Brexit

Keir Starmer is only a year into his job as Labour leader, but could his time in charge soon come to an end? Starmer is under increasing pressure following his failure to revitalise Labour. A bad set of results on 6 May could mean the final nail in the coffin. If Starmer is ousted – and that remains a big if, given the lack of viable contenders for the job – Corbyn's critics within the Labour party will quickly find themselves in a difficult position. With no heir apparent on the Labour right, Starmer's departure could easily mean the left taking control of Labour all over again. Yvette Cooper has been touted by some as a 'compromise candidate', in the event that Starmer does depart.

The Lugano convention – part of a tapestry of complicated international law agreements ensuring the courts of one country recognise the courts of another – has a dull name but it matters a great deal. Since the EU referendum, the convention has played a small role in the great internecine conflict between Britain and Brussels. Much energy has been wasted in this series of pointless bust-ups. And now, the EU is determined to use the Lugano convention – a playing field it claims to control – to ensure Britain pays a price for Brexit, by effectively blocking us from rejoining the convention. Why does this matter? Because without the convention, business suffers.

He backed Brexit for a wheeze – and then, when he realised that it was actually going to happen and the implications for his business sank in, he fled to Singapore. That, very simply, is the Remainer case against Sir James Dyson. But how does it stand up against reality now that Brexit has happened? In an interview with the BBC, Dyson revealed a little more about his decision, in 2019, to relocate his HQ in Singapore, and why he backed Brexit. Dyson has burned his fingers, but not in the ways which Remainers asserted No, Sir James has not left Britain. His company still employs around 4,000 people here, and moreover, its Wiltshire operation is expanding. Moving the HQ to Singapore, he says, was not a relocation but an expansion into growing markets.

The ports would reek from the smell of rotting fish. Factories would close en masse as orders got snarled up in red tape. There would be chaos at the borders as deliveries were blocked, and services would hit a wall of ‘non-tariff barriers’ that would make it impossible for British firms to sell them across Europe.  We have heard a lot over the last few weeks about how much disruption our departure from the European Union was causing for exporters, and there were lots of stories about firms that might go out of business or would have to move production to France or Poland. Membership of the single market, despite all the hype around it, doesn’t make much difference to most exporters But hold on. The actual data is telling a different story.

The country would remain implacably divided for a generation, with Remain and Leave replacing class and geography as the new fault line in British politics. International investors would take a generation to come round to the idea. And campaigns to re-join the EU would grow in strength as the chaos deepened. Even a few months ago, it was possible to argue that Britain's tortured debate about leaving the EU would run and run without any seeming end. And yet since then something very interesting has happened. The UK’s comparative success at rolling out Covid-19 vaccines has in effect sealed the Brexit deal. The debate is now over, both here, and around the world.

'Suppose a man be carried, whilst fast asleep, into a room where there is a person he longs to see and speak with; and be there locked fast in ... he awakes, and is glad to find himself in so desirable company, which he stays willingly in ... I ask, is not this stay voluntary? I think nobody will doubt it: and yet, being locked fast in, it is evident ... he has not freedom to be gone.' Happy in a room he cannot leave, the man John Locke imagined during his musings on free will might almost be a metaphor for contemporary Spain in the European Union. Awakening from the long sleep of Franco’s dictatorship, the Spanish people were delighted to find themselves in the EU where they had always wanted to be and where their country is now locked fast into the Eurozone.

On the 23rd anniversary of the signing of the Belfast Agreement, it’s safe to say celebrations here in Northern Ireland will be muted at best. Over the past ten days, hundreds of rioters wielding bricks, bottles, stones and petrol bombs in Belfast have injured more than 70 police officers, most notably in the west of the city, where working-class loyalists and republicans live cheek by jowl. In terrifying scenes, a bus driver narrowly escaped injury when his vehicle was petrol bombed and left to coast down a street. The trigger for the violence was the decision by Northern Ireland’s public prosecution service not to bring charges against 24 Sinn Féin politicians who broke Covid restrictions at a funeral of an IRA leader, which 2,000 attended.

Why does Keir Starmer seem set on following the example of the French Socialist party, and leading Labour into electoral oblivion? The sad truth is that it could all have been so different. Back in September 2019, at the height of the Brexit saga, it was obvious that Corbyn's Labour was increasingly contemptuous of Britain's white working-classes. But instead of reaching out to Red Wall voters, Starmer has doubled down on this misguided approach. The miserable state of the French left should serve as a warning to Labour that you betray your traditional voters at your peril. In the last few years, France's Socialist party has imploded, reduced to such penury that they had sold their Paris HQ. It is a humiliation they brought upon themselves.

At the start of 2021, Labour and the Tories were neck and neck in the polls. Only three months later, a YouGov poll out this week has the Conservatives ten points up on Starmer’s party. This popularity dive comes at the worst possible time for Labour, with a crucial set of local elections, mayoral contests, Scottish parliament elections and the Hartlepool by-election to consider. Starmer is powerless to control some of the forces causing Labour's slump. But there is one big thing he could do that would help: clear out the dead wood from his shadow cabinet. Rumours about Starmer opting for a reshuffle have been so ubiquitous lately that the leader of the opposition had to openly defend his top team while on the campaign trail this week.

Amidst all the dry economic arguments, one of the more emotive fronts on which the 2016 referendum was fought was whether Brexit could lead to the dissolution of the Union. Some Remainers made the argument that dragging Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland out ‘against their will’ would turbocharge support for independence. Unionists such as myself – who ended up on the Leave side – saw it differently: EU membership was actually making it easier for the SNP to sell separation as a low-risk proposition. Shared membership of the EU would, after all, allow Scotland as a newly-independent country to enjoy relatively normal social and economic relations with England.

How's this for a terrible confession? There has always been a small part of me that admires Nigel Farage. As a Remainer liberal, it's hard to admit. I disagree with Farage on many things. And my (partial) admiration doesn't mean I forgive him for some of the low points of his political career, not least the disgraceful ‘Breaking Point’ poster unveiled in the lead-up to the EU referendum, nor his earlier comments about migrants with HIV. Yet I have a soft spot for outsiders, particularly ones like Farage who beat the odds.  What Farage achieved, all from outside a two-party system pitted against him, is unprecedented in the history of British politics.

Every Home Secretary is forced to confront the cold political realities of the office. What they set out to deliver – strengthening countermeasures in the aftermath of a terror attack, say, or taking steps to tackle a spike in violent crime – tends to be supported by swathes of the public at large. But though they can enjoy that currency of quiet public support, Home Secretaries of both major parties must then do battle 'inside the Beltway' with a vociferous legal and human rights establishment – and other vested interests ­– which seek to dilute their policy responses to the challenge of the day. To use a term of art, it is often a 'hostile environment' for holders of that least understood great office of State.

Boris Johnson appeared before the Liaison Committee this afternoon to face a smorgasbord of select committee chairs on everything from pubs to passports. After culture chief Julian Knight grilled Johnson on the continued problems facing British musicians touring Europe, Liaison chair Bernard Jenkin took his chance to nimbly interject. Westminster's answer to the 'capo dei capi' took the chance to pose a question of his own: would the PM would join him on a Zoom call to hear performers' vociferous concerns for the purpose of 'listening and gathering intelligence'?