Brexiteers are incensed at the outcomes of their own project
Warnings of red tape, border delays and exporter costs were poohpoohed as ‘project fear’, writes Andrew Woodcock
One of the more jaw-dropping aspects of the first few weeks of 2021 for Westminster watchers has been the howls of outrage from Brexiteers at the outcomes of their own project. From the start, erecting barriers to trade with the EU was at the heart of the Leave programme, even if its proponents were keener to talk about unleashing global Britain or stopping freedom of movement or taking back budget contributions from Brussels.
Warnings that Brexit would inevitably mean red tape at the borders, delays and costs for exporters and a consequent hit to the UK economy were pooh-poohed as “project fear”, while Leavers were coy until the referendum was over about whether they in fact wanted to quit the single market and customs union.
On the very day when he signed the Christmas Eve trade deal that would ensure the introduction of nontariff barriers to British exports, Boris Johnson continued to claim that there would be “no non-tariff barriers” as a result; just as he had told the Irish businesses currently wasting hundreds of hours filling in customs forms that they would be able to throw any customs forms in the bin.
It is the businesses which have to fill in those forms who have found it most galling to hear Johnson and other ministers describe as “teething problems” the new bureaucratic burdens which many of them fear are now a permanent and structural obstacle to selling overseas – if not a threat to their livelihoods.
Erecting barriers to trade with the EU was at the heart of the Leave programme, even if its proponents were keener to talk about unleashing global Britain
Their fury was heard at sessions of the Commons Scottish and Welsh Affairs committees this week, where traders spoke of lorries returning to the continent “full of fresh air” because UK businesses had given up the struggle to export and of companies having to fill out 48 pieces of paperwork for consignments which had once required two.
Many were perplexed to find arch-Brexiteer Michael Gove writing to the vice president of the European Commission this week to complain of “pressing problems with the operation of the Northern Ireland protocol”, while Mr Johnson muttered darkly about suspending some of its provisions, for all the world as if it wasn’t the agreement which they themselves demanded and agreed.
Of course, opponents of EU withdrawal always expected that when the downsides of Brexit began rearing their head, Leave-backing ministers would be quick to blame Brussels. An exasperated Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney was certainly speaking for many – both in the remaining EU and the UK – when he told the Brexiteers yesterday: “You’ve got to own the consequences of your own decisions. If you force a certain type of Brexit, then that has consequences. And when the problems that all of us had been warning would flow from that kind of Brexit actually happen in reality, you’ve got to take responsibility for that.”
Yours,
Andrew Woodcock
Political editor