The staggering success of Brexit in transforming Britain’s economic prospects has been such that in his Autumn Statement speech the Chancellor mentioned it, well, just once, and that to refer to the fatuous “Brexit Pubs Guarantee”. This is the policy, first trailed in Rishi Sunak’s 2021 budget, and which came into force last August, whereby duty on a pint of beer bought in a pub is guaranteed to be less than when bought in a shop. As Brexit benefits go, this might be thought rather meagre but, in fact, it’s not even a Brexit benefit, as it could have been done whilst being a member in the EU. This has not happened suddenly. It began to emerge early in the Brexit process, and by October 2017 I was writing that Brexit was “becoming a battle for Britain’s political soul”. At that time, that may have seemed like hyperbole, or at least pessimism. Seven years later, it seems almost a truism. The first step in this will be facing the fact that, economically, Brexit has been, and will continue to be, deeply costly. The headline figure, re-iterated by the head of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) last weekend, is of GDP being 4% lower than it would otherwise have been, a bigger impact than the Covid pandemic. It’s not a new figure or comparison: the OBR said the same thing in October 2021, and it continues to do so with 18 months' more data. Moreover, this figure is built in to the government’s own budget calculations.

The wasn’t just a matter of a Prime Minster smoothly, if ruthlessly, appointing a more congenial or compliant Cabinet Secretary. On the one hand, Cummings’ written testimony (p.59, para. 276) reveals the utterly chaotic manner in which Sedwill’s ejection began. On the other hand, other evidence to the Inquiry shows that, Johnson ‘ally’ or not, Case, prior to taking over that role, had confided to Sedwill that he had “never seen a bunch of people less well-equipped to run a country”, referring, apparently, to Johnson and his special advisers. [3] Those wishing to make arguments against Brexit have more than enough truth on their side without needing to have recourse to fantasies and lies. Since then, the idea has been extended so as to mean granting a private company or consortium a ‘charter’ to completely run a city or zone within any country, regardless of development level.

Total Pageviews

Secondly, it distracts from and discredits the genuine criticisms and concerns about Freeports. These include issues of economic effectiveness, governance and accountability, value for money, planning laxity, tax evasion, and corruption. It’s absolutely necessary to monitor these and also to monitor whether government promises are kept that no environmental or labour standards will be reduced, whether within Freeports or more widely. None of this is aided by nonsensical claims about Charter Cities. In a generic sense, Charter Cities, like Freeports, are amongst many different kinds of ‘Special Economic Zone’ (SEZ).

It is tempting to think that because we seem to be witnessing the death throes of this government, we are also seeing the death throes of this entire period of chaotic mis-rule and vicious division. It is certainly of some comfort that the Supreme Court showed this week, as it did over the original Miller case about Article 50 notification and the unlawful Prorogation, that some of the institutional guide-rails are still intact. That’s hugely important. And perhaps, post-election, the Brexitist populists will destroy each other and become so splintered between different parties as to keep them from power. But so much poison has been unleashed during recent years, and it has spread so far, even, now, extending to violence on the streets. Much will depend on whether the expected next Labour government, amidst all the other challenges it will face, will be able to reverse that spread. I am not hopeful, but it is the only hope there is. Freeports take a variety of forms and those within the EU are constrained by EU rules, especially those on state aid. So the Government was correct to claim that, post-Brexit, UK Freeports could be different. However, this doesn’t mean that they are a complete free-for-all, because they still have to comply with World Trade Organisation rules and be consistent with the level-playing field conditions, including those on state aid, in the UK-EU trade agreement. Identity, Empire and the Culture War Byline Times explores the weaponisation of Britain’s past as a key tool in a dark project of division and distraction Similarly, the Inquiry is revealing how during Covid Johnson was flip-flopping daily, or even hourly, on both the overall strategy and the detailed measures for dealing with the pandemic. So it is surely reasonable to assume that he behaved in the same way on detailed issues in relation to the Withdrawal Agreement and the TCA, and also on the big questions about them, most especially whether to allow there to be one or both versions of no-deal Brexit. Brexit, too, explains the uselessness of the Cabinet which, as Rawnsley says, the Inquiry is showing to have “failed to act as a collective decision-making body and a restraint on a dangerously dysfunctional Prime Minister”. How could it have been otherwise given that, as Martin Kettle wrote when Johnson appointed his first Cabinet, it consisted of “mostly second-rate ideologues, many of them with negligible records of ministerial achievement and several of them with very dubious political ethics. All the positions of power are held by Brexit extremists. The rest are political hostages to the hard Brexiters.”

Blog Archive

At around the same time that post-Brexit Freeports were being developed and discussed, reports began to circulate on social media – often using #CharterCities – that the ‘real’ agenda behind Brexit was to introduce ‘Charter Cities’ into the UK.

