Speaking of last week\u2019s much-publicised Brexit \u201cre\ufeffset\u201d, Sir Keir Starmer proclaimed: \u201cIt gives us unprecedented access to the European Union market.\u201d Sorry, prime minister, but, with the utmost possible respect, I have to say that it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
We enjoyed unprecedented access to the \ufeffEU market when we joined what was then the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973. And we had even more unprecedented access when we signed up with others to the European \ufeffsingle \ufeffmarket in 1986.<\/p>\n
Our membership, indeed championing, of the single market, negotiated on behalf of Mrs Thatcher, by my old friend the late Lord\ufeff Cockfield, was regarded by Ken Clarke as Mrs Thatcher\u2019s greatest achievement.<\/p>\n
Ken \ufeffdidn\u2019t say this, but I shall: it gave British industry a trading opportunity to counterbalance some of the damage wreaked by Thatcher\u2019s adoption of monetarism and its excessively deflationary policies in the early 1980s.<\/p>\n
However, this did not stop soi-disant Thatcherites from turning to the Brexit which involved abandoning our precious membership of the single market. At which stage, I should point out to you that the egregious Farage, whose absurd Reform P UK party so terrifies Starmer and his adviser Morgan McSweeney, is an arriviste Before the word Brexit was coined \u2013 by former Labour \ufeffminister for Europe Denis MacShane \u2013 one Jimmy Goldsmith set up the Referendum \ufeffparty in 1994. Goldsmith was not all bad. While wanting to leave the EU, he at least did not wish to leave the \ufeffsingle market. (He also had the good taste to want to buy \ufeffThe Observer, but failed!)<\/p>\n
Which brings us to The Great Betrayal, and the outcry from Farage, Reform and the right-wing press that this minor \u201creset\u201d of our relations with the EU is throwing away the \u201cfreedoms\u201d of Brexit.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s face it: as most of the country now recognises, it was Brexit, and the lies that accompanied it, that was the great betrayal. Instead of running scared of Farage, Labour should be hammering home that it was \u2013 and is \u2013 Farage\u2019s Brexit which has aggravated so many of the discontents in this country that began with the economically and socially damaging austerity programme of 2010 onwards.<\/p>\n
The Centre for European Reform finds that, since Brexit and the pandemic, UK trade performance has fallen way behind the G7 and EU average<\/p>\n
Alas, as a\ufeff recent article in \ufeffthe New Statesman observes: \ufeff\u201cGeorge Osborne\u2019s austerity doctrine still rules Britain\u2019s economy.\u201d So\ufeff, if I may add, does Brexit.<\/p>\n
As I have pointed out before, the damage caused by Brexit\u2019s impact on our output and trade has inflicted a \u00a340bn-plus hole in annual \ufeffgovernment tax revenue \u2013 a hole which is largely the explanation for the problems my (almost ) friend Rachel Reeves has been having with the budgetary finances, and her ill-chosen way of filling it.<\/p>\n
Last week\u2019s \u201creset\u201d is generally considered to be more important for its strategic and defence implications than its economic ones. The \ufeffgovernment\u2019s estimate of a \u00a39bn-a-year annual boost to the economy by 2040 takes in\ufeffto account the recent Indian and US\ufeff trade deals, plus the relaxation of certain Brexit restrictions under the \u201creset\u201d. This is chicken feed by comparison with the annual \u00a37.5bn plus we received from the European Investment Bank \ufeffduring the last year of our EU membership \u2013 a figure that was multiplied two or three times by the private sector investment it stimulated, and which, broadly speaking, we received every year.<\/p>\n
The Office for Budget Responsibility will no doubt give its own estimate at Budget time of the impact of the trade deals, but it is unlikely to be very different from the \u00a39bn figure from the \ufeffgovernment last week. \ufeffA recent Stanford University study\ufeff puts the loss of output from Brexit even higher than the widely quoted 4% \ufeffa year from the OBR.<\/p>\n
The Centre for European Reform finds that, since Brexit and the pandemic, UK trade performance has fallen way behind the G7 and EU average. This surely strengthens the case for the \ufeffgovernment to regard last week\u2019s tentative but welcome easing of Brexit-induced bureaucratic restrictions on trade with, and travel to the EU, as merely the first step towards re-entry to the customs union and single market. This is vital for it to realise its growth ambitions. So, as called for by Lord Kinnock, is the need for \u201ca national security levy to fund defence bonds\u201d in a world where we can no longer rely on the postwar consensus of US support for European defence.<\/p>\n
Photograph by\u00a0Hannah McKay\/Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Speaking of last week\u2019s much-publicised Brexit \u201cre\ufeffset\u201d, Sir Keir Starmer proclaimed: \u201cIt gives us unprecedented access to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-133171","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114574004276850573","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}