It was the old 'Fog in Channel, Continent cut off' message. We were such a vital addition to the councils of Europe that, well, they couldn’t really survive without us. Amazing, eh?
Newspaper columnists, especially ones like Jenkins, have an extraordinary belief in themselves and their innate ability to know all things and to impart their opinions to thousands of readers as if handed down on tablets of stone.
In 2016, he voted to remain with so little conviction he might as well have tossed a coin on his way to the polling station. On 6 July, about a fortnight after the seismic event, he wrote:
"During the referendum I was persuaded neither by project fear nor by Brexit’s projected sunny uplands. I thought, and still think, time and compromise will eventually stabilise Britain’s relations with the EU as not so different from today."
So certain was he that things wouldn’t change very much he was adamantly opposed to a second confirmatory vote, which put him even further out than Jacob Rees-Mogg who had backed the idea in the House of Commons until he realised he might lose another vote.
Jenkins found it “staggering that the remain minority can accuse the Brexit majority of not knowing truth from lies – unlike in all elections? – and could not have meant its vote.”
It’s pretty clear now that he was among those taken in by the lies that everything would turn out for the best. Warnings against Brexit were 'Project Fear' he thought. Jenkins also failed to recognise that in elections we do get to vote a second time, and again after that, ad infinitum. Liars can (and are) voted out of office when it's obvious they had failed to deliver and hadn’t got a clue.
The referendum was different, a once-in-generation event and arguably therefore even more important that a second vote is held.
We don’t know when the penny dropped for Jenkins, but drop it did. By February 2022, he had undergone a sort of epiphany, writing that life outside the single market (for just one full year remember), had been an “utter disaster.”
“Britain’s position as an island”, Jenkins said, “has to be one that trades openly with the mainland. Sooner or later, the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour will have to be restored, however painfully. It would greatly help if Labour’s Keir Starmer stopped vacillating and committed himself to that objective, as should candidates for Johnson’s succession. No, this is not revoking Brexit or rejoining the EU. It is just embracing sanity.”
I covered that article on this blog.
Now, Sir Simon writes again. This time about Starmer's EU relations 'reset': From the day Britain left the EU, this reset was inevitable. What a pointless waste of time, money and effort.
Who does he blame for this colossal waste? None other than Corbyn and Starmer.
"It was Starmer who helped to scotch at least a possible Commons coalition against hard Brexit and in favour of sanity. It was Corbyn and Starmer who could have stifled five years of the greatest act of self-harm by a British government since the Great Depression."
They could have blocked the Tories from chasing a hard Brexit, or what he now calls 'the greatest act of self-harm by a British government since the Great Depression.' This is from the man who in July 2016 was telling us:
"Now we have the backtracking on project fear. Of course, there is uncertainty and an initial lack of confidence. It would be amazing if the pound did not “take a knock” this week or if bank shares and house prices did not plummet, poor things. Remain’s ludicrous prophecies of doom cannot have helped, any more than can Whitehall’s failure to prepare for a Brexit outcome. Will there be a Chilcot report into the lack of contingency planning?"
"It appears that, after all, there is to be no emergency Brexit budget, no tax rise, no enhanced austerity. Indeed, the Treasury, for which the referendum has been an all-time low, promises not higher income tax, but lower corporation tax. The Bank of England will pump more money into the economy, or at least into the banks."
"I cannot see that as bad news."
We didn't get an emergency budget, that much is true. But since then we have had plenty of tax rises, they're at record levels, the BoE did pump money into the economy - partly due to Covid - so the national debt is at a post-war high, and we have had nothing but spending cuts or what Jenkins calls 'enhanced austerity' with plenty more to come.
That Jenkins couldn't see what was obvious to 48% of the voting public is amazing but he was not alone. I'm glad that at last, he has come around to recognising Brexit for what it was and still is.
If he wanted more proof of how much Brexit has damaged Britain, he could do worse than read this report by The Centre for European Reform. Brexit has not just hit our exports to Europe in the way that any trade barriers would, it has also impacted trade in goods with the rest of the world:
"By the end of 2024, goods exports were 20% below their 2019 levels (Chart 5, left panel). Had they kept pace with the pre-pandemic trend, goods exports would have been 30 percentage points higher. In contrast, services exports have grown robustly by 21% since 2020, but not enough to offset the losses in goods exports. As a result, the share of services exports in the UK economy is now at its highest level on record, while goods exports have reached their lowest share of GDP since 1993. This shift in the composition of British exports has important implications for the UK’s industrial strategy, which should place export-oriented services sectors at its centre.
"The more puzzling question is why, considering Brexit, goods exports have fallen to both EU and non-EU exports in tandem. One possible answer is that significant new frictions in trade with the EU are affecting supply chains across the board."
I have always said most people in this country have no idea how much British industry relies on machinery, systems, components, spare parts, consumables and support services from the EU. Politicians seem to believe only finished goods and produce are traded across the Channel and that the UK is self-sufficient in everything else. I am afraid that we have become so integrated with and reliant on continental suppliers that Brexit was always going to have a major impact on our manufacturing and processing industries.
If only politicians had understood this in 2016 we might have had a different outcome.
