The Brexit consensus is wobbling

Ed Davey makes an interesting move (no, stay with me here)

Ed Davey has done something interesting- and there is no bungee jump involved.

I’m being slightly mean. The revivification of the Lib Dem parrot at the 2024 election is one of the most important developments in recent British politics and a crucial component of the on-going fragmentation of the electoral landscape. But it was achieved, much like the Labour result, on being an unthreatening vehicle of anti-Tory discontent. In the process the party divested itself of any noisy or problematic policy, and replaced it with trips for their leader to Chessington World of Adventures. The shift in Brexit policy was most marked of all: the party which had stood on the revocation of Article 50 (without a referendum) in the winter of 2019, decided to leave Brexit well alone by the summer of 2024, albeit with some obligatory manifesto boilerplate fluff about joining the single market one day, maybe.

This wasn't bad politics. No-one really believed the Lib Dems had changed their mind about Brexit, but they had mined that hill deep, and there was little salience in reanimating the issue last July. SNP and Green aside, the Lib Dem position was part of a wider EU shaped omertà within British politics. The Conservatives had no desire to talk about Brexit because much of the polling suggested that the British public thought it hadn’t delivered (especially on immigration); Labour didn’t want to talk about Brexit because the scars of the Red Wall demolition were still raw; the Lib Dems were targeting a slew of old Leave voting heartlands in the south-west and beyond; and even Reform left it alone because they had to try and show they were about something else beyond their signature (failed) project. As a result, the rushed and threadbare post-Brexit settlement forged by Boris Johnson electorally via his 2019 victory and then practically through his negotiation of the 2020 of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) with the EU, has enjoyed shallow but broad political consensus in Westminster. No-one much liked it but few wanted to re-open it, for fear of the daemons therein.

At a national level, that changed today. Ed Davey made a speech in which he called on Keir Starmer to re-negotiate the TCA (there is a review due over the next 12 months) to include a new UK-EU customs union. Here’s an extract of the speech he made.

The UK must be far more positive, far more ambitious, and act with far more urgency. That is why, today, I am calling on the Government to negotiate a brand-new deal with the EU this year. Not just tinkering around the edges of the botched deal the Conservatives signed four years ago. But negotiating a much better deal for Britain, that has at its heart a new UK-EU Customs Union, to come into force by twenty-thirty at the latest. Forming a Customs Union with the EU is not only the single biggest thing we can do to turbocharge our economy in the medium and long term. But an agreement to work towards one would unlock big economic benefits for the UK now and start tearing down those damaging Conservative trade barriers this year. It would be a win-win for our country, and I still can’t understand why the Government continues to rule it out.”- Sir Ed Davey, 16th January 2025

On policy terms, the arguments for a customs union remain strong. Tiresome rules of origin checks continue to burden British industry, and their effects prove annoying and expensive for consumers. A CU would make the now de facto GB/NI border more porous and less politically problematic within Stormont. Davey is right that an unpredictable Trump presidency makes the logic of deeper UK/EU cooperation on every front stronger (I remain convinced that had the referendum followed the Trump victory in 2016, rather than preceded it, that Remain would have won for this reason).

But the policy is less interesting than the politics, simply because the policy isn’t going to happen any time soon- at the risk of saying the most boring thing I’ll ever write on this substack: the Lib Dems are not in government. But for me, this remains an important milestone, because it is the biggest crack yet in the unloved Brexit consensus. The fact Davey feels able to make the shift at this time, tells us something important about the politics of the moment we’re in.

The clear polling discontent, across the Leave-Remain spectrum (for different reasons) about Brexit is finally starting to exert a gravitational pull. It shows that Davey believes that enough time has passed, poison drained and Brexit disbenefits realised, to give him space he did not have before. It also speaks to an old dynamic about to be made anew: the reason we joined the EEC in the first place, and elected to remain in it in 1975- the economy, and the EU being seen as a means to improve it.

As long as Britain’s economy continues to prove sclerotic, the stronger the pull of the EU orbit will prove. This was precisely the dynamic which led us to join. The argument is weaker than it was, given that unlike in the 1970s, the EU’s economy is similarly enfeebled, but the dynamic remains. Closer EU links will now also occupy the same rhetorical place in British politics that leaving did in the years up to 2016: an easy panacea, a simple salve for all our ills. The weaker Britain is for longer, the stronger that message will be. Most strikingly, we can even add Kemi Badenoch to the list of people muttering about the disappointment of the post-Brexit settlement: saying, as she did in a speech today that:

"We announced that we would leave the European Union before we had a plan for growth outside the EU.”- Kemi Badenoch, 16th January 2025

The cracks then are getting more noticeable, and could become bigger more quickly than we might have anticipated. Does any of this have any effect on Keir Starmer? Probably not, at least for a while. There is of course, the possibility of a hung parliament at teh next election, and already we can see that Starmer will be faced with the question as to whether he’d be willing to accept this as a pre-condition for Lib Dem support if he were to lose his majority. But that’s a long way off and with Trump about to take office the last thing he’ll want to do is antagonise the incoming administration by volubly moving closer to the EU. The trauma of Brexit is greatest for Labour and it isn’t on the Remain oriented left where Labour will fight its fiercest battles at the next election- but in Reform oriented Leave seats.

But Starmer should see this as the glimmers of a political opportunity. With some wiles, he could exploit this opening precisely to help neutralise the Farage threat. Because what’s Farage’s greatest strength? His outsider status. He is the man who lobs grenades into the burning building- he has no record, no governing history- not even control of a council which his enemies can point to, and just for once lob a grenade of their own.

Except of course, he does have a record. It’s Brexit- the biggest and most well known act of politics of our lifetimes. He has repeatedly taken ownership of it, claimed it would never have happened without him. And yet it’s a record widely disliked by the British public. The potency of the argument was well demonstrated by Alistair Campbell on an edition of Question Time, just before Christmas. Farage clearly abhorred it, but had little to say other than chuntering “Get Over it…it was years ago!”

There is a political argument which accepts Brexit but articulates that its results have been poor and assigns the blame for it at its handmaidens. It is an argument Starmer and Labour would be perfectly placed to make. It would require some communications skill, as Campbell displayed, but it would be possible. And it feels as if the environment is becoming more and more favourable to making it.

P.S. Emily and I talked more about this on the News Agents yesterday, as well as what the prospects are for the Gaza ceasefire to hold. You can listen here.