So Brexit was about taking back control, wasn’t it? It was about parliamentary sovereignty, about the idea that we the people should elect our MPs to Parliament and they alone should control the laws of the country. Did I get that right?
Those self-styled MPs debated the Retired EU Laws (Repeal and Reform) Bill this week, a Johnson-Truss-Rees-Mogg construct that seeks to “unwrap” what we call “cumbersome EU law”. As ever with Brexit, it is easy to raise slogans, but the actual results are a far cry from the promises made. In fact, if you were to ask artificial intelligence to come up with a piece of legislation specifically aimed at undermining parliamentary sovereignty, it might even produce something like the REUL Bill.
It gives ministers, not MPs, the power to supersede several thousand UK laws passed by UK parliaments, without the current UK Parliament being able to decide what they are. From maternity rights to animal welfare, consumer rights to water quality, employment laws, environmental laws and more, they aim that all of these should be banned – all because these laws were once agreed upon – UK ! – “Europe”.
tne Stella Creasy and Clare Ni Chonghail have good pieces on this on the website, and if you want an investigative analysis from someone who understands the law better than I do, and gaslighting government ministers and hard-right Brexiteer MPs who Pull your strings, see article in Possibility by King’s Counsel Shona Jolly, who warns of a “collapse in legal certainty, with serious consequences for individuals, business and public authorities – and clearly for themselves – investment and development.”
If passed, as of the first day of 2024, the REUL would trigger a new avalanche of buggering for businesses and consumers, to add to the buggers that have already taken 4% out of the economy.
I was hoping to cover some of this when I was asked to go over it today scheduled to debate Labor’s Brexit stance at the end of last week, but failed to do so in the time available. However, it is part of the same argument I put forth, that the Labor Party, contrary to conventional wisdom, stands to gain politically from talking about Brexit and the damage it will do to Britain, not lose For.
Austerity, Brexit and the disaster of the Boris Johnson and Liz Truss premierships – they are all part of the same story, of a party that puts its interests ahead of the country, and a government that sets policy on important issues, not its Not according to what is happening in the real world, but what is happening inside the factions that dominate the Tory party.
Rishi Sunak knows the bill is harmful. But he also knows that if he backs out, Brexiteer true believers and Johnson opportunists could play a trick. So he goes with the craziness.
This was partly due to the fact that Keir Starmer said in Belfast that Labor would support Sunak on a new deal to break the impasse on the Northern Ireland Protocol. Smart politics.
Even smart politics would call real confidence – and leadership – the Brexit mess, and lay it firmly at the door of those Tories like Sunak who, unlike Johnson and Truss, actually believed in Brexit.
Try this for starters:
- You said there would be no economic fallout. So why has it made us all poorer? Your Brexit failure.
- You said there would be an American trade deal. We are not even discussing this. Your Brexit failure.
- You said it would solve immigration. It’s gone bad. And we have a labor market crisis before us. Your Brexit failure.
- You said the Irish border is not an issue. it is. Your Brexit failure.
- You said Brexit would boost the NHS. The NHS is on its knees. Your Brexit failure.
There are dozens more to throw at where those five came from. Instead of saying he will “make Brexit work”, Starmer should say he will “fix the mess of Brexit”, because the mess is what it is. Enhanced grip versus denial of reality seems like a good dividing line to me, provided you’re on the right side of it.
Imagine if a Labor government had won the election on a host of promises that were unfulfilled, the lies, the insurrection and the economic damage now clear to all. The Tories will never stop whining about it. It would look more like “Winter of Resentment” (1979) and “The Mess We Inherited” (2010).
I understand why Starmer doesn’t want Brexit to dominate the election. I understand why he wouldn’t commit to re-engaging, or even dismiss the arguments. But Brexit will not dominate the election. It won’t happen now. There will be economy. There will be leadership. Which party will have a future plan. The Brexit debate could be a contributing factor to all three of them and to Labor’s advantage. They need to grab it.
At an event hosted by the Pinsent Mason law firm, where legal writer Richard Susskind gave an engaging presentation on the development of artificial intelligence after dinner. It included some amazing examples of how they answered legal questions asked by their new chatbot, ChatGPT. As he spoke, I passed a note to a colleague of his, asking whether the combination of AI and frugality could lead us to AI courts, a near collapse of the criminal justice system, in which the role of lawyer and judge is was performed. artificial intelligence. He retorted: “America, minor crimes, are already happening.” Hmm. awful.
The most poignant presentation was from a Ukrainian lawyer named Anna Babych, whose husband, also a lawyer, is back home while she, their two children and her mother moved to the UK when the war broke out. he showed me a recent report in Times From the Frontline, illustrated by a photograph of two Ukrainian soldiers, one of whom was a partner in her law firm. He had nothing but praise for his host family and the way Britain had helped him, his family and Ukraine.
Richard Susskind, and Pinsent Mason’s boss, Alastair Morrison, are both Scots, and asked me to play my bagpipes as part of the after-dinner entertainment. So I did, serenading Anna with the national anthem of Ukraine. I’m not happy to see tears in a woman’s eyes, but Richard acknowledged that real live music can still stir emotion in a way that artificial intelligence can’t. “Still”, he said!
I was also grateful to Alastair Morrison for the photograph he showed me, which I will almost certainly refer to in any future speeches I make on the subject, which I sometimes have to talk about. It is called soft power. Thanks not least to our history, music, sport, culture and, with all their ups and downs, the royal family, the UK has consistently been at or near the top of most soft-power league tables.
On the day of the Queen’s funeral, Alastair was on his way to Australia, and the funeral took place at the same time as he flew from Dubai to Sydney. The photo she took was in the back of the large business class section of an Emirates flight, where every screen you can see is tuned to live coverage of a funeral in London.
This is soft power, he said. indeed it is.
So Boris Johnson is writing a tell-all memoir… He should call it SPARE followed by five asterisks.