This blog is usually all about doom and gloom. Not this week. For the first time in a while, I feel there is reason to be cautiously optimistic – not for the short term or even the medium term, but when looking beyond the next painful years.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that there has been a sea change in how the country talks about Brexit. A few months ago, Brexit was still a taboo. It has now become the object of an increasingly widely shared consensus in the population and among media outlets that it has simply been an unmitigated disaster. That is regrettable and many people will suffer for a long time as a result of Cameron’s disastrous decision to hold an in- out vote on EU membership without any proper constitutional safeguards. Yet, long term, “no benefits Brexit” may turn out to be a salutary shock for the UK that opens up windows of opportunity for much needed fundamental change that would otherwise have remained shut.

 No benefits Brexit

 The facts showing that Brexit has no benefits are unambiguous and denying them looks increasingly like delusion or ideological obstinacy. This was illustrated last week by the PM himself whose defence of Brexit, when put on the spot during PMQ by the SNP’s Ian Blackford, seemed extremely unconvincing and unconvinced. He feebly suggested that he was still proud to have supported Brexit and that there had been benefits in the form of the world’s fastest vaccine roll-out, taking back control of our borders, reducing immigration, as well as ‘trade deals and deregulation.’

 The first two are well-known, long debunked lies (on the vaccine roll out this Byline Times article, on record-level immigration post-Brexit see here).

 The deregulation and trade deal claims, too, have been shown to be complete nonsense time and again (including on this blog here and here). But just to repeat some key points: Post-Brexit deregulation has not really happened because none can agree on what to deregulate. Former Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency Minister Rees-Mogg ultimately had to turn to the public to get an idea of what regulations people would like to see repealed – without success of course –, before the government came up with the disastrous idea of simply scrapping all retained EU law at the end of 2023, unless an explicit decision is taken to retain a specific law.

 Regarding trade, a couple of weeks ago, a new set of figures was made public that show that not only are the Australia and New Zealand trade deals most likely harmful to the UK, but also the much-lauded Japan agreement – in place since January 2021 – has not stopped trade with Japan from falling. The reason for this seemingly surprising result of the UK-Japan deal is that trade does not work like the simplistic Brexiter world view suggests it does. As I have written before, in the 21st century few goods that countries trade are produced inside the borders of just one country. Most – especially high value added – products are the result of a complex division of labour across firms and operations located in various places. Therefore, whatever goods the UK wants to export to Japan may rely on parts that are produced inside the EU. The very basic Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), which barely goes beyond WTO rules, hurts that sort of intermediary trade just as much as bilateral UK-EU trade in finished consumer or investment goods. Similarly, whatever Japan wants to export to the UK may not be a finalised product destined for consumption in the UK. Rather, it is most likely an intermediary product that may be assembled into a final product in the UK for sale in the UK and elsewhere – most importantly the EU. Indeed, before Brexit, the UK had become Japan’s gateway to the EU. Therefore, Brexit is not providing the UK with benefits from replacing EU trade with trade with the rest of the world. Rather, it is hurting UK trade with both. The figures about the Japan-UK trade deal illustrate this painfully.

Brexiters will continue to deny this and spread misleading information about trade deals, as Michael Gove did last month, for which Tories have now been reprimanded by the UK Statistical Authority, and as trade secretary Kemi Badenoch did again yesterday by promising an ‘amazing trade deal’ with India within a year. Despite the continuing lies and falsehoods, outside of the Brexiter bubble, however, people have started catching up with reality.

 That leads to the frustrating situation where we are being held hostage by a small minority of fanatics in the Tory party. For instance, a Byline Supplement poll suggests that as many as 81% of decided respondents would support a Swiss-style relationship with the EU, which presumably implies that they would not object to unilateral alignment with EU rules and perhaps even European Court of Justice (ECJ) jurisdiction. That position has been strongly rejected by both PM Sunak and labour leader Starmer, which makes it difficult to see where political change will come from…and yet, Brexit has been such a disaster that it has revealed fundamental flaws in the UK’s constitutional set up, which has the potential to fundamentally reshape the country.

