The Brexit slogan “Take back control” was always a lie. Boris Johnson, in a long boast about his so-called achievements in the Sunday Express yesterday, wrote that he “took back control of our borders”. Perhaps he should have visited the M20 in Dover, where thousands of immobile lorries are stacked up, and repeated this claim to their drivers. Under the EU, Britain’s borders were an issue negotiated with its neighbours. Under Brexit, the border at Dover is now controlled by France – and there is not a thing Britain can do about it. When we left the EU we lost all control.
The movement of people, goods and services across borders is always a matter of mutual advantage, of negotiation, of give and take. The prosperity of the British Isles since the Industrial Revolution has been rooted in ever-freer trade with the outside world. Membership of the EU made Britain’s products competitive, its banks rich and its labour market open to all talents. This gain reached its climax when in 1986 Margaret Thatcher signed the Single European Act, initiating a quarter-century of sustained growth. This era ended in 2019 with Johnson’s hard Brexit. The government’s own statistics estimate that it will reduce Britain’s growth by as much as 4%. The Tories have gone from being a free market party to a protectionist one, and it will cost the UK dear. Tory leadership candidates, as they spout their pseudo-Thatcherite cliches, lack the guts to admit this.
