Oh, what a year 2024 has been! A year consisting of two main parts:
First, the end of a dying government, lurching ever further to the far right, coming up with ever more farcical anti-European policies as it attempted to cling on to the power it had long lost any right to exercise.
Then came a shiny new Labour government, but one so scared of its own shadow that it is incapable of doing what is right and really “resetting” our relationship with the European Union.
It’s the hope that kills you.
Still, in the spirit of Christmas, let’s look on the bright side. The Rwanda scheme is dead and buried. After hundreds of millions in wasted money, a battle with the courts and numerous threats to break international and European law, the plan died at the election. The obvious solution all along was to do a post-Brexit deal with France, not Rwanda. Perhaps now there is a chance for some common sense.
Then the Tory leadership candidate Robert Jenrick started pushing the terrible idea of leaving the European Court of Human Rights. Jenrick lost, and that scheme went with him into obscurity. For now. That policy would have torn up all our deals with the EU, done huge economic damage, and made us an international pariah. It would have made us, Russia and Belarus the only European countries outside the ECHR. Thank God that mad idea died along with Jenrick’s political ambitions.
But let us not forget that Nigel Farage’s Reform got 15% of the votes in the general election, and that a certain group of people tried to use the Southport murders to begin a race war. This is how far we have fallen since 2016.
As for the rest of the year, it has been little more than the removal of one government with impossible EU policies and its replacement by another government with slightly different but equally impossible EU policies.
Don’t get me wrong, it is nice to have a government that can talk about Europe without sounding as if the very word sticks in its throat, but we need more than words. There are still a host of pressing issues in need of a solution.
The UK delayed full checks on EU food imports again, putting them off until 2025. As I said in the review of Brexit in 2023, when the checks were also delayed: “I can’t remember how many postponements that makes” – I look forward to writing the same next year. The checks are essential to prevent a long list of terrible animal illnesses getting into the country – either that or we agree to follow EU standards. There isn’t a third choice. Also delayed was the introduction by the EU of full biometric checks on UK visitors, which will mean fingerprint and facial recognition scans, just to get to mainland Europe.
The fact that Northern Ireland is in the EU’s single market for goods means that new EU safety standards now apply in the province, but not in the rest of the UK. The border down the Irish Sea is getting harder every day, and there is nothing we can do about it. Many small and medium-sized companies will stop selling in NI and in mainland Europe.
It may be one of the reasons why the Bank of England finally got down off the fence and pointed out that the UK must “rebuild relations” with the EU. The governor, Andrew Bailey, finally said what the Bank has known all along about the damage done by Brexit.
Another good sign was the inclusion in Labour’s first King’s Speech of a “Product Safety and Metrology Bill”, which allows the UK to either “mirror or diverge from updated EU rules”.
In short, the bonfire of EU laws is no more. We will align with EU regulations when it is in our interests to do so, and it will be in our best interests a great deal of the time. This was perhaps the biggest change of 2024, the new government ending the Brexiter dream of regulatory divergence just for the sake of it.
But that battle is not yet won. Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves now have the courage to talk to Brussels, but that’s about it. The promise of a “reset” in our dealings remains a promise, not a fact.
In the meantime, the US elected a trade war-starting, tariff-loving president who thinks the EU is worse than China. The right wing media and Tory Party think Donald Trump is keen on a UK trade deal – last time he was president we didn’t even start trade talks. Trump tears up trade deals rather than negotiating them, and has promised to put 10-20% tariffs on all our exports to America. Still the Brexit believers think he is the new Messiah.
It’s worrying that the prime minister seems to think we don’t have to choose between the US and the EU. As he told the Lord Mayor’s banquet, it’s a false choice because the special relationship is not only healthy but “the best hope for the world”. One really doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Starmer really should realise that the one-word answer to the question “why was Brexit such a terrible idea?” is “Trump”.
Britain is a small, lonely economy caught between a rock and a hard place. We cannot stand up to Trump without the weight of the EU behind us. Not that the EU will include us in its plans to tackle the MAGA presidency; why should it?
Until something changes on free movement, membership of the customs union or the single market, nothing much is going to happen. Unless the UK government gets a grip, the so-called reset with the EU will be nothing of the sort.
Here’s to 2025 and to the return of realism, missing from the UK since 2016. That would actually start to improve things. Maybe next year?
