Five years on, we finally know what Brexit means:
a worse deal for everyone
Polly
Toynbee
On trade, finance, migration, food standards and more,
the UK suffers fresh ignominy on a daily basis
Thu 24 Jun 2021 16.32 BST
Five years
ago today, in the early hours, Britain discovered what it had done – and what
had been done to it by the liars, charlatans and rogues who mis-sold Brexit as
“taking back control”. The wound is as fresh as ever. Breaking apart political
parties and reversing erstwhile red or blue wall seats is a minor matter, but Brexit’s
explosive division of the country by social class, geography and a deep sense
of personal identity is a lasting injury.
Few have
changed their mind: though polls put remain (or return) ahead by a nose, no one
wants to be put through that hell again. Brexit is done for the foreseeable
future, though a government thriving on national disunity strives to keep it
alive with infantile culture wars and “anti-woke” phoney patriotism. Polls give
the Conservatives a 14-point lead, as they head into next week’s Batley and
Spen byelection. No surprise, for what party in power could dream of a better
boast than this: the vaccines are genuinely bestowing the gift of staying alive
on every single citizen. And Britain is out ahead of other European countries:
pollsters tell me voters sincerely (though unjustly) believe that had we
remained in the EU, we couldn’t have had our own programme. Despite EU
vaccinators catching up, and the UK having more people dead and more debt than
they do, Covid is still a convenient cover.
Yet barely
a day goes by without further proofs of Brexit’s damage, some of it now forcing
its way into the Tory press. This week, pigeon fanciers are barred from having
their birds participate in cross-Channel races by new rules. Less niche is the
alarming 17% rise in food prices: Ian Wright, of the Food and Drink Federation,
tells me Brexit costs and obstructions have sent commodity prices soaring, and
those are now working their way on to the shelves. The unexpected £2bn fall in
UK food and drink exports to the EU in just the first quarter of this year is,
Wright tells me, “no teething problem, but very real and sustained. Smaller
firms have stopped exporting”, overwhelmed by the new obstacles. The government
may turn a permanent blind eye to import checks starting next week: “But that
soon gets dangerous. When no one checks, who knows if imported food is what it
says on the tin, and not, say, horse meat?”
Financial
services are migrating to the EU: by March, Brexit had already driven away an
estimated £1.3 tn of assets and jobs. By April, more than 440 finance firms had
fled, taking 10% of the UK’s financial sector assets, worth a staggering
£900bn, while foreign investment subsides.
Boris
Johnson’s hastily botched EU trade deal left out finance, responsible for 80%
of our exports by value. It nearly stalled over fishing, a sector with just
12,000 jobs, yet even that industry is wrecked – and the Express says so:
“‘They’ve sold us down the f*****g river!’ British fishermen hit out on Brexit
anniversary.” Wherever you look, expect the same story. The assault on the
arts, music and broadcasting is lethal for a sector where Britain excels. This
week, the music industry has been begging for an end to the deadlock over EU
touring, vital for its viability. Another thunderbolt struck this week with a
report showing the EU is likely to enforce its rules limiting non-EU content in
its broadcasting: nothing new here, the EU is always strict on cultural
protection against the US. That strips millions from financing for drama and
other programmes, on top of BBC cuts and the possible privatisation of Channel
4.
Look at
almost any industry and you find too much damage done to fit in this space:
vanishing EU workers, no EU arrest warrant or crime data sharing, the loss of
Erasmus, EU visitors handcuffed at our airports, and EU citizens here in peril
of being failed by the Home Office, in a manner redolent of the Windrush
scandal – a poisonous message that will deter EU tourism.
As the
Brexiters’ reckless unreadiness unfolds, the government emerges devoid of basic
policy. Is it for protecting our farmers, manufacturers, steel or wind turbine
makers, or is it for wild free trade, with the cheapest food and products
imported, regardless of home industries? The Australia deal sold out farmers,
with 60 times more beef imported next year for a puny 0.02% GDP increase over
15 years.
Yesterday
the sausages were kicked down the road, but this will only delay the Northern
Ireland protocol crisis beyond the tense marching season. There’s an easy
answer to food export dilemmas if a pig-headed prime minister hadn’t appointed
the mulish Lord Frost to block it: only ideology stops them agreeing to EU food
standards, as we have agreed to EU employment and environment norms. That
should alarm most voters who may not relish an inalienable right to lower food
quality.
It’s high
time Labour broke its silence on these calamities, and it should start right
there with food standards. It would be an easy win. Had the Brexiters lost by a
whisker five years ago, do you think they would have quietly capitulated, any
more than the SNP did after it lost in 2014? The omerta of Labour remainers has
done them no favours, letting these Brexit car crashes pile up unopposed. True,
Brexit is electoral dynamite that Johnson plans to exploit for ever, but that’s
why Labour needs to make a stand now. There’s no reopening the referendum, it
should just target the failed trade deal. Polls show the public knows how bad
it is, Strathclyde university’s Prof John Curtice found that even among leave
voters, only one in three thinks it a good deal.
Emily
Thornberry, shadowing on trade, sees that wide-open goal. “Be grown-up and
pragmatic,” she says. “We need a good deal. We can make the best of Brexit,
while they’ve made the worst of it.” So far Covid shrouds the effects, driving
the EU trade deal’s disasters from most front pages. But on everything from
farming, manufacturing and finance to entertainment and food the government is
vulnerable and culpable, if Labour would shake off its paralysing
Brexit-phobia.
Polly
Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário