Lib Dems Refuse to Endorse Rejoin for Election
For first time in 50 years Europe not on UK election agenda
Hopes held by many that Brexit would be an issue in the next general election have been dashed after the Liberal Democratic Leader, Sir Ed Davey, told the BBC that any work to undo the Brexit imposed by Boris Johnson would now have to wait until at least the next Parliament in five years time.
The Tory position remains vehemently anti-EU, with all the would-be successors to Rishi Sunak sounding more Europhobe than Nigel Farage or Richard Tice. Labour’s line was laid down two years ago by Sir Keir Starmer when he ruled out any return to the Single Market, Customs Union, or Free Movement and used the slogan “Make Brexit Work” – though without any explanation of how this happy state might be achieved.
Labour shadow ministers studiously avoid the “B” word and it suits both Tories and Labour to make the election the first in half a century in which Europe is not an issue. Some argue that this defies economic gravity as Goldman Sachs last month noted that the UK economy has shrunk five per cent since our entry into the hard Brexit era. The OBR put the reduction in GDP at four per cent.
In her Mais Lecture, Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, denounced what she called “a rushed and ill-conceived Brexit deal”. But there are no proposals from Labour to restore lost trade with Europe, let alone the lost sovereign rights that British citizens have been deprived off by the extremist Tory-Ukip-Reform idea of a suitable relationship between Britain and Europe. This leaves a vacuum. No party is speaking for the 63 per cent of all registered British voters who did not vote for Brexit and the 16 million voters who actively voted to remain linked to Europe. It is often forgotten that Brexit did not obtain a majority of all those on the electoral register – only 37 per cent. In many countries a referendum that changes the constitutional arrangements of a nation has to obtain at least a majority of all registered voters.
Peter Kellner, one of the UK’s more distinguished pollsters, makes the somewhat tongue in cheek argument that 2 million out of the 17.4 million Leave voters have died since 2016, so the Remain camp is now in a theoretical majority. But no-one in the general election other than Greens and the SNP will speak for them.
The UK Lib Dem parliamentary candidates have put out literature saying their party is the party of Rejoin. Sir Ed Davey launched a Lib Dem campaign this week and proclaimed that the Lib Dems were on “the path to the Single Market”. Being on a path is a meaningless slogan. Given Sir Ed was in the cabinet that green-lighted in 2013 David Cameron’s Referendum decision which led to Britain’s new posture of unsplendid isolation from Europe, perhaps he does not want to admit that Nick Clegg’s supine poodle-like acceptance of whatever Cameron proposed during the 2010-15 coalition was an historic mistake.
But Sir Ed did not use the “R” – Rejoin – word.
He was put further on the spot when Katya Adler, presenting BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, quizzed the LibDem leader about the confusion and contradictions in his Brexit policy. Ms Adler is the first Today presenter who is an expert on the EU, speaks European languages, and as the BBC’s Europe correspondent knows the mood in EU capitals as well as Brussels.
She told the LibDem leader firmly there was no interest anywhere in Europe in reincorporating a Britain that has made such a mess of Brexit. British hopes of cherry-picking some future friendlier trade deal with the EU while repudiating most of the conditions of the Single Market won’t work. Accepting EU law on trade and related European Court of Justice rulings, lifting the ban on Europeans working in the UK, and dropping the xenophobic anti-European hostility which has been at the heart of Tory policy on Europe since 2016 were all pre-conditions for a new win-win relationship with Europe.
Sir Ed spluttered, but had little to say. He talked of a chat he had with Christian Lindner, the leader of the German Free Democrats who is currently German’s finance minister in the coalition government. German Liberals are not soft, cuddly English Liberal-Democrats. They are Manchester Liberals, firmly right-wing, hostile to any state intervention, regard Bidenomics and any hint of Keynsian deficit spending as heresy, and in Linder’s case he supported Putin’s annexation of Crimea and has been voting in the European Parliament and Council of Minister against EU support for pro-environment and carbon-reduction policies.
The pretence that the LibDems could be the pro-Rejoin party in the general election is shattered. Sir Ed is on the same page as Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer. British voters will have no choice on Europe in the general election, and probably not this decade.
Denis MacShane is the former Minister for Europe. His book is Labour Takes Power. The Denis MacShane Diaries 1997-2001 is now out