Labour and Brexit: time to lead

If you watch a friend signing a document committing a large sum to an organisation that is scamming him, you do him no service by offering a better pen. Instead, if you want to help him, you'll try to talk him out of the mistake he's making. He may not like you for shattering his illusions but it is still the best favour you can do for him.

The British government has spent a long time trying to hide the results of its own analysis of the potential economic outcomes of the different options for Brexit: leaving the EU but staying in the Single Market and Customs Union, leaving but with a good trade deal in place, or leaving with no deal and having to revert to World Trade Organisation terms ("hard Brexit). However, the government has been forced to release the reports to Parliament. The broad lines have begun to leak.

Those of us who voted to remain within the EU will not be at all surprised to discover that there is no option that is economically beneficial to the UK. The harder the Brexit, the worse the impact. And the regions most affected will be the North of England and to a somewhat lesser extent, the West Midlands.

Brexit damage to the UK economy by region
From the Guardian

These, coincidentally, are the regions that voted most solidly for Brexit. They are also, the North of England above all and the West Midlands to a somewhat lesser extent, the heartlands of the Labour Party - my party.

It's easy to sympathise with Labour MPs, and indeed Labour Party members in those regions, who feel that opposing the Brexit views of so many constituents will undermine the party's position. It's particularly tough for the MPs, whose very jobs are at stake. So it's comprehensible that there should be calls to show understanding, even sympathy, for the anxiety about the EU expressed by so many in those regions.

This is often dressed up as an economic concern. EU immigrants are taking local jobs or putting excessive pressure on health, housing or education services. However, there is no evidence that any of this is happening and now there is evidence that Brexit would be no solution anyway - the government analysis shows that Brexit would wreak far worse damage on services and employment than immigrants ever could - if they did cause damage. 

There is no valid economic argument for Brexit.

Which leads to the darker, uncomfortable truth about a lot of these Leave voters. A truth we don't like to voice inside Labour. Their concern about immigrants may not be about economics at all but simply about immigration. 

What drives it is fear of the other, the foreigner - which is a translation of the original Greek that gives us the word xenophobia. It is the attitude summed up by Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party at the time of the Brexit referendum, when he spoke of his discomfort at finding himself in a railway carriage in which everyone around him was speaking a foreign language.

If "understanding" or "sympathy" means accommodating xenophobia, then Labour would be crossing a red line which lose it its soul.

Our supporters in the Brexit camp have swallowed a snake oil salesman's patter. They believed the now-discredited claims of the Brexiters that there would be a huge Brexit dividend that could be used to fund the NHS. They believed that many of their woes were caused by immigrants and leaving the EU would solve the problem. They believed it, and the latest leaks demonstrate again how mistaken they were.

Labour is the friend of these voters who are going to bear the brunt of the harm Brexit will do to Britain. It has a duty to speak truth to the Brexiters among them, explaining clearly how mistaken they were, not in a superior way, but just as one would attempt to prevent a friend signing away his money. We should be winning them round to what the evidence demonstrates: Brexit will solve none of their problems. And they need the chance to change their mind and exit from Brexit. Or at any rate, the chance to stay in the Customs Union, the least bad option of those on offer.

Instead the Labour leadership continues to sit on a fence. We're told the Brexit vote must be respected and no opportunity to revise that vote must be given. We hear claims, demonstrated to be entirely false by the example of Norway, that it isn't even possible to stay in the Single Market after leaving the EU. And we're told we have to go along with Leave sentiments, without interrogating ourselves as to whether those sentiments are simply based on economic misapprehension or on something far more toxic: downright xenophobia.

That doesn't feel like leadership. It feels like followership. And it's time Labour learned to lead once more.

Especially on the Brexit issue, the most urgent of our times, the one on which our friends most need our help.

And again: just what does 'Brexit means Brexit' mean?

“Brexit means Brexit,” Theresa May and the backers of Britain leaving the European Union keep assuring us.

Like a lot of slogans, it’s pretty meaningless. Does it mean leaving the Single Market and Customs Union too? Or just the EU institutions themselves? A hard Brexit in other words, or a soft one? 

No one’s saying, least of all May.

Well, if she isn’t saying, she’s certainly been hinting of late. People voted to get control of immigration, she tells us, and I suspect she’s right. You can’t tell from the referendum results, because it wasn’t mentioned in the question, but listening to the conversations in the media or simply in the streets, it’s clear a great many people voted Leave to put an end to free movement of people into Britain. A great many of them are worried that Poles are taking their jobs, or they simply don’t like hearing Polish on the streets – “this is England and people should speak English”.