A superbly written chronicle of how Britain chaotically cut ties with its closest economic partners. Chris Grey’s rigorous analysis of how Brexit unfolded should be mandatory reading for anyone who cares about politics.” Shona Murray, Europe correspondent, EuronewsLike all conspiracy theories, it can’t really be proved or disproved not least because, for its advocates, the very fact that there is no evidence for it is proof that it must be true, because ‘of course’ there would be no evidence of a secret agenda. It is true that, although most of the violence came from the far-right, some of the Pro-Palestine marchers were also violent. It should also be said that some of the marchers used antisemitic slogans and chants that are utterly indefensible. It simply isn’t enough to say that these are being ‘misinterpreted’ when everyone must now know that (to take the main, specific, case) ‘from the river, to the sea’ is open to multiple interpretations. It is a fact that to many Jewish people, including some who are our fellow-citizens, it inspires genuine fear. So to continue to use that chant is to choose to stoke that fear. That is not simply about moving from Brexit to a wider right-wing agenda. As their pet political scientist Matt Goodwin illustrated this week, the Brexitists want to claim that the referendum was not just a vote to leave the EU but a vote to permanently end what he calls ‘Liberal Centrist Dad politics’. Absurd as this claim is – that wasn’t the question asked, so it can’t be claimed to be what the answer meant – it is important to understand how widespread it is. Thus similar claims this week were made by populist commentator Isabel Oakeshott and by Miriam Cates, co-Chair of the ‘New Conservatives’ group of Tory MPs. It enables Brexitists to dishonestly pretend that the referendum gave them a democratic licence for far more than leaving the EU. So they use it as if it were a permanent majority for their entire ideology, even though, as the last seven years have made clear, it was not even a permanent majority for Brexit, and was never a majority for any particular form of Brexit. A fascinating, thoughtful, clear and authoritative analysis of Brexit and its ongoing aftermath.” Professor Brian Cox, physicist and broadcaster

It would be quite absurd for Brexiters to support Solvency II reform simply because Brexit makes it possible, irrespective of its merits. Doing so won’t make Brexit more successful or secure. Conversely, it would be absurd for anti-Brexiters to oppose Solvency II reform, regardless of its merits, simply because it was made possible by Brexit. Doing so won’t make Brexit more of a failure or re-joining more likely. As to whether Solvency II reform turns out to be successful, that will depend on whether the assessment of the risk-reward balance turns out to be right or not, something which will probably take years to know and which will be down to things which are nothing to do with Brexit, and in itself will neither vindicate nor discredit Brexit. Because for the purposes of this post I am splicing together different parts of testimony to Hallett it may be confusing as to what jobs Simon Case was doing at different times. In May 2020 he was appointed as Downing Street Permanent Secretary, a role that had been unfilled since being vacated by Sir Jeremy Heywood in 2012 (it had in any case only been created in 2010), who became Cabinet Secretary until his retirement in 2018, when he was succeeded by Mark Sedwill. Then, in September 2020, Case was appointed Cabinet Secretary, replacing Sedwill.

Pages

Rees-Mogg’s attempt to discredit the process reveals his grating hypocrisy, seen also in his role in the illegal 2019 prorogation, since he so often affects to represent himself as the voice, an unctuous and preposterous voice admittedly, of parliamentary traditionalism. For, as Hannah White of the Institute for Government explains, the significance of the hearing is far less about Johnson’s future than it is about protecting the vital constitutional importance of ministerial accountability. But it also shows how Brexit continues to be the cornerstone of British populism, for all that it has ceased to have majority support. It is the talisman of Brexitism. Cummings’ own self-serving and obscenity-strewn testimony to the Inquiry, in both its written and, especially, its oral form, showed his utter contempt for ministers and civil servants, whilst in itself giving a glimpse of the bullying and misogynistic culture which, as confirmed by Helen MacNamara’s evidence, permeated the inner workings of the administration. MacNamara, the most senior female civil servant at the time, makes it clear that this culture was not just morally grotesque, but substantively and substantially impaired the quality of decision-making. But, that aside, my point is that, for all that the vote on the Windsor Framework may betoken that we have passed the high-water mark of Brexiter extremism in parliament and government policy, it has metastasized into something wider or more general, but which retains Brexit as its primary point of reference. For that reason, rather than call it Conservative populism or even, taking a tip from Goodwin, the ‘new populism’, it is most apt to call it Brexitism. For example, in some versions, Brexit is described as a ‘live experiment’ being conducted by the ‘Babson World Operating System’. There is a real initiative by a spin-off company of Babson College in the US called the Babson Global Competitiveness and Enterprise Development Project. It promotes and supports Charter City-type developments and undoubtedly has a free market and libertarian agenda. But calling it a ‘World Operating System’ is hyperbole, making it sound far more sinister and powerful than it is.