Time for Brexiters to do some heavy lifting
In an alternate reality, the Vote Leave's top people – Matthew Elliot and Dominic Cummings – would have moved into government as strategists, plotting the UK’s path to the sunlit uplands of freedom. Michael Gove would have had a big job in Cabinet. Instead, in one of the most bizarre twists of the Leave victory, most of the people that actually made Brexit happen will have no formal role in delivering it.
But having won the referendum battle know they could easily lose the Brexit war for ideas. As such, Mr Elliot is now tooling up to create a semi-permanent lobby from the remnants of the Leave campaign. As a campaigner with a formidable record, we ought to take what he does seriously and therefore the Rowland Report will be following closely.
Some vague hints as to what his vision for Brexit looks like were given in a slightly odd 800 word op-ed for the FT last week, a large proportion of which was devoted to gently needling Roland Rudd for being on the wrong side of history, but otherwise speaking only in the broadest of generalities about the possible shape of the UK's trading relationship with the EU and the world.
Frustratingly his comments on trade were confined to the narrow issue of tariffs and therefore completely failed to address the fact that the UK has a trade surplus in services, where non-tariff barriers are the key concern. We all know the Bavarians want to flog us BMWs without tariffs. But that doesn't tell us a great deal about whether UK lawyers will have rights of establishment in France, or whether Luxembourg domiciled investment funds will be able to be managed from London. This is the nitty-gritty of Brexit and the proponents of Leave must engage with the substance seriously rather than trotting out campaign lines. Are there hints, that two months on, this might actually start to happen?
There was a call from Elliot - wearing his Business for Britain hat - for everyone to get round a table together and talk about the future:
‘Now Britain is heading for Brexit, [business] groups from all sides need to get around the table again because the voters’ verdict on June 23 was the start of a process’.
Business does need to engage with the new reality, it is true. He also appears to recognise that many on the remainy side will be extremely suspicious about his agenda and motives. Trying to reassure those in business he continues:
Most Brexiters have a vision of liberal Euroscepticism, championing free trade around the world which will allow Britain to flourish, rather than being constrained to an outmoded regional trading bloc. We want to see a continued flow of foreign investment into the UK, as well as highly skilled migrants.
This is what the Americans call a pivot. And it's a pretty shameless one. There is no doubting the liberal credentials of Elliot, but that paragraph above ain't the campaign Leave ran - and he knows it.
In addressing the issue he lays bare the great intellectual sleight of hand of the Leave campaign - namely that the high priests of Leave were mostly small-government, staunchly free market liberals running a campaign that was sold on immigration control and more spending on the NHS.
To me, the fight for the heart and soul of Brexit is only just beginning - and I suspect rather quickly the liberal, internationalist, free market view will crash headlong into the inward and protectionist vision of Brexit the Leave campaign allowed to emerge in order to win the campaign. For every John Redwood calling for unfettered trade, there will 1,000 leave voting farmers and fisherman lobbying for special protections and subsidies. Popular anti-trade sentiment has swept the West like wildfire, and it is into this environment that the UK is now negotiating.
So it's time for the self-described liberal Brexiteers to do some heavy lifting on the ideas front - they must, if we are to avoid the worst case scenario of a narrow, nativist husk of a country adrift from Europe and with painfully slow trade negotiations going on with the rest of the world.