 The Brown Report

 One indication of potentially profound reforms to come is the report of the Commission on the UK’s future, chaired by former PM Gordon Brown, which was revealed by Labour last week. The former PM’s report contains some radical proposals, most importantly the transformation of the House of Lords into an elected chamber representing regions and nations. This proposal addresses two key concerns of the Commission, namely, tackling corruption and decentralising the UK’s constitutional set up to give more powers to regions and local authorities. Regarding the former, the report portrays a grim picture of the House of Lords, citing Martin Williams’ book Parliament Ltd which claims that “lifetime appointments to Britain’s Upper House are being sold to wealthy donors.” The report argues for stronger ethical standards in public life and envisages banning second jobs for MPs.

 More generally the Brown Commission denounces in no uncertain terms the influence of foreign money on British politics and suggests the powers of the Electoral Commission should be strengthened to be able to deal with that issue. That in itself would constitute a major break with the Tory strategy of past years of undermining the Electoral Commission’s powers to avoid scrutiny.

 The issues of corruption and the over-centralisation of the country pre-date Brexit. Yet, it is ‘thanks’ to the Referendum that an extreme faction of the Tory party has taken control of the country and made these issues so egregious. The truly sickening revelations about Tory peer Michelle Mone’s shameless profiteering from public contracts for personal protective equipment (PPE) are only one – albeit particularly shocking – example of this.

Similarly, the over-centralisation issue has been exacerbated by the fact that both Scotland and Northern Ireland have been taken out of the EU against the majority will of their populations, as expressed in the referendum. The situation is made worse by the recent Supreme Court ruling against the power of the Scottish Parliament to legislate for a second independence referendum, casting doubt on the notional of a voluntary Union.

The silver lining is, that the accumulation of such revelations and decisions over the past six years may mean that enough political will may now exist to tackle these thorny questions that concern the behaviours and powers of lawmakers themselves.

 Of course, much will depend on whether Labour actually will form the next government and which parts of the Brown Report will find their way into the Labour GE manifesto.

 Preconditions for change

 In one respect, Brown’s report on the British constitution is disappointing, namely regarding the electoral system. No mention is made of any plans to replace the first past the post (FPTP) system with some form of proportional representation (PR) for elections to the House of Commons. Such a reform seems urgent, not only to remedy the blatantly undemocratic situation of a permanent rule by minority governments (in terms of popular vote share), but also to create the preconditions for a more constructive collaboration amongst political parties in the UK. The latter may in turn be a precondition for a way out of the current Brexit mess. Chris Grey’s most interesting and thought-provoking blog post about Labour’s Brexit strategy outlines ways in which a cross-party agreement on Brexit could come about and what its benefits would be for a future Labour government. Professor Grey’s blog suggests that such a cross-party agreement may be the only way in which Labour could be bolder on Brexit. Yet, cross-party agreements do not come naturally to British political parties, as the whole political system is based on an in-built structural adversarialism and antagonism between majority and opposition that makes collaboration and cooperation look like weakness or collusion. Labour may be able to manoeuvre the Tories into a position where they have to commit to ‘making Brexit work,’ as Prof Grey suggests. But much better would be a more fundamental change to the UK’s polity that creates the preconditions for cooperation rather than opposition among the UK’s major parties. Here, the Brown Report misses a trick.

 Yet, even in the absence of electoral reform, change to the two major parties’ Brexit strategy may be inevitable. Here, one possible source of change is time. The popularity of Brexit will wane naturally and inevitably due to the fact that voters in the older cohorts who disproportionately supported it are dying. Electoral support for isolationism may hence decline as those age groups who were strongly opposed to Brexit, but did not get to vote in the referendum are entering the electorate. A related source of change is that politicians whose careers are tied up with the Brexit debates will also progressively leave the political scene. Replacing the current Brexit-tainted politicians with a new generation seems like a necessary condition for a more constructive relationship with the EU to emerge, as Tom Hayes argued in a recent blog post. On both aspects, time is on the side of reason. Sadly, Kier Starmer’s strategy may mean that Britain is walking down the path towards reason in slow motion.

 Chester By-election: Is Starmer’s ‘Tory light’ strategy working?

