Last Friday, the Daily Express published an unusual “think piece” on Brexit by the right wing journalist Jonathan Saxty. Unlike normal Express fodder, it did not castigate Keir Starmer for betraying Brexit. Instead, Saxty pointed out that since Labour had always opposed leaving the EU and Starmer had promised closer links with it should it win the election, what else could you expect?
Saxty wrote: “Little wonder a country which has seen little benefit from leaving the EU is receptive to getting back into bed with Brussels… Although the youth mobility scheme with Spain has been rejected for now, one can easily imagine Labour signing up to similar schemes to win hearts and minds among young people – who already back the party in large numbers – while using this as a cover to reduce immigration from outside Europe, a move likely to be popular on the Brexit right anyway.”
He added: “If Labour can achieve some breakthrough with Brussels – off the back of a Brexit legacy which, to most Brits, has been a complete waste of time anyway – then Sir Keir’s party is likely to bake in a decade in power whatever the weather.”
This is unusual stuff to read in the Express, in that it sounds sensible. But that didn’t last long.
Saxty ended the piece by saying that rather than Labour, it was the Conservatives who had really failed Brexit by not maximising “ the advantages of Brexit, becoming a high-tech superpower and magnet for global capital, including from Europe. The UK could and should have got back into bed with the Commonwealth, not least the Realm countries of Australia, Canada and New Zealand.”
This is now the last myth of Brexit – that it could have been brilliant but instead was done badly. It is a myth rooted in Empire nostalgia, a yearning for a time when we ruled the roost and could impose our will on other countries rather than be subject to all the entanglements of Europe.
It requires a great deal of delusion to believe this, because:
1) The UK always traded with Europe and other countries far more than it did with the Empire. At its peak, the Empire accounted for 35% of UK trade; 65% was therefore with other countries.
2) This is hardly surprising as the UK was the largest advanced manufacturing country at the time and therefore made things that poor colonies did not really need or could afford, but richer Western countries did and could.
3) There are no big deals to be done with Australia and New Zealand. They are massive exporters of food and raw materials, coal, bauxite, iron ore and foodstuffs like soya, wheat, and beef. This is stuff that we either don’t need, like coal, or which would fatally damage our farming industry, like beef.
4) Since we joined the EU, the Anzac nations have found that rapidly developing nations like India and China are desperate for what they produce and thus they now export mainly to them, not us.
5) The trade deals the Tories did agree with New Zealand and Australia were so bad for the UK that TV news programmes in those countries openly mocked us for signing them
6) The combined populations of Canada, Australia and New Zealand don’t even equal that of Germany.
7) Canada is our 18th largest trading partner and takes one-sixth of what we sell to Germany. Australia is 19th and NZ 43rd
8) If we could somehow increase trade with Canada by six times, it would still only be as important as Germany and not the whole EU.
I could go on, but this argument was settled in the 1950s when the Empire ended and it became obvious to even the biggest imperialist where our largest market really was. The Brexit campaign told us this thinking was wrong all along, and that a freed Britain would quickly be elevated back to supremacy by a grateful world.
None of it has happened. And that’s not the Tories’ fault – it is Brexit’s fault.
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