Scribblings

The UK and the EU: You Can’t Unscramble an Egg

In last week's Scribblings, I wrote that it is impossible to predict the future, especially in politics and international affairs. We can never be sure what is around the next corner.

Last Monday, Andy Burnham became British prime minister in succession to Keir Starmer. Before Monday, political and media circles were abuzz with speculation over who would be appointed chancellor of the exchequer, the most important post in the UK government after the prime minister. Would the existing chancellor, Rachel Reeves, get to keep the job or would it go to Ed Miliband, the energy secretary or to Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary?

In the end it went to none of them.

Instead, Burnham nominated John Healey, whose resignation as defence secretary some weeks previously was seen as marking the end of Starmer’s days as prime minister.

As an article in the Guardian puts it:

… when John Healey was appointed chancellor on Monday after intense briefing from allies of Ed Miliband, Shabana Mahmood, and Rachel Reeves, it blindsided even those at the top of the Labour party.

“We did not see this coming,” said one Labour MP. “But that is probably a sign that it is a good decision.”

It is impossible to see around corners in crowded political streets.

But if you happen to be on a French, Spanish, German or Belgian motorway, or any other European motorway for that matter, it is quite possible to see a fair distance down the road.

With Burnham as prime minister, what I see when it comes to the UK and the European Union is that nothing much is going to change from the way things are now.

Later in the year, when an EU/UK summit is finally arranged, with some help from the Irish presidency of the EU Council, which is well disposed towards the UK, hopefully we will see the three deals currently under consideration- student exchange, the push to reduce paperwork and certification for food exports, and the linking of emission trading systems- finally signed off. All to the good.

Helpful as these deals will be, let’s be honest, they are hardly going to move the dial on economic growth in the UK. They are just ice-breakers, little more than that. A tentative attempt to take the Brexit deal out of the deep freeze into which Boris Johnson put it.

The only thing that would really push UK economic growth would be a return to the EU’s single market and customs union. Not just one, but both. But we know this is not going to happen anytime soon. Why? Because British politicians have themselves locked in a doom-loop.

The economy is flat-lining. Living standards are stagnant. Public services are creaking. Infrastructure cries out for investment. Defence spending needs to be boosted because of the dangerous times in which we live. You can’t negotiate “peace” with madmen and the world is awash with madmen.

The “doom-loop” has a number of elements that interlock with one another and strangle political decision-making.

To begin with, there is the FPTP – First Past the Post = electoral system that was designed for a two-party system, which guaranteed that one party would generally win a majority, even a small majority. There were always a few stragglers, such as the Liberals and the Ulster Unionists, maybe the odd Irish Nationalist, but it was still a two-party system. Those days are gone. UK politics is now fragmented across the political spectrum. Labour won its current thumping majority on 34% of the vote. With FPTP, could a party win a majority on just 30%? Don’t rule it out.

Second, there is the dominance of the right-wing, largely foreign-owned media, with a deeply ingrained hostility to Europe, constantly dreaming of days of glories past. The mainstream right-wing media now has to compete with an even more rabid social media, especially X, formerly Twitter, whose owner has opened it to every fruit-loop and wing-nut washed up on the wilder shores of the extreme right-wing. They make any rapprochement with the EU close to impossible until someone has the courage to break their stranglehold, not so much on the public as on politicians.

Third, there is a deep strain of what can be best described as “working class protectionism” buried deep in the DNA of the Labour Party, going back to the days of Bevin, Healy, and Gaitskell, among others. You can also add in Benn, Shore, and Corbyn. Not so much “socialism in one country” as “labourism in one country”. It is also to be found in the trade union movement. Former prime minister Gordon Brown once summed it up when he talked about “British Jobs for British People”.

“Working class protectionism” speaks to the very real fears of many ordinary people whose concerns are all too often dismissed as hostility to the realities of the global economy. Well, if you were going to lose your job and possibly be unemployed for the rest of your life, would you not be hostile to the forces that threw you on the scrap heap?

There is a policy melange of social conservatism, traditionalism, patriotism, and state economic intervention in the market to protect jobs that has an appeal to many. It is a cry to bring back yesterday when economies were largely bounded by their own borders. Oh, and add in a deep hostility to all forms of immigration.

The same melange of cultural conservatism, nationalism - often ethno-Christian, anti-immigrant nationalism - and interventionist and protectionist economics underlies many of the populist movements in Europe. Populism is really a politics of nostalgia: “We want things to go back the way they used to be.” The subtext often is: “When men had manufacturing jobs, women mostly stayed at home and looked after the children, and we were all white.”

Is this not also the essence of MAGA in the US, with the emphasis on the “again” in Make America Great Again?

The north of France, where I live, is now a stronghold of Le Pen’s Rassemblement Nationale, drawing on working-class support. In the years after WWII, the parents of these RN supporters all voted Communist. Look at it closely, and there is not much difference between the policies of Le Pen and those of Maurice Thorez, the longtime post-war leader of the French Communist Party, who was born in the north, near Calais. Once these policies had a left-wing face. Now they face right. Like Thorez, Le Pen thinks kindly of Moscow.

That many working people have been “left behind” by the economic changes of the past few decades is a stark reality that many economists and other analysts were slow to understand, especially the fact that many of the “left behind” were geographically concentrated. Governments need to pay attention to this and do what they can do to bring hope back to these communities. But the totality of policy should not be dictated by the need to rebuild these communities. But in the UK that is the Labour reality. Cue a cut in taxes for pubs to “save working class culture”.

Which brings me back to the UK and the EU. It is a truism that you cannot unscramble an egg. Eggs are pretty fragile things in the first place. When you break them, you cannot unbreak them. Ask Humpty Dumpty. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not put Humpty back together again.

That is how I see things between the UK and the EU. The relationship was a pretty fragile egg to begin with. It came close to breaking more than once.

But then with Brexit it did break and the UK chef who eventually got his hands on the frying pan, Boris Johnson, made sure the egg was well and truly scrambled. And it was a pretty watery, runny scrambled egg he served up to the British people. No toast, no bacon, no sausages to go with it. In fact, the British find it difficult to sell bacon and sausages to the EU these days. Thank you very much, say the Irish; we can do that instead. In one of my local supermarkets, there is always Celtic lamb on sale. And Irish cheddar.

So when Andy Burnham looks at what he needs to do within the next three years to give Labour a chance of returning to government after the next election, it will not take him long to realise that there are no quick deals on offer from the EU. Just the long slog of year after year of negotiations. Mind-numbing, detailed negotiations,

Any deal worth its salt would have to contain a return to free movement. Go beyond that, and you are talking about going into Schengen, and a commitment to join the euro. He is not going to waste precious political capital on that, not now at any rate. Maybe someday, somewhere over the rainbow, but that day is not today.

Burnham’s first instruction in 10 Downing Street was that he wanted “rough sleeping” in the streets in the UK ended. He won’t waste any time on those part-time British migrants, sorry, “ex-pats”, who complain they can only sleep 90 days in every 180 in their second Spanish homes.

Politics and economics do not always rhyme. It makes economic sense for the UK to rejoin the EU or, at least, the single market and customs union. Burnham knows that. But for now at least, it does not make political sense. Politics is about more than economics and always will be.

Before you decide to scramble an egg, always remember you cannot unscramble it.