AdiEU

After 47 years as a member of the EU, the UK is about to head for the exit at perhaps the worst moment in modern history to be pursuing a go-it-alone trade policy. This week’s decision to allow Huawei to take a role in the UK’s 5G network illustrates that the UK will increasingly have to choose its friends carefully, and as Martin Wolf’s recent column in the FT put it, “Britain after Brexit will not be alone, but it will be lonelier.”

As Britain prepares to leave the EU, it is worth reflecting on the fact that more than half the UK population have lived their entire lives as a citizen of the EU. And around 24 hours from now, that will be denied to them. Obviously, nothing is going to change immediately – until end-2020 the UK will still have all the rights of an EU member, apart from the most important one of having any influence over EU decision-making. The vassalage of which Jacob Rees-Mogg made such great play is now a reality. It is only for 11 months, of course. After that, Britain is on its own and will have to fend for itself in a more hostile geopolitical environment than existed in 2016. 

There are huge challenges ahead in order to make the economy Brexit-proof. Having accepted that the UK will now leave the EU, it is incumbent on those who sold their vision of a post-EU Britain to deliver on their promises. What I don’t want to hear from anyone in the course of this year is people telling me to get behind Brexit. That is like saying Liverpool will win the Premiership this year so we should all support them. For the last seven years, I have focused on the economics of Brexit and I have called out those who use spurious economics to justify their entrenched positions. I will continue to do so after 31 January.

Indeed for many of us, the greatest casualty has been truth. Politicians and large parts of the media have never been honest about the trade-off between autonomy and economic well-being and there has always been a sense in parts of the British media that membership of the EU is a zero-sum game. If something is cooked up in Brussels, it must be a plot by the French or the Germans to defraud the British. There has never been any recognition that everyone pools some of their sovereignty in order to get something back. It is true that in the late-1980s the likes of Commission President Jacques Delors had a grandiose vision for the EU which sounded too federalist for many across Europe, and I have long had reservations about the construction of the monetary union which is little more than a glorified fixed exchange rate mechanism. But the high tide of Eurofederalism passed in the early 2000s as the EU expanded eastwards and I suspect it will not easily be able to recapture the ambition (hubris) of the Delors era. Indeed, I maintain that the EU from which the UK voted to leave is not the EU of today, and will not be the EU of ten years hence as it scales down its domestic ambitions and seeks instead to act as a voice for Europe on the global stage.

Even more seriously, Brexit raises question marks against a British political class that is prepared to take a big gamble with the standing of the UK and the well-being of its people. Brexit may work out, but the balance of evidence suggests it will not deliver what its proponents promise. For example, in an increasingly interconnected world, how can people believe that leaving the EU will grant them “freedom”? Freedom from what? As a medium-sized open economy, the UK is a rule taker in the modern global trading system – the only difference in future is that it will not have to accept all the EU’s rules – but it will find that the US and China are even more transactional in their approach to trade and the UK will not be an equal partner. But even “freedom” from the EU will turn out to be a chimera as the UK is forced to adhere to EU standards in many areas in order to retain access to the single market. Throughout the last four years, snake-oil salesmen have sold us a vision of what Britain can be, if only it can shake off the yoke of the EU. It’s all nonsense. And if politicians are prepared to lie to such an extent on matters of fundamental economic well-being, how far are they prepared to go on other issues?

Indeed, the political class are entirely responsible for the mess we find ourselves in today. Whilst people voted as they did in 2016 for various reasons, I maintain that a common denominator was the desire to strike back against politicians who failed to manage the fallout from the economic collapse of 2008-09. Voters were promised that normality would soon be restored. It wasn’t, and those believed to be responsible for the collapse – primarily bankers – were not properly held to account. Meanwhile the subsequent austerity policy introduced by the Cameron government penalised some of the poorest in society. Then to compound their error, MPs spent two years arguing about how to proceed and singularly failing. It is tempting at this point to launch into my “j’accuse” post that I have been wanting to write for years, in which I point fingers and call out those politicians who enabled and facilitated Brexit. But somehow it does not seem like the right thing to do today.

There are many economic and political challenges ahead. Although many people will doubtless celebrate their “liberation” from the EU, the more thoughtful Brexit supporters realise that the real hard work starts now. It won’t be easy and frankly I believe much of what was promised is undeliverable. But I say to Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Iain Duncan-Smith, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Nigel Farage, Daniel (“absolutely nobody is threatening our place in the single market”) Hannan, Dominic Cummings, Matthew Elliott and all those who believe the UK is about to enter the promised land, this is on you.