Brexit - Still Not Done and Not Going Away

In December 2019, Boris Johnson promised Tory voters that they would "Get Brexit Done".  It was clear that was not going to be true, and so it turned out.  And, still Brexit is not done, with the government continually having to go back to the EU for further negotiations, the UK having to abide by EU rules and regulations on trade, a border down the Irish Sea, as Northern Ireland is kept even more inside the EU's remit than the rest of the UK, and so on.  The fact that the issue continues to take pride of place in the media, including in the pages of the scurrilous Brexiteering press such as The Daily Express, despite their continued milking of Covid, shows that the issue is not going away.

As each day passes the lies that the Brexiteers told, in order to get their wafer thing majority for Leave in 2016, are exposed.  The Brexiteers in both Tory and Labour Parties promised that it would be possible to have all the benefits of being in the EU, but without any of the costs or responsibilities.  For anyone with a brain, it was obvious that that was not true or even possible, and so it has turned out.  Instead, Britain just in order to get a limited free trade deal with the EU, has had to agree to continue to abide by EU Single Market rules and regulations, in respect of the goods being sold, including all of the rules on country of origin.

But, even then, that free trade deal, like all such deals, does not give the UK unfettered access to the EU, because, now, like all other third party countries, it has to complete reams of paperwork to prove that it is complying with those regulations, which, previously, as an EU member, it did not have to do.  Its estimated that the cost of all this additional paperwork costs UK businesses around £9 billion a year, or about half of that £20 billion saving that Johnson and the Leavers promised would result from leaving the EU, and then be available to the NHS.  Of course, the parlous state of the NHS, and the Tories offer of just a 1% pay rise to NHS staff shows they never had any intention of using any such fictional savings to benefit the NHS in the first place.

But, that is not the end of the cost, because alongside all of this form filling goes the huge cost of delays at UK borders, for any business seeking to export to the EU.  That has left millions of pounds worth of fish and shellfish rotting on UK docks, resulting in huge losses for UK fishing businesses, one of the main groups that the Leavers promised would benefit from leaving the EU.  yet another big lie of the Brexiteers that has been exposed.

Finally, wherever, UK exporters have failed to meet any of these rules and regulations, which outside the EU they no longer have any say in, they do not even get tariff free trade with the EU.  That is before all of the issues arising from the costs that businesses and consumers have found are lumped on them, in the form of VAT, because the UK is no longer part of the EU VAT regime.  The response of the UK government has been to tell businesses to get around many of these problems by setting up branches inside the EU!  Of course, many businesses, large enough to be able to do that, did not need the government to give such advice, because they have already been closing their UK businesses, and setting up in the EU instead so as to avoid all of the costs that Brexit has imposed on them.

The next big shoe to drop in that respect is going to be the movement of UK service industries to the EU, and they account for 80% of UK employment, and GDP.  London has already lost out to other EU centres in respect of share trading, and the same is inevitably going to happen with the rest of financial services.  These are huge earners of UK foreign earnings required if Britain is to have any chance of paying for its imports, especially as its earnings from visible trade in goods declines, and as the huge levels of borrowing it has undertaken to cover the costs of government lockdowns, begin to seriously impinge on government finances, as the Pound falls, and global interest rates continue to rise sharply.

All of the mess that the government has got itself into in order to try to sell its deal that effectively keeps the UK inside the single market and customs union, whilst pretending its outside it, has created the problems it faces in Northern Ireland with the Protocol.  Irish Marxism has given a good account of those problems, as well as how it is leading inexorably to the question of a border poll, and the potential for a United Ireland, as the consequences of Brexit, begin to break apart the United Kingdom itself. 

And, today, we have seen another manifestation of the lies of the Brexiteers in the trade figures.  Government Ministers over the last few months have been claiming that the reported problems at UK ports were all a fallacy, made up by Remoaners.  To the extent they accepted that any problems existed, they claimed they were just teething troubles that would be quickly resolved.  But, today's trade figures show that UK exports to the EU dropped by 40% in January.  In fact, his is still inside the grace period arranged between the UK and EU, and as the EU imposes a full regime of checks on UK exports, the UK is likely to be hit even harder.  The only reason that the ports themselves didn't get choked is because many exporters decided not to bother sending their shipments in the first place.

But, the figures show another lie that was purveyed by the Brexiters.  Whilst UK exports to the EU fell by 40%, EU exports to Britain fell by only 28%.  That shows the extent to which UK consumers continue to be dependent upon EU producers to a far greater extent than EU consumes are dependent upon UK producers.  That was always inevitable despite he idiotic claims and lies made by the Brexiters to the contrary.  The EU is an economy of 450 million people, with a GDP seven times larger than that of Britain.  It has free trade deals with many countries and economic blocs across the globe.  The idea that the EU would be dependent on Britain to meet its needs, rather than being able to simply meet those needs itself, or from many other countries was absurd.  By contrast, the UK economy is dependent upon importing huge amounts of goods, without which it could not even survive, let alone sustain any kind of reasonable standard of living.  Its why Hitler tried to cut it off in WWII.  However, much Britain might try to dissuade UK consumes from buying imported EU food, cars, wine and so on, it will not succeed, and unlike the EU, it cannot easily provide homegrown substitutes for those imports. 

As each day passes, a new Brexit absurdity is exposed, and it will only get worse.  Brexit is not going away as a live political issue, and those that argued for it will increasingly be exposed for the charlatans they really are.  Its even rumoured that UK officials have been meeting with their EU opposite numbers, on the basis that they are waiting for things to get so bad that they will be able to float the idea of actually formally re-joining the single market and customs union, if not yet the EU itself.

An intelligent, principled opposition would have been pointing all this out, and hammering Johnson's government every day.  But, the reality is that Starmer, having spent four years demanding another referendum, when Corbyn was Leader, has become a bigger Brexiteer than Corbyn ever was.  Starmer has acted as a loyal lieutenant to Boris Johnson on every issue that has come his way from government lockouts, to Brexit, to jingoistic flag-waving, denying Scots a democratic vote on independence, to protecting UK War Criminals from prosecution.  Starmer has done what Corbyn never did, which is to lead his troops through the division lobbies in favour of Johnson's disastrous and damaging Brexit.  He and Labour have to own that disaster now as much as does Johnson and the Tories.

The only way of Labour rescuing itself from that disaster is if it is able to remove Starmer before the next General Election, and to put in place a leader committed to the ideas of International Socialism, and rejoining the EU so as to fight alongside our European brothers and sisters for a socialist Europe.  The fight for that begins by a fight against Starmer's witchhunt, and for a democratisation of the party, and the rest of the Labour movement.  We need to begin to remove all of the right-wing pro-capitalist elements from any elected positions within the party.  But, we should also not let Brexit limit our own internationalist perspectives.  We need to build our own links with socialists within the European socialist parties, and begin to create an EU Wide Workers Party, fighting for common objectives for workers across Europe inside or out of the EU, as the basis for a struggle for a United Socialist States of Europe.