Boris Johnson’s stance on Europe

It was the big Brexit lie. No, not the £350m a week to spend on the NHS or the “bonfire” of red tape. The lie was that the shambles now enveloping British trade with Europe was an unavoidable price worth paying to leave the EU. That was rubbish.

In order to further his chances of becoming Tory leader Boris Johnson made two commitments. One was to resign from the EU, the other was to depart Europe’s customs union and single market, aspects of which embrace other non-EU states such as Norway. The second decision was an almost casual gesture to make him look macho to the party’s hardline Brexiters. It was not put to referendum and was beyond stupid.

No news item today is free of the consequences. Earlier this year, the effects of leaving the single market could be seen in plummeting trade with the continent, even accounting for the pandemic. Additional red tape is awesome. HC estimates traders will be handling 215m more import/export documents a year, at an estimated bureaucratic cost of £7.5bn a year. Tariffs may not apply but rules of origin and health standards do. Every truck, every cargo requires inspection.

As for migration, the overall shortage of seasonal farm labour, according to BBC Radio 4’s Farming Today, is 20 per cent and often more. Fruit will rot in fields, pigs cannot get to abattoirs and Christmas turkeys will be a “nightmare”. Meanwhile, care homes in England are short of 170,000 staff, and delivery firms short of 100,000 drivers. Hotels have abandoned rooms and restaurant tables. Creative industries – worth £110bn to the UK economy – were forgotten by the Brexit negotiators and are now virtually isolated from Europe.

This is not Brexit. Britain could have left Brussels and freed itself from a mass of rules and regulations. It is the result of leaving the single market, of Johnson’s xenophobic belief that European trade standards were somehow “not British”. He was wildly in favour of EU workers when mayor of London but no longer as prime minister.

I am sure some of the current disruption will settle down but the idea that trade with Britain’s biggest partner by far, the EU, will ever recover outside some form of economic union is absurd. So is the theory that any losses from the present chaos will be met by gains elsewhere. It seems bizarre to have to explain to a Tory that prosperity lies in open markets not closed ones.

Johnson has significantly not set up a permanent trade and agriculture commission to guard British interests in new deals. He is clearly desperate for deals, however bad. In addition, the National Audit Office has yet to do the normal impact assessment of Lord Frost’s post-Brexit deal with the EU. It has not bothered. I imagine the assessment would be the colour of blood.

Brexit need never have so devastated the British economy. The damage has come from one decision, to depart the single market. The sensible path now would be for Johnson to eat humble pie and seek, as far and as fast as possible, readmission to that market. Britain would imitate the protocol it has agreed for Northern Ireland. This would not mean rejoining the EU, just rejoining Ireland – the most delicious of historical ironies. It is almost as if the Brexit camp will not accept Brexit has happened and the UK has left the Treaty. In an explosive book just published the French ambassador in London at the time of Brexit, Sylvie Bermann, one of France’s most senior diplomats describes Johnson as an “inveterate liar.”

Britain has refused to accept that the ambassador of the EU in London should be given the normal diplomatic courtesies that the UK certainly expects its ambassadors to be granted. The Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, has accused EU member states of “location politics”. This is the precise description of Margaret Thatcher’s policy in the 1980s and 1990s as she persuaded banks and firms to relocate in Britain in order to get access to the EU Single Market which Johnson now repudiates.

Some see the appointment of David Frost, a mid-rank ambassador who swore allegiance to the cause of Brexit and the ambitions of Boris Johnson after the 2016 referendum as the UK’s new chief official for dealing with the EU as a provocation. Johnson rewarded his faithful serviteur with promotion into the House of Lords and a seat in the cabinet even if Frost has never faced an election and has no political experience other than doing what Johnson wants.

But the grass roots activists who made Johnson the Leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister are all devoutly religious in their devotion to a hard Brexit. So is a significant group of Tory MPs who need to be reassured every week or so that Johnson remains as devoted to the fullest rupture with Europe as they are.

This powerful block of anti-EU UK politicians and their supporters in the anti-European press want to create a permanent strategy of tension between the UK and the rest of Europe.

Johnson is taking a huge risk. His non-stop provocations are exhausting the patience of Europe, Trade between Germany and UK went down 30 per cent in January year-on-year. There was a 70 per cent drop in Italian exports in the same period.

Amsterdam’s bourse now trades more shares than the London Stock Exchange. Clearing and derivatives are moving out of London to Europe or New York.

The question now is the same one that Cicero posed two millenia ago. How much longer can the British Cataline, try the patience of everyone else in Europe?

Negotiating the single market in 1987 was Margaret Thatcher’s proudest free-trade achievement. It was in Britain’s and Europe’s interest and proved a success. Johnson reversed that achievement in an act of naked political ambition. He pretended it was necessary for Brexit. It was his biggest lie. In his 2001 book ‘Friends, Voters, Countrymen’, written while he was trying to win a seat in the Commons for the first time, Johnson wrote that Britain’s interests were “still on balance served by maintaining our membership” and said withdrawal would mean “a worrying loss of influence”.

In 2003, he told the House of Commons: “I am not by any means an ultra-Eurosceptic. In some ways, I am a bit of a fan of the European Union. If we did not have one, we would invent something like it.”

In the same debate he looked forward to the expansion of the EU, adding: “I do not know whether any honourable Members are foolish enough to oppose eventual Turkish membership of the European Union.”

Compare that to the Vote Leave campaign that Johnson helped run in 2016, which was criticised for running advertisements warning about mass immigration if Turkey was allowed to join the bloc.