This week in Brexitland, December 29, 2022

The top five most Brexity moments of the year

Given this is the last entry for 2022, I figured I would have a look back on the whole year and pick out the most Brexity moments and revel in the very worst that Brexit offered up during the last twelve months. Getting this down to only five was difficult as there was a lot of Brexit to choose from.

5. Jacob Rees-Mogg casually dismisses the Brexit concerns of a British wine seller live on national television

We begin with a very recent event, Rees-Mogg on Question Time a couple of weeks ago. He was confronted with a comment from an audience member who has been in the wine industry for the last 30 years. A man explained how difficult importing and exporting his product had become as a direct result of Brexit and made a plea for honesty in the Brexit debate.

Rees-Mogg, when he wants to be, is an impressive retail politician. He’s generally good at talking to people who disagree with him and even those who dislike him. However, this doesn’t apply to anything related to Brexit - when anything Brexity comes up, Rees-Mogg is immediately at his very, very worst.

This recent Question Time moment is a prime example. All Rees-Mogg could do was basically tell the guy he was wrong about his own business and sector. About how great the Australian and New Zealand trade deals have been for wine import/exporters in the UK, even as the guy told him precisely why this wasn’t the case. All Rees-Mogg could do was obfuscate and dance around the issues, trumpeting the old lines about how Brexit is great, even if reality is telling you that it isn’t. All the emptiness of Brexit was on display here in Rees-Mogg’s baseless piffle.

4. George Eustice admits that the Australian trade deal sucks - in the House of Commons

Those paying attention to the detail could have told you that the Australian and New Zealand post-Brexit trade deals weren’t very good for the UK some months ago. The first hint was the antipodean media laughing at how bad they were for Britain right after they had been agreed. Yet it was still a shock to hear a Tory MP have a go at one of them, particularly a former cabinet minister doing so in the House of Commons.

“Since I now enjoy the freedom of the backbenches, I no longer have to put such a positive gloss on what was agreed. I hope my Right Honourable Friend will understand my reason for doing this, which is that unless we recognise the failures the Department for International Trade made during the Australia negotiations, we will not be able to learn the lessons for future negotiations. There are critical negotiations under way right now, notably on the CPTPP and on Canada, and it is essential that the Department does not repeat the mistakes it made. The first step is to recognise that the Australia trade deal is not actually a very good deal for the UK…..”

The former DEFRA Secretary then went on to say that “the truth of the matter is that the UK gave away far too much for far too little in return.” Eustice is not only a former cabinet member, but a staunch Brexiter (he once ran as a UKIP MEP candidate). This wasn’t a Remainer having a go at the Australian trade deal, but someone firmly of the faith, which makes it all the more remarkable.

3. A “Swiss style” rethink of Brexit is floated - and then denied in short order

The very same month that George Eustice stood up in the Commons and had a right old go at the Australia free trade deal, there was an article in the Times laying out the government’s supposed plans to try and renegotiate trade terms to aim for a “Swiss style” relationship with the European Union. This was immediately confusing as this would require a decade of negotiations, accepting freedom of movement again, as well as EU rules on lots of things.

Sure enough, the government had to move quickly to squash any notion that this is what they were considering once the Brexit babies started to throw their toys out of the pram. What was the government thinking when it trailed this “Swiss” idea? All we can say for sure is the following: the government doesn’t know what it’s doing on Brexit in the slightest. It understands that it is boxed in by the Boris Johnson/David Frost agreement and wants to undo that without looking like they are trying to undo Brexit. Yet they have little room for manoeuvre given Brexit is a religion more than it is anything else and any hint of something aimed at better relations with the EU will appear to be blasphemy to a large portion of the Conservative parliamentary party. All they can do is pretend they have options when they do not.

2. Penny Mordaunt’s “Trade Deals” with US states

While Mordaunt was International Trade Secretary, there were lots of cringe moments. Her terrible speech in America at the end of last year is one of the all time worst in UK political history; within it, she tried to compare the UK leaving the EU to the US declaring independence from…..who was it again? Oh yeah, the UK. But the worst moment of her tenure as DIT Secretary came when Mordaunt went round several US states and got them to agree to the idea of signing Memorandums of Understanding with the UK. She then proceeded to try and pass these things off as “trade deals”.

These agreements with US states are Brexit in miniature: what is being claimed isn’t true and would be extremely lame even if it was correct. US states cannot agree trade deals (this is done at federal level). What was discussed between the UK government and various US states were simply Memorandums of Understanding. In essence, they would try and make life easier for businesses to sell into each other’s markets. A sort of glorified trade fair, if you will. So, not trade deals at all, meaning they were completely misrepresented to the British public.

Yet even if the claim that they were trade deals had been true, think of how lame a place for Brexit to land that would be. Pre-referendum, there was talk of the Five Eyes coming together as a new, all-powerful trading bloc - now the UK government is reduced to begging Indiana to pretend to be signing a trade deal. It’s deeply pathetic.

1. The Kwarteng/Truss “mini-budget”

The mini-budget of 2022 is Brexit at its most Brexity. It was the first, full-throated attempt to “take advantage of the freedoms of Brexit” and thus experience the maximum potential of the project. Of course, what happened when Brexit at its fullest was exposed to reality was highly predictable - market meltdown and the project crashing to Earth in record time. Truss didn’t last two months in Number 10.

Much like they now disavow the idea that they ever said Brexit would cause the EU to collapse, or that a US trade deal was endlessly talked up as an almost automatic outcome from leaving the EU, the Brexiters are now trying to distance themselves from “Trussenomics”. It’s not terribly convincing. They all talked up Truss and her plans as being the ultimate fulfilment of Brexit many times, on the record. Trying to now say that Brexit can be some other, undefined thing just doesn’t wash. The polls seem to reflect this as well, with the public turning against both the Conservative party and Brexit in the wake of Truss’ failed premiership.

Thank you for reading, not just this week but every week in 2022 when you stopped by. If you haven’t subscribed already, please do, and I’ll be back next week again with the worst of Brexit. Happy New Year!