As far as trade and travel are concerned, the only issue with Brexit is quite how massively damaging it has been. And according to the polls, voters agree by a huge margin.
You don’t need to read economic surveys to experience the effects of low growth, and to make the obvious connection between a sluggish economy and the decision to leave the EU customs union and single market. However, I suspect something more visceral is going on. People mentally equate the longer and slower post-Brexit passport queues—all those new passport stamps, fingerprints and facial images—with what must be happening to trade too. They are broadly right, of course.
And in which case, mental hostility to Brexit is about to get even stronger, when we are forced to book €20 visas before even setting off for Paris on a day trip. These new visas, similar to the ESTA visa for travel to the US, will be required for all travel to the EU from the end of next year under the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS). Hardly anyone seems aware that ETIAS is about to strike. I predict it will become the most infamous of the various post-Brexit erosions of what we used wistfully to call “free movement of people” within the EU single market.
Why did Keir Starmer not seek to negotiate ETIAS away, for British travellers to Europe and vice versa, in this year’s so-called “Brexit reset” with the EU? There was a huge mutual advantage in doing so. The answer, I am told, is that he never put it on the negotiating agenda, so limited were his goals for the reset, and so worried was he about an argument over Europe with Nigel Farage.
The only major economic beneficiary of the reset is the agricultural industry, which gains from a proposed veterinary agreement that reduces red tape at the border. But even this has not yet been introduced, or even fully agreed, so slow is progress. Things are being held up, too, by a dispute over the youth mobility scheme, which was agreed as part of the reset. That is now subject to a fierce rearguard bid by UK negotiators seeking to cap the numbers of youngsters from the EU who are allowed to come to the UK.
In other words, for all the public hostility to Brexit, and for all the talk about a reset, the present government hasn’t moved on. It is not only Farage they fear; it is also Trump. Only last weekend Peter Kyle, the business secretary, was in Washington trying to shore up the tech trade deal which Starmer and Trump agreed in principle earlier this year. That deal is now under threat from the latest Trump assault on European digital regulation. “The idea that joining the customs union is a quick way to get growth into our economy, I think, is fantasy,” Kyle told the Sunday Times.
Why was the arch-Brexiteer Sunday Times so keen to focus on the idea of the UK rejoining the customs union? Because it is hugely unpopular within the anti-EU Trump circle, and because Kyle’s colleague David Lammy recently told the News Agents podcast that Turkey is “seemingly benefitting” from its customs union with the EU.
“Britain post-Brexit has developed a particular character,” Kyle countered in the Times. “Far more willing to move fast and to be entrepreneurial as a government, to seek opportunities around the world, not just with America. To see that recognised in a document [the new US national security strategy] which will be seen in historic terms as a pivot in America’s world view, I think is significant.”
Will Labour politics on the EU shift if Starmer is replaced next year by, say, Wes Streeting? The dial may move a bit, but in the face of Farage, Trump and Vance, I doubt there would be any rapid movement. There might be some signalling about the contents of Labour’s next manifesto, but nothing sooner, and even then probably nothing as dramatic as rejoining the customs union and single market.
One thing might change this: a surge in next May’s local elections for the pro-EU Greens and Lib Dems. Particularly if Reform also does less well than forecast and is not the runaway winner. If Labour comes under pressure from the left and centre—and not just the populist right—then maybe some sanity will return to policy on Europe.
But here’s a thought. A recent poll found that more Reform UK voters believe Brexit has been a failure than a success. Who knows, maybe it will be Farage himself who ultimately negotiates a bold and constructive deal with the EU on trade and travel.
