Fraser Nelson

The editor of The Spectator, Fraser Nelson, hosted a discussion at the Centre for Policy Studies last week. The CPS was Margaret Thatcher’s favourite think tank, right wing and very much in line with her own thinking. Among the speakers was Daniel Hannan about whom I wrote yesterday. Nelson admits that he was (and is) a Europhile all set in 2016 to vote to remain until he heard arguments set out by Hannan and others like him. He then went on to vote - and campaign - for Brexit using the pages of his magazine to do it.

But Mr Nelson clearly is starting to suspect he was wrong to vote to leave. It looks like ‘buyers remorse’ as Will Hutton called it last week. 

This is how the Nelson's question went:

"I used to be a remainer, I was all set to vote against Brexit. It was listening to speeches like Dan’s [Lord Hannan] that made me change my mind. I’m a complete Europhile, I make no apology for that. But Dan was telling us a wonderfully positive free tradey vision, it was one of the things that made me change my mind.

"So, a good position for me to ask you Dan, the ONS did some figures today [22 November] showing that our services exports to the EU were down 20 per cent last year versus 10 per cent to the rest of the world – not great – and when it comes to imports from the EU, they were down 42 per cent versus 16 per cent to the rest of the world. 

"Now, technically we should have been able to trade with the rest of the EU just as normal. It feels as if we’re putting up barriers one way or another with our closest neighbours, This wasn’t in the script?"

Here's the clip:

Hannan gave a waffly answer about Britain having traded “artificially” with the EU although nobody on Twitter, including several trade experts, had a clue what he was talking about and I think it’s clear he didn’t either.  He also said we have "redirected" trade from our "hinterland", by which he meant the old empire.

What's interesting to me is not the rubbish spouted by Hannan but how a man like Fraser Nelson, who has been writing articles for five years about how good Brexit is going to be, is now openly questioning if he was right to support it?

And even now, after five crazy years, he still doesn't understand it. How on earth could he say, "technically we should have been able to trade with the rest of the EU just as normal."  This was always absolutely IMPOSSIBLE from the day in January 2017 when Theresa May declared we would not remain in the single market and the customs union.  Yet, Nelson thinks it was and is!

Hannan tried to reassure him but obviously failed because a couple of days later he was writing in The Telegraph an article with the title: Was I right to support Brexit? If this is ‘Global Britain’, I’m starting to wonder. 

But even more than that, I think it’s also interesting how an intelligent man (he can’t be entirely stupid to have become editor of The Spectator) allowed himself to be convinced by a chancer like Hannan who has practically no knowledge of international trade at all. He was an MEP but as far as I remember he went to Brussels to tell them what he thought, rather than to listen and learn.

I am naturally sceptical about most things and tend towards pessimism. My first thoughts about anything are always to believe it will all go wrong. And a lifetime spent among salesman has taught me to spot bulls**t at three hundred metres. The more cocky and confident people are, the more suspicious I am.

And I would never offer reassurances on important things to other people unless I was quite sure that they wouldn’t come back to haunt me.

But men like Nelson, Hannan, Johnson and Gove (especially Gove) are far more likely to listen to themselves and believe what other amateurs like them say, rather than accept the advice of experts and people with years of experience. This applies in spades if the expert speaks with a northern accent.

If we have learned anything over the last few years it is that men like Hannan, Farage, Singham, Farage, Cash and many, many others did zero research. You would have to be quite dim to think now, looking at what's happening, that they did. Virtually all of the growing number of downsides were entirely unforeseen and unpredicted - by Brexiteers. The experts pre 2016 warning are all gradually being confirmed one by one.

So, Nelson is, as far as I know, the first leading advocate of Brexit to publicly go on record and question some basic assumptions about Brexit that he had previously accepted as fact.

We should be encouraged.

There is zero prospect of Britain cutting regulations and becoming like Singapore-on-Thames. If Brexiteers ever thought European banks and businesses would somehow be attracted to a low regulation economy off the north west coast of Europe they are being proved wrong every day. Hundreds if not thousands of companies are moving in the opposite direction. That is perfectly clear and undeniable.

And a few days ago, a representative of the British International Freight Association told the Scottish Parliament’s Economy Committee that new customs controls on imports at the UK border which will begin in the new year would have “more significant impacts on the UK as a whole than what we saw on January 1 this year.”  Let that sink in.

So, if Hannan or anybody else thinks we are over the worst and the sunlit uplands can be glimpsed on the horizon, they have another think coming.