 In my last blog post, I wrote about Starmer’s electoral strategy, which in my view is based on the assumption that the way to beat the Tories in the next General Election (GE) is to out-Tory the Tories and move Labour considerably to the right. Starmer may thus seek to recapture the votes of former Labour voters in the North- and Middle of England. From an electoral strategy perspective, my concern with that ‘Tory light’ strategy is that it may neglect the impact it has on young, left-of-centre voters in urban areas who may be put off and prefer not to vote at all rather than supporting Starmer’s centre-right strategy. As Chris Grey pointed out last week, there is another risk: Starmer’s red lines regarding Single Market (SM) and customs union membership may put off not just left-wingers in the Labour party, but also centrists in the South of England who would expect a much clearer departure from the current policy regarding UK-EU relationships. As Chris Grey argues, “Starmer’s excessive Brexit caution is actually rather incautious in a post-Brexit, post-left-right context, given how many Labour voters were remainers.” During the next GE, this may lead anti-Brexit Labour voters to turn to whoever supports a softer version of Brexit and thus decreasing Labour’s chances to win an outright majority. For those voters, the Liberal Democrats – who currently have the boldest and clearest approach to rebuilding the UK’s relationship with the EU including rejoining the SM – may constitute an attractive alternative to a centre-right Labour party that largely continues the Tories’ Brexit strategy. Moreover, academic research suggests that the type of seats Labour needs to win to get a majority in the next GE is diverse, but predominantly in the middle of the political spectrum. I hence have serious doubts about Starmer’s ‘Tory light’ strategy.

 Yet, the Chester by-election last week may seem to suggest that Starmer’s strategy is working – at least electorally. While Chester is considered a safe Labour seat, the slump in Tory votes from 32% to 20% is very significant and of the order Labour would need at the national level to overturn the current majority in the House of Commons. (To not completely abandon my habitual doom and gloom, depressingly 22.4% – i.e. nearly 1 in 4 – voters in Chester still think voting Tory is the way to go, casting doubt on any hopes of a Tory electoral wipe out). So, in Chester, Starmer’s centre right strategy seems to have worked. Rafael Behr suggests something similar about Starmer’s strategy in general in his Guardian column last week.

 But here is the catch: Even if Starmer’s strategy were to be electorally viable, there remains one other big problem. Namely, what will a Labour manifesto based on this strategy look like going into the next GE? This is where Starmer’s trepid centre-right strategy may come back to bite him. If the centre-right strategy wins Starmer an outright majority, then his hands will still be tied by what he promised if he is not to lose any credibility and come under sustained attack from the pro-Brexit, right-wing press. It would be very easy to portray him as a traitor if he were to veer off course on any of his Brexit-related promises (no free movement of people, no single market membership, no customs union, no rejoining).

 At the same time, the next government most likely will inherit a dismal economy in a situation where not just the UK, but the world economy will be struggling with sluggish growth and high prices. In that situation, Starmer will need a good economic strategy to deliver any economic growth and increase in living standards for the British people. In such a situation, one big advantage that the UK has in comparison to other advance economies is that it has had Brexit. Not in the sense that Brexit provides opportunities to grow outside the EU. Rather, the one big opportunity hard Brexit presents to the next government is that reversing or at least softening it will constitute a low hanging fruit in terms of boosting economic growth. Contrary to what Starmer says, doing that could add up to 4% to GDP over time, which is the sort of growth spurt many Western governments are currently dreaming of being able to deliver to their voters. By drawing unnecessarily red lines around the issue of Brexit, Starmer essentially promises to fight one of the most difficult economic battles the country has faced in recent decades with one hand tied behind his back. To be clear, I remain convinced the slogan ‘making Brexit work’ makes some electoral and pragmatic sense, as the country may not be ready for a government running on a promise to reverse Brexit. But what policies exactly are necessary to make it work – e.g. unilateral regulatory alignment - should be subject to careful consideration and planning, not something that is pre-determined by considerations of electoral expedience. Indeed, some of Starmer’s statements about the way to make Brexit work may be incompatible with some of his red lines. Thus, Labour’s plan to conclude a veterinary agreement with the EU for Northern Ireland to reduce trade frictions seems almost certainly to imply some level of unilateral alignment on EU rules, which seems to be contrary at least to the spirit of his statements on Labour’s EU policy.

 Missing a historic opportunity?

