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Boris Johnson claims we are heading for ‘serfdom’ if Starmer changes our awful Brexit deal. Ignore him
Naomi Smith
The case for
talking to Brussels and seeking improvements is undeniable – except to those
like Johnson, in a world of their own
Tue 9 Jul
2024 12.00 CEST
We are
seeing a Conservative movement so bereft, so out of ideas, that it’s replaying
its old hits. At the end of their reign, with Britain poorer, sicker and less
free, it is unclear where the Tories go now. Still, idiocy does adore a vacuum,
and so it’s time to talk about Boris Johnson again.
On Sunday,
the disgraced former occupant of No 10 suggested Keir Starmer would be putting
Britain “on the road to serfdom” if he sought improvements to the shambolic
Brexit deal that Johnson struck. Even now, he and those who still laud him seem
incapable of understanding the damage they have done. Where once we could
travel, live and work freely across the continent, Britons now face time
limits, visa fees and roaming charges. Where once our businesses could sell as
easily to someone in Berlin as someone in Birmingham, they now get red tape,
delays and additional charges. And pertinent to the allegation levelled by
Johnson, where once the British people had a say in the rules that govern our
trade with our largest market, we now have none.
Instead of
“Britannia unchained” we have Britannia unanchored, our country adrift, more
vulnerable to economic headwinds and the whims of bigger global players. Even
accounting for Covid and Ukraine, Brexit has caused higher consumer prices and
lower economic growth, and all for benefits no one can articulate without the
preface : “Well, maybe in the coming decades …” Those who claim there are
Brexit opportunities rarely go into the detail. When they do, they almost never
explain the trade-offs.
So ignore
revisionism, it’s Johnson who delivered “serfdom” for the UK. He said “fuck
business” and he delivered.
Fixing the
problems Britain faces after Brexit won’t be easy. Starmer has pledged that
economic growth must be the overriding priority for his government. The
quickest and most obvious way of achieving this without any additional
investment or revenue-raising is removing the Brexit straitjacket from UK plc.
But having said that access to the customs union and single market access is
unlikely in his lifetime, what space remains for Starmer to improve Johnson’s
deal?
Quite a bit,
actually. Last year, crossparty MPs and industry leaders of the UK Trade and
Business Commission published 114 recommended fixes to the Brexit deal, all of
which fall within Starmer’s red lines. These proposals were endorsed by
business at the Trade Unlocked conference. They are also extremely popular with
the British public.
They’re a
good place to start and there are things the EU wants, too. An ill-timed
request for talks about youth mobility was clearly an early exercise in
Brussels kite-flying, and we know they’re also keen on increased security and
defence cooperation. From our side, British businesses, farmers, fishers,
employers, manufacturers, researchers and innovators all need regulatory
certainty. Just as the Conservative government agreed to align with high EU
standards due to the economic cost of doing otherwise, this Labour government
can codify it. Beneficial alignment would provide the certainty that businesses
have been deprived of for almost a decade and boost direct investment.
Johnson has
billed the European political community summit next week as a decisive
showdown. Instead, it will be a valuable opportunity for the new UK government
to build trust with its continental counterparts. But the real work on trade
will start away from the pomp and ceremony of Blenheim Palace, with ongoing
dialogue intensifying as we approach the official review of the UK-EU Trade
Cooperation Agreement in 2026.
Crucially,
Starmer must strike a new tone with our European neighbours, something he may
have achieved already through optics alone. Together we face existential
external threats. We cannot afford more phoney wars with our closest democratic
allies while authoritarians are poised to dismantle democracy in the US and are
crossing borders in Europe – another reason Johnson’s battle metaphors in the
context of EU relations are particularly obnoxious.
Johnson
fancies himself a student of history, so his charge that Starmer is pursuing a
Tsarist Russia-style great retreat from Brexit is unlikely to be accidental.
But if he knew anything about history, Johnson would understand that for a good
general, retreat is by far the best call when a plan proves fatally flawed or
to have been terribly executed. Both are true in the case of Johnson’s Brexit.
Starmer should ignore the hyperbole about serfdom: any retreat from what
Johnson delivered is likely to be a winning strategy.
Naomi Smith is chief executive of the campaign group Best for Britain
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