In June 2016 the UK shocked the world by voting to leave the European Union. In our previous book (Brexit: Why Britain Voted to Leave the European Union) we told the story of what happened in the referendum and why it produced a leave vote. This book is a sequel to the earlier one and examines what happened after the decision was made looking at events up to the point that the UK formally left the EU in January 2020. This was a period of unprecedented political and electoral turmoil in British politics which for a period looked like it could shatter the party system. It encompassed three elections and three different Prime Ministers and unprecedented volatility in both Parliamentary and electoral politics. The book maps out the twists and turns of the Brexit process, both at the level of the political elites and among the mass public. It then goes on to examine the long-run antecedents of this momentous decision, using data that goes back more than fifty years. Finally, it speculates about the economic and poltical consequences of Brexit for the future, while taking into account the Covid Pandemic which itself added to the turmoil in British politics.

What are the likely effects of Brexit on the political parties and British politics more generally, particularly in light of the Covid pandemic?

This chapter focuses on the UK’s objectives in relation to Brexit, with emphasis on the role and salience attributed to the Norway model. The post-referendum UK government has quite consistently rejected a future UK‒EEA membership as part of its rejection of all off-the-shelf agreements (a relationship that the EU already has with at least one non-member state and which can be extended to include the UK), and has instead stressed the need for a set of bespoke agreements with the EU (a set of agreements that are specially designed for the UK). Views across the UK differ widely on the preferred form of the UK’s future EU association, and the government has been widely criticised for lack of clarity and realism. The government’s position has then also shifted considerably over time. The 8 December 2017 Withdrawal Agreement shows how it has conceded to the EU on substantive issues and on control of the process. It now acknowledges that there is a need for a period of transition. Close to a year after the negotiations began, it remains unclear what the UK government wants and what it will settle for.

In order to untangle this, we need to consider: (a) the type of future EU association the UK government expresses a commitment to (whatever the details may be), and how it has evolved; (b) those actors and forces that influence this, what they want and how influential they are; (c) who controls the Brexit process (if anyone); and (d) the broader (European and global) context within which this process is unfolding. The unfolding of the Brexit saga thus far suggests that the UK’s future relationship with the EU will be determined not by goal-driven government action, but by a complex and unwieldly process that is influenced by a broad range of actors and factors.

The chapter is divided into two main sections. In the first, we consider the position of the UK government, which asserted that ‘Brexit means Brexit’ in line with the Leave camp’s focus on the need for taking back control. In the second section, we consider how this objective is to be carried out by paying attention to those UK actors that are most capable of influencing the course of action. Our survey includes parliament and political parties; devolved nations (the Scottish government’s view, that of Wales and that of Northern Ireland); business; and labour unions.

Political discourse in Brexit Britain has seen an unexpected return to the language, ideas, and idioms of the 1840s when Britain first defined itself as the “free trade nation.” In campaigning for Brexit, self-styled “free trade economists” sought to return to the unilateral trade policy of “global Britain” first adopted in 1846, but in practice, the British government has sought to negotiate a range of “free trade agreements”; similarly, in Brexit demonology, one overriding goal of leaving the European Union was to escape from its Common Agricultural Policy, the direct lineal descendant of the notorious Corn Laws repealed in 1846. More globally, at variance with the free trade rhetoric in contemporary British politics, the direction of trade policy under American influence after 2016 raised the prospect of trade wars, tariff hikes, and protectionist barriers to the free trade policies which had constituted the common economic aspiration of the world trading system since the Second World War. This recent revival of global public debate over “free trade” comes at the end of a period when discussion of trade policy remained an arcane subject, largely left to economists, international institutions such as GATT or the EU, or debated at best in specialist bodies such as the Institute of Economic Affairs or Chatham House, and rarely creating headlines beyond the pages of The Economist or Financial Times. That retreat was in large part a reflection of the emergence of managed economy in which decisions over economic policy were increasingly determined by the state and the experts. Later, paradoxically, the tide of neo-liberalism with its deregulatory fervor and restoration of “free markets” globally as well as the reshaping of the architecture of world trade with the creation of the WTO in 1995, produced, if anything, a marked popular backlash against free trade, no longer identified with consumer democracy and popular welfare but the ability of TNCs to exploit cheap labor worldwide and to redistribute wealth from the poor to the rich, reversing decades of growing income equality.

Against this far wider canvas, this essay sets out to understand the part free trade has played in British politics from the publication of Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776) to the referendum decision in favor of Brexit in 2016.