They forget that at one time a lot of Celts must have resented hearing Anglo-Saxon spoken in this same green and pleasant land. But then they probably wouldn’t care even if they did remember.

May has been playing to this particular group, with promises about control of immigration. That’s not possible without a hard Brexit including departure from the single market, since membership of market requires acceptance of freedom of movement of EU citizens. So, though she hasn’t made it completely explicit, for May it seems that “Brexit means hard Brexit”. That would leave Britain having to deal with the EU on the same terms as any other member of the World Trade Organisation, except for any more favourable terms it could extract by negotiation. Tough, considering that the EU is the world’s biggest trading bloc, and right on Britain’s doorstep.

Business isn’t keen on this option.

Still, the uncertainty continues. May isn’t committing herself to hard Brexit. She claims she’s playing her cards close to her chest and doesn’t want to reveal her negotiating stance to other EU leaders. Many of us have wondered whether it might be because she doesn’t have much of an idea what her stance is. Basically, she can’t get off the fence.

Well, yesterday we had the excellent news that car manufacturer Nissan would be building two more models at its plant in Sunderland, in North East England. That secures 7000 jobs in the plant itself and many others in the supply chain. It doesn’t just protect jobs in a region that desperately needs them, it provides new ones.

A matter for nothing but celebration.

However, it’s odd. The Nissan Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn made it clear this summer that Nissan wouldn’t be investing any further in its UK operations if it couldn’t guarantee continued easy access to the European Single Market.

Carlos Ghosn leaving Downing Street after meeting Theresa May

The British government has let it be known that it gave ‘assurances’ to Nissan before the new investments were announced. But, in typical May economical-with-information style, no one’s saying what those assurances were. Was it a guarantee that Britain would remain in the Single Market? A soft Brexit, in other words? That seems to contradict the position she’s been taking for several weeks. And does it depend on her? Doesn’t it require the agreement of the other EU states?

Alternatively, has May assured Nissan that Britain would either remain in the Single Market or compensate the car manufacturer for any financial loss it incurs as a result of leaving? That would be costly. She can’t offer such a deal to Nissan and not to other car makers. She can’t offer it to car makers and not to other exporters.

We continue to live in interesting times. There are a great many more questions than answers. And one of the more intriguing is still what on Earth does “Brexit means Brexit” really mean?

Brexit: trying to tame the monster

George Osborne, former Chancellor of the Exchequer – the quaint British term for Finance Minister – who campaigned for Britain to stay in the EU and was unceremoniously dropped by his boss David Cameron’s successor as soon as she took over – has said that “Brexit won a majority. Hard Brexit did not.”

One of the other figures who disappeared in the wake of the vote was Michael Gove. He’s a real hard case. He betrayed his old friend David Cameron by campaigning for Brexit alongside his new friend Boris Johnson. He then betrayed Johnson by announcing he would stand against him for the Conservative Party leadership, in effect forcing him out of the contest. He then went on to be soundly trounced. By then he had become too toxic even for the Tories, which is pretty remarkable in that company. So he found himself relegated from any kind of office, cast so far into the outer darkness that he can’t even hear the weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Even so, he’s managed to make his voice heard, and even he, unworthy he, has a point worth making:

George Osborne is absolutely right that a hard Brexit has no mandate and would be no answer to the problems Britain faces.

In fact, it would put jobs and livelihoods at risk by erecting new barriers to trade with Europe. As he said, being close to Europe despite the Brexit vote is vital for Britain’s future.

Our economic future depends on membership of the single market, while cooperation with Europe on security is crucial in the fight against terrorism and organised crime.

So even Gove, keen Brexiter though he was, is panicking now that he sees just what benefits Britain would be giving up. His solution is to stay in the single market.

Mike (top) wanted us out, George wanted us in
Now they have to try to stop the runaway train

I’m afraid that might cause some ructions. Because a great many of those who voted for Brexit did vote for a hard Brexit. They want out, and completely out. In particular, a great many of them want to get out of the EU to put an end to what they see as the sheer horror of immigration – they belong to the growing camp of xenophobes who are rounding on people they feel they can scapegoat, but don’t realise that it isn’t they who will gain from attaining their aims.

As I argued before.

