The Conservative Party’s gaffe-riddled campaign is stumbling on to its inevitable conclusion on 5 July and a Labour landslide that looks certain to overshadow Tony Blair’s historic 1997 victory and Clement Attlee’s win against Winston Churchill in 1945.
On both those previous occasions, the Conservatives took more than 30% of the popular vote. Now they are regularly polling around 20% and sometimes less, as Reform UK Ltd with its owner and newly installed leader Nigel Farage, eating into their steadily diminishing base.
Electoral silence on Brexit
It promises to be a wipeout and although the reason is perfectly obvious, it has become the great unmentionable subject, both main parties having taken a vow of silence. The Tories are fooling themselves if they believe voters are punishing them solely for their handling of an unforeseen pandemic or Vladimir Putin’s bloody war in Ukraine.
The 2019 Tory voters who think Brexit hasn’t yet been ‘done properly’ are peeling off to Reform and those who have completely lost faith in the whole enterprise are supporting Labour or the LibDems in the hope it will soon be reversed.
I daresay the former group is considerably smaller than the latter if three separate and carefully chosen BBC audiences last week are anything to go by. When Question Time host Fiona Bruce asked in Chester (a leave-voting area) if anyone had seen any benefits of Brexit, just one chap was able to mutter something incoherent about ‘regaining’ the sovereignty we never lost:
On Radio 4’s Any Questions, the SNP MP John Nicholson got a great cheer for adding Brexit to Tory MP James Cartlidge’s shortlist of excuses for his party pushing taxes to their highest level since the Second World War:
In the second leader’s debate, we saw the SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn receive a huge round of applause for unequivocally declaring that Brexit had been “a disaster” and that voters should ignore the “snake oil salesman” who delivered it:
The British people may have been gullible in 2016 but they’re not stupid and have joined the dots, most of which are contained in this dossier. After claiming Brexit would bring no downsides at all and ‘considerable’ upsides, it can hardly come as a surprise that the party which promised so much and delivered so little is soon to be flushed down the tubes.
David Downside Dossier
We added another 11 downsides this week:
Economy
The respected Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) says there has been a sharp fall in UK business investment dating from around the date of the June 2016 referendum. The IFS calculates that by the start of 2023 business investment in the UK was no higher than it was in June 2016, something “not replicated in other advanced economies”.
This shortfall from the 2010 to 2016 trend rate amounts to approximately £4,200 per worker per year, with negative future consequences for growth
The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) has criticised the UK’s post-Brexit replacement for the EU’s chemical regulation regime as inefficient, lacking in long-term focus and poor value for money. The RSC is urging the next government to invest in a dedicated national chemicals agency. The present system has led to duplicated effort, fragmentation and confusion, according to a new RSC report with the result that industry and the UK’s global standing are suffering.
Total Media Group, a behavioural planning agency based in London, has been acquired by Germany’s Mediaplus, Europe’s largest independent media agency.
TMG chairman, Guy Sellers said Brexit in 2016 made the company consider its credibility with European clients, asking: “Why would you appoint a London media agency to your European media when they’re not even in Europe?” Sellers admits that if it hadn’t been for Brexit, the acquisition “certainly wouldn’t have happened the same way at all – it might have taken longer”.
The think tank UK in a Changing Europe reports that UK goods trade has “underperformed relative to other OECD countries, particularly since the introduction of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) with the EU in January 2021”.
UKICE said if the UK’s total exports to the EU had grown at the same rate as intra-EU exports since Brexit, they would have been 27% higher in August 2023. From December 2020 to August 2023, UK exports to the EU rose by just 1%, and by 9% with the rest of the world. UKICE say it is therefore possible that, without Brexit, the UK’s trade with the EU would have grown more strongly than trade with the rest of the world.
Retail and Manufacturing
A report by Retail Economics and online marketplace Tradebyte claims exports of clothing and footwear sold to the EU have fallen from £7.4bn in 2019 to £2.7bn in 2023.
Red tape has forced many UK producers to set up operations inside the EU while others have rejigged supply chains so goods made in Asia are now shipped directly to the single market. A sock-maker based in Leicester has shifted production to Italy, ending more than 100 years of manufacturing in the East Midlands.
The same report also claims that British retail sales to the EU have plummeted by £6bn since Brexit, despite a flourishing European e-commerce market. The report’s author and CEO of Retail Economics Richard Lim, said: “International retail is a complicated space to be in, particularly for UK brands and retailers looking to sell in Europe post-Brexit. From language barriers to taxation and customs issues through to warehousing and fulfilment, these are not small obstacles to overcome.”
Financial Services
Britain’s financial industry is clearly not happy with the status quo. TheCityUK, a trade body representing UK-based financial and professional services firms is calling on the next government to seek an “ambitious and wide-ranging” review of the UK’s relationship with the EU as part of a wider strategy of boosting growth.
In a manifesto released last week, they urged the government to “actively engage” with industry over the first 100 days to understand its priorities ahead of the 2026 review of the TCA.
The Channel Islands
The burdens of Brexit have also impacted Britain’s Crown Dependencies. Guernsey’s Environment & Infrastructure (E&I) department say that dealing with the post-Brexit ramifications has made everything “much more complicated” requiring more time and resources. E&I President Deputy Lindsay de Sausmarez said. “We’ve had a whole raft of legislation that we’ve had to bring in, for example about phytosanitary regulations, and things like that, which we’ve never needed before Brexit.”
Northern Ireland
The EU is set to phase out artificial smoke flavourings over the next two years after its food safety authority said toxicity concerns, including cancer risks, were either confirmed or can’t be ruled out. It means that crisp makers and presumably retailers in Northern Ireland will also be subject to the ban under the terms of the Windsor Framework, potentially creating a ‘smoky bacon border’ with Britain, according to The Daily Mail.
Gibraltar
Gibraltar’s chief minister is rolling the pitch ahead of announcing details of the forthcoming deal with Spain. Fabian Picardo says the alternative to a treaty is potentially the full application of the Schengen border code with all of the massive difficulties that would entail, and for Gibraltar to reciprocate.
He said: “In other words, if the Schengen border code is applied to Gibraltar and to crossings from Gibraltar to Spain, the government of Gibraltar will apply the same rules to crossings from Spain to Gibraltar. We will do that more in sorrow than in anger.”
Travel
The introduction of a competitor to Eurostar’s cross Channel services will be delayed by at least four years due to Brexit red tape, according to CityAM.
Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, the Spanish rail firm Evolyn, and the newly established Dutch operator Heuro were planning a high-speed challenger services. Evolyn was expected to launch its service as early as next year, but corporate filings from Eurostar say this is “not feasible,” with “2028 considered to be the earliest possible timing of market entry”.
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