This week in Brexitland, September 30th, 2022

1. Brexit and the current crisis

This past week, something extraordinary occurred. The latest Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the job for less than a month, announced a “mini-budget”. This phrase was just the latest example of post-truth politics rearing its ugly head - this “mini-budget” was sweeping and radical and beyond the scope of most supposedly “proper” budgets we’ve had over the last several decades. Taxes for the rich would be slashed, corporation tax rises cancelled. This is beside spending being ramped up separate to this budget that is mini, mostly to subsidise household energy bills.

The reason it was called a “mini-budget” in the first place seems to stem from having an excuse to side step the OBR. Which turned out to be a terrible error since what the markets seemed to see was a UK government lowering taxes while pumping up spending, all without any decent explanation and with no publicly available plan for how this wasn’t going to send debt spiralling out of control when it was already pretty dire. The result? A run on the pound, interest rates going up, the IMF putting out a statement about how terrible it all is (a rare thing), and the Bank of England having to bail out pensions. An obvious disaster, putting us in the midst of a crisis.

Well, except if you were on the right trying to be an apologist for Truss, that wouldn’t be so clear. The number of takes from the British right that are contradictory, make no sense either on their own or next to anyone else’s explanation, or are just plain nonsense are so staggering, I can only go through a few of the most egregious amongst them. There was the, “It’s not the mini-budget that spooked the markets, but the spectre of Keir Starmer becoming prime minister that did the trick” gambit. First of all, this is obvious rubbish - Labour have been ahead in the polls for the whole of 2022, so why now exactly? - but also, it’s a terrible excuse even if it was true. So, the market has decided the Tories are going to lose the next election alongside the British public? Great messaging there, guys.

Another attempted sideshow was that there hadn’t been a problem at all and we’d either just imagined it all or what there was of it was stoked by the woke MSM. Then there was the “It was Remainers fault” line that someone is seemingly legally required to trot out at times like these. It’s Putin’s fault, that was another good one the prime minister herself used (when she finally emerged from her bunker). I’m sure there is another major slice of bullshit I’m missing here, but let’s move on.

None of this would have happened without Brexit. This is a line I can hear the Brexiters moaning about already - why do you have to bring Brexit into everything? - but I can explain. One, Truss would never, ever have come close to becoming prime minister of this country without the vote to Leave. Vote Leave winning in 2016 allowed two things to happen that were crucial to paving the way for PM Truss: One, it allowed a previously, relatively marginalised portion of the Conservative party to slowly but surely take it completely over (much like the Corbynistas did within Labour), with Brexit being explicit in how this was possible (after all, we needed a “real” Brexit, didn’t we?). Without this bunch having the power they acquired, Truss would never have risen beyond the level of “cabinet member who is there because she always does what they are told”, which is already too high a status given her talent level (Cameron needs to take some blame there for elevating her to DEFRA Secretary). Leader of the party? No chance, not without Brexit.

The other way this crisis would never have happened without Brexit is that the vote to Leave changed politics in Britain, at least for the time being, where truth became secondary to the Brexit narrative. Basically, if reality ever seemed to be saying that something Brexity was bad, then it must be reality that is wrong. Without this style of thinking, particularly within the Conservative party where it is ubiquitous no way could Truss have won, particularly with her mad plans, ones laid out during the leadership campaign. Far too many Tories now believe that the anarchist libertarian stuff that has grown into a sort of religion on the right since 2016 is sensible and perhaps even the only real conservatism. They have lost all sense of respect for institutions, tradition, sober balance and even the importance of balanced budgets in favour of a radical, Leninist revolutionary agenda.

They have also lost sight of where the British voters are. This has been apparent in the polls for a long time now, yet somehow, Westminster is only just waking up to this (although it helps that the poll leads for Labour are now suddenly insane). The Tories by and large do not understand why they won so decisively in 2019. One reason for the victory was Johnson himself, who although I’ve never understood it to the same extent people on the right have, had mass appeal. People liked him in 2019 - he had a certain insouciant charisma that seemed to work for a lot of people. I am using the past tense here for several reasons but one is that this trick was only ever going to work once. Yes, people liked Johnson in 2019 partly because he’d been in the job for a matter of weeks, hadn’t done anything yet and was being obstructed from doing anything due to a lack of a parliamentary votes being available to him (which he exacerbated greatly by chucking out a score of MPs from his party, but let’s not dwell on that here).

