Last night our Labour Mayor, Sadiq Khan, passionately urged a more “pragmatic debate” on Europe including rejoining the single market, because he said, politicians “can’t keep quiet about the immense damage Brexit is doing”. Although his position can be interpreted as a swipe at the Labour Party’s national policy of no return, Khan’s free-wheeling won’t annoy Keir Starmer unduly. He knows Khan faces an election in May next year and London overwhelmingly voted Remain, so he will have a sympathetic audience.
In a week we learned that our Mayor is set to announce a near 10 per cent rise in our council taxes, shunting the reasons for our woes clear of his doorstep, is clever politics. But he’s certainly right that for the economy, and especially for London, Brexit and the thin, desperate deal Boris Johnson signed two years ago was a disastrous move that has set us on an even steeper path of decline than many of our European neighbours.
Where he will find little support, is his argument we volte face and re-enter the customs union and single market. Although 59 per cent of voters agree that Brexit has worsened the UK’s economy, only one third wants to negotiate us entering the EU again. Project Fear was correct. And yet there is continued widespread support that it is up to the people of Britain to decide who comes here, in what number and from where. This was always the impasse and the latter won.
The way forward now is a far duller set of negotiations with the EU than the high drama of Brexit and Johnson’s bombastic rhetoric. Because Brexit is done and yet clearly it isn’t working economically to the benefit of anyone. Fortunately, there is room for further manoeuvre.
Restoring trust with the EU, however, must come first, with focused confidence-building around our neighbourly relations, sorting out the Northern Ireland Protocol, and ensuring there is a domestic regulatory package we can align on with our European trading partners, not raising hackles with a “bonfire of EU regulations”.
Then it will be possible to revisit the post-Brexit Trade and Co-operation Agreement in 2025 so that improvements can be made. It’s urgent that government reduces these new trade barriers in goods, services, mobility and digital trade, as UK businesses are suffering catastrophically from red tape at a time when we urgently need ease of trade to boost economic growth.
This path out of the post-Brexit quagmire is one Rishi Sunak and Starmer must embark on with conviction as it could be the defining legacy for both. And this technocratic, detail-orientated duo are both suited to that task ahead. Neither has shown themselves as fans of macho, divisive bluster or provocation. A diplomatic entente with Europe is already well under way.
Even Steve Baker, the arch-Brexit rebel against Theresa May’s soft exit from the EU, and now the Minister of State for Northern Ireland, tweeted in October his praise for Dale Carnegie’s self-help book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Every principle in this best-selling tome advises against aggravating those you are trying to win over. Lobbing insults across the water is part of the populist politics we have no appetite for in the long shadow of Russia’s war.
We learn today that Starmer will back Sunak if he agrees a Northern Ireland Brexit deal with the EU, as both sides edge closer towards a settlement. When asked about whether they considered Brexit to be “done” in a poll before Christmas by Tony Blair’s Institute for Change, most of the public did not, including rather tellingly a third of former Leave voters. It appears the consequences of Brexit are dawning upon all of us, even the die-hard purists. But it is not more public debate we need, as Khan is suggesting, as that will only raise the temperature amongst naysayers on all political sides.
Sunak will be derailed by the Right of his party, still wrangling for their Singapore-on-Thames vision for Britain. Instead, his tactics are to go softly, softly behind the scenes with diversionary tactics out front, focusing his party’s attention on beating the migrant boats.
For Starmer, Brexit is equally troublesome as he needs to win over voters in Britain’s Red Wall. His ruse? Taking Back Control is all about local devolution, he says, while we remain puzzled how this connects to the EU.
Slow negotiation without drama. That is what is required. Remainers stand down. Brexiteers calm your shrill cries. Our future begins by building deep trusting relations with our neighbours again.
Wonder of Tatjana Patitz
As a teenager of the Eighties, one image remains with me: that of the supermodels Tatjana Patitz, inset, — who sadly died aged just 56 this week — Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista, shot for a 1990 Vogue cover by the legendary Peter Lindbergh. Growing up in the muddy depths of the British countryside, their cool glamour was a siren call to a frustrated girl, desperate to escape to the bright lights of London. And it was why I knocked on the doors of British Vogue in my twenties and stayed there for a decade, not just conjuring teenage dreams but living them.
Don’t call it a comeback, Boris — it just won’t happen
Cast your mind back to a year ago and the hysteria building over lockdown parties at No 10, which would culminate in national horror over a raucous knees-up held on the eve of Prince Philip’s funeral, where suitcases of booze were wheeled in.
So close to the tragedies of Covid and that long winter of isolation, we didn’t contain our fury. The image of our late Queen mourning alone was one we could not erase. And Boris Johnson’s fall from grace was in play. His loyal acolytes, like Nadine Dorries, are still on our airwaves with whispered promises that he will return. Johnson himself had told his Cabinet that the autumn would bring distance from the string of scandals that beset him. The news yesterday that the very same No 10 party had also descended into people allegedly having sex barely raised an eyebrow, as we’re too busy with Harry and his tales of royal genitalia. But it’s because we’ve moved on. For our former PM and his supporters, accepting that is the toughest battle.
