Brexit Unfolded: How no one got what they wanted (and why they were never going to)

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Whilst Johnson is the most obvious culprit here, the same applies to his entire administration, including his feeble and mediocre Cabinet and his team of arrogant and bumptious Vote Leave Special Advisors, both during and after the Cummings’ period. If, as the Hallett evidence so far suggests, the entirety of this administration suffered from multiple deficiencies in handling Covid, then it is inconceivable that it became super-competent when dealing with Brexit. And whilst it might be said that the pandemic was a wholly unusual and complex problem, the same is true of Brexit. If they differ, it is not in that but in the fact that Covid was a crisis imposed on the UK, as it was on other countries, whereas Brexit was imposed by, indeed created by, the Brexiters, many of whom were by this time running the country. So they were incapable of dealing with either, but with Brexit they had the added culpability of having caused it. Argument Honestly held opinions and provocative argument based on current events or our recent reports. Because for the purposes of this post I am splicing together different parts of testimony to Hallett it may be confusing as to what jobs Simon Case was doing at different times. In May 2020 he was appointed as Downing Street Permanent Secretary, a role that had been unfilled since being vacated by Sir Jeremy Heywood in 2012 (it had in any case only been created in 2010), who became Cabinet Secretary until his retirement in 2018, when he was succeeded by Mark Sedwill. Then, in September 2020, Case was appointed Cabinet Secretary, replacing Sedwill. Identity, Empire and the Culture War Byline Times explores the weaponisation of Britain’s past as a key tool in a dark project of division and distraction It gave us the bitter referendum that was supposed to resolve matters. It gave us Brexit which, apart from everything else that could be said about it, manifestly intensified divisions within the Tory Party and smeared them to every corner of the polity. Yet, at the same time, which makes the whole thing an even bigger tragedy, it failed to satisfy the Brexiters. It has degraded our international reputation, permanently crippled our economy, toxified our entire political discourse – and, still, they want more. Still, they want the ever-elusive ‘true Brexit’. Still, they want the ever-elusive ‘true Conservatism’.

Democracy in Danger The newspaper’s extensive reporting and analysis of the various threats to democracy from populism, oligarchy, dark money and online disinformation. These and similar claims can all demonstrably be shown to be untrue simply by reading the terms under which bids to operate Freeports were made. There is nothing in them which would allow any of these claims to be true, and no legal basis for them to be true. Nor is there any way that Freeports can ‘morph into’ Charter Cities. If Charter Cities ever became a policy, they would need a whole new legal basis just as they would if Freeports had never existed. The key point about this is that, as at a generic level is true of every single regulatory decision, there is a trade-off between reward and risk. In this case, crudely, the reward is freeing up massive funds for much-needed investment and generating proceeds that benefit policyholders or pension scheme members. However, there’s also an argument that it wouldn’t make much difference to these rewards in practice. The risk is that holding fewer reserves and/or more risky investments could lead to insurance companies or pension schemes collapsing, destabilizing the financial system and damaging policyholders or pension scheme members (and probably, ultimately, taxpayers). Again, there’s also an argument that it wouldn’t make much difference to these risks in practice.Diana is especially well-handled in this respect. Whilst being overtly pro-Brexit, it is made scrupulously clear that she is neither a racist, nor stupid, nor ignorant, nor insensitive, nor unreflective. If anything, she comes across as having a kind of sentimental and delicate sense of England and its history. She is arguably more sympathetically drawn than the other main characters, with Cecily sometimes coming across as somewhat priggish and hectoring and Victoria as rather shallow, snobbish and materialistic. In what is clearly an anti-Brexit book by an anti-Brexit author, that is an achievement. It’s not just that, though. Opinion polls show that in October 2022, following the Truss debacle, 57% thought that Brexit has made the UK economy weaker than it would have been, and 11% that Brexit has made the economy stronger than it would have been, a lead for 46 percentage points for ‘weaker’, which was the highest recorded since the question was first asked in February 2022. However, in the most recent iteration of this poll, in October 2023, 49% thought ‘weaker’ and 21% thought stronger. At 28 percentage points that is still a considerable lead, but it has not only declined since its high point in October 2022 it is also the smallest lead recorded in any of the polls since the question was first asked. (The numbers responding ‘similar’ or ‘don’t know’ have remained stable throughout, at around 20% and 12% respectively). What both Brexit and coronavirus reveal are some fundamental flaws in the way we are governed and the political discourse around it. The populist explosion of this decade, of which Brexit was a prime example, has bequeathed a way of governing which is impervious to reason, and incapable of engaging with complexity. It isn’t just chance that we have a woefully incompetent Prime Minister , a dud stand in [i.e. Dominic Raab], and a cabinet of mediocrities, propped up by a cadre of special advisors with few skills beyond contrarian posturing. Subsequently, eight Freeports have been approved in England. In effect, they combine features of long-familiar Enterprise Zones, regional development policy and ‘classical’ Freeports. My suspicion about the shallowness of any conversion to centrism Sunak may have had on Monday was amply justified within two days, following Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling that the government’s ‘Rwanda’ policy is unlawful. That created immediate political pressure for Sunak because, whilst it seems unlikely that Braverman, herself, has a great personal following amongst the Brexitists, her views do, and Rwanda is a policy issue for them to rally around.

