Under the headline “Britain mulls Swiss-style ties with Brussels”, readers are told “Senior Government figures are planning to put Britain on the path to a Swiss-style relationship with the European Union … The move, intended to forge closer economic ties, is likely to infuriate hardline Conservative Brexiteers”. There was more. Rather a lot more.
“Last week, Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, signalled that Downing Street intended to break from the approach of Boris Johnson and remove the majority of trade barriers with the bloc … senior Government sources have suggested that pursuing such frictionless trade requires moving to a Swiss-style relationship over the next decade … However, they insist that this would not extend to a return to freedom of movement”. Like heck it wouldn’t.
As Hunt’s Autumn Statement made crystal clear last week, the UK will be short of the economic growth it needs, and for several years to come. The Tories have hemmed themselves in by shouting the odds over migration, only to realise that, without those new workers, the country will be worse off.
What should also be focusing minds within the Tory party, but won’t be any time soon for the headbanger tendency of the so-called European Research Group, is that they face almost certain, and most likely catastrophic, defeat at the next General Election. But there is an issue on which Rishi Sunak, and his sidekick Hunt, can outflank Labour - and that, perversely, is the EU.
Those movers and shakers within the EU know not only that the Swiss’ arrangement was messy, complicated and above all time consuming, but also that the UK, and especially the Tories, don’t have the luxury of time on their side. So they can play hardball and direct any enquiries from the Westminster Government to the sign that says “Single Market and Customs Union or nothing - do you want it or what?” They know our Government would want it.
Yes, the Brexiteer fringe, exemplified by the mildly anti-Semitic outburst overnight from former Brexit Party Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, who ranted “Rishi Sunak is a Goldman Sachs globalist, so this sellout of Brexit is not surprising. The Tories must be crushed” (jackboots at the ready, apparently) will froth and moan. But they have no plan to offer.
Sunak and Hunt know this all too well: the Tories’ own anti-European headbanger fringe can’t see beyond giving Johnny Foreigner the finger. At every meeting where the PM faces frothing, beetroot-faced Europhobes, he simply has to respond “OK, I hear you - now what’s your alternative?”
And no alternative worth the name will be ponied up. You want better economic growth - here’s a single market of 500 million people. You want to redeem yourselves in the minds of the electorate - admit you messed up and show you’re working to sort it. Which brings us back to those two quotes at the beginning of the post. From Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill.
Brexiteers revere Churchill and Mrs T. Maybe, just once in a while, they should listen to what the two of them actually said.
https://www.patreon.com/Timfenton
11 comments:
What a stunning fuck up Brexit has been. The ERG alternative is really encapsulated by a single word: "deregulation". They mean the end of minimum wages, the end of Health and Safety, the end of Trade Unions, the end of employment tribunals, the end of protection from racial and all other forms of discrimination (THATS JUST THE STARTERS).
The problem was that the wage earning rent paying public would have voted that down and so we get a code: "deregulation". But without wages at a third of what they are now UK produce will remain hopelessly uncompetitive to the slave labour and migrant worker economies selling 'stuff' to Brazil, Nigeria, India and all the other places the ERG wanted a preference trade deal.
So we got a massive deception, and it took until Truss for the scales to fall from the eyes of the working Tories (despite the finest endeavours of Mail and Express and Sun).
The utterly monumental Truss disaster has created an opportunity though. Its finally become plain what the Tufton Street gang have been about. That creates the space to make the case (again) that what we had before Brexit - for all its faults - is a damn sight better than what we have after.
During the negotiations the EU made it abundantly clear that that yes, Britain could remain in the single market inna-Swiss-stylee as long as we accepted the Four Freedoms. “No, you can’t cherry-pick the freedoms you want!” they said, causing the Usual Suspects to try disguising British exceptionalism as eU BuLlYiNg.
Meanwhile, Gammon Broadcasting's Martin Daubney was lost for words when sneaky Remainers hijacked his cosy little echo chamber and subverted his Brexit poll: https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2022/11/21/watch-moment-gb-news-presenter-realises-poll-went-against-brexit/
Excellent piece Tim. As @Staedtler has been saying on Twitter for years, it will almost certainly be the Tories who back down, especially if they see an opportunity to outflank Labour.
The Mail mistook a spoof Tory MP for the real thing and it’s just fabulous
John Plunkett. Updated October 31st, 2022
https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2022/10/31/the-mail-mistook-a-spoof-tory-mp-for-the-real-thing-and-its-just-fabulous/
I do not accept that Starmer can be outflanked, the man is just too sharp and left wing.
I have to read a lot of history books as research for my plays, and I know through history that men like Starmer don't get outflank.
Satire, Mark?
I hear Sunak has asked Nasa to use the James Webb Telescope to search for Brexit benefits.
@18:42
No Bertie. Why would you say so?
I know you're not a university man, but I don't think that it's fair to accuse me of satire to such a serious point.
What on earth is a 'university man', Mark? Apart, that is, from it being the language of times gone by.
Asserting that Starmer is 'left-wing', if taken at face value, displays such a divorce from all available evidence that it could only be intended as a joke. Hence my 'satire'.
If it was meant seriously, and, from your earlier efforts, I fear it probably was, then your words amount to satire in any case; but with yourself, sadly, as the unintended object.
@22:50
I'm sorry Bertie, I don't really see your point.
I'm not at all surprised, Mark.
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