What the commentators said
Corbyn’s shift is an effective strategic move, said James Randerson on Politico. Yet the details of his new stance don’t bear too much scrutiny. He said Labour would seek a deal that maintained all the benefits of the current system, but that also curtailed freedom of movement and provided exemptions from some EU rules, including those on state aid that would block Labour’s nationalisation plans. “To many in Brussels that will sound a lot like a Labour version of having cake and eating it.” (Indeed, at one point in his speech, Corbyn accidentally referred to a “new cake” before correcting himself to a “new UK customs union”.)
The idea of staying in a customs union has a superficial attraction, said Vernon Bogdanor in The Guardian. It would seem to solve the Irish border problem and allow frictionless trade while freeing the UK from all the encumbrances and costs of EU membership. Alas, the reality is not so rosy. As customs unions necessarily involve a common external tariff, membership would remove one of the chief advantages of Brexit: “the opportunity to secure lower prices for consumers by importing goods tariff-free from outside the EU”. What’s more, when the EU negotiated new trade deals with third countries, these deals would open British markets to those countries, but wouldn’t open up their markets to us, as we wouldn’t be a member of the EU. Nor would it guarantee smooth trade: in Turkey, which has a customs arrangement with the EU, the queues of lorries waiting to cross the Bulgarian border sometimes extend ten miles.
By holding out the illusory promise of a “bespoke” deal, May and Corbyn are both on “collision courses with reality”, said Rafael Behr in the same paper. But May, who has “pedalled harder and faster towards the impossible”, is set to “crash first”. In the meantime, the UK is becoming a global “laughing stock”, said Clare Foges in The Times. Germany’s Der Spiegel says our U-turns are making observers not just dizzy but “nauseous”; France’s Libération says “all of Europe is quietly sniggering at the worn-out old British lion”. Whatever impact Brexit has, the months of indecision and chaos have already taken a huge toll on our credibility.