To a certain kind of Remainer, the big Brexit lie was exposed once again this week with the news that Sir James Dyson would be relocating his company’s headquarters to Singapore.
Liberal Democrat MP and second referendum advocate Layla Moran summed up the #FBPE mood, calling the decision an act of ‘staggering hypocrisy’ and suggesting that Sir James, a prominent Brexiteer, should donate to the People’s Vote campaign to ‘help mop up the disaster he has created’.
As it happens, Sir James insists that Dyson’s decision has nothing to do with his views on Britain’s relationship with the EU. Nor does it involve the firm upping sticks altogether. Explaining the decision in the Telegraph, he said ‘these are not the actions of a hypocrite but someone wanting to invest more in the UK post-Brexit, not less’.
But even if the Dyson decision was not quite the devastating blow for Global Britain that many assumed, it was a reminder of the bigger picture on Brexit – a picture we are losing sight of amidst the ongoing Commons drama.
In a message to Vote Leave supporters shortly after the referendum victory, Dominic Cummings wrote that ‘taking back control to Britain is just the first step. The next step should be major changes in Britain so that the broken Westminster and Whitehall system has to focus on the public interest in a way it does not now.’
Brexit, in other words, was a necessary but not sufficient ingredient for national renewal. That has two implications: first, that the Brexit wake-up call extends to areas that have nothing to do with the EU. And second that delivering Brexit only gives Britain the chance to do things differently; leaving is not the same thing as capitalising on those opportunities.
Unfortunately, the process of actually getting out has so far proved so all-consuming that it has eclipsed the more important – and, frankly, more interesting – question of what Britain should do once outside the EU.
Clearly, some corners of Westminster pay no attention because their goal is to stop Brexit altogether.
More striking is the Labour leadership’s lack of enthusiasm for actually exercising the power it would have were the party to win office.
Before an expedient change of heart in 2016, Jeremy Corbyn spent his career complaining about the Brussels capitalist club that would thwart the Left’s radical plans were it ever to win power.
But now that he is closer to No 10 – and the EU’s exit door – than he could ever have imagined, the Labour leader suddenly seems worried about exercising all the power that would be available to him. Why, for instance, does Corbyn need Brussels to ‘guarantee that existing EU rights at work, environmental standards and consumer protections will become a benchmark to build on – not fall behind and undercut other countries at our people’s expense’? What does he think Labour governments are for exactly?
Of course, there is a relationship between how we leave and the freedoms we have once we’re out. That explains the present dividing line among Brexit-supporting MPs, between those who think the deal on the table amounts to a permanent and unacceptable limit on those freedoms and those who think it gets Britain out with enough of those freedoms intact.
Fractious though that debate may be, it at least has the advantage of being a conversation about how to make the most of Brexit. But those serious about capitalising on Brexit need to remember that the fiercely disputed consequences of the Withdrawal Agreement is just one of several constraints on Britain’s ability to thrive once we leave.
An interesting poll by ComRes recently found 72 per cent of voters agreeing (and just 10 per cent disagreeing) that the Brexit process has shown that British politics needs a total overhaul. A similar proportion felt that Brexit has shown that the current generation of politicians just aren’t up to it.
The proposition that “after Brexit, the UK should position itself as the lowest tax, business-friendliest country in Europe” won the support of 48 per cent of those polled – with just 16 per cent disagreeing. In other words, Britons overwhelmingly want to make us the kind of country where a firm like Dyson is happy to stay — and many more like it are happy to come.
