Colonial status

‘… we are truly headed for the status of colony - and many will struggle to see the economic or political advantages of that particular arrangement.’

So wrote Boris Johnson in his letter of resignation as UK Foreign Secretary. He was talking about the compromise arrangement that Theresa May thought she had agreed with her Cabinet last Friday. At that time, the Cabinet included Johnson as well as David Davis, then Secretary for Exiting the European Union, who resigned a little before him. 

For both these ex-Ministers, the compromise simply conceded too much and meant that Brexit would no longer truly mean leaving the EU.

Boris Johnson. Recent ex-Foreign Secretary of the UK

It’s Johnson’s view that the compromise, if the EU adopts it, would involve the UK accepting most EU regulations, without having any say in making them.

He’s not wrong. The EU was never going to allow Britain to have access to its markets without a British commitment to respect its regulations. Indeed, the EU may not accept May’s compromise in any case. But it certainly won’t accept it if Britain refuses its regulations.

Why, then, did Theresa May go for the compromise? She realises, as still many do not. what damage it would do to the British economy to impair trade with the EU. Besides, what is the alternative? Leaving the EU without a trade deal – as still seems likely – will leave Britain chasing any deal it can get in a world a lot less forgiving than the environment of the EU.

At the top of the list of nations with which it would be trying to make up for its lost business would be the US. Not that the US can possibly replace all the trade lost with the EU, but the sheer size of its economy means that it can do far more than any other nation to make up the shortfall. But, and this really shouldn’t come as a surprise, the US too has its conditions.

For a trade deal, the US will demand that Britain applies American standards, in particular to food – allowing chlorine-washed chicken, for instance. In other words, Britain would have to accept regulations, just as it would from the EU, but in this case regulations in which it not only has no say going forward, but in which it has had no say in the past either. What’s more, many of those regulations – including the one about chlorine-washed chicken – are deeply unpopular in Britain. But they would have to be accepted.

In other words, Britain would have to put up with being regulated by foreign powers outside its control whether May’s compromise is agreed, or whether the country eventually has to accept a hard Brexit.

Boris is right. Britain is heading for the status of a colony. Where he’s wrong is in thinking that there’s an alternative. At least within the context of Brexit, colonial status is a given.

There is, all the same, an alternative. Britain could stay in the European Union. And go on playing a role in setting the regulations it has to obey. And that 27 other of its neighbours, within the same trading area, also have to accept.

But that was not what hard-Brexit Boris had in mind in his resignation letter.

Doug Jones: a key victory. One to emulate in Britain

What a relief – an unexpected one, to me at least – to see Doug Jones beat the alleged sex abuser and paedophile Roy Moore for a Senate seat in Alabama.

A famous victory. We need more of them. Here too.

The state is solidly Republican, so for a Democrat to win is extraordinary in itself. But Doug Jones isn’t just any Democrat. He proclaimed on his campaign website that, “I will defend a woman’s right to choose and stand with Planned Parenthood”.

He adds, “I believe in science and will work to slow or reverse the impact of climate change” putting a gulf between himself and Donald Trump. And, again flying in the face of far right views including the President’s, he proclaims that, “discrimination cannot be tolerated or protected. America is best when it builds on diversity and is welcoming of the contributions of all”.

These are bold statements of a liberal outlook. Just the kind of views that sink most candidates in the US, especially in the Bible Belt. But despite all that, Jones was elected.

Of course, he was helped by the fact that his opponent was mired in shocking, disgraceful scandal. But then, Trump had made claims to have engaged in much of the same behaviour in his past, and that didn’t stop him getting to the White House. It seems that the mood has changed in the United States, and when moral bankrupts like Moore run, it takes only courage and decency to beat them.

That’s great news. Congratulations to the US for a step back towards a more civilised polity. But also a comfort for the rest of us, who still have to strike out along that road.

Because in Britain we too face a government that is weak and indefensible. Not because it has been engaging in shameful sexual behaviour – some Members of Parliament have but most MPs seem not to have been caught up in that scandal, including the current Ministers, with one exception (Damian Green, deputy Prime Minister in all but name, is having a torrid time at the moment).

No, in Britain, the tribulations of the government are down to the ineptitude with which it’s handling the biggest question of our time for this country: Brexit. Again and again, Ministers and not least the Prime Minister, Theresa May, find themselves ill-prepared, inconsistent in their approach, incapable of presenting an argument effectively.

As a result, the other EU nations – the EU 27 – constantly out-negotiate the government and leave it having to make concessions.

I’m not particularly upset about that. The concessions seem to take us towards softening Brexit. They may in the end leave us able still to enjoy many of the benefits of EU membership (at the cost of having to comply with some of its obligations), making Brexit a somewhat less damaging prospect.

On the other hand, it leaves the government looking like damaged goods. Weak. Adrift. Inept. Bereft of leadership.

