First of all, Happy New Year to you. I get the impression that 2023 will see the beginning of the end of Brexit. A new sense of realism is starting to appear, in odd places. Nobody expects anything to get better and for a lot of people they will get decidedly worse this year but at least there is a recognition that Brexit is not going well and that for me is a good start. I begin with a piece by Martin Fletcher in The New Statesman. Fletcher is a good writer and journalist. He followed Boris Johnson for The Times as its Brussels correspondent after the idiot was sacked for making up a quote. Fletcher wrote an article for The New York Times just before the 2016 referendum saying if Britain voted to leave the EU a lot of the blame should be on Johnson because of all the myths he created about ‘barmy EU bureaucrats.’ I know he is absolutely anti-Brexit.
However, his article came as a bit of a shock. The title is: It’s time for Remainers to try and make Brexit work. He tweeted it here:
After six years, it's time for a Brexit truce: https://t.co/FsX9x4CXfI
— Martin Fletcher (@mfletchertimes) December 29, 2022
I’m not sure it’s his own title, perhaps a sub-editor wrote it, I don't know. You can’t find those actual words in the piece but that is more or less the sentiment. Fletcher says, “.. as we enter 2023, [.] the mass of the British people are exhausted by the battles of the past six years and yearn to move on.”
I don’t agree that remainers are somehow failing or exhausted or in some way are preventing Brexit from working. It’s not obvious to me what he’s proposing. He does want an enquiry into Brexit and says:
“But sometime, somehow, we have to start healing Brexit’s wounds and reuniting the country, and something not so different from a public inquiry might conceivably offer a way forward."
"Suppose leading Remainers were unequivocally to state the obvious – that we will not seek another referendum for at least a generation; that the EU would not let us rejoin right now even if we voted to (and certainly not on the terms we previously enjoyed); and that not all the Brexiteers’ nostrums are wrong-headed. Leveling up, for example, is a laudable aim, as is weaning British industry off its dependence on cheap imported labour."
Genuinely, I don’t think this would make any appreciable difference. And remainers are not one organised, homogeneous bloc with a clear leader. Who is going to make the declaration? We are a disparate lot from all walks of life who just think Brexit is a very bad idea. For most of the time, we are simply carrying on with our lives as leavers struggle to make sense of what they campaigned for. I don’t see how we can help.
There is no prospect of another referendum in the short or even medium term and even less of the EU accepting us back. Mr. Fletcher may not agree, but I think remainers who are still working are doing their best to ‘make Brexit work’ in whatever way they can.
Some are moving to the EU, and others have given up trading with Europe because it’s too cumbersome and costly. If they can’t make money at it what else are they supposed to do? Others may well be looking overseas but if your clients in Holland or Germany have stopped buying from you, finding alternatives in Japan or Australia is perhaps not that easy or quick.
His article, with a quarter of a million views, has taken a lot of pushback. A few examples:
Although he’s a remainer, abhors Brexit and wants to see it reversed, I think he is like a lot of journalists, he really doesn’t understand how it’s impacted industry, especially SMEs who are doing whatever they can to mitigate the problems their businesses face and will continue to face until we rejoin the single market again, as we’re bound to sooner or later.
Daniel Hannan
This one may have you with your head in your hands. Daniel (now Lord) Hannan has a new article in The Telegraph with the rather lengthy title: I used to be an optimist, but 2022 changed me. Things are bad, and they’re only going to get worse
He is gloomy about the future, in stark contrast to the Reaction Life article and highly optimistic video he put out with the aid of the BBC in 2016. You wouldn't think that the 2016 video and the latest article were the products of the same mind but they are.
A recent poll prompted the peer to reach for his laptop. The survey "showed unalloyed, if unsurprising, gloom about 2023. Only four percent of people believe the cost of living crisis can be tackled. A word cloud for people’s expectations is dominated by 'difficult', 'worrying', 'challenging', 'scary', 'tough', 'bleak' and 'disaster', as well as several words rendered with asterisks."
Brexit, by the way, doesn't get even a passing mention in his piece. Strange that. Mind you, if you had had a hand in provoking such gloom by destroying a big chunk of our overseas trade and damaging our economy, you too might be a bit circumspect about reminding people of your role in it.
Our economic problems he says, "might have something to do with the lockdowns that we ourselves demanded" but we refuse to countenance it and "airily declare that the fault lies with MPs Who Just Don’t Get It." It's all down to covid apparently, even though other G7 members are growing fast with economies above pre-pandemic levels while we are uniquely still below. Didn't they do lockdowns as well?
He now seems to admit Brexit has been a total waste of time and effort with this:
“No wonder the Truss/Kwarteng attempt to bring the state closer to its pre-2020 size was unpopular. Britain is in the mood for big government. We don’t want deregulation or tax cuts.”
Small government, deregulation, and tax cuts were at the heart of Brexit, weren't they? Now he seems to accept this is not what voters want and is never going to happen. We have permanently ruptured our relationship with our European neighbours for nothing.
In 2016 he was writing almost the exact opposite of his new Telegraph piece. Six years ago he was forecasting that after Brexit EU, "regulations became even more heavy-handed, driving more exiles from Paris, Frankfurt and Milan. No other European city could hope to compete: their high rates of personal and corporate taxation, restrictive employment practices and lack of support services left London unchallenged."
In fact, we have exported a lot of business to Paris, Frankfurt and Milan for which they are no doubt extremely grateful. Nothing is coming the other way.
The delusions of Brexit are at last beginning to clear.
