Gavin Barwell (now Lord Barwell), Theresa May’s chief of staff and one of the supporters and possibly an architect of her 'backstop' approach to Brexit, has picked up on some polling figures from The Tony Blair Institute about voters' current thinking. The data comes from JL Partners and was covered by the FT last October. I posted about it at the time HERE. Barwell points to the survey which shows that a section of the electorate (19%) seems to think the UK should now try to negotiate “a new kind of association agreement with the EU, unlike anything we know today.”
Here he is:
A special mention to the 19% who want "a new kind of association with the EU unlike anything we know today" pic.twitter.com/RbxT9UCPn8
— Gavin Barwell (@GavinBarwell) January 31, 2023
The unicorn gif is indeed appropriate.
As you can see, 51% wanted (at the time anyway, the figure may be even higher now) to either remain in the EU and EEA or have a closer trade and security partnership. On top of that, a further 19% want this chimera that Barwell is talking about - the very same one that Theresa May (and him) and probably the rest of the Tory party set out to find in 2017!
It’s like a search for perpetual motion, Atlantis and the secret of alchemy rolled into one. You need to be a special kind of person to even believe it exists and have a clue as to what it might look like. Only someone who epitomises British exceptionalism to a tee could think it was available.
I assume Barwell is talking now from sad experience.
If you go into a car dealer, you see a list of models and prices. Asking for a BMW with a Ford engine, three wheels, and the boot of a Land Rover Discovery won’t get you very far. It certainly is ‘unlike anything we know today’ but it isn’t going to cut that much ice with the salesman.
So it is with the EU, all of the options with the famous ‘balance of rights and responsibilities’ have been laid out for years but even now we are still asking for something the EU simply isn’t prepared to offer. Why should they help us? What’s in it for them?
Why would they be interested in sitting down and negotiating this uniquely advantageous partnership for the UK? It would open up a massive and incredibly destabilising can of worms with all the EU member states, EEA countries, and every other trading partner. The sooner we get this out of our heads the better.
I am not suggesting for one moment that this is what the Labour Party is after, only that nearly a fifth of the population is still living in a fantasy world (unlike anything we know today!). When these people face up to the reality of our situation we will be closer to rejoining. Likewise, 17% want a closer trade relationship. When they realise this means dynamically following rules we have no influence over, you might think they too would see the light.
The EU holds the keys to the single market and has far more to offer us than we have to offer them.
Polling
On the polling published by Unherd the other day, which I posted about HERE, I had a quick look at the constituency level. Selby has changed from being in favour of Brexit by 59 to 41% in 2016 to being opposed to it by 59-41%!!. Quite the reverse, eh? It would be interesting to get Nigel Adams’ reaction to the poll. He has more or less staked his entire political career on Brexit.
He intends to step down at the next election and may be going to the Lords, what a legacy of chaos and destruction he will be able to look back on.
And those of us who watched the referendum results come in in the early hours of 24 June 2016 and saw the jubilation in Sunderland when we got the first inkling of a leave victory, might be surprised to note they now think leaving the EU has been a mistake.
In 2016, Sunderland voted to leave by 62-38%. The latest poll from Unherd shows Sunderland Central is now opposed by 64-36%. The sound of pennies dropping is becoming deafening.
Some pennies are taking longer to drop
In The Times there is an article by two authors under one heading: What is the impact of Brexit on the UK economy?
The first part comes from Mark Littlewood, DG of the IEA, the pro-Brexit, Tufton Street think tank. He accepts there have been "frictional effects associated with Brexit, [but] they have fallen short of some of the more apocalyptic and hysterical forecasts."
He is a master of euphemism. He defends it all (as he must) by concluding:
"Brexit has allowed Britain to “take back control” in many areas. But that is no guarantee that this control will be used wisely. If the UK performs poorly, this will be down to poor policy-making rather than the outcome of the 2016 referendum. We would only have ourselves and the politicians we elect to blame".
This is what I have always feared. My own experience of British industry has shown that those at the top are usually completely incapable of developing a rational plan and sticking to it for more than a couple of hours.
It's a case of we might be wrong, but we're wrong in a British way.
The second part comes from the Times' respected economics editor David Smith who writes plainly that "Brexit has so far been bad for the UK economy, the only question being the extent of the damage."
He says:
"The UK was accustomed to being the growth leader in the EU but, since the referendum in 2016, has been comfortably outgrown by the EU and the eurozone, and by individual European countries such as France. The UK is rare among leading economies in having an economy that is still smaller than it was at the end of 2019, just ahead of Brexit and the pandemic."
"The two particular areas of concern are exports and investment, the traditional drivers of growth and productivity. While adjusting to Brexit, the UK missed out on a post-pandemic recovery in trade in 2021 and export performance remains weaker than competitor economies. Latest figures show exports of goods and services, in volume terms, running apercentcent below their last 2019 levels."
Even more worrying, he says, is business investment running at 8.1% below pre-Brexit, pre-pandemic levels at the end of 2019 and, in fact, at its lowest level since 2015. Smith thinks we need a closer trading relationship with the EU, but as he says himself, this is something not on offer from either of the major parties. I would add at the moment. Watch this space.
