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Unable to move: Sunak remains at the mercy of the Faragists and the Tory right.
Infamy, infamy … the Brexit legions have still got it in for Sunak
William
Keegan
Power, in this disintegrating Tory party, seems as
precarious as being an emperor in febrile ancient Rome
Unable to move: Sunak remains at the mercy of the
Faragists and the Tory right.
Sun 11 Dec
2022 07.00 GMT
Classical
scholars must surely see parallels between the embarrassing sequence of prime
ministerial changes in the British government this year and events in AD68-69
in the ancient Rome so beloved of Boris Johnson.
AD68-69 was
the year of the four emperors. First there was Galba, murdered by soldiers of
his Praetorian Guard – this year’s parallel being the removal of Johnson by his
long-suffering cabinet. Then there was Otho, who took his own life – this
year’s version being the political suicide committed by Liz Truss with her
lunatic budget.
Finally
there was Vitellius, murdered by his successor Vespasian’s troops. The modern
equivalent of Vitellius must be Rishi Sunak, and of Vespasian’s troops a motley
collection of Faragists and Sunak’s extreme rightwing “colleagues” on the
Conservative benches.
Sunak can
hardly move without being challenged by Vespasian’s troops. The word gets out
that he knows in his heart that Brexit is an unmitigated disaster, and wants
closer relations with “Europe” and – hey presto – the locusts descend. A Swiss
relationship? A Norwegian relationship? Any closer relationship? The locusts
demand instant denials, and get them!
At the
pre-Christmas presentation of his show Rock & Roll Politics, the journalist
Steve Richards asked his audience for a show of hands on whether they expected
Sunak to survive for the whole of next year – thereby resisting the modern
equivalent of Vespasian’s troops. The overwhelming majority believed the Tories
could not do this again, and voted for his survival. Now, I did not get where I
am today by making forecasts about the survival of Tory leaders, but I cannot
help reflecting that the more deluded of his fellow Brexiters are out to get
him.
Which
brings us to Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, his shadow chancellor, Rachel
Reeves, and the question: why the hell are they ruling out any question of
rejoining the customs union and single market?
Here I have
to acknowledge that while there is a growing, indeed almost overwhelming,
recognition in this country that Brexit is a fully fledged catastrophe, the
conventional wisdom is that either we can never go back or that it will take
many years to do so.
This sort
of stuff is almost wilfully defeatist. What I do understand from a longstanding
European Union source is that there is not much chance of our former EU
partners believing they can enter into trustworthy negotiations with a totally
discredited Conservative and Brexit party.
But if it
got its act together, Labour could do it. It is time for Starmer and Reeves to
highlight the real costs of Brexit and the holes in the economy caused by the
self-harm of a policy that knocks 4% – £100bn a year – off GDP and some £40bn
off the government’s annual tax revenues, thereby having a major impact on the
resources available for health, education, social services and all the goals
that Labour is expected to champion.
Which would
you prefer? Starmer and Reeves to continue paying obeisance to a minority of
Labour voters in the so-called “red wall” constituencies – who were wilfully
misled into voting leave – or a far-sighted effort to rise to the occasion and
do more for the whole country, including the red wall? Yes, sorry, it’s a
rhetorical question.
It is no good Labour saying things were bad before
Brexit. The point is that the economy has been dealt an extra hammer blow
The fact of
the matter is that Starmer, like one of his political mentors, the late Dick
Leonard – formerly Brussels correspondent of the Observer – was right to be a
passionate remainer. Both businesses and citizens are realising that the end of
freedom of movement is causing widespread frustration, the ultimate irony being
that the net migration figures the Brexiters wanted to reduce are actually
rising, while the economy is suffering from the exodus of continental European
workers. You couldn’t make it up.
It is no
good Labour saying things were bad before Brexit. The point is that the economy
has been dealt an extra hammer blow. Things are a lot worse precisely because
of Brexit.
Talking of
which, while I understand Labour’s determination to emphasise that it is
fiscally trustworthy, the economists at the National Institute for Economic and
Social Research have been pointing out that now is not the time for spending
cuts and tax increases. There is a difference between the crazy Truss-Kwarteng
approach of borrowing to finance tax cuts for the rich and of increasing
borrowing to encourage investment.
At the
moment it seems that Labour is content to sit back and watch in the hope the
Conservatives will destroy themselves. But the worry is that Labour, through
being pusillanimous about Brexit, is not facing up to the size of the economic
problem facing it if it wins the next election. Meanwhile, we watch to see what
Vespasian’s troops do to Vitellius Sunak.
The signs are clear. Our destiny lies with
Europe, not a ‘sovereign global Britain’ fantasy
Peter Hain
There is a path out of this prosperity-killing
shambles and Labour can lead the way
Illustration:
Dominic McKenzie.
