Brexit: a hopeless case

This year will mark the tenth anniversary of David Cameron’s attempt to shoot UKIP’s fox and the ill-fated referendum on leaving the EU that he tried to use. We will also be able to recall all the lies told by Brexiters ten years ago as the campaign got underway. Of all the words spoken about Brexit since the starting gun was fired, those of  German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble in June 2016 still ring true: "In is in. Out is out", emphasising that the UK couldn't retain single market benefits without accepting EU obligations. Ever since the vote, we have been trying to find ways to prove that Schäuble was wrong. And we have comprehensively failed.

Dean Acheson, former US Secretary of State said in 1962 that Britain had "lost an empire and has not yet found a role."  If he were alive today, he might say we have lost a trading bloc and not yet found a role.

Nothing shows how utterly lost we are than an article in the FT by Labour's Europe minister Nick Thomas-Symonds: This is what a proper Brexit looks like.  This was in response to a campaign in the Daily Express, supported by Badenoch and Farage, for a 'proper Brexit.'  The debate is still centred on what Brexit actually means. Mrs May said Brexit means Brexit in what must be the ultimate and silliest circular argument. She didn't know, and even now, neither does Thomas-Symonds - or Farage for that matter.

The FT article talks about "slashing red tape" and "sweeping away trade barriers with the EU" to "ease a source of pressure on food prices" and "participation in the EU’s internal electricity market" being good for consumers, businesses and investment in the North Sea. All without rejoining the single market apparently.

And on security, Thomas-Symonds ends with this:

"You cannot have security without prosperity. And prosperity will be driven by removing the unnecessary barriers that hold our great businesses — small, medium and large — back. It’s about building a strong trading relationship for the future: a new strategic partnership. You could call it a proper Brexit."

When people went to the polling booths in June 2016, I think they were thinking far more along Herr Schäuble's line than he is now suggesting. The reset that Labour are pursuing is years away from showing any results, and any benefits are most likely to be very small and very expensive. The EU will see far more of them than Britain.  That is how negotiating with Brussels works, one might say it's the whole purpose of negotiating as a bloc.

In response to Thomas-Symonds, Lord Frost, our former chief EU negotiator, has written a letter to the FT where he, naturally, argues against any closer relationship:

"Far from being a new trade deal, [Thomas -Symonds] 'reset' with the EU constitutes the partial re-entry to the EU’s single market, in defiance of his own party’s manifesto, applying EU laws without any say in them, and paying for the privilege too — a point that goes oddly unmentioned in his guest column.

"The government’s efforts would be better expended on using the benefits of British national independence, while we still have it, to deregulate and improve the business environment here in the UK. Such action would do far more to help the benighted British economy than surreptitiously binding ourselves once more, bit by bit, to the slow-growth EU."

They are both wrong, although Frost has the more logical position, even if it means making the country poorer than it already is. After ten years, we are still going round in circles trying to find that 'Goldilocks' position, not too close and not too far away, in perfect balance, not losing too much trade with Europe while still gaining some extra trade with the rest of the world. 

I really don't believe such a position exists where a majority in this country accept that a 'proper' Brexit has been achieved. Even if it did, such are the dynamics of global trade and geo-politics, it would very soon be out of date and out of balance, and we would be constantly chafing to renegotiate it. Britain would be permanently looking to 'reset' the relationship.

No, Schäuble was right. You are either in or out. And I think the polling shows we are in favour of being in rather than out. 

It's worth remembering that Farage, had the result gone the other way, would by now be a footnote in history. As it is, it is looking increasingly like he will be PM by 2029. Such are the quirks of history.  

An anonymous Tory MP in 2017 said that the party was "tethered to the mast of Brexit."   How prescient that was. The Tories are all but extinct, a position they have been driven to largely by Brexit and Boris Johnson. When he kicked out all the pro-EU moderates in 2019, the party shifted to the right and became virtually indistinguishable from Farage‘s lot, whatever name they’re going by this week.

If Farage ever gets into power and pursues a Frost-style 'proper' Brexit, Reform will be tethering themselves to the same mast.  It is a hopeless case.