In an unprecedented move in November 2016, the Communications Secretary of Prince Harry released a statement condemning ‘the racial undertones of comment pieces’ and the ‘outright sexism and racism’ of social media comments regarding the Prince's relationship with selfidentified biracial American Meghan Markle (Knauf 2017). Headlines like the one above, drawn from The Telegraph (Watson 2016), are indicative of these evidently ‘racial undertones’. Once the engagement was officially announced in November 2017, coverage continued in a similar vein: the bride's former life as an actor on the legal drama Suits (2011–) became widely entangled with discussions of race and racism, and the state of the monarchy in the UK.

Markle is not the first divorced American to marry into the British royal family, of course. In 1936, Edward VIII abdicated to marry socialite and divorcée Wallis Simpson, who received a markedly cold reception (Pigeon 2015). Eighty years on, divorce does not hold the same scandalous import. However, the British royal family still carries significance as a point of cultural affirmation regarding the connections between family, marriage and the nation (Turner 2012), as my analysis of the media coverage of Markle and Prince Harry's relationship in what follows evidences. Furthermore, I posit, this royal romance becomes a ‘special relationship’ that has to carry the weight of even more consequence, emerging as it does in a period marked by the rise of nationalist politics in both the US and the UK. The British monarchy still captivates the British public, especially around occasions such as weddings and funerals. Indeed, events such as the death of Princess Diana in 1997 and the public mourning that followed can be considered ‘as a performance of the nation and a vehicle for the production of a national public sphere’ (Shome 2001: 324). I argue that Prince Harry's engagement to Meghan Markle was of similar significance, if not magnitude. Markle and Prince Harry are ‘arguably the most high-profile interracial relationship of the West’ (Asava 2017: 1). The British monarchy, however, has long been thought of as inherently white, and is connected to how ‘we’, the public (as this notion is predominantly constructed by the media), imagine the nation.

Introduction

Post 6.1 was written on the day the Prime Minister announced that he would hold a referendum on EU membership, and I think its concerns have come to pass. Post 6.2 outlines my concerns about how the media would handle the referendum, all of which came to pass.

The Leave campaign focused on the economy. For my own part I helped organise a letter from academic economists expressing similar economic concerns: as a later poll would confirm, economists were almost unanimous in thinking Brexit would reduce living standards. However the broadcast media, as I had feared they would, treated this view not as an expression of knowledge, but as just another opinion, always to be balanced by an opinion from the other side (Post 6.3). Post 6.4 argues that this failure to get across the overwhelming view of economists might be critical in deciding the result. Equally important, suggests Post 6.6, is the failure to get across economists’ equally universal view that immigration improves the public finances.

These failures were critical in part because most of the tabloid press was far from balanced. Indeed it seems fair to argue that the right-wing press had been running the Brexit campaign for years (Post 6.5). On the day after the vote I published Post 6.7, which remains the most widely read post I have ever written. Post 6.8 draws some lessons from what I regard as a disastrous decision. Of course I have continued to write about Brexit as the negotiations unfold, but until we know what Brexit actually means, if anything, it is difficult to know which of those posts will be of any lasting interest.

6.1

When National Interest and Party Advantage Conflict

Wednesday, 23 January 2013

I would not be the first to observe that there is a potential conflict between George Osborne’s role as Chancellor and his deep involvement in Conservative Party election strategy. The fact that this is often said does not mean it is real: it could just be a story told by those commentators who are themselves fixated by the battle between political parties. However there are two major areas where the Conservative part of the coalition government seems to be putting perceived election advantage ahead of prospects for the UK economy: immigration and Europe.

State aid took on significance during and in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit referendum’s campaign. This chapter argues that this was a result of campaigners’ misunderstandings regarding the nature of the EU’s state aid regime. The second section considers the two agreements that define the future UK–EU relationship: the withdrawal agreement and a EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement governing the parties’ post-Brexit relationship. It discusses the implications of these agreements for the post-Brexit competition regime. The third section suggests what the UK’s competition provisions might look like post-Brexit. The analysis shows that there is little that has or can be gained through this new regime. The fourth section considers the subsidy provisions which are contained in the agreements between the EU and UK. These provisions give the government greater scope to subsidise firms, industries and regions in the name of industrial policy and regional equity. The chapter is sceptical about the utility of the anticipated post-Brexit industrial policy and competition regime. It appears that the new regime will incorporate many elements against which we have cautioned against in this work.