Conservative leadership hopefuls fail to understand that the UK needs less Brexit, not more

Editorial: They are still ignoring the problems that Brexit is causing, and arguing about Europe at a time when there are even more pressing problems, most obviously the cost of living crisis

(Dave Brown)

Famously, Brexit was not “done” when the UK formally left the EU at 11pm on 31 January 2020. It has continued to be an endlessly damaging and divisive issue, and it is still exerting a kind of gravitational pull on the politics of the Conservative Party. It is doing them, and the country, no good.

At the moment, there are long-established Leavers, Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt, at the front of the leadership race, with a born-again Leaver, Liz Truss, close behind, and the Eurosceptic Kemi Badenoch not far further back.

Sunak remains the MPs’ choice, on 101 votes thus far, but among the members Penny Mordaunt remains the great favourite, not least because she is perceived as being the most Eurosceptic. This is no accident, and Mr Sunak finds himself sneered at for having “pro-European” MPs supporting him, as if he is tainted by association with the heretics.

Jeremy Hunt, despite his desperate lurch to the right, has never been forgiven for rejecting the no-deal option in 2019, and it was telling that he came bottom in the first poll. Put at its starkest, this is now a Ukip Mark 2 party.

Therefore, the truth is that whoever is elected leader, and whatever their background, they will try to renegotiate the deal Boris Johnson and Lord Frost signed. Abolishing the Northern Ireland protocol of the UK-EU withdrawal agreement, for example, which was possibly only a negotiating ploy for Boris Johnson, has elevated it to an article of faith and a solemn promise from all the candidates. It is not now a question of whether it will be enacted, but when.

If the next prime minister fails to renegotiate the Brexit deal, a harder Brexit will necessarily follow. It might take the form of the UK unilaterally suspending its treaty obligations and breaking international law, though with only mild retaliation from the EU. Or it might even provoke a trade war with the European Union, Britain’s largest export market, further economic hardship, the return of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and the active hostility of the Biden White House.

These are just some of the worst-case scenarios that will logically follow such an approach, and one that is made much more likely by the virulent wave of anti-EU sentiment working its way through the Conservatives once again.

Yet, instead of facing up to those risks, and telling their party some of the home truths it needs to hear, those who wish to lead the Conservatives are embracing the madness. They are still ignoring the problems that Brexit is causing, and arguing about Europe at a time when there are even more pressing problems, most obviously the cost of living crisis.

Just as the leadership election of 2019 put off tough choices and wasted time, and ended up with the cakeism of Boris Johnson, so too is another beauty contest consuming too much time and energy. The cost of living crisis requires action now, behind the existing, out-of-date packages of measures, welcome as they are.

The emergence of Suella Braverman on a perniciously anti-European, anti-human rights platform has been a particularly unpleasant feature of the process. Even though she has now been discarded, actually slipping back in this round, the theological questions about the credentials of the leading candidates keep creeping in. They will become even more pressing as the contest intensifies and proceeds towards the vote of the activists.

It is as if this Tory leadership election is about selecting the leader of a religious cult rather than a head of government faced with an economic crisis (and one that has been exacerbated by Brexit). Even after six years, the mantra for many Tory MPs and activists remains that the next Conservative leader must be a Brexiteer, that wonderfully buccaneering-sounding sobriquet for enthusiastic self-harm.

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Anyone who fails the shibboleths of sovereignty is either ruled out, or has to perform such acts of penitence that they start to say and do things that the cult demands of them but which they surely know to be irrational. Ms Truss, for example, had to receive the benediction of Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nadine Dorries before she could count on getting enough Eurosceptic support to make her a credible contender, and for her Remain apostasy to be dissolved. In 2016 she made the case for Remain; now she renounces her former faith. Either she was wrong then or she is wrong now.

But despite her Damascene conversions, Ms Truss remains behind Ms Mordaunt (and now by a slightly greater margin), who is not even in the cabinet but has the advantage of being pictured in her Royal Navy uniform, as though just off to sink the Armada or to victory at Trafalgar.

The remainder of this parliament, therefore, promises to be almost as chaotic as the first half, dominated as that was by Covid (which is threatening a bit of a comeback). Brexit has thus far proved more of a hindrance than help in resolving the economic crisis because it has made labour shortages worse, pushed up costs and disrupted pan-European supply lines. The nation needs less Brexit, not more. It is not going to get it.