This week in Brexitland, February 18th, 2022

1. A Brexit benefit finally discovered as all-Ireland trade massively increases

In this Substack, I often lament about how much Brexit, which was supposed to be about increasing free trade and making the country less protectionist, has in fact dampened free trade and made Britain much more autarkic. So imagine my joy this week in hearing about a way in which Brexit has directly managed to increase trade between a part of the United Kingdom and a member state of the EU. I am referring to the fact that trade between Northern Ireland and Ireland increased massively in 2021. Exports from Northern Ireland to their southern neighbours were up 65%, or 3.9 billion Euros since Brexit got “done” at the end of 2020. Exports from Ireland to Northern Ireland were up 54%, or an historic high of 3.7 billion Euros.

These are massive numbers. Brexit, via the mechanism of the NI Protocol, has made trade between the two portions of the island of Ireland increase on an epic scale. Are the proponents of Global Britain celebrating this increase in free trade? No, for reasons you will all obviously be aware of already. For the loser in all of this is Great Britain, who has seen its exports to Northern Ireland and of course, Ireland as with all of the EU, fall dramatically.

This points to the real reason that the DUP and many Tories are so desperate to get rid of the NI Protocol - it strengthens the economic ties between Ireland and Northern Ireland, while weakening them between Great Britain and both. The way this has happened to such a great volume, so quickly, suggests that even given five years a lot of this trend will be so firmly entrenched, Northern Irish Unionism could start to look like a severely imperilled cause. Northern Ireland leaving the Union and becoming part of the Republic could go from a distant but visible possibility to a racing certainty sooner than anyone thinks.

Yet it’s difficult to have any sympathy for the Unionists involved here, given agreeing to the NI Protocol was always, inevitably and unavoidably going to have this effect. In other words, all of this was entirely predictable. In the meantime, as someone who believes in the power of free trade to do economic good, my own heart sings a little that with the trade barriers Brexit put in place, businesses found another way to use trade between borders to their advantage, immediately selling across the places of least friction. The irony for Brexiters who go on about the value of free trade and the “protectionist EU” is that the NI Protocol acted as a large scale experiment in free trade that proved both its economic benefits and how quickly they can be felt. Shame Great Britain has to be the loser in the deal, having erected trade barriers with all of its closest neighbours. But at least the value of free trade is clear for anyone to see.

2. How Starmer’s comments on “no case for rejoining the EU” need to be understood in context

This week, the leader of the opposition made some remarks about EU membership that have received a harsh reaction from some quarters. He said, straight out, that there was “no case for rejoining the EU”. Remainers got upset at what was perceived as the Labour leader ignoring the views of his mostly Europhilic membership; some pundits from the right of centre press jumped on Starmer’s comments as “playing the public for fools”, essentially trying to allege that Keir didn’t mean it and is still secretly plotting to return us to the European Union the moment he takes office.

Dealing with the latter first: I find this sort of commentary really pretty rich. Liz Truss is allowed to change her mind and become a Brexiter and it is just accepted she has no ulterior motives, but the same kind of luxury is not extended to Keir Starmer for him to change his views on Brexit in any way. This is an anti-Labour pitch, pure and simple, and demonstrates how worried many on the right are that Starmer may have got his Brexit approach exactly right for the next election, after years of Labour doing almost the perfectly bad thing on the subject every time.

For I think that Starmer has indeed got his party’s pitch just right, as in, he is saying the correct thing at the correct time in relation to our relationship with the EU. He’s not saying everything will stay the same, he is just saying we won’t rejoin anytime soon. And for those of you reading this and feeling betrayed by those words, let’s look seriously at the current situation.

Rejoining the EU right at the moment would be very difficult, even if there was a sudden change in public opinion and even if we had a government that was explicitly pro-rejoin. But we don’t have public opinion in favour of rejoining the EU, what we have now is a lot of people who appear to think, “Brexit has been a disappointment. But we voted for it, so we need to give it a real go, and besides, I would rather jump out a window than have another referendum on this subject anytime soon”. You may not feel this way, I do not feel this way, but this is the reality of the present moment. We have left the EU on very harsh terms. It will take years for a lot of the downsides of Brexit to sink in for the vast majority of voters. The whole “brand new dawn of world trade” thing has to be played out and be seen to fail before many people even begin to rethink our relationship with Europe.

