Brexit Unfolded: How no one got what they wanted (and why they were never going to)

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As always, my huge and sincere thanks to all the tens of thousands of people who read each week via various channels. I know very well that this blog competes for limited time and attention with any number of other sources, and I never take your readership for granted. Meanwhile, the two main strands of Brexit politics, those of the Northern Ireland Protocol and the EU Retained Law Bill, drag on undramatically, yet with the capacity to unleash crisis and chaos in the near future. Both are dominated by the never-ending toxicity of the internal dynamics of the Tory Party.

That said, this ongoing contestation is of interest simply because it is ongoing. Firstly, that shows the failure of Brexiters to convert their referendum victory into a stable consensus, or more accurately their refusal to even attempt to do so. Hannan expresses surprise and even bewilderment that the contest is still happening. It is “extraordinary”, he gasps, that “none of this is dying down”. Yet he and his fellow ideologues conspicuously fail to grasp why this is the case.This very limited consensus is reflected by the current leadership of the two main Westminster parties. But Sunak’s ability to go very far with it is highly constrained by the fact that, whatever voters think, many of his MPs will vociferously disagree with him doing so. Notably, he has still failed to reach an agreement over UK participation in Horizon, to the major detriment of UK science and industry (though in that case he has been reported to have his own reservations, as well as facing the inevitable demands from the Brexiters to stay out). In any case, it is unlikely he will be in power after the next election and the Tory Party will, almost certainly, head off in the most dogmatic and extreme direction about relations with the EU, deregulation and just about everything else. This book confirms Chris Grey’s status as one of the most acute and authoritative analysts of Brexit. Forensically detailed yet approachably written, this fully updated edition provides invaluable perspective on what looks destined to become one of the greatest public policy disasters of the twenty-first century. If you want to understand why, there really is no better guide to the whole sorry mess.” Tim Bale, Professor of Politics, Queen Mary University of London These are essentially the points made just this week by the Chair of vehicle-maker Ford, Tim Slatter. Arguing that Britain should continue to follow EU car regulations “otherwise, what we're going to see is a lot of extra cost come into the cost of developing vehicles and producing vehicles”, he continued that:

Yet the huge rebellion against Covid Plan B restrictions that occurred on 14 December and which was largely driven by the ERG (which now overlaps with the ‘Covid Recovery Group’) was a stark reminder of their continuing power. So by the time that Frost’s resignation got leaked to the press a few days afterwards, Johnson’s capacity to change direction on the NIP was already more constrained than it had been when the resignation decision was made. Hence, perhaps, both Heaton-Harris’s appointment and Truss’s apparently (or possibly) unchanged brief. I think that this sequence of events explains what happened with Frost.Still, 118 Tories voted to support the Committee, suggesting that the Conservative Party isn’t (yet) Trumpified in the manner of the Republicans. Crucially, amongst their number were some very committed Brexiters, including Steve Baker, John Baron, Graham Brady, Geoffrey Cox, David Davis, Daniel Kawczynski, Tim Loughton, Penny Mordaunt and, no doubt, others. The Tory Party is clearly deeply split on this, as it is on many issues, but the split on this occasion wasn’t a straightforward one between pro- and anti-Brexit MPs. For that reason alone it is absurd to depict what happened as a ‘Remainer show trial’ or as a prelude to reversing Brexit. It is the refusal of Brexiters to accept that which explains how their original obsession with leaving has now shifted to an obsession with remainers. That in turn is part of the attempt to show that Brexit has been ‘betrayed’ or ‘not done properly’ or ‘done in name only’. Taken together, it creates a vicious circle. The more that Brexiters themselves decry the Brexit we actually have, the less reason there is for the public, including leave voters, to support it, and the less the public support it, the more Brexiters turn their ire on remainers.