 Starmer’s strategy to out-Tory the Tories on Brexit, immigration, and anti-unionism is particularly regrettable given that “no benefits Brexit” provides another potential benefit, namely the once in a lifetime opportunity to rid the country off the Tory party in the next GE. That may sound dramatic, but there may now be a small, but nevertheless real, possibility for the Tory party to suffer a similarly disastrous electoral defeat as the Canadian Tories did in 1993, which ultimately led to the disappearance of the party. The disappearance of the Tory party in the UK would make room for a more modern, less corrupt centre-right party in British politics, replacing the anachronistic rent-extracting monstrosity that has held back the country for way too long. If that were to come to pass, at least Brexit would become the truly transformative moment in British history that finally rid the country of its archaic political system and made space for the country to enter the 21st century.

 Perhaps it took Brexit for us to understand that Britain’s problems are primarily home-made, not the EU’s or anyone else’s fault. The past two years have clearly shown for instance that it is not sending money to Brussels that explains why the NHS is on the brink of collapse. It is the Tories’ misguided economic and fiscal strategy that literally – and possibly intentionally – starves our public services to death. It is the corruption inside that party that means the crown jewels of the British state – such as Royal Mail – are sold off to Tory cronies without much public debate or parliamentary scrutiny. It is the corruption inside the Tory party that explains why PPE contracts can be used by Tory donors to siphon off millions in taxpayers’ money and hide in offshore bank accounts and trust funds without providing anything of use to the country. With the scapegoat of the EU gone, all the rot in the Tory party has been exposed in bright daylight and people start to take notice.

 The Tory’s current plight is compounded by the fact that Sunak is completely dependent on the right-wing of the party to survive, which most recently has led the government to approve the construction of a new coal mine in Cumbria and to perform a U-turn on the manifesto promises of a yearly house building target. Both policies are considered to be favoured by older, more right-wing voters and unlikely to go down well with younger ones (which may be one of the reasons why the Tories do everything to disenfranchise them with the new electoral ID law).

 All this creates a golden opportunity for Labour to not just win the next GE, but to actually change the terms of engagement and thus to prepare the ground for the truly transformative change the country needs. Labour should focus on taking the people their fear of a new political direction that Sunak calls the ‘politics of yesterday,’ but is in reality a necessary condition for the country to tackle the existential issues it is facing both in terms of the economy and the environment. The pro-rentier libertarian market-fundamentalists have had their chance since the 1980s to show the benefits of their policies. It is now abundantly clear that all that their policies achieve, is massive pain for the largest number and obscene levels of wealth for the few. Rejecting this set of policies does not imply a Corbynite return to old-school state socialism but has to imply a better balance between states and markets. There is a massive amount of space between the Truss-Kwarteng-IAE type extreme pro-rentier libertarianism and the Corbynite return to socialism.

 Yet, Starmer is making the same mistake as Tory leaders since Major made when faced with Farage’s populism and then increasingly ERG’s extremism. Ultimately, pandering to and co-opting, rather than confronting and rejecting, the factions that defend extreme views has deep-reaching consequences for any political party and the country as a whole. While it may provide a quick fix for an incumbent party leader to silence extreme voices, long term the effect this strategy has on the party and indeed the country’s political landscape is – as the case of right-wing nationalism and Brexit shows – potentially disastrous. The main problem with the pandering and co-opting strategy is that it does not only shift the policies that are being considered into an ever more extreme direction (see the Rwanda policy), but it more fundamentally shifts the country out of the realm of reality, rational analysis, and reason, into the realm of fantasy, conspiracy, and paranoia.

 Still, “no benefits Brexit” and the chaotic state the UK is currently in provides a once in a generation opportunity to shift the centre of the political spectrum away from the right-wing madness we have seen taking hold of UK politics over the first two decades of this century. That will only happen if Labour looks beyond winning the next GE and instead starts thinking about what mandate they will need from the British electorate to fix the country. If the manifesto simply contains a promise to ‘make Brexit work’ better than it did under the Tories and to control immigration better than the Tories did, then the next government will not have the mandate to deliver the fundamental change that the country so desperately needs after decades of wrong-headed economic policies that transformed a once flourishing country into a rentier capitalist economy. Starmer’s Labour may be in the process of missing yet another chance to redefine how we think about the economy, the state, and the world we live in in the 21st century. However, the appetite for fundamental change seems to be growing in the British public sphere. Eventually, a political force will emerge that manages to transform that appetite into a political programme.