Secondly, it distracts from and discredits the genuine criticisms and concerns about Freeports. These include issues of economic effectiveness, governance and accountability, value for money, planning laxity, tax evasion, and corruption. It’s absolutely necessary to monitor these and also to monitor whether government promises are kept that no environmental or labour standards will be reduced, whether within Freeports or more widely. None of this is aided by nonsensical claims about Charter Cities. Brexit Unfoldedis a must-read for anyone who cares about what happened following the momentous decision Britain took in the 2016 referendum. Grey is not a neutral observer, but his analysis is scholarly and balanced. He writes with engaging clarity as he navigates through toxic headlines and political slogans. It will be a long time before this illuminating account is rivalled.” Jonathan Dimbleby, broadcaster and author The book depicts the relationships and conflicts between these characters unfolding over the days they spend together in the house and surrounding area, with Dover and its cliffs again having quite different resonances for the various characters, especially Cecily and Diana. Alongside that depiction there are the ‘interior monologues’ of Cecily, Diana, and Victoria. Of these, Victoria’s is the most straightforward and contains her reflections on, especially, Cecily and their shared childhood, as well as on the other characters in the book and on her former boyfriend. It has been known for some time that the ERG’s membership has fallen, and the group is much less organized than in its 2018-19 heyday. Its members, or ex-members, are also split, and some of those in government, especially Chris Heaton-Harris and Steve Baker, were closely involved in, and became advocates of, the WF. Indeed, in Baker’s case, that led to the one-time ‘Brexit hard man’ being thrown out of the ERG’s WhatsApp group whilst being described as a “little weasel” by Nigel Farage. As Robert Shrimsley, Chief UK Political Commentator of the Financial Times, observed, “the revolution eats its own children”. Perhaps more to the point, it is the latest example of the difference between taking responsibility for the realities of delivering Brexit and the luxury of espousing Brexit purity from the sidelines.I’ve quoted that at length not to say ‘I told you so’ (and, in any case, I was hardly the only person saying similar things at the time), but because it serves as a fair summary of what we have been hearing recently at the Hallett Inquiry. As Andrew Rawnsley, Chief Political Commentator of The Observer, wrote in his column last Sunday, “the testimony from the people in the room” has shown that Johnson was “comprehensively incapable of doing the job”. But, Rawnsley continues, it wasn’t just Johnson who failed, it was the cabinet and senior civil servants, and the blame for that lies in part with Dominic Cummings and his Vote Leave team. In this way, as I suggested in last week’s post, Britain’s ‘Brexit fever’ may have broken but, as I also suggested, that has to be caveated by the possibility of an ERG resurgence, perhaps after the next election, and by the way that ‘Brexitism’ has become embedded within a powerful segment of British political culture. This is a concept with a long history, but its contemporary emergence is associated with development economics – whereby an outside country, or a private corporation or conglomerate, would be granted control of a city or other zone in a developing country and run it on, typically, low tax, low regulation lines.

Another question is whether, how, and to what extent, Sunak follows up his success with the WF by moving in more pragmatic directions on Brexit policy generally. As I suggested last week, there are already signs that he will do so in relation to defence and international relations. But what about domestic policy and, crucially, the Retained EU Law Bill? If he continues with the latter, Brexitism can hardly be said to be in abeyance. If he doesn’t, will that provide a new rallying point for the Brexiters? It is of note that both this Bill and the Bill of Rights Bill are on the agenda for today’s meeting of the Partnership Council of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement. Yet the omnipresent Rees-Mogg was at pains to represent the hearing as the work of “the haters of Brexit”, despite the Committee containing four Tory MPs of whom at least one, Bernard Jenkin, is one of the most Ultra of Brexit Ultras. Indeed it turned out, as Martin Kettle noted, that “the unexpected star turn here was Sir Bernard Jenkin, a Conservative MP whose Brexit credentials are unchallengeable, who quietly carved Johnson’s evidence into pieces, leaving him spluttering and humiliated”. Perhaps Jenkin will now join Baker in the ranks of ‘crypto-remainers’, Jacobins turned Girondins.Meg Russell and Lisa James’ book is an academic text, whose authors work at University College London’s Constitution Unit and thus bring a very high degree of academic credibility and expertise, and it is based on a major research study of ‘Brexit, Parliament and the Constitution’. As such, it draws on the Hansard record of parliamentary proceedings and a whole swathe of other official documents, secondary sources including other studies of Brexit and media reports, and a wide variety of interviews with participants in the events conducted by the authors (and others). These are all assiduously cited and there is an extensive bibliography, a compendious index, as well as a useful glossary of parliamentary terms. In short, it is a scholarly account but, for a It is hard to imagine a clearer, more detailed, more dispassionate analysis of the journey and execution of the UK’s departure from the European Union than this brilliant and readable book by Chris Grey. Everyone who cares about the issue, for and against, needs this level of expertise and knowledge at their fingertips. Masterly.” Howard Goodall CBE, composer and broadcaster Sometimes, the profiles in the EM report are painful to read, as with that of Carol, who ran a niche bridal lingerie business in Devon. The last line is “Brexit was the final nail in the coffin of the business” (p. 12). Or that of Darren, who ran a specialist motorsport vehicle engineering firm in Cornwall and Essex. His profile concludes “our business is finished” (p. 17). These are affecting, personal stories of individual dreams shattered, whilst at the same time implicitly telling of damage to whole families and to local communities, often in ‘left-behind areas’. It was a dog-whistle which was heard, with the consequence that far-right thugs despoiled the Armistice Day events that Braverman had falsely claimed the Pro-Palestine march threatened, unleashing what the Metropolitan Police called“extreme violence” against them. As the former Tory MP Dominic Grieve said, “it's impossible to escape the conclusion that some of that [violence] was fuelled by the rhetoric and the incitement of the Home Secretary Suella Braverman.” Grieve, also a lawyer and a former Attorney General, albeit of a very different stamp to Braverman, is hardly a man given to injudicious remarks. So for him to have used the word ‘incitement’ in this context is little short of remarkable. We all owe a debt to Chris Grey. Where the claims for Brexit are shrouded in post-truth, Brexit Unfolded records the truth. This important book is not just a historical record – it is a vital foundation for anyone trying to work out how Britain can move forward.” David Miliband, former Foreign Secretary

