Post Segments
Dear Subscribers,
This week on BfB, Catherine McBride’s takes an in-depth look at the government’s planned Reset with the EU. She analyses the dangers it represents to UK sovereignty and the likely vast costs to British taxpayers. Meanwhile, EU officials express doubts about Burnham’s chances of sealing the EU Reset deal, while Julian Jessop explains the dubiousness of the OBR’s assessments of Brexit. We also consider the significance of the consolidation of the powers of the Cabinet Secretary by Burnham this week.
New on BfB:
The EU Reset is a Sovereignty Trap, Not a Growth Plan by Catherine McBride
Behind the reassuring language of ‘co-operation’ lies a programme of dynamic alignment that would make Britain obey EU rules, pay EU bills, and surrender control over vital sectors of the economy. Catherine McBride argues that the government’s Brexit reset policy amounts to a wholesale concession of legislative sovereignty across defence, energy, agrifood and youth mobility. Moreover, the Reset is projected to impose a vast financial burden on the taxpayers, businesses and universities which would run north of £20bn per annum by the 2030s – contrary to the economic benefits claimed for a Reset by Rejoiners.
EU doubts about the prospects of British rapprochement
Politico has reported the doubts of EU officials about the prospects of Burnham striking a deal to fulfil the government’s EU Reset policy. The Starmer government’s policy of dynamic alignment to the single market was gradualist, as well as being cautious and vague about how far in practice it was adhering to the Brexit ‘red lines’ stated in the Labour Party’s 2024 manifesto. Burnham has reiterated his commitment to the manifesto, which has signalled doubts about the possibility of concluding a Reset deal from EU officials: ‘Those things [an EU Reset deal which adheres to the red lines] are not compatible’, said one official. Whether these doubts on the part of EU officials are genuine, or whether such briefings are a negotiating tactic to secure further concessions from the UK side, remains an open question. Given Catherine McBride’s analysis of the likely costs of such a detail detailed above, we await the forthcoming EU-UK summit with some trepidation.
Debunking the OBR’s assessment of Brexit and trade
The OBR has assumed that the UK’s global exports and imports will be 15pc lower in the long run than if the UK had remained in the EU. However, Julian Jessop has shown that the OBR’s calculation of Britain’s ‘trade intensity’ bears little relation to reality. In fact, the trade intensity of the UK economy has barely changed since Brexit; the EU’s performance is much the same as the UK’s; and the OBR’s calculation ignores the role of non-Brexit factors, as well as exaggerating the significance of ‘trade intensity’ for an advanced economy such as Britain’s.
The OBR has become a totem for Rejoiners, who cite its forecasts as confirmation that Brexit has been a disaster. Most notably, its prediction that Brexit would hit GDP by 4pc has become Rejoiner orthodoxy. Yet, the OBR’s forecasts rest on shaky ground. In an article for BfB last week, Graham Gudgin and Wilf Glasby showed how the OBR’s generation of the 4pc figure was methodologically unsound (based not on its own analysis but a crude averaging of an array of diverse studies conducted by others). Moreover, it was ultimately only a prediction, not a settled fact. The slide from the one to the other is the interpretative leap on which Rejoiner claims about Brexit and the economy consistently depend.
What we’re reading:
Helen MacNamara for The Daily Telegraph: Burnham’s rewired state is less democratic
Tim Shipman for The Spectator: Meet the most powerful woman in Britain
That plane of political life satirised in Yes, Minister, and often buried beneath the public statements of ministers, is mostly a background consideration in contemporary political analysis; the practical, or authoritarian, side to political life seems duller than the performative, or democratic, side – with the exception of several analyses by Nick Busvine for BfB. The role of Cabinet Secretary has been publicised in recent years by Dominic Cummings, who ascribes to it an absolute executive authority alongside that of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer – rendering all other Cabinet ministers impotent. And this week has seen a consolidation of the powers of the Cabinet Secretary, Dame Antonia Romeo, under which she will be able to overrule departmental officials. Danny Kruger has characterised this as a ‘constitutional coup in plain sight’ and a subversion of ministerial authority – and in turn of democratic representation.
Two notable articles have drawn attention to this – one by Helen MacNamara, who served as Deputy Cabinet Secretary (2020-21), and another by Tim Shipman, whose four-volume history of Brexit remains the definitive insider account. Shipman presents Romeo’s consolidation of power as a last-ditch attempt to justify the civil service’s existence by making the implementation of policy as frictionless as possible. Shipman’s Romeo is mechanistic, without an ideology or mentality, serving only the civil service. MacNamara, by contrast, sees Romeo’s consolidation as of a piece with Burnham’s will-to-devolve: two halves of a single project of rewiring the state. She notes a tension between the two, however, in Burnham’s wish to facilitate ‘growth and competitiveness’; and she has doubts about how far devolution is desirable in practice, despite its attraction in theory, because of the dearth of public interest in local government.
MacNamara’s analysis suffers from illusions about ‘democracy’ and ‘democratic accountability’: a cynical reading of British democratic politics since 1867 would complicate the picture, since low turnouts and a lack of public interest can in fact sustain political stability. And, stripped of the gossip and the jokes, Shipman’s analysis is rather wooden and ahistorical. The real significance of Romeo’s consolidation of power is the restoration of the original, authoritarian function of the Cabinet Secretary, instituted by Lloyd George in 1916 as a conduit to the Prime Minister and keeper of his ‘secrets’, simplifying and centralising executive authority for the duration of the war. Thus, MacNamara’s instincts are correct: ‘Manchesterism’ does amount to centralisation, and Romeo’s position has been repurposed to serve it, unwittingly restoring its historical, anti-democratic function.