In other words, for different reasons, the British government looks like a target easy to strike. Ripe for an effective campaign from its adversaries. An open goal, virtually.

If that puts the government in the role of Roy Moore, who do we have to play Doug Jones? That, sadly, is where the analogy breaks down.

Up against the British government we have an excellent shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, putting up a powerful, coherent narrative and, frankly, running rings around the incumbent Brexit secretary, David Davis.

However, this is an issue of such importance that the Prime Minister, rightly, has taken a directing role in the negotiations. Her Brexit Secretary handles the detail, but the broad thrust is in her hands. What we need in front of her is a figure capable of running rings round her like Starmer does round Davis.

And what do we have? Jeremy Corbyn. Who seems to have taken a Trappist vow of silence on Brexit. He has nothing to say. Even when journalists pressure him to take a stance, he refuses to do so. Doug Jones proclaiming his commitment to a woman’s right to choose? Sadly, nothing that bold, radical or powerful is coming from Corbyn.

A friend and Corbyn supporter tells me he’s “keeping his powder dry”. The words “put your trust in God, my boys, and keep your powder dry” is often attributed to Oliver Cromwell, as an exhortation to his soldiers.

If they’d kept their powder dry by never using it, Cromwell would have died on the scaffold instead of Charles I.

Trust me. If the powder is ever going to help, you have to keep it dry, certainly. But then you actually have to open fire with it.

Doug Jones did. Look at the result. When will Jeremy?

Is there any point in Brexit any more?

“We must not forget that a key motivating factor behind the vote to leave the EU was to control immigration,” Andrea Leadsom, UK Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, has assured us.

She was responding to concerns from farmers. According to the Guardian: 

Meurig Raymond, president of the National Farmers’ Union, told the body’s annual conference in Birmingham that … the industry would require 90,000 season workers a year by 2021, on top of more than 250,000 permanent workers – more than three-quarters of whom now come from the EU.

Meurig Raymond of the National Farmers’ Union
A stark warning on the potential consequences of Brexit on agriculture

This comes on top of the statement from David Davis, the Brexit secretary, in the Latvian capital of Riga. The Guardian tells us:

He said that it was not plausible that British citizens would immediately take jobs in the agriculture, social care and hospitality industry once the UK had left the EU and repeated comments made in Estonia on Monday that immigration restrictions would be phased in.

He said: “It will be a gradual process. That will take some time; yesterday I said it will take years.”

“Don’t expect just because we’re changing who makes the decision on the policy, the door will suddenly shut: it won’t,” Bloomberg quoted Mr Davis as saying in the Estonian capital of Tallinn on Monday.

That certainly chimes with the fears of the National Farmers’ Union:

“Quite simply, without a workforce – permanent and seasonal – it wouldn’t matter what a new trade deal [with the EU] looks like. Food will rot in the fields and Britain will lose the ability to produce and process its own food.”

Hold on, though. It certainly doesn’t chime with the comments by Davis’s colleague Leadsom. “Controlling immigration” was, she claimed, a key motivation in the vote for Brexit.

That at least has the merit of honesty. Many of us on the other side of the debate have long felt that what was behind the vote was xenophobia. The great leave campaigner and then-leader of UKIP, Nigel Farage, once famously claimed to be made uncomfortable at being in a railway carriage in which no one around him was speaking English.

My own feeling is that if you’re made uncomfortable by people speaking a foreign language, then the problem is with you, not with the others. There are, however, enough Brits upset by hearing Polish in our streets to have put together a majority for leaving the EU.

In vain, it would seem. If Davis is to be believed, there will be no let up in immigration for many years to come. So we may achieve Leadsom’s goal of controlling immigration, but not that of reducing it. Yet a reduction is what people really mean when they talk about control: they want fewer immigrants.

It won’t be happening. Certainly, not at any time soon. Probably never, unless you want crops rotting in the fields and Britain to lose self-sufficiency in food.

So that only leaves the other motivations for Brexit.

• Taking back control over our affairs from Brussels. Sadly, that seems only to mean that we have to crawl on our bellies to the US, even under Trump. That’s because we need to try to find other trade deals that might compensate for the loss of exports to the EU. That’s a tall order anyway, since we might be suffering a 30% drop in trade as a result of Brexit, but in the meantime it means losing all control over our destiny as we try to beg deals with the Americans and other nations.


• Saving money. We were told by Brexiters that leaving the EU would generate savings of £350m a week. That figure was always a lie and it certainly isn’t going to be produced. Indeed, we’re now beginning to count the cost of Brexit, and it’s clear it will far outweigh any possible savings.

In the past, I agreed with Brexiters who said that there was no case for a second referendum. You can’t keep consulting the people and ignoring the decision until you get the one you like. But now that we’ve established that Brexit will generate none of the promised benefits – absolutely none of them, not even the base xenophobic ones – mightn’t there be a case for a second consultation after all?

I mean, now that it’s clear that there’s no point in Brexit whatever.