But again, even if public opinion was different and we had a government ready to try and rejoin, it would be difficult. That’s because of the feelings within the EU on the idea of the UK rejoining. Now, I find it irritating when Remainers trot out the “But they’ll never let us back in!” trope - this is more of the anti-British feeling that was part of why we’re in this mess in the first place. It’s the notion that we don’t deserve to rejoin and therefore the EU won’t ever let us back in. That’s nonsense. However, given the acrimonious way in which Brexit has been handled, it is difficult to see this generation of EU politicians just waving us back into the fold, particularly on the favourable terms we had before leaving. The terms of rejoining would be steep, probably too steep for even a pro-European government to agree to.

In other words, we are years and years away from the wounds of the Brexit wars of 2016-2019 healing, both for the British electorate and opinion within the European Union. Which I suppose begs the question: if I’m pro-European and rejoining is what animates my politics way beyond anything else, why should I vote for Labour at the next general election? Why should I even hope they get in over the Tories regardless of how I vote myself?

Whatever Starmer’s views on how to handle Britain’s relationship with the EU, just having a Labour government in the next parliament will do several things automatically that will be helpful to pro-Europeanism. One, it will throw the Tories back into opposition after a long spell in government, one in which they are going to have to decide who they are and what they want to stand for as a party. At last, the Conservatives can have a real debate about what Brexit has actually done to the country and I think that would be beneficial to both the body politic and conservative thinking on Europe. Two, Labour will move us closer to Europe just by dint of fixing the worst of the terrible Boris Johnson trade deal that’s in place now. And most voters will support this because it will have demonstrably positive effects - lessening the tension in Northern Ireland, massively scaling down the queues of lorries at the Channel, to take just two obvious examples. More to this, Labour will not endlessly talk up trade deals that aren’t coming our way, such as with America. There will finally be some truth to what our government says about Brexit, particularly as a Labour government obviously won’t feel any need to cover for Tory mistakes.

As for whether even fixing the worst of the current deal is too Remainery for the voting public: if Tory Eurosceptics want to play just working out some of the worst elements of the horrifically bad trade deal they had to settle for at the last minute at the end of 2020 as “reopening Brexit”, best of luck to them. I think if Starmer makes it clear that in his first parliament as prime minister that freedom of movement won’t come back, there will be no return to the single market and there will definitely not be a referendum on rejoining, I think all Conservative attacks on Labour will not only not work but will rebound on them as large sections of the public wonder why the Tories are going on and on about something that they themselves were supposed to have got “done” already. Brexit will unravel, folks - it’s just going to take a while and have a lot of twists and turns along the way. Don’t be put off by the idea that it won’t happen in one go. Think about what can be done next and focus on that. And give Starmer a break - he has to win an election in the current political climate, not the one we wished existed.

3. Rees-Mogg says that "the evidence that Brexit has caused trade drops is few and far between"

Jacob Rees-Mogg has become not so much the minister in charge of looking for Brexit benefits as the minister in charge of trucking out all of the old Brexit hits, stirring up the unicorns to run rampant through the pages of our tabloids once again.

This week has been a banner one on this front. When asked whether he thought Brexit had caused any downturn in trade, Rees-Mogg said:

"I think Brexit has been extremely beneficial for the country. I think the evidence that Brexit has caused trade drops is few and far between."

This is my biggest gripe with Brexit - the continuous fantasy and denial of reality. If they could just admit that some of it hadn’t worked out as planned and that it turned out in the end there had been some sizeable trade offs involved, I could at least begin to wrap my head around “accepting Brexit”. How can one seriously begin to do that when the high priests of the whole thing can’t even admit to things that are just obviously going on in front of us?

What Brexit has demonstrated in real terms is how Britain is an island that doesn’t make a lot of stuff, having pivoted to a service based economy long ago. As a result, it needs to import most of the goods it requires. Which is the main reason, beyond any others that I thought Brexit was a bad idea and still do: when you need to import as much as Great Britain does, perhaps erecting idiotically high trade barriers with every single country in relatively close proximity to you isn’t a smart idea. Now, if you have a different argument to the one I’ve just put forth, great, let’s discuss. But it’s impossible to begin to do this when Brexiters can’t even mention the fact that any downsides to their project, even the ones that are obvious and unavoidable, even exist.

Thank you once again for reading. If you haven’t already, please subscribe, and I’ll see you all next week.