The Opportunities of Brexit?

Roger LIDDLE * Labour Member of the House of Lords since 2010; Former Adviser of Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson. Contact: liddler@parliament.uk.

The meaning of Brexit means remains opaque and contested. In the immediate future, the UK-EU relationship depends on solving the Northern Ireland Protocol dispute, an essential pillar of the 2020 Withdrawal Agreement. Without mutual agreement, a major confrontation looms. The economic consequences of Brexit have so far been negative. Its fervent advocates and increasingly the electorate are disappointed – but for opposing reasons. Liz Truss, the former British prime minister, was aiming for a “new era” of economic growth, stimulated by a right-wing programme of tax cuts and deregulation, in which “taking advantage of the opportunities of Brexit” will play a big, if unspecified role. How this will work out in practice is problematic. Speedy divergence from EU rules could lead to new tensions over “unfair competition”. Meanwhile the opposition Labour party has rejected re-joining the EU, its single market or customs union: for sound electoral reasons, Sir Keir Starmer is firmly opposed to reopening the Brexit argument. However, its policy of “making Brexit work”, while deliberately vague, holds out the promise of a more cooperative EU relationship.

More than six years after the British people voted to leave the European Union (EU), the question of what Brexit means, what its full impact will be, and how in reality it will change the shape of the United Kingdom's (UK) relations with its European neighbours remain unresolved. Yet, the UK general election of December 2019 was emphatically won by the Conservative party on a promise to “Get Brexit Done”. In one important sense, Boris Johnson kept his promise – and in agreement with the EU. The Withdrawal Agreement (WA), ratified by the UK in January 2020, and the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) approved by both Houses of Parliament in December 2020, represent several thousand pages of agreed legal text, defining that future relationship. In the “government by rules” mindset of the European Commission, there it is: a job, if not…