will expire. There can be little doubt that the REUL bill will have a very significant impact on post-Brexit Britain, but it seems hard to disagree with Best for Britain that the impact can be nothing else than catastrophic.
Another symbolic policy which has made the headlines this week is the government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda. A controversy has taken place over the allocation of more levelling up money to London boroughs than to Yorkshire and the Northeast of England. The government defends the allocation arguing that there are deprived areas in London and the Southeast too and that the per capita allocation is lower in the South East than the North, due to the much higher population density. Both claims are certainly true. However, the bigger problem we should not lose sight of is that the levelling up funds only partially replace money lost by councils due to austerity and obtaining those funds is subject to a administratively burdensome and extremely costly bidding process that creates uncertainty and makes planning difficult for local councils. Levelling up provides an example of another symbolic Brexiter policy that was only ever meant as a slogan and therefore is not fit for purpose in practice.
Combatting symptoms
While I have written about symbolic policies many times before, another type of legislation that the UK’s post-Brexit political system is increasingly spewing out is legislation combatting symptoms rather than causes. Indeed, the government’s reaction to the growing expressions of discontent that are gripping the country – in the form of strikes over pay and living costs, but also protests over climate change – is to crack down on the expression of discontent while showing a sheer incredible unwillingness or inability to address the causes.
Most strikingly, the answer to increasing hardship amongst nurses and other NHS workers – who for the first time in history voted for strike – is to restrict people’s right to strike via the new Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill. The answer to increasing number of protests against the current disastrous economic and environmental policies, is to criminalise forms of protest and conferring more powers to police to stop protests. There are even suggestions that Sunak is trying to quell the Church of England’s criticism of the government’s often inhumane and immoral policies by ‘vetting’ bishops before their appointment.
While such anti-democratic policies are greeted with great enthusiasm by right-wing media outlets, they do of course not help solve any of the problems that make people descend into the streets or walk out from their jobs. Indeed, they are a pure expression of desperation by a government that is losing control of the country and has no plan how to fix it.
The government is hence hell-bent on doubling down on symbolic policies and suppress any expression of discontent and civil society pressures for change, while turning up a notch the ruthlessness with which it attempts to burn as many bridges to Europe as it can in what may be its last months in power. Meanwhile, the opposition finally dares naming a key culprit causing many of our problems but does not yet dare to be honest about the solutions. We are hence stuck with Brexit due to ideological delusion on one side and cowardice-bordering political prudence on the other. The one unlikely source providing a way out from this situation may be the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP).
The NIP to the rescue?
Besides the ‘accident in waiting’ that is the REUL bill, the other area where a Brexit-related storm is brewing is Northern Ireland. To be fair, there have been some optimistic noises coming out from the ongoing negotiations between the UK and the EU about the implementation of the NIP. In particular, The Irish Times and other outlets lauded the agreement on the UK agreeing to provide the EU with real-time data about GB-NI trade as a breakthrough. Indeed, given years of stubborn opposition to such an agreement, the UK government finally agreeing to it is a positive sign of more pragmatism, which may make a technical solution to some of the issues around the NIP possible.
Yet, it remains very doubtful that any such technical fixes will be politically acceptable to the Brexiters in Westminster and Unionists in Northern Ireland. Indeed, the ERG and the DUP continue to threaten to reject any deal that does not meet their maximalist demands. The government seems to be aware of that, reportedly considering calling the permanent border posts that it has now started building ‘huts’ rather than ‘border posts’ in the hope to make them less inacceptable for unionists and Brexit ultras like the ERG.
The stage is hence set for a major test for Sunak’s authority and Brexiters’ and Unionist’s resolve to insist on an extreme stance on Northern Ireland.
Sunak’s leeway seems extremely limited, given the USA’s insistence that an agreement needs to be reached by April 10th, the date of the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. Indeed, the fact that the stakes are so high in NI – namely the threat of a return of a civil war-like state – and the importance foreign powers and the world hegemon attribute to the question, make the NIP much less an internal affair than the rest of Brexit. While the US and EU may not care how much damage the Brits decide to inflict on themselves, the situation is different regarding NI. NI is thus at least partially protected from the full blow of Westminster madness.
The question then becomes whether Sunak will be willing to ‘stand up to the ERG’ – as opposition leader Starmer challenged him to do this week – and find an agreement with the EU. If he does not or if his government does not survive the attempt to do so, then more political chaos will ensue.
If he does, then Northern Ireland may continue to benefit from the ‘best of both worlds’ (EU single market membership and largely friction less access to the GB market). In the latter case, given the ever-growing discontent with Brexit among the UK’s population and businesses, soon the question may then arise: Why can the rest of the country not have what NI has? That question will be hard to answer once people stop listening to the ideologues. As a result, Northern Ireland may very well become the thread by which Brexit will eventually unravel …Until that happens, however, we all remain hostages of a narrow – and shrinking – group of die-hard Brexiters and their right-wing media supporters.
*Regular readers of this blog will have noticed that my posts have become somewhat less frequent over the past few months. This is essentially down to the fact that I started the BIT as a ‘lock down project’ and find it more difficult to make the time in my schedule now that work and life are back to ‘normal.’ I will strive to keep up with important developments, but currently fortnightly posts do seem to work fairly well.