Recently I listened to potential future Chancellor of the United Kingdom Rachel Reeves being interviewed by Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell for their Leading podcast. During her answers on the subject of relations between the UK and Europe, (after 30:00), she stated: “We want a closer relationship … so we can trade more freely … import checks are adding a huge cost … many small businesses have given up exporting.”
Closing the doors
Sound logic. Yet the Shadow Chancellor then went on to reiterate that the UK would not rejoin Europe’s customs union because a customs union was “not the answer” to reducing checks. That, apparently, would require membership of the single market, which is actually not customs union-dependent.
So why not the single market? According to Ms Reeves, it is because the voters of Leeds West (her constituency) voted against free movement and would do so again.
Instead, she insisted that a putative veterinary agreement that Labour would like with Europe (noises in Brussels are not hopeful on that front) would sufficiently reduce checks.
There is a reflex anti-Europeanism in these responses, and they’re not a one-off. Asked about the prospects for European ties, she has previously stated “I don’t think we have to rejoin the single market and customs union”. And she is not alone. Keir Starmer himself has said there is “no case for the UK rejoining the EU” and that joining Europe’s single market would not boost the UK’s economic growth.
Short-termism
Leaving aside the lack of diplomacy in this anti-single-market cant, when juxtaposed with the talk of closer relations with that same single market in almost the same breath, there are holes in Labour’s position.
The dogs in the street know British business is crying out for a customs union with Europe. The 5% drop in output associated with leaving Europe’s single market is more than significant (is there any policy anywhere that could increase output by 5%?). The situation for British business is likely to worsen as regulations evolve, Europe introduces its carbon border, and investment in areas like electric cars continues to flee to the continent. Perhaps most of all, can anyone really say that the UK feels like it’s doing well since leaving the single market? For Ms Reeves, Europe is irrelevant, as she says in the interview the UK economy was not “doing really really well before [the UK] left the EU”.
Strange silence on Brexit
In ordinary times, this wouldn’t matter. But there is an election coming. In a normal election, such statements would be pulled apart by the media, by the government, and by other opposition parties. But this is not a normal election in ordinary times. This is the first post-Brexit election.
It is “post” in the sense of literally being after the UK’s leaving, but also in that the participants don’t want to talk about it. So there is not the usual contest of ideas around these statements, which would be gradually honed by a campaign and by criticism. Instead, none of the parties wants to challenge Labour on Brexit. In fact, none of them wants even to speak about it. So, in the foggy omertà, Labour’s pro-Brexit statements are allowed to stand as political facts.
Brexit has become like transubstantiation or a geocentric cosmology for medieval peasants: you don’t need to talk about it; it just is. Or, as Ms Reeves put it, “It’s eight years ago now and we do have to accept the world as it is” and, regarding the suffering Brexit economy, people must “accept things as they are”.
Changing tack is harder when you’re in power
If you feel frustrated at the dogma, you’re not alone. At one point in their interview, as the shadow chancellor defended staying out of Europe’s institutions, Rory Stewart exclaimed – in what I assume was not meant as a compliment for Ms Reeves, an LSE-trained economist – “you sound like Kwasi Kwarteng”. Reeves and Kwarteng have both said that the UK economy was not in great shape before Brexit anyway.
As of 7 July Labour will likely be the new government of the UK. Their position on Europe, unchallenged, will not have moved. They will have to defend it for the next Parliament. And, unlike the Tories, they won’t have the “reducing immigration” incantation or the protective fetish of “sovereignty” to fall back on. The Tories, meanwhile, won’t have to defend the economics of Brexit anymore. The economic argument for Brexit doesn’t stand up anyhow.
None of this is to take away from the fact that the UK likely needs a change of government, and that there will be relief when that happens. But it will be richly ironic when Ms Reeves and the Labour cabinet are left as the only ones making an economic case for Brexit.