Illustration:
Dominic McKenzie. Illustration: Dominic McKenzie/The Observer
Sun 11 Dec
2022 07.00 GMT
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It’s now
official. Brexit has caused lasting damage to the UK economy and, with the
Tories in denial, Labour needs to lead the way with a new policy agenda.
Yet it’s
almost a taboo topic: the Tory government won’t admit it and Labour is
understandably reluctant to rekindle old Brexit flames.
The
governor of the Bank of England, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) and
the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) all agree
that, notwithstanding Covid or the Ukrainian war, Brexit is the main reason why
the UK is the only economy in the G7 still below its pre-pandemic size.
Real wages
fell by 2.9% following Brexit, according to the Resolution Foundation. London
School of Economics researchers found Brexit triggered food price rises by 6%
in the two years to the end of 2021. Business investment, dogged by post-Brexit
uncertainty, has also flatlined since 2016, compared with EU and US trends.
Since 2021,
trade growth has been lower for the UK than the G7 average, reflecting
non-tariff barriers after Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal.
The OBR
found UK trade 15% lower than if we’d remained in the EU. Tory leaders promised
a new nirvana of foreign trade deals now that the UK had “broken free” of the
EU. Yet among the very few new ones, Liz Truss’s much trumpeted Japan deal has
actually seen exports to Japan fall by £0.4bn, or 3.2%.
Her deal
with Australia has been denounced as “not actually a very good deal for the UK”
by the pro-Brexit former cabinet minister George Eustice.
As for the
promised “bonfire of red tape” for business, Brexit has in fact piled up extra
form filling and costs for businesses attempting to access our largest and
nearest market. The chemical industry has spent £2bn complying with the UK’s
duplicate of the EU’s regulatory system for absolutely no benefit, leading the
Treasury to admit that the UK’s Brexit divorce bill could rise to £42.5bn, up
to £7.5bn higher than initially estimated.
This kind
of nightmare will only be repeated for numerous other sectors of the British
economy if the abominable “Brexit freedoms bill” ever reaches the statute book.
This would, at the end of 2023, revoke around 3,800 EU measures, which were
continued by Theresa May’s administration in order to provide business with
regulatory certainty after the referendum result. The resulting chaos would
also be incompatible with the requirement in Johnson’s UK-EU trade and
cooperation agreement to maintain a level playing field with the single market
in order for the UK to retain tariff-free access to it.
Brexit,
supposed to “control” immigration, has in fact delivered both chronic labour
shortages and a dramatic jump in net migration in the year to June 2022, to a
record 504,000 – deeply ironic given the racist undertone to much of the Brexit
campaign.
Nobody at the
top of the EU trusts the UK any more. Why should they, after the Tories sign
treaties then break them?
As these
Brexit failings become more evident, support for Scottish independence appears
to be edging up. Unless Labour does something about it, we could get
independence driven at least in part by Brexit, which Nicola Sturgeon
continually stresses in making her case.
Brexit is
proving a disaster and if re-running a referendum is out of the question, how
do we “make Brexit work”, to quote Keir Starmer?
Even if the
real solution – rejoining the single market and customs union – is ruled out
for the foreseeable future, there are a number of practical steps that Labour
as an incoming government should prioritise.
First,
rebuild trust. Nobody at the top of the EU trusts the UK any more. And why
should they, after the Tories sign treaties then break them? Yet without mutual
trust, problem-solving negotiations will not succeed – I know that, as a former
Europe minister.
Like
ironing out unnecessary travel restrictions (such as the “90 days limit in any
180 days” for UK citizens, whether on business or for tourism, to the Schengen
area).
More urgent
is sorting out the Northern Ireland protocol, which triggered a collapse in
Stormont self-government. Having investigated the protocol as a member of a
Lords committee for over a year, I know how that can be done, but it requires
give and take on both sides, especially less fundamentalism and more straight
dealing by the UK.
Building on
the EU-UK trade agreement, we need to ensure continuation of a “level playing
field” on regulation. Enabling, for example, Nissan Sunderland to continue
exporting 70% of its production to Europe.
Cooperation
on energy policy is essential, including on net zero and on security of supply
(as we depend on imports from mainland Europe for around a third of our
energy).
Britain
faces a multiplicity of crises that can only be overcome in cooperation with
our immediate European neighbours: catastrophic climate change, the Ukraine
war, economic growth, energy affordability and security.
It’s high
time that we all confronted the Brexit fantasy of a “sovereign global Britain”.
The writing is on the wall. Our destiny lies, if not within, then certainly
with Europe – and Labour needs practical policies to deliver that. Something,
given the current prosperity-killing shambles, that even Brexit voters would surely
welcome?
Lord Hain is a former Labour cabinet minister.
His new thriller The Elephant Conspiracy: corruption, assassination, extinction
is published by Muswell Press
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