Time for UK to revisit EU ties

Ido not believe politics will change in the UK anytime soon, despite the shift in the public mood, which has been leaning toward believing that Brexit was the wrong step for the national interests of the country, its unity, economic prosperity and social cohesion. No one is talking here about abandoning Brexit all together and rejoining the EU, but at least some sanity might have emerged within parts of the country and the Conservative Party leadership, which has hinted that trying to recover some of the billions of pounds the UK has lost as a result of its hard Brexit might not be that bad an idea after all. Brexit-supporting Prime

Minister Rishi Sunak had to appease his party when he told business leaders this week that life outside the EU was “delivering enormous benefits and opportunities.” But many of those in attendance and the rest of the country question what the Conservative PM, ministers and MPs mean when they make such statements. To date, none of the Conservative advocates of Brexit have succeeded in pointing to any such benefits and opportunities, which is the elephant in the room that no one in government dares mention. Sunak’s comments followed a Sunday Times report that

“senior government figures” were planning to “put Britain on the path toward a Swiss-style relationship” with the EU. Switzerland has far closer ties with the bloc through bilateral agreements that allow it access to the single market and a high degree of free movement through paying into EU coffers. Previously, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, himself a Remainer, had spooked the euroskeptics in his party when he said he was eager to remove the “vast majority” of trade barriers with the

EU. Hunt, who managed to rebalance the books and calm the financial markets after Liz Truss’ disastrous mini-budget of cutting taxes and borrowing money to stimulate growth, was not speaking from the void, as polls and experts have been indicating a cooling of attitudes in the UK toward the validity of Brexit.

The Conservative government and its supporters prefer to blame the current recession on global forces and say that it was “made in Russia,” while people are facing the brunt of the costof-living crisis with weakened public services and a starved health sector due to years of governing by a party whose sole aim was to get the UK out of the EU, without a vision of what to do on the day after.

No one, of course, could discount the impact of COVID-19 or the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but the Tory Brexit has been a major cause of Britain’s recent economic woes.

I think the country deserves a sane discussion, away from the boosterism and lying of the Boris Johnson era, that could ultimately admit that Brexit started with many lies and the shortest route to putting things right might, unfortunately, require a review of hard Brexit and the consideration of a Swiss-style arrangement with the EU or a Norwegian one.

Mohamed Chebaro is a British-Lebanese journalist, media consultant and trainer with more than 25 years of experience covering war, terrorism, defense, current affairs and diplomacy.