Brexit Unfolded: How no one got what they wanted (and why they were never going to)

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This has not happened suddenly. It began to emerge early in the Brexit process, and by October 2017 I was writing that Brexit was “becoming a battle for Britain’s political soul”. At that time, that may have seemed like hyperbole, or at least pessimism. Seven years later, it seems almost a truism. Secondly, it distracts from and discredits the genuine criticisms and concerns about Freeports. These include issues of economic effectiveness, governance and accountability, value for money, planning laxity, tax evasion, and corruption. It’s absolutely necessary to monitor these and also to monitor whether government promises are kept that no environmental or labour standards will be reduced, whether within Freeports or more widely. None of this is aided by nonsensical claims about Charter Cities. Procedurally, agreeing the Windsor Framework finally ends the Withdrawal Agreement negotiations. Of course, formally speaking, that occurred when the Withdrawal Agreement, including the Northern Ireland Protocol, was finalised in 2019 and signed in 2020. But, because of Boris Johnson’s dishonesty, negotiation of the Protocol effectively continued until now.

We all owe a debt to Chris Grey. Where the claims for Brexit are shrouded in post-truth, Brexit Unfolded records the truth. This important book is not just a historical record – it is a vital foundation for anyone trying to work out how Britain can move forward.” David Miliband, former Foreign Secretary Now fully updated with an afterword covering each element of the Brexit debate since the end of the transition period in 2021, this new edition remains the essential guide to one of the most bitterly contested issues of our time. It’s also true that multiple connections exist between Babson Global and free-market think tanks and their staff, many if not all of whom support Brexit. It’s undoubtedly true that they meet, talk, share funding sources, and sit on each other’s governing bodies. It’s true that they are often very secretive, especially about their sources of funding. But that doesn’t mean they are secretly running some ‘live experiment’ on the people of Britain. The staggering success of Brexit in transforming Britain’s economic prospects has been such that in his Autumn Statement speech the Chancellor mentioned it, well, just once, and that to refer to the fatuous “Brexit Pubs Guarantee”. This is the policy, first trailed in Rishi Sunak’s 2021 budget, and which came into force last August, whereby duty on a pint of beer bought in a pub is guaranteed to be less than when bought in a shop. As Brexit benefits go, this might be thought rather meagre but, in fact, it’s not even a Brexit benefit, as it could have been done whilst being a member in the EU. One is that because some of those who are pro-Brexit are also advocates of Charter Cities, and those who advocate Charter Cities are mainly pro-Brexit, then, ‘therefore’, the secret agenda behind Brexit is the creation of Charter Cities in post-Brexit Britain.A superbly written chronicle of how Britain chaotically cut ties with its closest economic partners. Chris Grey’s rigorous analysis of how Brexit unfolded should be mandatory reading for anyone who cares about politics.” Shona Murray, Europe correspondent, Euronews It is certainly important to be vigilant. No doubt there are some powerful actors who would like to see something like Charter Cities created in the UK, or indeed wholesale national deregulation. However, crying wolf about what is actually happening with Freeports isn’t helpful, and is actually unhelpful, in resisting that. This is not to say that Johnson could not have become Prime Minister without Brexit (and Cummings). Simon Wren-Lewis’s blog this week has an interesting discussion of this. The BCG report also rightly highlights that the impact of Brexit has varied between sectors, identifying pharmaceutical and automotive industries as amongst those where Brexit “is likely to have been a major factor in reducing trade”. Perhaps the most important distinction to be drawn is between large and very large businesses, on the one hand, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) on the other. The reasons are fairly obvious. Larger firms had the resources to plan for and implement the changes that Brexit brought, and were often more likely to already be familiar with procedures for trading outside the single market. The wasn’t just a matter of a Prime Minster smoothly, if ruthlessly, appointing a more congenial or compliant Cabinet Secretary. On the one hand, Cummings’ written testimony (p.59, para. 276) reveals the utterly chaotic manner in which Sedwill’s ejection began. On the other hand, other evidence to the Inquiry shows that, Johnson ‘ally’ or not, Case, prior to taking over that role, had confided to Sedwill that he had “never seen a bunch of people less well-equipped to run a country”, referring, apparently, to Johnson and his special advisers. [3]

Since then, the idea has been extended so as to mean granting a private company or consortium a ‘charter’ to completely run a city or zone within any country, regardless of development level. There are other cases where the UK will decide to follow EU regulation, as has already effectively happened with restrictions on single-use plastic, and the logic of market size suggests there will be many more examples. These may well include the reversal of some of the planned but postponed divergences, such as conformity assessment marking (the long-delayed UKCA mark). Indeed, the tone of Sunak’s government is already markedly less bullish about divergence in general than its predecessor, and more concerned with limited divergence aimed at specific sectors. It’s a cliché that a week is a long time in politics, but Monday’s announcement of the bizarre resurrection to political office of David Cameron already seems like a distant memory. But it’s still worth dwelling on for a moment. Just from a Brexit point of view, his is a name to conjure with in that, almost uniquely, he is likely to be despised by those holding almost any position on Brexit. Even those not much interested or exercised about it may well resent him for creating this enormous and de-stabilizing storm and then washing his hands of it, with a seemingly insouciant song on his lips as he resigned. For remainers, he is the man who with total irresponsibility gambled and lost the country’s well-being in a miscalculated act of party management. Meanwhile, for leavers, any lingering gratitude they may have to him for having gifted them the referendum is superseded by the fact that he campaigned for remain.

