Dominic Raab's appearance on Marr on Sunday was, by all accounts, a demonstration of being tin-eared. He ignored the massive problems of red tape driving a wrecking ball through British industry, already under huge pressure from covid-10, and simply brushed away all the problems by saying the government is doing a "huge amount" to support these struggling businesses. But perhaps the most important thing he said was that we had to take a "ten year view" of Brexit. This is how true believers operate in the absence of any evidence that their 'vision' will ever materialise.
I think as long as the Conservative party is in power this will be the message of Brexit. The current generation of Tory MPs are too deeply invested in it to reverse course and it will take years for the party ideology to move on and for the leadership to acknowledge the disaster they have visited upon the nation.
The party is adopting, unwittingly perhaps, the same sort of policy which the Russian communists used for decades in pursuing a failed ideology, despite all the evidence piling up year after year that not only wasn't it working, but that it could never work. They are already using the power of the press to create a bogeyman in Brussels and keep driving the message that we are being punished somehow.
And this could work for years. I noted a report the other day about Switzerland and how after a vote to join the EU was rejected in 1992 by 50.3% it went on to have the lowest growth in the OECD for ten years.
Hard lessons from Switzerland 🇨ðŸ‡A look at Swiss politics shows that Euroskepticism is in the United Kingdom to stay. https://t.co/0K4HohKmuL— EFTA 4 UK (@EFTA4UK) February 15, 2021
The article begins:
"Imagine British political headlines in 30 years. Number 10 might declare victory on achieving carbon neutrality. Westminster might pass a universal minimum income to deal with mass unemployment due to automation. But almost certainly, the country won’t be debating whether to rejoin the European Union.
"Instead, Labour and the Conservatives (or their future incarnations) will compete on who is the tougher negotiator with Brussels. Remainers will have become a relic of the past; the United Kingdom will be a country of Euroskeptics of different breeds."
After 1992, Switzerland's manufacturers apparently outsourced production facilities—first to Germany and, later, to the EU’s newer member states and a property bubble-turned-financial crisis dealt a further blow to the Swiss economy in the 1990s.
This is of course what we are already seeing here in the UK. But did it persuade the Swiss? No.
"Nearly half of the Swiss were friendly to the idea of EU membership in 1992. Today, far fewer are. At the turn of the millennium, 3 out of Switzerland’s 4 major parties supported EU accession. Today, not a single party is actively campaigning on EU membership."
The writer says as a consequence of Brexit, even pro-EU Remainers will come to perceive the EU increasingly as an opponent, not as a partner.
We should learn a few lessons from this, although I really don't think we are like Switzerland, which many people might be surprised to learn don't just make cuckoo clocks. I would think most of the world's flour mills were either made in Switzerland or have machinery manufactured at a small town called Uzwil, the headquarters of the giant Buhler Group.
They have a great tradition in pharmaceuticals, robotics, chemicals, banking and all sorts of things and Switzerland has always been clean, organised and wealthy with a very high standard of living. In other words they don't need the EU. They are pretty content, we are not.
After spending forty years travelling the length and breadth of this country and visiting countless factories, many of which have now disappeared, I can attest to the fact that we have an awful lot of creaking infrastructure and impoverished communities. We are not Switzerland, trust me.
Also the EU mistakenly offered Switzerland a complex web of bilateral deals which allowed Switzerland's European trade to continue along with freedom of movement. Life outside wasn't too bad. But the UK have only a very thin trade deal and we are far more reliant on the EU than the Swiss.
Moreover, I think support for the EU fell in Switzerland after 1992 whereas it has increased here in the UK.
But this isn't to say we should be complacent but we do need to counter the narrative that the EU is our enemy and all will be well provided we grit our teeth for ten years. Like the Communists, after the first ten years of hardship the Tory party is more than likely to ask for another ten, and another.
That's how you end up with 70 years of disaster.
