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

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The most general one is that the Brexit dishonesty that I discussed in last week’s post isn’t negated, but exacerbated, if it is replicated by anti-Brexiters. In short, for the most part, wine producers in both the UK and elsewhere will continue to conform to the established global norm, including the US, of the 75cl (750 ml) bottle. Yet, with Britain having become, in their terms, an independent country, the Brexiters have created a situation where such discussion is impossible.

Yet it doesn’t necessarily require sympathy to notice that the way she has been pilloried, including extensive reference to the gap between her conduct as CEO and her position in the Anglican Church, is itself not so very different to the way that some of the sub-postmasters who were wrongly convicted were turned on by their communities at the time it was believed those convictions were warranted. The latest trade figures show that the percentage of UK trade done with the EU is now higher than before the referendum, at about 53. We shouldn’t by the way, let the Brexiters off the hook by saying ‘not yet’, given that David Davis, when Brexit Secretary, claimed “it will be possible to secure bilateral trade deals with the rest of the world that are larger than the value of the EU single market within two years”. There seem to be many people, not all of them Brexiters, who still don’t grasp these risks, but the government’s own announcement of the new controls makes it abundantly clear that biosecurity is a large part of what is at stake.That battle for the meaning of ‘real conservatism’ is, as I’ve argued many times before, inseparable from Brexit and, indeed, those castigating the party for not being ‘real conservatives’ are a perfect overlap with those who decry Brexit for not being ‘real Brexit’, just as there are parallels between Sunak’s plight now and Theresa May’s. But that it would be de-stabilizing in some way or another was inevitable, if only because the fact that both Ireland and the UK were members of the EU enabled a crucial de-dramatization or blurring of issues of identity, identification, and allegiance. But even if so, the point holds: extra costs, uncertainties and complexities are incurred to no conceivable benefit or advantage, and with an outcome which in substantive terms is defined by the EU rather than the UK.

Perhaps some will think this worthwhile – Pol Roger, with the ‘Churchill’ association, might find it viable to produce a niche, super-premium product, and there may be others. What of thuggish Lee Anderson, one of those intent on making Ed Davey the villain of the Post Office scandal (a proposal which, along with other aspects of the current situation, was eviscerated by Private Eye editor Ian Hislop in a blistering TV appearance)? It’s not, as the Brexiters have it, that these kinds of events, rather than Brexit, are what have caused all our recent economic woes. Five years on, and with the EUSS in place and giving rise to cases including, but certainly not limited, to those recently reported in the Guardian, it is now becoming clear that this is not just a scandal in the making but a scandal in progress. This is the exact opposite of the central Brexiter proposition about trade, which is that the EU has a declining share of world economic growth and so, ‘unshackled from the corpse’ of the ‘EU protectionist racket’, the UK would re-orientate towards the fast-growing areas of the world.

The Brexiters will try to exploit that, to deny or obscure its damage, but that is best countered by working even harder to establish and communicate the reality of what is happening. And all communities of Northern Ireland are severely affected by the ongoing collapse of the power-sharing institutions and its consequences, of which this week’s mass public sector strike is one of the most serious examples. He then moved to Warwick University and subsequently to Royal Holloway, University of London where he is now Emeritus Professor of Organisation Studies in the School of Business and Management. That isn’t so much about the difficulties of counterfactual economic modelling, which can be addressed, at least in a rough and ready way.

It’s no good Brexiters constantly (and, actually, inaccurately) saying that ‘this was the biggest democratic exercise in British history’ and then expecting us to forget all those promises.There has been relatively little Brexit news over the last week or so, and perhaps the most significant was Mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s high-profile Mansion House speech, in which he said “it is now obvious that Brexit isn’t working”. And, again, it’s no defence for them to say that some of the warnings were for even worse outcomes than have so far transpired.