Interestingly, even Theresa May, Cameron’s successor, who started off constantly repeating “Brexit means Brexit” (whatever that means) has been softening her tone on the single market recently. It really is possible that we shall see her government come up with an arrangement whereby Britain would remain in the single market despite leaving the EU.

That would be gloriously ironic. Because staying in the single market means accepting continued freedom of movement of people. Norway, which never joined the EU but is in the single market, has long had to accept that EU citizens can freely move there, live there, work there. It also means continuing to pay contributions to the EU budget. As Norway does. Finally, it means accepting EU regulations. As Norway does.

Leaving the EU in these conditions only means giving up any say in making regulations or setting budget levels. Amusingly, the Norwegians used to rely on Britain to speak up for them in EU deliberations. But who now will speak for us?

The Brexit backers who were voting for a hard Brexit won’t be at all happy about that state of affairs. Their dissatisfaction is more than likely to lead to tensions within the Brexit camp.

The statements by Osborne and Gove rather suggest that they’re trying to head them off. Gove and his mates let the Frankenstein monster out. Now they want to prevent his doing the damage they have at last learned to fear.

I don’t think they’ll succeed. Instead we shall simply see another phase in the debate, in which the Brexit camp itself splits, into the hard and soft trends. That only strengthens my conviction that we need another referendum. Not a second referendum on the EU, but a completely new referendum on what the alternative to the EU actually means.

You see, we know what the majority in the first referendum were against: they wanted no further part of the EU. But it didn’t make clear what they were for. And I suspect they won’t be able to agree on being for any one option.

In which case, given no satisfactory alternative to the EU – hey, why not decide to stay in after all?

A second vote on the EU: why not?

It’s not something to say too loud these days and, believe me, even I find it hard ever to express agreement with Tony Blair, but he’s right in what he says about the UK and Europe.

Certainly, if British voters change their mind, they have the right to a second vote. There’s nothing immoral or undemocratic about that. After all, the first vote was entirely negative: British voters opted to leave the EU, but they didn’t choose to go anywhere in particular. It’s one thing to decide you don’t like your job but, though some do it, it’s always struck me as a little imprudent to resign before you have a new one. How do you know it won’t be far worse?

The vote on 23 June was exactly like that. A small majority voted to leave the EU without expressing any preference on where to go next. That means that majority was made up of people with profoundly incompatible views about what they wanted to happen.

There are at least two major scenarios for what comes next, with many variations in detail between them.

The first is that we really, genuinely leave the EU. Completely. So that in our trade relations with the rest of the world – including the EU – we start from scratch, having to negotiate individual bilateral deals with no particular advantage as a starting point. A deal with China. A deal with the US. A deal with the EU. A deal with Ecuador, Bhutan, Burkina Faso. Our opening position is simply the rules of the World Trade Organisation, with no favourable arrangement with anyone in particular.

The second scenario is that we somehow manage to stay inside the Single Market. That means highly favourable trade terms with the EU – the same as we enjoy right now. That’s an option that comes with conditions, however. The most striking is that, unless Britain negotiates with consummate skill and the leaders of the other EU nations decide to be far more flexible than looks likely, we would have to accept freedom of movement of people and therefore unlimited rights for EU citizens to move here and work here.

The first of these options will, I suspect, look gloomy to a great many people who voted for Brexit. Britain will be paying for years, probably decades, for a decision to reset its trading relationships to zero.

As for the second, Theresa May as Prime Minister has made it clear that there can be no compromise over freedom of movement. By saying that, she endorses the xenophobia which, it’s becoming increasingly clear, was the main drive behind probably a large majority of the Leave voters: keep the foreigner out.

With the alternative to the EU clear, it’s possible the majority might crumble.

“You wanted out,” we’d in effect be saying, “but do you still that way if it means having to face the world alone and start making new deals with every single other nation, without the punch that either an Empire or EU membership gives?”

Or, alternatively, “You wanted out, but do you still feel happy with that arrangement if you have to accept the same terms as Norway, paying in the same contributions as we used to pay, with freedom of movement still in place, accepting all EU regulations but no longer having a voice over them?”

I wonder whether the majority would stand up faced with a stark realisation of what its choice really meant?

Good move on the anniversary of a declaration of war

Postscript It was good to see demonstrations taking place around Britain in favour of the EU, on 3 September – 77th anniversary of the declaration of war between Britain and Germany, for the second time in a generation, back in 1939. It’s worth remembering the depth of horror the EU was designed to avoid in the first place.