Although the political parties in this space, not just Reform but the rump of UKIP, and Reclaim, which has never been more than a rump, remain angrily disunited, there is a sense of this ‘movement’ coming together, an example being the way GB News employs as hosts Tories like, again, Rees-Mogg and Anderson, as well as Nigel Farage and oddballs like Laurence Fox, alongside its wider cast of viciously aggressive presenters and freakish commentators. Similarly, an offshoot of Fox’s Reclaim was recently revealed to have funded Andrew Bridgen, whilst Bridgen himself co-hosted a lavish dinner for anti-vaxxers at the Carlton Club last month. In some ways, such loose-knit communities of interest are more effective than a political party, creating the impression of a disorganized ‘general consensus’ rather than an orchestrated agenda. Even if passing the Windsor Framework has broken the Brexit fever as regards government policy, it will also serve to re-enforce and perhaps grow the poisonous reservoir of Brexit betrayalism within British Conservatism in its wider sense. That matters not so much in terms of Brexit policy but the rag-bag of populist causes with which Brexit has become bound up. Those causes have their adherents amongst the Tories, of course, with Lee Anderson and Jacob Rees-Mogg being obvious examples, but also within the Reform Party and the very powerful media and social media nexus that promotes Conservative populism. The staggering success of Brexit in transforming Britain’s economic prospects has been such that in his Autumn Statement speech the Chancellor mentioned it, well, just once, and that to refer to the fatuous “Brexit Pubs Guarantee”. This is the policy, first trailed in Rishi Sunak’s 2021 budget, and which came into force last August, whereby duty on a pint of beer bought in a pub is guaranteed to be less than when bought in a shop. As Brexit benefits go, this might be thought rather meagre but, in fact, it’s not even a Brexit benefit, as it could have been done whilst being a member in the EU.Britain’s 2016 vote to leave the EU divided the nation, unleashing years of political turmoil. Today, many remain unreconciled to Brexit whilst, in a tragic irony, some of those most committed to it are angry and dissatisfied with what was delivered. This leads to a bigger point. For many erstwhile remainers, and certainly for re-joiners, the obvious solution to the damage of Brexit is to re-join the EU, or at least to re-join the Single Market and/or create a customs treaty with the EU. For them, any divergence from EU regulations is misguided in itself, and also an obstacle to future re-joining. For Brexiters, the converse applies: divergence is seen as a good thing in itself, simply for being divergence, and will make re-joining in the future more difficult. For the Tories, the embarrassment is the result of having been the architects of Brexit. For Labour, it is because, otherwise, they would be forced to explain why they don’t propose to seek to reverse it, even to the extent of seeking single market membership. The political reasons for that, both domestic and as regards the EU, are understandable and, in my view, justifiable. But, whether justifiable or not, they don’t change the basic fact that the country is accepting – or being forced to accept – that, year after year, it is going to get poorer and poorer than it would otherwise have been. Some of those posts contain details which are now irrelevant, but the overall picture that is emerging confirms what is perhaps the central point made in that April 2020 post: That elision is evident not just in the rough and tumble of anonymous social media slanging matches and newspaper columns like that of Allister Heath, mentioned earlier, but in the writings of populist intellectuals. For example, in last week’s Mail, politics Professor Matthew Goodwin managed to run together issues as diverse, yet predictable, as Brexit, the paucity of further and technical education, the ‘over-representation’ of ethnic minorities in TV shows and adverts, and, of course, “’woke’ policies in our schools [and] universities” to propose that “there is a yawning gap between the values of the New Elite and the majority”.