Brexit Unfolded: How no one got what they wanted (and why they were never going to)

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But, more fundamentally, it is the fault of the Brexiters, in both politics and the media, who have made honest discussion so difficult and toxic as to be impossible. That will take many years, if it happens at all, but in the meantime a small step in that direction would be to start making a noise right now about the unfolding EUSS scandal. Indeed, the reality is that, although this was supposed to be resolved in phase 1, it never disappeared during phase 2 (the future terms discussion), and its supposed resolution with the Northern Ireland Protocol proved chimerical once the transition period ended. Chris Grey has blown away the fog and obfuscation surrounding Brexit and revealed it in all its stark wretchedness. So in evaluating Brexit, the real test is whether it has delivered these promises – promises of specific, concrete, often economic, benefits, and not simply ‘sovereignty’ as an abstract ideal; promises sold using grotesque emotional manipulation, and made with no suggestion that they would take decades to transpire, or would have any downsides at all.

But what the Post Office scandal should tell us is that it is now, when the damage is being done, that public outrage and outcry is most needed, as it is only that which galvanizes effective political action. Each comes from a credible source, each is independent, each uses a different modelling or calculating technique, and all show a negative impact. Of all those whose lives have been damaged by Brexit, EU citizens who were living in the UK, most of whom were not even entitled to vote in the referendum, along with UK citizens living in the EU, some of whom could not vote, have surely been the worst and most directly affected. For, as I’ve explained at length before, these risks have been increased by Brexit, rather than simply being unchanged because ‘the goods are still coming from the EU, and we didn’t have these controls before’.However (although, really, it is another aspect of the same basic issue) the situation of post-Brexit Britain is worse still than that of largely maintaining alignment with single market standards whilst not reaping the benefits of single market membership. Some politicians, too, including Green MP Caroline Lucas, have taken an active interest in it, just as a few did in the Post Office case. At some point, especially if there is to be any serious possibility of re-joining, that has to be confronted. But it was book-ended by three reports by Lisa O’Carroll in the Guardian which received far less attention.

It’s this, along with the problem of disentangling what is and isn’t a Brexit effect, which makes evaluating it so difficult.

The consultation was launched in June 2022 and concluded in August 2022, and the results were supposed to have been announced in November 2022. This, of course, is in itself an indication of the fatuity of the Brexiters’ ideas of regulatory independence, as I discussed in August 2021, when the idea was being mooted, and again in March 2023, when the policy was announced. However because the UK is not in lockstep, UK CBAM will come into force later ( creating a ‘window’ for dumping) and, as things stand, without linking the UK CBAM and ETS and EU CBAM and ETS. The need to recognize and resolve the emerging scandal of the treatment of EU citizens in the UK is, first and foremost, a moral imperative.