The other two things the Tories had going for them in 2019 were massive: Corbyn’s unpopularity and the public’s boredom with Brexit. Jeremy Corbyn had become toxically unpopular by 2019; his strange honeymoon in 2017 was short-lived and was destroyed entirely by several key moments, the biggest in retrospect being his reaction to the Skripal poisoning. Whatever the reasons, Corbyn was finished with the public by December 2019 and was leading a divided party into an election they would have lost even if the Tories had been in a worse position. Finally, Brexit. The public’s position in late-2019 roughly went like this: we’re tired of the Westminster fighting and the lack of progress one way or another on this issue. It’s been going on for years now and we’d like to talk about something else for a change. We had a referendum in 2016, Leave won, so it only seems fair to give that a go and see what happens.

What’s changed since 2019? Boris Johnson destroyed his popularity, then his premiership, only for Truss to take over on a prospectus that is popular with Tory associations, seemingly colossally unpopular with the wider British public. She herself is unpopular as well, having the charisma of a cold, damp cloth. Corbyn is gone, replaced by a leader who has corrected pretty much all of the problems created by his predecessor. On Brexit, it is itself becoming increasingly unpopular and even amongst those who still think we should stay the course, the fact that the slogan in 2019 was “Get Brexit Done” and the government are still talking about it all of the time is annoying to an increasing number of voters.

So, what now? We are in uncharted territory here, I think. Short term, we are headed for a lot of pain. However, there are the reasons to be cheerful. Number one, this government, however long it lasts, will do a great deal to further discredit Brexit. This is an explicitly pro-Brexit government in every sense and what they are doing is described by them as “real” or “full” Brexit at long last. For them to belly flop like they are doing will take Brexit with them for a lot of people. Secondly, this will almost certainly finish any chance of the Tories winning the next general election. While Labour can’t be complacent - and I’ll come onto that in the next section - the Truss premiership seems to almost everyone now as a fin de siècle; one of those moments in politics that come around every couple of decades, where the mood changes drastically and the old ways suddenly seem old hat.

Until then, try and enjoy Liz Truss as prime minister as much as sanity affords. Take yesterday morning: she decided to do eight local radio station spots ahead of Tory conference. Did she think this would be easier than doing national radio? If she did, man, was she mistaken - they all went for her, big time, and she responded in typical Truss fashion, namely spewing out incorrect policy details and generally sounding like a robot with a cold. Parts of it were funny, if you could get into the dark humour of it all. What else can you do in 2022?

2. Labour conference and Brexit

I attended Labour conference beginning last Sunday, coming back from it on Tuesday. It was one of the most fascinating Labour conferences I’ve ever attended, and I’ve been to far too many (I tried at one point, admitted while too drunk to have any chance of pulling the exercise off successfully, to count the number of party political conferences I have been to but I lost my way in the 40s).

The last Labour conference I attended was in 2019. The mood then was downbeat, even amongst the far left. I think they could sense their moment was passing. The only anecdote from the whole thing I remember with absolute clarity was standing in the bar of the Hotel Metropole in Brighton while Corbyn was giving his speech, and there was a line where he announced Labour as a “democratic party” and the whole bar laughed uproariously. This was in reference to a vote on Labour’s position on Brexit, which seemed to go the pro-Europeans’ way and was actually announced as such until the chair said she’d made a mistake and it was called the other way.

Anyhow, there are many things to say about the conference but you’re all here for Brexit, so I’ll focus on that here.

Many people on the centre-left will have been disappointed by the portion of Starmer’s speech where he talked about “Making Brexit Work”. And I get it, I really do. Except I still think Starmer did the right thing in all of this. Yes, Brexit is becoming more and more unpopular - the polling is clear on this. Yet it’s happening slowly, gradually. And a lot of the places where Labour need to win again are not ready to revisit the issue. I wish they were, but they aren’t. And Labour need to win the next election, not just for the country but for the reversal of at least the worst of Brexit any time relatively soon. Yes, a 33% lead in the polls seems to make it a foregone conclusion - but Labour have had large leads before, all right not this large admittedly, and lost still. Nothing should be taken for granted here.

The time to put pressure on Starmer to do more on Europe is the day after he wins the next general election, not any time before. The more unpopular Brexit becomes, combined with what “trying to make Brexit work” will actually mean in practice, will put huge pressure on a Labour government to reconsider its position with the EU. But that can’t happen until they are in government.

Thanks for reading. If you haven’t subscribed already, please do. Next week, I’m off to Tory conference for a day or two, so that will feature in the following edition. Until then, take care.