Ignore Tony Blair – here's what Labour should do next on Brexit
Peter Shore in 1979 (Associated Press/Alamy)
7 min read
Labour should ignore Blair and arguments about trade – and rediscover the wisdom of Peter Shore as it seeks its EU reset, argues George Eustice
“Tory MPs who babble about free trade will be kept off the airwaves.” It was September 2015 and Dominic Cummings was explaining to me how Vote Leave intended to take the establishment apart during the imminent referendum campaign. Of course, it is not quite verbatim because there were a few expletives thrown in for good measure, but you get the drift.
At the time I was a minister in David Cameron’s government and was still hopeful for his (now forgotten) “renegotiation”. After all, he repeatedly said that he “ruled nothing out”. Those of us who had worked with him knew he could be as hard as nails if cornered. When faced with a stubborn and greedy EU, might Cameron surprise everyone and perhaps even return to recommend a leave vote? Cummings foresaw that the British state would stumble predictably along the path of least resistance before being humiliated by the EU leaving the prime minister to face his electorate empty-handed.
The Vote Leave campaign had done its homework on understanding the sentiment that might deliver a leave vote. That sentiment was not, as some contend, an aberration. In fact, it was a rather prescient feeling that we lacked resilience as a country; that we didn’t make anything anymore and were too reliant on other countries; that we were no longer in control of our destiny nor even our own borders and that the world around us was starting to change and we possessed neither the powers nor internal resources needed to meet the challenge ahead.
The reason Tory MPs who “babbled about trade” were to be kept off the airwaves during the referendum campaign is because that is not what voters wanted. People wanted to take back control with less dependence on other countries and more national resilience.
As soon as the referendum was won, the baton was passed back to the Conservative government. Almost instantly, MPs who babbled about trade deals filled the airwaves. We Conservatives made mistakes by misinterpreting the sentiment behind the result we were trying to implement. We allowed Brexit to be defined as the pursuit of trade deals with minor economies in the Pacific region, rather than defining it through the prism of a new era of national resilience and self-determination, which is what people were crying out for.
Economists often exaggerate the importance of trade to economic growth. Global trade is already highly liberalised, so the old, textbook assumptions no longer work. Growth rates in the EU and UK have basically been the same since 2020 so those who have remained members are no better off. Real growth in the modern world comes from technology, innovation and the creation of tangible goods. To succeed today a nation needs, above all else, to have the freedom to construct agile regulatory regimes that facilitate innovation and attract new industries. We made some changes in important areas of science such as genetic technologies, but we didn’t seize the opportunity quickly enough in other areas and we allowed the concrete to set around retained EU law.
For the Labour Party, the challenge of getting it right is even more difficult. How can they reconcile themselves in government to a referendum result that the overwhelming majority of Labour MPs didn’t want and struggle to understand? Where, in their history, should they look for inspiration or guidance? There is not much use rummaging through the wreckage of Blairite clichés about being “at the heart of Europe” when we have left. The real answer requires them to go back a little further in their history.
Returning to Cameron’s “forgotten renegotiation”, during the summer of 2015 there was a call to all departments to put forward negotiating ideas. I thought I had devised a brand-new solution to environmental policy whereby we would continue to take a strongly international approach through agreements, such as the Berne Convention, have shared goals and objectives with the EU but with delivery of the policy solutions becoming a UK national competence again. One of the older civil servants in the meeting responded, “You mean what the Callaghan government pursued in the late 1970s.” That was news to me – but then we all go into politics assuming we are encountering dilemmas for the first time, only to find much has been tried before.
We all go into politics assuming we are encountering dilemmas for the first time only to find much has been tried before
Jim Callaghan himself was somewhat ambiguous regarding membership of the then European Economic Community (EEC). When chancellor, he once complained that he was tired of going to Brussels to argue about the size of rear-view mirrors on tractors – a reference to the 1974 directive about just such matters. He didn’t share the vision of Europe, but went along with it at the time. More significant is that the environment secretary under Callaghan was Peter Shore, a huge figure in the labour movement during the 1960s and 70s. He was difficult to pigeonhole within his own party. Sometimes seen as being on the right due to his early work with Hugh Gaitskell, sometimes seen as a centrist because of his support for Harold Wilson, and sometimes seen as coming from the left because he backed Michael Foot. I saw him speak once and one thing is certain: he was a thoughtful man of independent mind who refused to be pushed along by the crowd. He was an internationalist but, on Europe, was consistent in his view that EEC membership was a mistake and he dedicated a lot of his political life to arguing for alternative approaches and models that allowed co-operation while retaining national independence.
Shore left many papers in an archive held at the London School of Economics (LSE), where they are patiently waiting to be discovered by a new generation of Labour MPs. Imagine if today’s Labour Party had the presence of mind to revisit Shore’s work and ethos as it considered how to reconcile itself to Brexit? It could have championed a vision of a UK which was internationalist in outlook, but which recognised the importance of national resilience and independence. It could have articulated a message which valued manufacturing industry and the people who work in it. It could have talked once again of the “white heat” of innovation and built a modern regulatory regime to match that ambition. In short, it could have defined the post-Brexit landscape and reconnected with the industrial heartlands who voted to leave the EU and, once upon a time, used to vote Labour.
Instead of advancing such an agenda, the current government has fallen into the trap of exaggerating the role of trade again and returned to Blair-era clichés. It has already conceded “dynamic alignment” with EU law which will destroy any potential to construct agile regulatory regimes in science and will require the UK to implement laws even when they are known to be against our interests. The Prime Minister has also set an arbitrary deadline for his EU reset, setting the clock against his own negotiators in a misstep that will be ruthlessly exploited by the European Commission in the months ahead to extort cash and seize control. The agreement he reaches is likely to be so intolerable as to be unsustainable, with a future government having little option but to tear it all up again.
Callaghan reflected in his memoirs that, in the end, joining the European Community did nothing to solve the problems the country faced at the time. It is not too late for the current government to step back from the brink and at least take the time to study those papers in the LSE archive before signing the new agreement it is contemplating.
George Eustice was a Defra minister for nine years including three years as secretary of state
