Sunday 5 June 2022

Ellwood and the Single Market

The Tory MP Tobias Elwood said the unsayable last week and exposed the big conundrum that is and always will be at the heart of Brexit. In an article for Politics Home he suggests that Britain rejoins the single market to 'ease the cost of living crisis.' As far as I’m aware he’s the first Tory MP to break ranks on Brexit and predictably Brexiteers have piled in hysterically against him. There is clearly a growing fear among those most opposed to everything European that Brexit is turning to dust in front of us.

The problem of course, as many Brexiteers point out, is that we would have to follow EU rules that we have no influence over. Their fear is that if we rejoin the SM there will then be irresistible pressure for us to take the next obvious step and rejoin the EU as a full member. It’s obvious.

Brexiteers have to keep arguing that we must keep on the same path no matter how hard, no matter the suffering, no matter how much trade or output is reduced and no matter how long it takes. Because if at anytime in the future the British people believe their best hope for prosperity is inside the single market, Brexit is finished.

It's become like Marxism, a sort of faith that if we wait long enough and do it 'properly' or put different people in charge, it will at some unspecified time in the future produce results - even a dreamed of Utopia.

Brexit has to not only be a success but must be seen to be a success, in unmistakable ways. But outside the single market it’s hard to see how that is ever going to happen.

Already Northern Ireland, the only region to retain unfettered access to the single market and customs union, is growing faster than any other UK region except London, according to the ONS. This is a glaring problem for Brexiteers.

Lord Frost, the man more responsible than most for the mess, tweeted:

He is right to be worried - Brexit isn't 'safe' in anyone's hands. It is bound to fail at some point and I think that secretly he knows it.

No policy is 'safe' from a future government - and certainly not when the party pursuing it is split on the issue as we know the Tories are.

When I think about it, if Brexiteers really wanted Brexit to be a permanent solution for this country they should have persuaded other parties that it was a good idea and, dare I say it, pushed for a coalition government using proportional representation.  That way if (when) they lose power Brexit would continue to be safe. As it is, the moment Johnson goes or Labour is elected rejoining the SM will be back on the table - with business enthusiastically backing the move.

The former leader of UKIP weighed in with this:

Not only is Brexit apparently not safe with Ellwood is isn't safe with half the Tory party!!

Tom Tugenhadt, another leadership contender, has proved himself to be almost as dim as Boris Johnson with a tweet in which he seems to think joining the single market prevents the UK agreeing trade deals on its own account:

What Tugenhadt says would be true if Ellwood was proposing we join the customs union and adopting the EU's common commercial policy, but he isn't. His article doesn't mention the customs union at all.

Norway (not in the customs union) negotiates free trade agreements with other countries through the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) and so could we.  I am afraid that it shows just how ignorant many leading politicians are about Brexit and its implications.

The pro-Brexit commentator Iain Martin described Ellwood's intervention as "idiotic" and says for both a Labour or a new Tory leader, the practical question beyond faith-based Brexit will be how to improve trade/exports.

He doesn't seem to get it either. What incentive is there for the EU to offer better access to the SM? Why would they do it? They know the value of the market - as we should have done. Not one credible trade expert in that last six years has suggested Britain could ever replace trade lost (and continuing to be lost) by Brexit, with trade deals signed with countries half way round the world.

If Martin wants to improve trade why not do it with the huge single market right next to us?

He then tweeted that 'improving trade' will be the job of the next decade:

And oddly, he says rejoin will "never fly" post-Ukraine, seemingly forgetting that Ukraine is desperate to join the EU - along with Georgia and Moldova.

What is wrong with us?

Earlier, Martin resorted to the vaccine roll out and our response to Ukraine as some sort of justifications for Brexit:

Domestic health policy is not an EU competence and we could have supplied arms to Ukraine at any point since Putin came to power. The EU never prevented us taking action on either issue and Ukraine has been begging us for weapons for seven years.

I am afraid while the Tory party is in power we will never get a sensible debate about Brexit. But once they have been swept away (as they will be and perhaps very soon) the next government or coalition can start to control the narrative.

The first step will be allowing honesty in setting out the damage to the British economy, long suppressed under Tory chancellors, and then allowing business and industry to speak out. Once the voters begin to be fed a diet of truth, Brexit will see the beginning of the end.

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