ESSAY QUESTION for future historians of Brexit. Was the creation of the Department for International Trade in July 2016 a strategic mis-step in the delivery of the referendum result? With hindsight only, I am increasingly of the view it was a mistake to do it so quickly (1/11)
It legitimised a sense very early on that Brexit would not be Brexit unless the UK was able to strike trade deals without being part of a European trading bloc. This is the nub of many of the arguments being made today on the Customs Union and our future relationship with it 2/11
However, international trade was never really a central tenet of historic Tory Euroscepticism and nor was it the most frequent argument pushed in the referendum campaign (3/11)
Historic Tory Euroscepticism was about a sense that we were on a path to ever closer political union posing difficult constitutional issues - and that our budgetary contributions were too high and lacked transparency. In Europe But Not Run By Europe was a common refrain (4/11)
The drivers of the referendum result were more complex. But fundamentally came down to a sense that people felt they had lost control of their lives and communities because of the sweeping tide of globalisation - with immigration coming close to the top of concerns (5/11)
If you are seriously arguing that UK free trade deals with the United States, China and India will restore a sense of control to those communities most left behind, then you have not spent very much time observing the manner in which international trade deals are conducted (6/11)
All of which leads to the question, why are we expending huge swathes of emotional energy on different models of tariff collection and our future ability to get stiffed on steel by China, visas by India and food by the USA? Rather than limiting free movement for example? (7/11)
Answer - because trade deals have been at the heart of the Government's definition for Brexit since July 2016. People were told that Brexit would only be Brexit if we had the ability to strike trade deals. No matter the historical context or real drivers of Leave (8/11)
As Andrea Jenkyns herself put it really well in her Maiden Speech to Parliament in 2015: "Conservatives have held a consistent foreign policy view on Europe: to be part of a European trading entity, but not a fully integrated political union (9/11)
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If the Government had reinforced that consistent Conservative view post referendum, we might be in a different place. Hindsight of course is a wonderful thing. It's difficult to think strategically when you are in the middle of unprecedented events (10/11)
But Conservative Cabinet members might consider this context as they expend huge amounts of emotional energy on our relationship with a Customs Union rather than housing, childcare, jobs or the many other issues that have much more direct relevance to our communities (11/11)
