Arab News
It would not be an exaggeration to claim that the newly established job in the UK government — minister for Brexit opportunities — will at once be both the most difficult in the world and the easiest.
It will be the most difficult job as it is unlikely euroskeptic MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, the newly assigned Brexit opportunities minister, will be able to shower benefits on farmers, fishermen, manufacturers, and employers and employees alike as a result of the UK leaving the EU. On the other hand, the new portfolio might well be the easiest job because many believe there are hardly any benefits from Brexit, as most of the claims made by leavers have turned out to be lies aimed at winning the 2016 referendum.
The figures released so far indicate that benefits and opportunities will not start to accumulate at the doorstep of Rees-Mogg’s department, boosting the UK economy and the living standards of British people above and beyond what their neighbors could ever dream of.
Any perceived Brexit opportunities and benefits — or the absence of them — will outlive this government and its ministers, as the UK economy is likely to underperform for years to come. Politically, meanwhile, London’s standing has clearly fallen, since it is no longer one of the three key members of an economic bloc that could easily stand alongside the US and China and claim to be among the most powerful in the world today.
But this is not important, since the Brexit opportunities minister is awaiting suggestions from the public for possible benefits resulting from the UK’s EU exit that his department can explore. He told The Sun newspaper recently that he is bypassing the civil service to ask if any member of the public has any novel ideas on how to locate any of the increasingly elusive Brexit benefits.
Rees-Mogg himself has dismissed the mounting evidence that Brexit has hit trade and, by default, the UK economy, while maintaining that it has actually been a success. He has ignored the figures published this month by the Office of National Statistics, which showed that UK exports to the EU shrank by a record £20 billion ($27.2 billion) last year. British exports to the EU fell by 12 percent in 2021 compared to the last stable year before the pandemic, with Brexit rules blamed for supply chain disruptions, new trade barriers and red tape.
Even the government’s own analysis from last November showed that the losses from trade with the EU are expected to be 178 times bigger than the country’s expected gains from new free trade agreements.
Of course, Rees-Mogg and Prime Minister Boris Johnson wave all this off as simply part of the repercussions of COVID-19 that are being felt throughout the global economy. To be fair, I am trying, like Rees-Mogg, to find the positives for post-Brexit Britain and I want to believe in their motto of “Build Back Better,” but I am far from being convinced wherever I look.
The evidence of the economic hurt caused by Brexit is abundant. Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee reported this month that post-Brexit rules had imposed a “clear increase in costs, paperwork and border delays” on British businesses. The ONS’ January business survey found that more than half of importers and exporters cited additional paperwork and higher transportation costs as problems affecting their firms. Interviews with farmers, entrepreneurs and manufacturers from various parts of the UK, the majority of whom voted to leave, show them complaining about the hours lost filling in forms, costing them both financially and emotionally.
We all remember the Leave campaign in 2016 promising Britain freedom from Brussels and its tedious rules, which had apparently been holding back the UK’s economy and lowering the people’s living standards, while promoting the benefits of striking trade deals with faster-growing economies in a world that is shifting eastward. They also promised to keep all the benefits of the single market and customs union. Unfortunately, such promises were not kept in the final Brexit deal, leading to the necessity of laborious customs checks on goods moving between the UK and the EU, which ironically remains London’s all-time biggest and closest trading partner.
I have often tried to wear the hat of a Brexiteer in an effort to understand their motives for voting to leave the EU. Apart from a mishmash of abstract references to “freedom” and “sovereignty” and a desire to curb immigration, all my questioning has failed to produce a single concrete, clear benefit to the UK’s state, society or economy. Politically, the picture is no better. For all the photo ops at last year’s failed COP26 climate summit in Glasgow and the recent shuttle diplomacy over the Ukraine crisis, the UK government’s efforts have not registered beyond the domestic media, as the international media looks to Paris and, as usual, Washington for direction.
