Oh no, not another Brexit commentary…well, it is needed. The trajectory of the impact of Brexit was most likely to be anger and then relief, followed by pugnacious nationalism, puzzlement, possible regret and back to anger again; but perhaps a different sort. We are in the middle stages of this cycle.

Let’s take stock. In the news currently, where are we with trade deals?

49% of exports go to the EU and the post-Brexit trade deal has damaged several sectors. In the City of London, to date, a net 7,500 jobs and a trillion dollars of assets have moved to EU hubs. Regulatory equivalence agreements have been signed only in relation to aspects of derivatives trading (for 18 months) and the settling of Irish securities (until June). The EU is dragging its feet elsewhere as it wants to build its own capital markets. London will still predominate across financial services sectors including asset management, but its relative position is probably likely to weaken.

Elsewhere the damage is mounting. Brexit bureaucracy is hitting the food and drink industry with sales to the EU down 40% year on year, although to what extent this is partly due to Covid disruption is a moot point. The £35bn UK fashion industry warns of decimation as a result of red tape and travel restrictions. The UK music industry describes the first three months of Brexit as a disaster, with industry bodies suggesting 94% of musicians are negatively affected due to the UK making no progress on visas/customs and other controls on performances in continental Europe. And let’s not talk about fishing, where Brexit-voting fishermen from Scotland to Cornwall feel betrayed.

In Northern Ireland the aggressive Lord David Frost, Cabinet Minister responsible for implementing Brexit, warns of a summer of turbulence in Northern Ireland if the Northern Ireland Protocol, establishing a trade border in the Irish Sea, (which he negotiated only a few months ago), isn’t re-written. So far, the first casualty is Arlene Foster, the DUP leader and First Minister, duped into supporting Johnson’s deal. She has lost her job, at least the former one, to a deeply unimpressive, homophobic creationist, Edwin Poots. Oh dear. Northern Ireland looks shaky, and Scotland has a chance to re-make its case for departing the union, all fueled by Brexit. A diminished UK is, well, a diminished UK, less able to influence its destiny and shape global affairs.

Elsewhere, when the UK left the EU, the EU had 40 trade deals with 70 countries outside the EU. 63 countries have rolled over agreements with the UK, so no disadvantage but no advantage either. An agreement with Japan (2% of trade) was agreed on less favourable terms. Negotiations over the crucial US agreement have yet to begin and a huge row has just developed within Government over an agreement with Australia who want unfettered access to our agricultural sector, setting the precedent for negotiations with New Zealand and the US. The Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has warned of hugely damaging consequences to our farming industry and is currently arm wrestling with the true free marketeers in Cabinet.

Lastly on trade, there is now the scope, post-Brexit, of setting up freeports. Good in theory but more work is needed as 23 countries including Canada, Switzerland, Norway and Singapore specifically prohibit manufacturers benefitting from freeport-type deals which apparently is not unusual or unexpected. Take note Hartlepool.

Now the roll-out of jabs buys Brexit time but only for so long. The EU negotiator, Barnier, in his recent memoirs, openly wondered whether Johnson was pursuing a ‘madman strategy’ in his Brexit negotiations and lost trust in him keeping his word on anything. Well, welcome to Johnson’s world of winning at any cost.

The damage of Brexit is slowly cumulative, but the incoming tide has yet to reach a North of England rightly disillusioned with how it has been treated in the past. At some stage in the future, as the evidence mounts, the region may realise Brexit wasn’t the solution it was promised.

The Tories are triumphant. Johnson’s brand of populism plus a successful vaccine roll-out continues to draw the oxygen from opposition parties. England and, at least for now, the UK, is a one-party state. The dangers of this are obvious but for most voters won’t be visible for years.

You have to congratulate Johnson. He has landed on a winning formula as the face of Cummings’ strategic planning…

And what are the consequences for Labour and the LibDems?

These two parties are hopelessly adrift. At the start of 2021, this blog highlighted the uphill struggle for Starmer/Labour and the requirement of a new centrist party to counter the death of the Liberal Democrats. Today, this has become painfully obvious much earlier than expected.

Starting with the Labour Party, there is simply no point to it as it is currently constructed. Its grass roots are mostly too left-wing. Corbynites, like the Trumpites in the US Republican Party, are endemic but, unlike Trump, have no electoral appeal whatsoever. The influence of trade unions is also out of date and undemocratic. What clothes Labour had; public sector investment and notions of working-class solidarity, have been stolen by Johnson’s Conservatives. Add to this toxic mix for Labour of splits over Brexit and an inability to embrace nationalist sentiment convincingly in its heartlands, and it feels like game over for another generation. Keir Starmer is a decent man and the best available leader but that is not enough.

Turning next to the LibDems, there is nothing new to say. They screwed up Brexit, are too nice and too vague. Outside pavement politics, they lack a killer instinct and, even if they had one, wouldn’t know where or how to apply it.

So, for the Opposition, the way forward is a new party; a carefully constructed centrist one which will have to be years in the making to work and probably led by a Blairite. For all his faults, one is struck by the fact the most incisive, commonsensical commentary on current events often comes from Blair himself. Indeed, if you read about his time in government, his largest mistakes domestically often came when he had to pander to his left-wing in the Labour Party. Imagine if a Blairite was free from historical baggage…

I know we have been here before and for a new party to work, it will take patience as well as talent to succeed. A fresh start would ultimately involve the evisceration of both Labour and the Liberal Democrats before tackling Tory hegemony. It won’t be easy.

We shall see but the health of democracy, at least in England, demands a better choice than we have now.