In his classic work The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1951), the New York Herald Tribune humorist Will Cuppy’s verdict on Attila the Hun was: “Attila’s career teaches that you may get by for a while, but it can’t last.”
Without wishing to push the comparison too far, I think Cuppy’s observation epitomises the situation our present prime minister – they come and go, these Conservative prime ministers – now finds himself in.
Rishi Sunak has got by for a while, but the Fates are encircling him. When asked why he had sacked a certain minister from his cabinet, Clement Attlee, Labour prime minister from 1945 to 1951, is said to have replied tersely: “Not up to it.”
Both Alexander Johnson and Liz Truss were such dreadful prime ministers that Sunak was seen by many as a breath of fresh air. He made many reassuring noises at first but, alas, not for long.
He cannot conceal the fact that he is low-tax, low-regulation Brexiter when the economic and social crisis confronting the nation requires a leader who is the reverse of all three.
Sunak is manifestly not up to it. He gave the game away when he told the Northern Irish that they enjoyed the best of both worlds – membership of the UK and the European single market. But he does not seem to have got the message he preached. Nor, for that matter, has Labour leader Keir Starmer, notwithstanding his previous opposition to the prospect of Brexit.
This is tragic: the one and only Stephen Fry has been widely quoted as saying that Brexit is “a catastrophe” and “people know it in their bones”. The English were misled by the lies of the Brexiters – Scottish readers point out to me that, on balance, they were not fooled – but all and sundry now know a Brexit experiment has been conducted in this country and that it is indeed a catastrophe.
From Europe’s point of view, the one good thing about it all is that any thought of exiting the EU on the part of our former partners has been firmly quashed by observation of the British experience.
Although commentators differ on this, my impression is that our former partners would welcome us back, provided – after all the rubbish they have had to put up with – that we were serious.
However, with a Brexiter prime minister and a leader of the opposition who rules out re-entry to the EU, or even the single market, we do not look serious. That is to say, our politicians do not look serious, although polling suggests that the people are way ahead of the politicians.
It is obviously good that Starmer seeks a more constructive approach to the EU. But this, while a necessary condition the UK to shake off the economic self-harm with which it is afflicted, is not sufficient.
I commend to the Labour leadership a letter recently published in the Financial Times from Paul Rayment, former director of economic analysis at the UN Economic Commission for Europe. As regular readers may recall, I have occasionally pointed out that over the years of our membership of the EU and the single market, our economy became an integral part of the European economy. Mr Rayment puts it beautifully: “In rejecting out of hand any sort of return to the single market or the customs union he [Starmer] fails, like the Brexiters, to acknowledge (or realise) how deeply the UK was, and for the moment still is, integrated with the economies of the EU.”
He goes on: “This is not just a matter of exchanging finished goods but being part of a highly specialised pan-European division of labour where practically every enterprise obtains some components for its products from other countries in the single market.”
This, as he points out, is an extension of Adam Smith’s division of labour. Trying to unscramble this economic and trading omelette is producing the chaos that our businesses are trying to cope with.
The Labour leadership has got itself into a pickle over Brexit. Unless it sorts itself out, its plans for all manner of costly rescue operations for this benighted economy are going to be hampered. The losses to tax revenue from the impact of Brexit on our potential output are enormous – 4% of GDP, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility, and higher according to the National Institute of Economic Research.
The Conservative party is in such a state that it could well be out of office for two terms. A confident Labour leadership could sufficiently impress our European neighbours that this country was serious about admitting its catastrophic error and rejoining. This would give a welcome boost to a Labour government’s budgetary position.
Oh, and by the way, I suggest that Labour could ward off rightwing criticism that it is a “tax and spend” party by saying it believes in “tax and invest”.