Diana is especially well-handled in this respect. Whilst being overtly pro-Brexit, it is made scrupulously clear that she is neither a racist, nor stupid, nor ignorant, nor insensitive, nor unreflective. If anything, she comes across as having a kind of sentimental and delicate sense of England and its history. She is arguably more sympathetically drawn than the other main characters, with Cecily sometimes coming across as somewhat priggish and hectoring and Victoria as rather shallow, snobbish and materialistic. In what is clearly an anti-Brexit book by an anti-Brexit author, that is an achievement. The key point about this is that, as at a generic level is true of every single regulatory decision, there is a trade-off between reward and risk. In this case, crudely, the reward is freeing up massive funds for much-needed investment and generating proceeds that benefit policyholders or pension scheme members. However, there’s also an argument that it wouldn’t make much difference to these rewards in practice. The risk is that holding fewer reserves and/or more risky investments could lead to insurance companies or pension schemes collapsing, destabilizing the financial system and damaging policyholders or pension scheme members (and probably, ultimately, taxpayers). Again, there’s also an argument that it wouldn’t make much difference to these risks in practice. It’s also true that this political crisis still existed until the December 2019 election, and the Inquiry has already heard evidence that the work streams implementing provisions from the 2016 Exercise Cygnus on pandemic planning had been largely halted by no-deal Brexit planning. However, it is not true the completion of the Brexit deal, in the sense of the agreement with the EU of the text of the Withdrawal Agreement (WA) in October 2019, ended no-deal planning. Firstly, that WA was not agreed by parliament until after the election. Secondly, even when it had been agreed, it initiated a new phase of no-deal planning – this time concerned with the possibility of there being no future terms, or trade, agreement. It’s not just that, though. Opinion polls show that in October 2022, following the Truss debacle, 57% thought that Brexit has made the UK economy weaker than it would have been, and 11% that Brexit has made the economy stronger than it would have been, a lead for 46 percentage points for ‘weaker’, which was the highest recorded since the question was first asked in February 2022. However, in the most recent iteration of this poll, in October 2023, 49% thought ‘weaker’ and 21% thought stronger. At 28 percentage points that is still a considerable lead, but it has not only declined since its high point in October 2022 it is also the smallest lead recorded in any of the polls since the question was first asked. (The numbers responding ‘similar’ or ‘don’t know’ have remained stable throughout, at around 20% and 12% respectively). Another question is whether, how, and to what extent, Sunak follows up his success with the WF by moving in more pragmatic directions on Brexit policy generally. As I suggested last week, there are already signs that he will do so in relation to defence and international relations. But what about domestic policy and, crucially, the Retained EU Law Bill? If he continues with the latter, Brexitism can hardly be said to be in abeyance. If he doesn’t, will that provide a new rallying point for the Brexiters? It is of note that both this Bill and the Bill of Rights Bill are on the agenda for today’s meeting of the Partnership Council of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement.

SEZs exist in considerable numbers, perhaps in the low thousands*, all over the world – a well-known example being Shenzhen in China. A few SEZs could be considered Charter Cities. In particular, one variant of SEZs was Zones of Economic Development and Employment (ZEDEs) in Honduras, which gave rise to the ‘model city’ of Próspera, widely cited as the template for Charter Cities. However, its future is now in doubt because Honduras has since rejected ZEDEs as violating its constitution. As expected, the UK-EU Joint Committee overseeing the Withdrawal Agreement formally approved the Windsor Framework at its meeting last Friday. There is a palpable sense that this is a defining moment in the Brexit process and that, with caveats, a new chapter within it is about to start.

For example, in some versions, Brexit is described as a ‘live experiment’ being conducted by the ‘Babson World Operating System’. There is a real initiative by a spin-off company of Babson College in the US called the Babson Global Competitiveness and Enterprise Development Project. It promotes and supports Charter City-type developments and undoubtedly has a free market and libertarian agenda. But calling it a ‘World Operating System’ is hyperbole, making it sound far more sinister and powerful than it is. It is hard to imagine a clearer, more detailed, more dispassionate analysis of the journey and execution of the UK’s departure from the European Union than this brilliant and readable book by Chris Grey. Everyone who cares about the issue, for and against, needs this level of expertise and knowledge at their fingertips. Masterly.” Howard Goodall CBE, composer and broadcaster It has become increasingly difficult to separate out Brexit as a topic from British politics generally, and the politics of the Conservative Party in particular. That has been true for a while, but brought home with force this week with yet another outbreak of the Tories’ long-running civil war. It is a war in which Brexit features as both cause and consequence and, whilst it may have begun with a relatively genteel skirmish between ‘Eurosceptics’ and ‘Europhiles’ in the Tory Party, it has now become a full-blown culture war which has spread way beyond the party, or even Westminster politics.