Despite all the evidence, some Remainers are still despairing
Britain’s place at the heart of European trade will not be ruined by Brexit. But many pro-EU politicians seem to want us to fail
The anguish surrounding Brexit cannot be explained in purely political terms. Its cause is at least as much psychological. Some Remainers – a minority, but not an insignificant one – are so determined to see bad news that they are becoming unhinged. Like King Lear, they cannot adjust to the sudden loss of their long dominion.
Consider their response to the eminently sensible paper on postBrexit customs arrangements published last week. Ministers suggested two alternative ways to keep cross-Channel trade running smoothly when Britain starts to strike its own trade deals. One is simply to extend the customs facilitation procedures that are already making traffic in goods frictionless among developed economies. The other is to, in effect, operate the EU’s external tariff for it, applying Brussels standards and levies to goods that enter the UK for onward shipment.
Both proposals address reasonable concerns. The Institute of Directors calls them “a hugely positive step”. The CBI, which was strongly for Remain, says they are “encouraging”. The National Farmers Union, also Remain, is “delighted” that ministers want to phase in the new system.
So how have pro-EU politicians reacted? Are they relieved that the government is not pursuing the “ideological hard Brexit” they have spent the past year fulminating against? Nope. Before anyone had had time to read the proposals, Nicola Sturgeon called them “daft”, Vince Cable “chaotic” and Keir Starmer “incoherent”.
Pro-EU columnists were more bellicose, writing of disasters and cliff-edges and blah blah fishcakes. Pundits who are usually selfconsciously modern fulminated as if customs checks would be conducted by mustachioed officials in peaked caps – when, since the Nineties, most documentation has happened in advance and online.
Britain is not relying on magical new technology to facilitate crossborder trade. It proposes to extend schemes that are already up and running. For example, the bulk of our international trade – in common with other advanced economies – is carried out by Authorised Economic Operators, licensed companies exempt from many customs procedures. That scheme can be widened and deepened. At the same time, Britain will seek to remain in the Common Transit Convention, which covers the EU, EFTA, some Balkan states and Turkey, scrapping import and export declarations at frontiers.
For what it’s worth, there is a funky new technological solution, which will eventually make many physical customs checks redundant, namely blockchain – a system where the origin of goods can be indelibly recorded online. But ministers are not asking anyone to put their faith in the future, only to trust what already works.
If that still sounds abstract, look at an actual, existing non-EU state. Switzerland exports five times as much per capita to the EU as Britain does, having agreed sensible customs facilitation procedures with its neighbours. I’m not aware of any Swiss political party that wants to join the customs union, and thereby forfeit that country’s bilateral trade deals with Japan, China and the rest.
Switzerland is surrounded by EU territory, and is a major transit route for European hauliers. Its borders are high, jagged and permeable. The UK, by contrast, is an archipelago that conducts most trade through a limited number of ports, making any deal logistically easier to apply. Oh, and we’ll be the EU 27’s chief export destination. Not that Continuity Remainers are interested in logistics or logic. They are doctrinaire in their despair, repeating every poor economic forecast while disregarding hard evidence of prosperity: employment, growth, retail sales, manufacturing orders, exports, overseas investment and stocks have all risen. Most Remainers want Britain to get the best possible deal starting from where we are. But one in five, according to the pollster YouGov, want an economic downturn so as to teach Leavers a lesson, and these are the ones we keep hearing from.
So determined is their pessimism that they turn against their own ideas the moment they are put forward by Tory ministers. They have, for example, spent the past year demanding that Britain come up with a way to avoid an obstructive border in Ireland. Either of the Government’s two customs schemes would render a hard border unnecessary – and the government published a further paper making clear that, even if both were rejected by Brussels, it still wouldn’t impose a frontier in Ireland. There will be no border unless the EU erects one.
Some worry Ireland could become a route for illegal immigration into the UK, but this is to misunderstand how our borders work. An EU citizen wanting to enter Britain without a visa wouldn’t fly to Dublin; he’d fly directly to Luton. We allow six-month visa-free entry from Namibia, Nauru and Nicaragua, for Heaven’s sake; does anyone seriously think we’d deny it to the Netherlands? Immigration control depends on knowing who is in the country, not on refusing people entry.
Remainers applauded when, in its formal statement on Brexit in April, the EU declared: “In view of the unique circumstances on the island of Ireland, flexible and imaginative solutions will be required, including with the aim of avoiding a hard border”. But when the UK offered such solutions, the same people exploded with rage. Watch them do the same this week when the Brexit department puts forward ways to guarantee the mutual recognition of EU and British products already on the market.
The politicians who are most pro-EU are, bizarrely, the ones who insist that it will act against its own interests out of sheer spite. Truly, we are beyond the realm of reason. FOLLOW Daniel Hannan on Twitter @ DanielJHannan;
at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion